We Can No Longer Wait for Hopeless Attempts at Bipartisanship to Protect our Democracy
We are closing in on a year that began with the January 6th attack on the Capitol to overturn a free and fair election. In the 11 months since, Republican politicians and dark money groups have continued their assault on Americans’ ability to have their voice and vote counted.
And there is no end in sight.
Earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans voted to block the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (S.4), which would restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its full strength. This was the fourth time this year that Republicans have used their power to block popular voting rights legislation, having already blocked the Freedom to Vote Act and the For the People Act twice, along with measures to end dark money so billionaires can no longer buy elections and to ban partisan gerrymandering so voters have fair and equal representation.
Preventing debate on the bill is just the latest action in a long line of egregious attacks by Republicans to silence the voice and vote of the American people. In 2013 the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder, one of the Court’s most odious decisions.
After Shelby v. Holder, Republican-led states rushed to restrict early voting, reduce the number of polling stations in Black and brown neighborhoods, decrease assistance at polling places, and purge voters from voter rolls. According to a report from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), 868 polling places had been closed between 2012 and 2016 in jurisdictions previously covered by the Voting Rights Act. In 2019, a new report by the LCCHR found that 1,688 polling places had been closed in those same jurisdictions between 2012 and 2018 — nearly doubling the 2016 finding.
The situation has only become worse since Donald Trump took over the Republican party, attempting to restrict voting for millions of Americans in 2020, and then tried to overturn the results of the election, culminating in the insurrection at the Capitol. All along, Republican members of Congress and establishment groups supported the efforts or turned the other way, complicit in this sin against our democracy.
Following January 6, 19 states passed 33 anti-voter laws that will restrict access to the ballot box — all predicated on false assertions about the 2020 election. Many of these laws disproportionately impact Black and brown voters and would have been prevented had the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act been in place. Passing another piece of critical federal legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act, would counter many of these restrictive voting laws to ensure every voter has access to the ballot box to make their voice heard.
It is clear that Senator McConnell and Republicans are not operating in good faith. While Senator Joe Manchin has tried in earnest to find bipartisan support for voting rights, Republicans have continued to block voting rights legislation and have supported the anti-voting laws passed by Republican-led legislatures across the country. The time for hopeless attempts at bipartisanship on these issues are now over. Now, the Senate must take a stand and protect our democracy.
The Senate must move forward and do whatever it takes to pass both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Self-serving politicians in Republican-led legislatures are moving quickly, along partisan lines, to pass gerrymandered maps that deny voters fair and equal representation, and to pass laws that silence our voice and make it easier to sabotage our elections. We cannot afford to wait any longer to protect our Americans’ fundamental freedom to vote and ensure that hard-working families can make their voices heard on the issues that impact their daily lives like reducing the cost of healthcare and recovering from the pandemic.
