John Lewis Voting Rights Bill must pass

By Rod Sullivan
Posted 7/27/21

I believe that we are in the most important American political period since the Civil War. States have passed enough anti-democratic legislation to forever alter our country. Those things are already …

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John Lewis Voting Rights Bill must pass

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I believe that we are in the most important American political period since the Civil War. States have passed enough anti-democratic legislation to forever alter our country. Those things are already done. We have only one hope — that the US Senate passes a bill to fix things. And they are running out of time.

Let’s turn to Wikipedia for a brief history: The John Lewis Voting Rights Act (also known as HR4) is proposed legislation that would restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, certain portions of which were struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2013 by Shelby County vs. Holder. Particularly, it would bring back the requirement that certain states pre-clear changes to their voting laws with the federal government. It is named after late Georgia Representative and Civil Rights activist John Lewis.

The For the People Act (introduced as H.R.1) was a bill in the US Congress to significantly federalize state elections, change campaign finance laws, ban gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders.

The act was originally introduced in 2019, as the first official legislation of the 116thCongress. The House passed it by a party-line vote of 234–193. The bill was viewed as a “signature piece of legislation” from the Democratic House majority. After the House passed the bill, it was blocked from receiving a vote by the then Republican-controlled Senate, under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In 2021, congressional Democrats reintroduced the act as H.R.1 and S.1. The bill passed the House of Representatives on a near party-line vote of 220–210, advancing to the Senate, which is split 50–50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote. The bill had unified support among Democrats, but Senate Republicans blocked the bill with a filibuster in June 2021. Some Senate Democrats expressed support for abolishing the filibuster for the bill, but a few in their caucus remained opposed or expressed reservations about doing so.

So, we have two separate bills, but the same basic problem: the Republicans in the Senate will filibuster anything Democrats pass. Democrats must kill the filibuster, if only for this bill.

It is hard to understate the importance of this period in our history. We need all Federal elected officials to focus on this until it gets done. Everything else pales in comparison.