The following statement was submitted by Nancy Abudu, Deputy Legal Director, Voting Rights, for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
August 6, marked 54 years since the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was signed
into law. Combined with the passage of the Civil Rights Act the year
prior, these groundbreaking and, at the time, radical pieces of
legislation were the result of decades of struggle for civil rights and
the deaths of many, including Jimmie Lee Jackson.
On this anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, we are calling for it to be restored to its full strength. Click here to sign our petition.
In the six years since the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder,
we have witnessed a slew of disingenuous Voter ID laws, voter roll
purges, laws eliminating early voting, diminished access to the ballot,
and electoral maps drawn specifically to dilute the voting power of
minority groups or to hurt the chances of a specific political party.
And this isn’t just impacting the Black community here in the Deep South. These anti-democratic laws, passed by conservative lawmakers, target people with disabilities, people of lesser economic means, the elderly, and all communities of color.
All of the voting rights advocacy the SPLC’s Voting Rights team
engages in – fighting for fair and enhanced access to the ballot, taking
on gerrymandering, and cleaning up local election administration from
the federal level down to the precinct level – is guided by the
principle that our democracy can only be made whole again when we
restore the Voting Rights Act to its full strength.
Reform will not be easy. Republicans control the
statehouses here in the South. And let’s not forget Mitch McConnell’s
relentless obstruction of pro-democracy and election security measures
in the U.S. Senate.
We hope you'll join our effort by signing the petition.
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