The restoration of the Voting Rights Act

Democratic lawmakers have proposed two major pieces of legislation to protect voting rights. One is H.R. 4, known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. That bill would restore the key provision of the original Voting Rights Act, Section 5, that the Supreme Court invalidated in 2013, updating the old map of states and localities with racially discriminatory voting rules and requiring them to seek federal court approval before changing any election laws.

The bill would also “spell out exactly how a state, city or other entity might have violated the Voting Rights Act and charge the U.S. Department of Justice with doing more oversight, assigning election observers to states or municipalities with repeated problems,” Ella Nilsen has written for Vox. “Charging the federal government with taking a more active role is important, as a report by the federal Commission on Civil Rights found that even as the number of voting rights lawsuits has increased since 2013, only a small fraction of those have been brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Opponents of restoring Section 5 have generally argued that the provision is no longer necessary, citing, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did in his 2013 decision that struck it down, the fact that Black voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election. But supporters of the legislation counter that high Black turnout hardly disproves the well-documented existence of voter suppression. Rather, they say, it is a testament to the strength of Black voters’ civic commitment.

“Black folks turn out despite all the odds, and they break records and create new milestones for participation,” Janai Nelson, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, tells The Atlantic. “And that somehow creates a narrative that, you know, we cried wolf. And nothing could be further from the truth.”
The New York Times