Folks,

56 years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

This law changed the landscape of American democracy, invalidated Jim Crow laws throughout the South, and enforced the right to vote that had been constitutionally guaranteed nearly a century earlier — a guarantee that had been perpetually undermined by decades of white supremacist violence and intimidation.

Today, the Voting Rights Act is not the same as the landmark bill President Johnson signed in 1965. It has been gutted, undermined, and broken by a string of decisions made by a Republican-controlled Supreme Court.

Now, as redistricting is about to begin, it is time for the Senate to act and restore the Voting Rights Act — before Republican state legislatures can secure power for the next decade with partisan gerrymandering that the Supreme Court has ruled to allow.

Add your name to my petition demanding the Senate take up voting rights legislation to ban partisan gerrymandering this month. 18 states have passed 30 voter suppression laws in the last seven months, and more than 400 voter suppression bills have been introduced in 49 states — the time for us to act is now.

If the Senate fails to act, Republican-controlled legislatures could cement the House majority for the next decade through redistricting alone.

We told the American people that our democracy depended on the result of the last election. You responded by delivering our first combined House and Senate majorities in a decade. It’s time for us to act before this moment slips away.

— Tina