It's called the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015. Backed by civil rights groups, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont are introducing it today to strengthen the Voting Rights Act. That 50-year-old law's most serious voter protection was eviscerated in 2013 when the Supreme Court
ruled in
Shelby County v. Holder.
The Lewis/Leahy bill is a big improvement over the bipartisan milquetoast introduced last year. That bill never even got a hearing. Zachary Roth reports that the new bill will garner more support from progressives because it is tougher. But it will also probably lose a few Republicans. Not that even the weak bill had many of them in support.
Ari Berman at The Nation reports:
“The previous bill we did in a way to try and get bipartisan support—which we did,” Senator Leahy told me. “We had the Republican majority leader of the House [Eric Cantor] promise us that if we kept it like that it would come up for a vote. It never did. We made compromises to get [Republican] support and they didn’t keep their word. So this time I decided to listen to the voters who had their right to vote blocked, and they asked for strong legislation that fully restores the protections of the VRA.”
The 2016 election will be the first in 50 years where voters will not have the full protections of the VRA, which adds urgency to the congressional effort. Since the Shelby decision, onerous new laws have been passed or implemented in states like North Carolina and Texas, which have disenfranchised thousands of voters, disproportionately those of color. In the past five years, 395 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 49 states, with half the states in the country adopting measures making it harder to vote. “If anybody thinks there’s not racial discrimination in voting today, they’re not really paying attention,” Senator Leahy said.
There's more on Lewis/Leahy below the fold.
Some details per Berman and Roth:
• Under the formula laid out in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, nine states and parts of six others were required under Section 5 to get any changes in voting laws precleared by the courts or U.S. Department of Justice. The Supreme Court trashed Section 4, making Section 5 moot. Under Lewis/Leahy, Section 5 would be restored by compelling states that have 15 voting violations in the past 25 years (or 10 violations if one was statewide) preclear planned changes in voting law for federal approval. This would initially cover 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Coverage would last for a 10-year period.
• Every state in the nation would be required to submit for federal approval any election-law changes that would affect racial or linguistic minorities. These would include: changes in election boundaries that affect 10,000 or more minority voters or 20 percent of electorate; changes in voter qualifications; changes that cut, consolidate or move polling locations where a racial or linguistic minority population is significant; reductions in bilingual election materials.
• Jurisdictions would be required to publicly post information about any voting-law changes at 180 days before the first election affected by the changes.
Here's Berman again:
The legislation faces an uphill road in Congress. Few Republicans were willing to support the more modest VRAA, even after the historic 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma. Leahy could not find a GOP co-sponsor in the Senate for the old bill or the new one. That’s a sad development, given that the VRA has always had strong bipartisan support, and the 2006 reauthorization of the law was approved 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate and signed by George W. Bush. “A decision has been made within the Republican Party that we’re not going to do anything,” Leahy said.
There's not a speck of worthwhile legislation that doesn't face an uphill battle these days.