House of Representatives Passes Voting Rights Bill

Also in Washington yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a voting rights bill. The ‘John Lewis Voting Rights Advancements Act’ was named after the former Georgia congressman who died last year. The bill will restore part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that allowed the Justice Department to block certain jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination from changing their voting rules. Attorney General Merrick Garland said previously that the act’s ‘preclearance’ provision was ‘enormously effective’ and led to ‘thousands of discriminatory voting changes that would have curtailed the voting rights of millions of citizens in jurisdictions large and small.’

The bill will now move to the Senate where the majority of Republican lawmakers oppose it and call the legislation a massive federal overreach into the states’ roles in elections. In June, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the bill ‘unnecessary’ since ‘it’s against the law to discriminate in voting on the basis of race already’, although the legislation would allow the Department of Justice to block a law before it goes into effect. McConnell said the bill would ‘grant the DOJ almost total ability to determine the voting systems of every state in America.’