Keep History Alive: Protecting the 57 Year Legacy of the Voting Rights Act

We must never forget: America's soul was forged in a heroic fight for the right to vote for all Americans

Late Congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis and fellow protestors being beaten by a police mob at the Selma march on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1865. Lewis suffered a fractured skull. This image was beamed over national media and the public outrage led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act five months later.

Voting. It’s one of the most essential foundations of democracy. The right of the people to vote on who represents them in government was vehemently fought for in the American Revolution by those who founded the United States centuries ago. Of course, the founders excluded large numbers of people from this new democratic dream, including women, slaves, Indigenous people and those without property or who didn’t pay taxes. Only an estimated 10-20% of the American population was eligible to vote. Nevertheless, those flawed early days established an important principle for future generations. 

Yet we all know people today who, come election time, would rather do anything else than fill out their ballots and participate in politics. As someone with a deep passion for government and justice, it can be frustrating for me to hear that some don’t care enough to help maintain this crucial ritual of our democracy that is so fundamental to our freedom. 

When we take a step back, however, this apathy is not always caused by disinterest in politics. For some, the unwillingness to get out on election day is because of the tremendous effort needed to vote in certain areas. The number of hoops needed to jump through just to cast their ballot prevents people from exercising their right to vote.

Take Fulton County in Georgia. In this county, some voters had to wait up to nine hours in line at the polls in 2020, with non-white areas especially impacted. In Georgia during the 2020 primaries, a study from the Brennan Center found that non-white voters also had their ballots rejected at nearly two to three times the number of ballots from white voters. 

Many people are unable to take time off from work to vote in-person on election day. Lower income voters who cannot afford to miss work or find childcare must sacrifice their vote in order to survive. Voter suppression goes beyond race, though, and hurts Americans across the board. The intersections between identities such as gender, race, class, religion and ability are pivotal to understanding why existing voting laws and practices prevent different groups from having a voice through their votes. 

Even when people are able to get their ballots in to election officials, whether in person or through the mail, there’s no guarantee that their efforts will be worth their time and energy to vote. If their preferred candidate does not even make it through the primaries, they may not open their ballot when the general election comes around. 

Following the Reconstruction era through the Civil Rights movement, barriers to voting placed heavier burdens on Black people. These came in the form of poll taxes, literacy tests, and even physical violence when attempting to register or exercise the right to vote. Earlier this month, on August 6th, was the 57th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a piece of legislation that revolutionized voting protections for marginalized racial groups. The VRA outlawed racially discriminatory voting practices such as literacy tests to allow broader access to the polls.

Following the passage of this law, Black people began gaining more seats in the House of Representatives, going from just 5 members in 1965 to triple that amount with 16 members only ten years later. Looking even further to other racial and ethnic minority groups, we’ve seen a steady increase in representation over the last 20 years across the board. Congress today is the most racially and ethnically diverse in our nation’s history. Overall, 26% of the House of Representatives and 11% of the Senate identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander or Native American. By comparison, when the 79th Congress took office in 1945, non-White lawmakers represented just 1% of the House and Senate; and today’s numbers represent a 97% increase over the 107th Congress of 2001-03, which had 63 minority members.

Despite this growing diversity, Congress remains less diverse than the nation as a whole: white Americans account for 77% of voting members in Congress, considerably more than their 60% share of the U.S. population.

Today, the barriers to voting look somewhat different. Nonetheless, the effect is quite similar to past discriminatory practices. Restricting voting registration, gerrymandering, and voter purges are all elements that make something that was intended to be our constitutional right feel like something we must fight for.  

“Restricting voting registration, gerrymandering, and voter purges make something that was intended to be our constitutional right feel like something we must fight for.”

How did we get here, despite the monumental step forward made in 1965 along with the VRA being reauthorized over multiple decades? The US Supreme Court ruling in 2013 known as Shelby County v. Holder made voting access in many states incrementally more restrictive. In this case, the Supreme Court overturned a provision in Section 5 of the VRA that required jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to pass a federal review requiring preclearance before being able to pass new voting laws. The Roberts Court majority declared, despite an abundance of contrary evidence, that, “Nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.”

In her stinging rebuttal, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg summarized information reported by Congress that found that there were more Department of Justice complaints against various election practices between 1982 and 2004 than between 1965 and the 1982 reauthorization of the VRA. Wrote Ginsburg, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

The post-Shelby era guts the VRA

After Shelby, new laws were passed that made voting for Black, Latinx, and eldery voters harder to access.

Starting with strict photo ID rules with limited options for acceptable identification in Texas, along with elimination of same-day voting registration in North Carolina, we have seen a number of ways that Shelby has undermined our democracy.   

Since Shelby in 2013, there has been a cycle of states implementing new legislation followed by advocacy groups attempting to challenge these laws in court. I myself was surprised to hear about very recent attacks to voting rights protections with another case in 2021. In Brnovich v. Demo­cratic National Commit­tee, the Supreme Court ruled that two Arizona voting laws, one that required any ballots from outside a precinct to be completely discarded and another that allowed only a voter’s caretaker or member of their family to return an early ballot on their behalf, were not in violation of Section 2 the VRA. As a result, the Court made it significantly more difficult to challenge restrictive voting bills. That in turn has made it easier for vulnerable voting groups to be discriminated against.

It’s no wonder that telling people to simply “go vote” to solve the issues they care about most is not an effective motivator for political participation. When people face barriers throughout the entire voting process, they lose faith in our system to represent them and their interests.

There are ways to fix this

We all may be thoroughly aware of the problems within our government, but not enough time and energy is focused on how to actually fix these. With voter suppression still prevalent today, we need modern solutions to build a 21st century democracy: one that is truly representative. 

One of the most important reforms needed is the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to codify these protections into law once again. Continuing to put pressure on legislators is a strong first step. While at the federal level there has not been much action from the Senate on getting this legislation passed, states can take matters into their own hands like New York did by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York. 

Also, voters can demand that their representatives support FairVote’s Fair Representation Act, which would greatly enhance the electoral viability of non-white voters everywhere by electing members of the US House of Representatives by proportional representation in multi-seat districts.

It’s important to contact your legislators at the state and local levels to express the importance of measures like these.

With many primary elections happening over the next month and the midterm elections in early November, knowing your rights as a voter is crucial. Be sure to review the American Civil Liberties Union’s Know Your Rights page to ensure your vote is counted and more importantly that your voice is heard. 

For this election cycle, if you’re feeling hopeless, overwhelmed, burnt out, or any other feelings, remember that you are voting for those who cannot vote. And for those who have to work on election day. And those who are not old enough to vote. And those who do not have the physical ability and accommodations they need to vote. Those who have been wrongfully disenfranchised. And those who decided over a hundred years ago, with the passage of the 15th Amendment granting African-Americans the right to vote, and 57 years ago with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, that the people deserve a say in who represents them.

As the late Congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis once said, “The vote is precious. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society, and we must use it.” 

Alissa Bombardier Shaw @alissashaw_