Senate Democrats’ Push to Expand Voting Rights
Thursday marks the 54th anniversary of the protest that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. On “Bloody Sunday,” civil-rights demonstrators, including current Georgia Representative John Lewis, attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Highway 80 on their march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. They were met with tear gas, and with armed state police viciously assaulting the marchers—including the children among them. But the images from the protest thawed something in the national conscience. Months after the mass assault, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the VRA into law, beginning what some lawmakers thought would be the end of the disenfranchisement of people of color.
Nowadays people know better. Many forms of lawful and unlawful disenfranchisement have persisted through the decades, and although black turnout has surged at several points in recent history, it has rarely matched white turnout. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in 2013 defanged the VRA,, providing an edge to politicians who run on mostly white votes—and with Democrats who would seek to court voters of color ever on the defensive. But with a flurry of activity over the past week, party leadership, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is signaling that voting rights are a critical issue for Democrats, one that requires an offensive response.
