Set an instant record of scheduled voting rights legislation – Orange County Register

Senator Chuck Schumer, D-New York, the US Senate majority leader, has scheduled a vote for January 17 on the Voting Freedom Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The Republican Senate leadership will block the review by threatening a spoiler. In all likelihood, Schumer would then attempt to modify the filtering rule so that it no longer applies to “civil rights law.”

The problem is hugely symbolic; and, in that case, details of the actual law may be lost.

Democrats are trying to describe the votes on these bills as a referendum on democracy itself. In their view, opposing “civil rights” is endorsing efforts by the January 6 crowd to block the issuance of certificates for the 2020 presidential race.

They assert that the rejection of this bill places the United States in the hands of autocracies in the global competition between democracies and autocracies.

The basis of the Democratic leaders’ argument was that the John Lewis Voting Rights Act was necessary in the opinion of the US Supreme Court of 2013, in which Republican-appointed Justices repealed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The two bills need to be considered separately.

There are legitimate grounds for disagreement regarding the Free Voting Act. It includes many provisions that impose federal government solutions to problems traditionally assigned to the states. States will now have to accept what the federal government says is sufficient proof of a voter’s identity, even if the state suspects fraud. Prisoners who have served their time must be allowed to vote. Gerrymandering is banned, but “communities of color,” as the Liberal Brennan Center described the bill, cannot reduce the ability to elect a representative by race. The role of poll watchers will be greatly limited, even though they are the first line of defense against vote theft in many one-party-dominated precincts. The 25 states that have closed their primaries will have to allow voters to choose, by election day, the primary party they vote for.

All of these issues raise legitimate points of controversy, but voting no on the Free Voting Act for any of those reasons is a smart thing to do. could deflect the character of a Republican senator who is opposing “civil rights.”

Regarding the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, more consensus is needed. The 2013 Supreme Court ruling created a clear need for Congress to act. The 2013 decision, however, is not a complete rebuttal of the federal concept of protecting vulnerable minorities from persecuted southern state legislatures, as critics of the courts have shown. described it.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 reversed the burden of proof for some states: requiring them to prove that they did not intend to discriminate in making any changes to election laws their. It was permissible, the courts held, if Congress had reason to treat those states differently from others. However, as of 2013, the states in question were still those defined by criteria set out more than 40 years ago. The court said that in order to treat some states differently from others, more modern data bases were needed. The new Voting Rights Act provides a more modern formula.