The original John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act needed a little tweaking in the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions. So Terri Sewell of Alabama helped do just that, writes New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore:
Alabama congresswoman Terri Sewell on Tuesday introduced in the House the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act aimed at restoring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to how it existed before the Supreme Court gutted its key enforcement provision in 2013. Standing in front of the Edmund Pettis Bridge, where Lewis and other civil-rights activists were brutally attacked by Alabama state troopers as the whole world watched, a moment that inspired the passage of the original VRA, Sewell hailed the “personal sacrifices of amazing foot soldiers, many known and unknown, right here on this bridge in my hometown 56 years ago.”
An earlier version of the bill passed in the House in 2019, but it was updated in part to reduce its vulnerability to another court challenge on the grounds of having outdated data on discriminatory voting practices, which was the basis for the 2013 Supreme Court decision. The revised bill was also worded to address a more recent SCOTUS decision that made the use of lawsuits against election officials under Section 2 of the VRA more difficult.
As amended, the bill would not address the laundry list of abuses in the original, such as partisan gerrymandering, campaign finance matters, etc. But it would, Kilgore writes, “in the covered jurisdictions, stop any changes in law and policy governing voting and elections (including redistricting maps) until they can be reviewed for possible dilution of minority voting opportunities or representation.” That would at least restore the Voting Rights Act status quo destroyed by the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision in 2013. It would again inhibit, if not prevent passage of, the the kinds of anti-democratic bills Republican legislatures issued in a flood after Shelby, and passed more and faster after Donald Trump’s loss in 2020.
Kilgore concludes:
Unfortunately, the John Lewis Act has the same political problem as the For the People Act: a lack of the Republican support necessary to overcome a certain filibuster in the Senate. When Manchin made his version of the John Lewis Act the centerpiece of an attempted grand compromise voting-rights bill, Republican senators other than Lisa Murkowski shot it down quickly. But precisely because it simply reestablishes what was once the near-universally supported law of the land, it is likely a better vehicle than S. 1 to shame the GOP and rally stronger long-term support for enforceable democracy.
Better but not sufficient. The GOP gave up shame for Lent and then gave up Lent.