#vra section 5

[justinspoliticalcorner]

The Voting Rights Act is facing the biggest threats in its 60 years

Decades after its passage, the revolutionary law continues to face attempts to pervert its purpose

George Chidi at The Guardian:

Facing images of violent white mobs defending racial segregation, the condemnation of the world and of its own citizens, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, a law meant to end the hypocrisy of a democratic country that denied Black people the power of their vote. Sixty years later, race remains at the center of American politics. Cases before the US supreme court, and a platoon of Texas legislators fleeing the state to prevent redistricting, demonstrate how the Voting Rights Act – and its erosion – remains on the frontline of the political battlefield. “Democracy is at stake,” said Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Even as voting rights advocates use the act to win additional congressional representation in Alabama and press cases in Louisiana and North Carolina, a conservative supreme court makes gains precarious, he said.

“We wouldn’t be under such a threat if we weren’t doing so well in making sure our communities were engaged, that they were turning out and that their rights were protected,” Cox said. “This is a cyclical part of history, that when we see some success in advancing rights, there’s always backlash.” [...] Though constitutional amendments passed after the American civil war ended slavery and commanded racial equality before the law, American lawmakers regularly found ways to keep Black citizens from exercising political power. Literacy tests, poll taxes, separate ballot boxes for Black and white voters, white-only primary elections, purges of Black voters from the rolls and discriminatory district lines rigged elections for white voters in the US’s Jim Crow era.

Each time a court struck down a state law or demanded the end of a discriminatory practice, obstructionist local lawmakers – mostly but not exclusively in southern states – would quickly adapt, often enacting new election changes without enough time for a court to intervene. Civil rights laws at the time held insufficient authority to stop the practice. After years of campaigns for voting rights and racial equality across the south, the civil rights struggle came to a head in March 1965 in Selma, Alabama. The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Baptist deacon and local voting rights activist, at the hands of state troopers led 600 people to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

[...] Congress wrote the Voting Rights Act to prevent the case-by-case whack-a-mole games local lawmakers were playing with election rules. It forced jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to clear elections changes with the Department of Justice before they could go into effect. It banned literacy tests to vote and allowed challenges to district maps when those maps would not allow proportional representation for minority voters. The principles of the Voting Rights Act have shaped the way lawmakers from the halls of Congress to a city council hearing room have to respond politically to voters of color. Congress has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act four times since its enactment, each time under a Republican president. But the law’s protections have suffered a death of a thousand cuts.

In the Shelby County v Holder case of 2013, the US supreme court held that the data defining jurisdictions with a history of discrimination was too old to be relied upon; Congress must update it for the Voting Rights Act’s pre-clearance rules in Section 5 to remain constitutional, the court ruled. Republicans in Congress have blocked legislation – the John Lewis voting rights advancement act – updating the law, effectively ending pre-clearance. “It was a pretty significant blow to the project of ensuring voting free of racial discrimination in this country,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s voting rights project. “I think it really accelerated in this moment the attacks on voting access across the country.” States previously restricted by pre-clearance enacted a wave of election legislation following the ruling, closing polling places, changing voter registration rules and redrawing district lines unhindered. The 5-4 decision in Rucho v Common Cause in 2019 further eroded the power of the Voting Rights Act, by explicitly permitting political gerrymandering, even as racial gerrymandering remained off-limits.

The mid-decade redistricting in Texas proposed by Donald Trump presents a particularly vivid example of the consequences of an end to pre-clearance and recent supreme court decisions. Democratic state representatives have fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum to pass the redistricting legislation, which would likely grant Republicans an additional five congressional seats in Texas by concentrating some minority voters into fewer districts while diluting clusters of other voters. “Those maps would have had to be reviewed by the federal government coming in after the fact to challenge them, and winning,” Lakin said.

In 2003, the eighth circuit federal appellate court further restricted the use of the Voting Rights Act, ruling in Arkansas State Conference NAACP v Arkansas Board of Apportionment that private groups do not have a right to challenge state election laws under the act; only the Department of Justice can bring a voting rights case to court. A second eighth circuit decision extended the ban on private voting rights suits from redistricting cases to suits challenging restrictions on voter assistance. Of the 180 or so successful claims brought under the Voting Rights Act, only 15 have been brought by the Department of Justice, said Jacqueline De León, senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund. The Department of Justice’s voting rights division used to have about 30 staff attorneys; under the Trump administration, it has lost all but two or three, she said. “We know the Department of Justice is not going to be in the business of enforcing voting rights,” De León said. “Right now, we don’t know if there will be a future where a Voting Rights Act is available to our country. This is really a moment for concern and reflection on this anniversary.”

Lakin said she expects the eighth circuit ruling to be appealed to the supreme court. Meanwhile, a case in Louisiana that has reached the US supreme court threatens the last leg standing of the Voting Rights Act. On Friday, the court signaled that it will consider the constitutionality of section 2, asking for supplemental briefs in Louisiana v Callais. The case, to be heard later this year, asks whether the state’s creation of a majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th amendment to the constitution.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 turns 60 today. The Voting Rights Act is facing serious headwinds, aided by court decisions from right-wing activist judges (especially those on SCOTUS) and GOP politicians.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Suppression Alert: Back to Pre-VRA Days

The Horrible “SAVE” Act, and How You Can Help Stop It

David Pepper at Pepperspectives:

Long-time readers of mine know I’m obsessed with the first days following the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Because something revolutionary happened immediately—before Section 5 (and pre-clearance) became so effective in stopping suppression tools and tactics, and before the Voting Rights Act led to the end of racial gerrymandering.

[...]

Orwell himself would be impressed by the title: the SAVE Act. But it doesn't save a thing. It just destroys, based on the false narrative that non-citizens are registered and voting in large numbers around the country, which is simply a lie. (Study after study—including comments by GOP officials—have confirmed that the level of non-citizens voting in US elections is infinitesimal; after much hype by Ohio’s Secretary of State, for example, the number turned out to be 6 , out of 11 million citizens, and some cases occurred because government had errantly communicated that these legal residents (non-citizens) could vote). But to combat this made-up problem (which is also already illegal), the SAVE Act would upend almost every aspect of current voter registration processes in a way that would dramatically reduce the amount of voter registration that takes place. Specifically, the new registration process would require that any voter registering to vote, or updating their registration, would need to, at the moment of registration, present “documentary proof of United States citizenship.” Sounds simple, right? But this procedural change alone throws a wrench in the way that millions of citizens register or update their registration. Practically speaking, this requirement means the end of:

online voter registration (“This would render the online voter registration systems currently running in 42 states useless, forcing election officials to revert to more far more costly and labor-intensive in-person registration.”)

automatic voter registration (AVR): a popular and effective reform where eligible voters are automatically registered to vote when interacting with certain government agencies (far beyond just BMVs)

mail-in voter registration

voter registration by third parties and non-profit groups (since the best reading of the statute is that government officials are the ones who must see and verify the ID)

campaigns or parties conducting voter registration drives (same reason)

all on-line BMV registrations: while about half of all voter registrations take place through Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the vast majority of those also take place on-line. The SAVE Act would upend that system, because “[a]ll registrations currently collected online, whether through a motor vehicle department or state election’s office, or by mail, would now have to be done in person.”

All of those, gone. (For more details on these obstacles, read this summary from Nonprofit Votes.) The vast majority of voter registration in America is taking place in these ways “as of 2022, only 5.9% of voters registered to vote in person at election offices.” In fact, as states have been working hard to modernize voter registration through reforms like online registration and AVR, this law would gut all those reforms. Some of these methods of registering voters (such as third party registration work) also are the most likely to reach and empower Americans who otherwise won’t participate in democracy. Because many of these non-profits are located and working with these communities in other ways. Finally, by gutting all these methods of registering, and instead channeling the registration of millions of Americans into in-person registration at elections offices, “The SAVE Act would also overwhelm election officials, leading to long lines for voters and dramatically increased costs for state and local governments.

[...]

But we also know perfectly well who will be eliminated from the rolls. The SAVE Act’s requirement of “documentary proof of United States citizenship” includes passports, birth certificates and other documents that millions lack—and does not include even driver’s licenses or Real IDs. Which means millions of Americans will end up not registering or voting. First, the reality is that there will be American citizens who simply don’t re-register because it has been made more complicated or costly. Just as ease of registration (on-line, mail-in, AVR) led to more people registering, complicating registration will naturally lead to less. Even for those that have the required documents, they certainly don’t carry them with them on a regular basis. But far worse, we also know that the types of ID that would be required by the SAVE Act will disproportionately eliminate from the rolls certain groups of Americans citizens. To start, according to the Institute for Responsive Government:

around 80% of American women change their name when they get married. “As a result, roughly 33% of all married women lack documents that meet citizenship requirements and reflect their current legal name. Married women make up over a quarter of the electorate, so impeding them from registering to vote has a potentially significant impact on election outcomes.”

Millions of women will likely need to pay to update their identifications in order to vote, according to Glamour: “If a married woman hasn’t paid $130 to update her passport—assuming she has one, which only about half of Americans do—she may not be able to vote in the next election if the SAVE Act becomes law”

“In 2020, 14.10% of survey respondents 80 years old and older reported that they lack access to documents proving citizenship.”

“24.34% of 18-29 year olds reported that they lacked documentation".”

According to Ms., “nearly 9 percent of voting-age Black Americans lack access to birth certificates and passports, compared to 5.5 percent of white Americans.”

Case studies of Hispanic voters showed they were less as likely to have there required identification as White voters;

Voters of lower incomes are also far less likely to possess the required documents.

A June 2025 study found that 10% of voting age American citizens—at least 21 million people—”cannot readily access documentary proof of citizenship.” And this is not hypothetical.

The SAVE Act is a massive disgrace that would lead to widespread voter suppression, and women, low-income, elderly, youth, and persons of color are likely to face the brunt of the harms of the SAVE Act.