None of the arguments against voting rights reform stand up to scrutiny. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

[link removed]

On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Senate will consider rules changes to allow passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. As the showdown vote approaches, opponents are scrambling for reasons not to pass the landmark voting rights legislation. Their leading arguments, which range from factually inaccurate to historically naïve, are reviewed and rebutted below.

Election reform must be done on a bipartisan basis

It would be lovely if both parties supported free, competitive, inclusive elections. But they rarely do . . . at the same time.

In the 1820s and 1830s, for example, Jacksonian Democrats unilaterally pushed to enfranchise poor and working-class white men. The 15th Amendment, which prohibited states from denying Black Americans the right to vote, passed Congress in 1869 with precisely zero Democratic votes. Reconstruction-era Democrats were equally unified against the 14th Amendment and the Ku Klux Klan Act. Should Republicans have waited for Democrats to come around while people of color were denied full citizenship?

This is not an argument to postpone election reform — it’s an argument for Republicans to get on the right side of history.

Voter suppression laws don’t actually suppress votes, so there’s no need to preempt them

This claim is factually inaccurate. Voter suppression laws not only deter people from voting, they do so in a targeted and discriminatory manner. Take voter roll purges. For much of the 2010s, Georgia disqualified voters for tiny discrepancies (such as the absence of a last-name hyphen) between their voter registration forms and other state records. In the run-up to the 2018 midterms, the exact match system snagged more than 50,000 voters, over 80 percent of whom were people of color. (For perspective, Stacey Abrams lost the 2018 race for Georgia governor by fewer than 55,000 votes.)

A note to journalists and others who look at the laws on the books: many of the worst ones were blocked by courts, and others were softened and their provisions improved the same way. But the Supreme Court has now twice gutted the tool courts used to protect voters, the Voting Rights Act. Expect far worse to come.

“Can’t prove it” has long been the refrain for those who deal in the dark arts of voter suppression. But, as with tobacco and carbon emissions, you can only deny mounting evidence for so long. Legendary conservative jurist Richard Posner, who voted in 2008 to uphold Indiana’s voter identification law, came to regret his decision as evidence mounted of its ill effects. Posner’s changing stance in the face of changing evidence should be a model for all of us.

Gerrymandering isn’t a big problem

Republicans, who currently control the redrawing of 187 congressional districts compared to just 75 for Democrats, have passed heavily gerrymandered legislative maps in Texas, North Carolina, and beyond. Some contrarian pundits, however, have pointed out that the balance of seats in Congress could remain roughly the same, if the 2022 election returns resemble those of 2020. Where’s the gerrymander, they ask?

This is a blinkered and naïve view of redistricting. As my colleague Michael Li points out

[link removed]

, Republican map drawers have used the redistricting process to shore up the districts they already gerrymandered heavily in 2010. As a result, North Carolina Republicans could carry 71 percent of the state’s seats in Congress with just 47 percent of the vote. Texas Democrats would have to win 58 percent of the vote to be favored to capture 37 percent of the state’s congressional seats. The redistricting process has been particularly damaging to voters of color, whose districts were carved up to minimize their voting power. This isn’t gerrymandering in retreat, it’s gerrymandering 2.0.

Can’t we just reform the electoral count act?

We should reform the Electoral Count Act. It’s a mess, and its ambiguities would have led us into a constitutional crisis had Vice President Mike Pence attempted to block the 2020 vote certification. But reforming that law won’t prevent extreme gerrymandering, intimidation of local election officials, voter suppression, or the many other issues the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act are designed to fix.





Democracy

January 6 Lives on Through Sham Election Reviews

An under-discussed part of the election sabotage campaign currently raging in state legislatures nationwide is the effort to undermine post-election audits by allowing and performing partisan reviews that flout proper protocol and foster distrust in elections. A year on from the Capitol insurrection, Gowri Ramachandran notes the antidemocratic fervor shared by these sham reviews and the events of January 6. “One year after a failed attempt to reject the will of the voters, states, local governments, and Congress must act to secure elections from this lasting effort to sabotage them,” she writes. AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY

[link removed]

An Antidemocratic Sneak Attack in Georgia

Thirty years ago, Georgia’s Gwinnett County was 90 percent white and a Republican electoral bastion, home to House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s seat. Today, the Atlanta suburb is 35 percent white and home to multiracial political coalitions that elected Georgia’s first female Asian state senator as well as 20 Black women to state, county, and municipal offices. But Republicans in the state legislature are now trying to turn back the clock, taking aim at the new multiracial America with voter suppression laws and gerrymandering. “What is happening in Gwinnett at both the local and state levels is a harbinger of what is to come without stronger voting rights laws,” Sonali Seth writes. READ MORE

[link removed]

New York’s Democracy Needs a Boost

The defeat last November of two pro-voter ballot questions, propelled by heavy “Stop the Steal”-style ad spending and weak turnout from proponents, stifled New York State’s recent leadership on expanding democracy. This is not the time for defeatism, Chisun Lee and Derek Perkinson argue, but for action. “The governor and legislators must redouble their efforts this year to protect democracy for all. New Yorkers cannot afford for their leaders to take progress for granted,” they write. NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

[link removed]





Constitution

Local Control for the DC National Guard

The DC National Guard will remain under the president’s command, after efforts to include a reform that would transfer control to the DC mayor was stripped from the final version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. However, ensuring this local control remains crucial, as cases such as the delayed deployment by President Trump of the DC Guard during the January 6 insurrection illustrate. “It is time to bring command and control of the DCNG — along with other key pieces of the legal framework for domestic deployment of military forces — out of the nineteenth century, and to recalibrate these authorities to meet the precarious moment in which we find ourselves,” Elizabeth Goitein writes. AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY

[link removed]





Coming Up

VIRTUAL EVENT: How Civil Wars Start: A Conversation with Barbara F. Walter and Michael German

Thursday, January 13, 6–7 p.m. ET

The United States has long been known for its optimism. We trust that peace prevails, our institutions are unshakable, and our democracy is unbreakable. But in the past decade, America has undergone seismic changes in cultural and economic power that have created a fertile breeding ground for political violence. Brennan Center Fellow Michael German, a former FBI special agent and expert on domestic terrorism, discusses these dangers with Barbara F. Walter, author of the new book How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them

[link removed]

. RSVP TODAY

[link removed]



Produced in partnership with New York University’s John Brademas Center

VIRTUAL EVENT: The Fight to Vote: A Conversation with Michael Waldman and Yamiche Alcindor

Wednesday, January 19, 6–7 p.m. ET

Donald Trump’s Big Lie isn’t just about what the defeated president felt or did, but rather the impact of his actions on American democracy and millions of voters. In conversation with acclaimed political journalist Yamiche Alcindor of PBS and NBC News, Michael Waldman (Brennan Center president and author of The Fight to Vote

[link removed]

) tracks the current wave of voting restrictions sweeping statehouses around the country in the context of the nation’s history of voting rights — from the Founders’ debates to the civil rights era. RSVP TODAY

[link removed]



Produced in partnership with New York University’s John Brademas Center

Want to keep up with Brennan Center Live events? Subscribe to the events newsletter.

[link removed]





News

Alicia Bannon on Chief Justice Roberts’s “troubling tone” // REUTERS

[link removed]

Sean Morales-Doyle on the rarity of voter fraud // FULCRUM

[link removed]

Harsha Panduranga on government surveillance of social media // GUARDIAN

[link removed]

Yurij Rudensky on the busy year ahead for election litigation // LAW360

[link removed]

Derek Tisler on insider threats to election administration // WJCT NEWS

[link removed]

Wendy Weiser on the legislative assault on our democracy // ATLANTIC

[link removed]

Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]





[link removed]

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

120 Broadway, Suite 1750 New York, NY 10271

646-292-8310

tel:646-292-8310

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Support Brennan Center

[link removed]

Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences

[link removed]

.

Want to stop receiving these emails? Click here to unsubscribe

[link removed]

.

[link removed]

[link removed]

[link removed]

[link removed]

[link removed]

[link removed]