60 Years Later, the Voting Rights Act Still Needs Defending
Sixty years after its passage, the Voting Rights Act remains under attack through felony disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and restrictive voting laws. Protecting democracy requires both defense and forward-thinking action.
The Voting Rights Act was under attack from the moment of its 1965 inception to the present day. Today, some 4 million Americans are unable to vote due to a felony conviction. These disenfranchised citizens live in a nation with yearly elections, and yet they are barred from casting a ballot and electing candidates of their choice.
Barring citizens who have served their time isn’t about making communities safer, nor is it about forcing persons who have made mistakes to atone for those misgivings. Such is part of a broader strategy to limit who can vote.
The pattern of taking steps to limit the electorate continued in the 2000s. The June 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder meant that Sections 4 and 5 of the landmark legislation were no longer available for civil rights litigants to use. It also meant that states with histories of discrimination no longer had to get federal preclearance for voting rights changes.
The High Court’s decision opened the floodgates in terms of restrictive voting legislation, which has had the cumulative impact of denying and abridging the right to vote for millions. For instance, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU found in 2023 that after the Shelby County decision, “at least 29 states passed 94 restrictive voting laws. While a few of these have been blocked by courts or repealed, most are still in effect.”
As monumental as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was, our nation needs something more. Sixty years after its passage, we should be asking ourselves what the next iteration of pro-voting policies entails. We should be advocating for policies that offer repair for decades of harm. We should also be asking what tools are at our disposal to protect the ballot today and for future generations.
Due to circumstances, we often get stuck in a cycle of defense rather than ideating on what future generations might need. If ever there was a time to do both defense and offense, that time is now.
As we mark the 60th anniversary of the VRA, we must recognize the active attacks on democracy and continued voter suppression tactics — felony disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, limited polling place resources in predominantly Black communities, polling place closures, reductions in early voting, Sunday voting, etc. When you add to this combination of coordinated voter suppression tactics the active resistance to the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, the fragility of our voting rights and democracy is ever clear.
Laws designed to silence dissent have spread fear and anxiety, even as our nation has historically built upon responding to injustice through protests. That doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. In fact, hope is more important now than ever.
This moment calls for creativity, coordination, and intergenerational learning. Most of all, it calls for hope. If we believe that our best days are behind us, we are less likely to organize and struggle for the future.
Our votes are our voice. Sixty years after its passage, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is both bedrock and a target requiring vigilance and renewed commitment to defending and ensuring voting rights for all Americans. Today, we uplift and venerate the legacy of all of the courageous people who marched from Selma to Montgomery and remind ourselves that democracy belongs to every citizen, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, background, or zip code.
We must be prudent enough to remember that democracy requires voice, and our votes are our voice. Therefore, a threat to voting rights anywhere is a threat to voters everywhere.
This piece was originally published in Word in Black and has been edited for length. For the original version or more information, visit the opinion page at www.wordinblack.com.