Bipartisan Slippage in Standards for D.C. Voting Rights
By Peggy Noonan
The Washington Post
November 2021
In the name of bipartisanship, Washington’s leaders have devised a way to silence the voices of millions of Americans. They are doing it by watering down the Voting Rights Advancement Act, a crucial piece of legislation that could either protect or further erode the voting rights of millions of Americans.
The bill, initially introduced by Senators John Lewis, the late civil rights icon, and Ted Kennedy, the Senate’s liberal lion, would have been a vast improvement over the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed racial discrimination at the polls. The new bill would have strengthened the federal Voter Protection Clause, authorized the Justice Department to sue states and localities with voting rights violators, and covered more areas, including language minorities and the disabled.
But, as is often the case in Washington, compromise was the outlet. The bill was rewritten, weakened, and left vulnerable. Its most significant flaws were exposed when Senate Republicans used a parliamentary maneuver to water it down further. The result is a bill that barely resembles the original. Or its original urgency.
What once aimed to be a bonfire of change now flickers like a candle in the wind. The bill would still advance some good, but the evidence shows that, in many places, state legislatures and local authorities will exploit the outlet to continue preventing people from exercising their most basic democratic right: the right to vote.
Put another way, the bill would not provide the overall civic protections needed, nor for that matter the same overall comprehensive protections the 1965 act provided. Maybe, in time, as more people join the cause, we’ll push for greater reforms, but we already know this is but another step backward.
