VOTING RIGHTS IN THE CROSSHAIRS

As a counterweight to voting rights restrictions being advanced in Republican controlled state legislatures, the U.S. House of Representatives, on March 3rd, by a vote of 220-210, passed HR1, a sweeping voting rights bill. The "For the People Act of 2021," which faces unanimous Republican opposition, includes, among other fundamentals, a national system for automatic voter registration, transparency requirements for political advertising, and it establishes non-partisan redistricting commissions to end partisan gerrymandering. Republicans argue that this bill, which faces an uphill fight in the Senate, would give license to unwanted federal interference in states' authority to conduct their own elections. Solid Republican opposition to this legislation is fed by the fear that these changes would ultimately benefit Democrats through higher turnout, most notably among minorities. For Democrats, this is the third attempt to restore key provisions of the "Voting Rights Act of 1965." Republican control of the Senate and the White House insured that previous endeavors had no chance of succeeding. According to "History.com," the "Voting Rights Act," which passed August 6, 1965, and was designed to enforce voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, was "one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history." The Act was subsequently amended 5 times, to bring it in line with contemporary realities. However, in 2013, in "Shelby County v. Holder," the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the law's core provision. By a 5-4 majority vote, the Court concluded that section 5 of the Act, which mandated that states had to get permission in advance - "preclearance" - from the Department of Justice or a federal court in Washington D.C. before making any changes affecting voting processes. They had to prove that their proposed changes were not racially discriminatory. The Court decided that this section was antiquated, and declared it unconstitutional. Immediately following publication of this decision, Texas announced that it would implement the country's strictest voter i.d. law. Other states followed suit. In a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election, and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities, Republican legislators, still taking advantage of the 2013 Supreme Court decision, introduced well over four times the number of bills to restrict voting access they had proposed during the same time last year. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 33 states introduced over 165 restrictive bills, compared to just 35 by February 2020. Absentee voting reform appears to be of particular interest. The general tendency is to limit voting access, impose stricter voter i.d. requirements, slash voter registration opportunities and enable more aggressive voter roll purges. Specific examples include Arizona's proposal to enable the legislature to overthrow the state's voting result for president, awarding Arizona's Electoral College votes to the candidate of the lawmaker's choosing. This state also proposes to require voters to get their mail-in ballots notarized before sending them back. Georgia wants to limit Sunday voting. (African-Americans tend to vote on Sunday in larger proportions than other demographic groups.) In general, Arizona is discussing 19 restrictive bills, Pennsylvania 14, Georgia 11, New Hampshire 10 and so on. The objective has been simple and quite clear: "Help the Republican Party win elections." Most of these bills still require adoption by respective state Senates and signatures from their governors. Pennsylvania and Michigan, unlike Arizona, Georgia and Texas, have Democratic governors who may veto some election-related bills passed by GOP controlled legislatures. The voting rights bill passed by the House would invalidate many of the restrictions that are being proposed. However, Democrats would need to convince 10 Senate Republicans to go along with them. Without significant process changes this would be a steep hill to climb. Progressive Democrats see ending Senate filibuster rules, which would "only" require a simple majority, as a primary target. Representative John Sarbanes (D-MD), author of HR1, during a recent "Vox" interview, suggested that "there's all manner of ways you could redesign the filibuster so [the bill] would have a path forward." But conservative groups have already embarked on a $5 million campaign to persuade moderate Senate Democrats to oppose rule changes needed to pass any measure to accomplish that. The 15th Amendment to our Constitution reads: "[t}he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude." While this statement appears pretty straight forward, political opposition following its ratification in 1870 continues to focus on blatantly ignoring or circumventing its provisions, from establishing poll taxes and literacy tests early on to, more recently, usurping flagrant misinterpretations reflecting "contemporary" reality. It's time to remove partisanship from the equation and accept the Amendment's intent at face value. Theo Wierdsma