A smart political operative told me earlier this week that he was surprised by how much the Texas gerrymandering story had broken through to the public. I began thinking about what the situation might be analogous to — and what the results were. The starkest historical example was the deprivation of Black citizens’ voting rights in the Jim Crow South, which ultimately led to the Voting Rights Act.
More recently, in 2021, GOP states enacted a wave of voter suppression laws, prompting corporations and the media to recoil in disgust. Major League Baseball even moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta in protest. In Texas, Democratic legislators broke quorum to try to slow the state’s anti-voting measures from advancing.
It wasn’t until a year later that the Biden administration prioritized a legislative response: the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. By then, public attention had shifted, and while both measures passed the House without a single Republican vote, they died in the Senate as a result of a GOP filibuster.
In both historical and recent cases, legislation was a primary response tool — but not the only one...
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