Voting rights advocate Rev. William Barber was in Washington Friday marching with other activists to raise awareness about voter suppression on the fourth anniversary of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In Barber's home state of North Carolina, activists have notched two recent victories in the courts that have struck down a discriminatory law targeting voters of color and found lawmakers relied too heavily on a race to draw the state's congressional districts. Nonetheless, the 2013 Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act suggested Congress could derive a new standard for discerning which states require extra scrutiny. That still hasn’t happened.
Additionally, Barber told a group of reporters that Attorney General Jeff Sessions can't be relied upon to challenge any new voter suppression laws coming from GOP-controlled legislatures, and he's worried that roadblocks for voters of color could be overshadowed by all the attention being paid to cyberattacks on our elections. Vanessa Williams reports:
“The truth is homegrown voter suppression poses a greater threat to U.S. democracy than Russian election tampering,” Barber said. [...]
“For nearly four years, the leadership of the Senate and the House have not brought for one bill to fully restore the Voting Rights Act,” said Barber said. “This is the real hacking of our democracy; the real hacking of our election system.”
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, as of May, at least 99 bills to restrict registration and voting have been introduced in 31 states, and more than a third of those bills have seen some type of legislative action. The center notes that although bills introduced to expand voting access outnumber those that would restrict access, “more legislation to limit participation is advancing toward passage.”