Voting Rights
The right to vote is a basic value that all Americans should be able to enjoy. But the reality is that voting rights are under attack. Politicians who want to win reelection often make it harder for people to vote, whether by restricting access to polling places in communities of color or making it more difficult to fill out ballots by requiring photo ID or setting strict eligibility requirements. Adding to the threat, politicians use misinformation and other strategies to interfere in elections.
Thankfully, we have made progress in fighting back against these efforts, and Congress has specific authority to safeguard the law through legislation. We are working with a coalition of organizations to craft legislation that would restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act.
In the 1800s, laws like poll taxes and literacy tests disproportionately disqualified black and poor white voters and kept them from casting their votes. Voting rights activists launched a nonviolent campaign to end these practices, culminating in the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama. The Civil Rights Act expanded voter registration and election laws, including requiring states to provide voting locations in all communities and allowing people to register with an address they lived at only briefly, like college students. It also reinstituted the federal requirement that jurisdictions with a history of discrimination get preclearance from the Department of Justice or a court before changing their electoral rules and allowed individuals to sue over voting issues.