By Maureen Edobor & Transformative Justice Coalition
On May 17, 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a forceful humanitarian plea for Black enfranchisement: “Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.” Heeding Dr. King’s plea, the civil rights community fought to elevate this issue to the forefront of Americans’ awareness of the severe disenfranchisement confronting African Americans. It would take the televised brutality of “Bloody Sunday” at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to turn the tide of public sentiment in favor of the need for passage of compelling legislation. Many powerful forces throughout the country came together, encouraging Congress to pass the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which protected the fundamental right to vote for the entire community, and for the first time in the nation’s history, explicitly outlawed racist, exclusionary practices that disenfranchised the Black community. After ushering millions of new Black voters into the electorate, facilitating unprecedented rates of Black representation in legislatures nationwide, particularly in the South, and enjoying broad bipartisan support through 2007, the VRA has been under legal attack precisely because of its success.
After the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby v. Holder ushered in a decade of attacks on the Voting Rights Act, allowing a wave of new restrictions harming black and brown voters, the VRA is facing it’s most dire threat yet — a rogue federal court determined to close the courthouse doors to Black, brown and democracy-loving voters seeking to exercise their constitutional right to participate and be adequately represented in American democracy. Following the 2020 census, Arkansas re-drew its state House map, splitting the largest Black population in Arkansas among three districts to undermine their political power and prevent Black voters from amassing enough political power to choose their candidates of choice. Appropriately, the Arkansas NAACP and affected Black voters filed suit under the VRA, arguing that the state should have drawn at least four more majority black districts to account for the state’s Black population. However, even though the Arkansas NAACP had a strong argument the map violated the rights of black voters, for the first time in its 58-year history, a radical federal court ruled that individual voters and groups like the NAACP and the League of Women Voters cannot bring cases under the VRA to challenge discriminatory voting practices or maps. Practically, this means the U.S. Attorney General in the Department of Justice is the only individual who can enforce major provisions of the VRA.
For decades Black voters experienced unspeakable racial violence and targeted voter suppression at the hands of the states, with no protection by the Department of Justice. Black voters know best how racist voting laws affect them, which is why individual voters and nonprofit organizations that represent their interests have brought most of the cases – more than 90% – challenging discriminatory voting laws. If the Supreme Court rubber stamps the Arkansas decision, millions of Black and brown voters, whom the VRA was explicitly enacted to protect, and the organizations working to safeguard their voting rights can no longer bring any case under Section 2 of the VRA.
As legal protections for Black voters are being stripped by the courts in piecemeal fashion, more restrictive voting laws were enacted in 2023 than in any year of the last decade. State legislatures are emboldened to continue passing laws that roll back the expansive voting access established in 2020, during the global COVID-19 pandemic. These laws impose draconian photo ID requirements to vote, ban individuals from handing out food and water to people waiting in line to vote, limit early voting, absentee voting, and eliminate polling sites in predominantly Black and low income communities. At the same time, elected officials employ the full arsenal of their power to target Black voters for baseless criminal voter fraud investigations in crucial battleground states all over the country (Wisconsin, Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and New Hampshire).
In Texas, the Secretary of State was given specific legislative authority to take over election administration in Harris County, such that the state can alter any and all aspects of election policy in one of Texas’ most diverse counties. In North Carolina, the Republican majority overrode the governor’s veto to arbitrarily shorten the window to return mail-in ballots and ban ballot drop boxes that collect those votes. In Mississippi, the legislature passed a law allowing the Secretary of State to cancel a voter’s registration if they do not confirm their address. In Virginia, the governor summarily ended automatic voting rights restoration for residents who completed their felony sentences. Collectively, these laws disproportionately affect voters of color and Gen-Z voters, the two largest voting blocks in the electorate, by undermining confidence in the electoral system, creating tangled rules for participation, and disenfranchising voters more explicitly by restricting opportunities to vote or presuming that failure to exercise a fundamental right justifies taking it away.
While lawyers ask the court to reconsider its ruling in the Arkansas case, the Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) has launched an advocacy campaign to educate our communities on how this case will impact our rights as organizations and Black, brown, and concerned voters. On Monday, January 15th, the Transformative Justice Coalition held a Virtual Town Hall, “The 2024 March to the Ballot Box: Overcoming Obstacles and Protecting Our Vote,” featuring Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in a discussion on the work of pro-Democracy Attorneys General to defend the Voting Rights Act of 1965. TJC also held a Day of Action to honor the legacy of MLK using the following hashtags: #ProtectOurVote #NoVoiceNoChoice #AllEyesOnArkansas #TakeOurCue #RestoreTheVote, and created a pledge to continue fighting for our voting rights and keep up the heat on the rogue and radical states who are trying to make this awful ruling the law of the land. We urge people to join our movement by going to Transformative Justice Coalition’s website: TJCoalition.org.
As was observed by the panelists during the TeleTown Hall, this battle will not be won just in the courts but will instead require the American people to rise again in the streets demanding that our democracy be unshackled by these anti-Democracy forces. We need everyone to call their mayors, congressional representatives, attorney generals, secretaries of states, governors and demand that they defend the Voting Rights Act from this new assault on its mission of removing racial discrimination in voting. Most critically we need everyone to demand that Congress pass protective federal voting rights legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.voting laws. If the Supreme Court rubber stamps the Arkansas decision, millions of Black and brown voters, whom the VRA was explicitly enacted to protect, and the organizations working to safeguard their voting rights can no longer bring any case under Section 2 of the VRA.
As legal protections for Black voters are being stripped by the courts in piecemeal fashion, more restrictive voting laws were enacted in 2023 than in any year of the last decade. State legislatures are emboldened to continue passing laws that roll back the expansive voting access established in 2020, during the global COVID-19 pandemic. These laws impose draconian photo ID requirements to vote, ban individuals from handing out food and water to people waiting in line to vote, limit early voting, absentee voting, and eliminate polling sites in predominantly Black and low income communities. At the same time, elected officials employ the full arsenal of their power to target Black voters for baseless criminal voter fraud investigations in crucial battleground states all over the country (Wisconsin, Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and New Hampshire).
In Texas, the Secretary of State was given specific legislative authority to take over election administration in Harris County, such that the state can alter any and all aspects of election policy in one of Texas’ most diverse counties. In North Carolina, the Republican majority overrode the governor’s veto to arbitrarily shorten the window to return mail-in ballots and ban ballot drop boxes that collect those votes. In Mississippi, the legislature passed a law allowing the Secretary of State to cancel a voter’s registration if they do not confirm their address. In Virginia, the governor summarily ended automatic voting rights restoration for residents who completed their felony sentences. Collectively, these laws disproportionately affect voters of color and Gen-Z voters, the two largest voting blocks in the electorate, by undermining confidence in the electoral system, creating tangled rules for participation, and disenfranchising voters more explicitly by restricting opportunities to vote or presuming that failure to exercise a fundamental right justifies taking it away.
While lawyers ask the court to reconsider its ruling in the Arkansas case, the Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) has launched an advocacy campaign to educate our communities on how this case will impact our rights as organizations and Black, brown, and concerned voters. On Monday, January 15th, the Transformative Justice Coalition held a Virtual Town Hall, “The 2024 March to the Ballot Box: Overcoming Obstacles and Protecting Our Vote,” featuring Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in a discussion on the work of pro-Democracy Attorneys General to defend the Voting Rights Act of 1965. TJC also held a Day of Action to honor the legacy of MLK using the following hashtags: #ProtectOurVote #NoVoiceNoChoice #AllEyesOnArkansas #TakeOurCue #RestoreTheVote, and created a pledge to continue fighting for our voting rights and keep up the heat on the rogue and radical states who are trying to make this awful ruling the law of the land. We urge people to join our movement by going to Transformative Justice Coalition’s website: TJCoalition.org.
As was observed by the panelists during the TeleTown Hall, this battle will not be won just in the courts but will instead require the American people to rise again in the streets demanding that our democracy be unshackled by these anti-Democracy forces. We need everyone to call their mayors, congressional representatives, attorney generals, secretaries of states, governors and demand that they defend the Voting Rights Act from this new assault on its mission of removing racial discrimination in voting. Most critically we need everyone to demand that Congress pass protective federal voting rights legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
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