Former President Barack Obama’s 2020 eulogy of Congressmember John Lewis was a clarion call to the electorate. Although the Voting Rights Act was passed 55 years earlier, Obama reminded attendees that “there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting.” As we approach the last leg of the 2024 presidential race, safeguarding voting rights requires the same dogged tenacity that was central to Lewis’s legacy.
Three years ago, civil rights and grassroots groups mobilized support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. The bills intended to restore long-standing voter protections that were invalidated by the federal courts, expand ballot access, curb partisan gerrymandering, and curtail voter suppression tactics.
The legislative measures were defeated by a Republican Party filibuster in the Senate. This occurred despite protests, arrests of activists and Congressional Black Caucus chair Joyce Beatty, and pressures from more than forty groups such as Black Voters Matter Fund, NAACP, Poor People’s Campaign, and National Action Network. University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban even co-signed a letter supporting voting rights.
Despite the momentum for voting rights legislation several years ago, it seems to have faded to the background of this year’s election. Voting rights received no mention in the September Gallop Poll rankings. Prospective voters selected the economy, reproductive rights, immigration, health care, tax policy, and Supreme Court nominations as the most important election issues.
Missing in the polling data and media discussions of voters’ concerns is how ballot access is an intersectional issue. Communities impacted by natural disasters such as hurricanes need election assistance. People living in low-wealth communities are adversely impacted by voter purge laws. Students, especially those at HBCUs, are regularly targeted by voter suppression tactics such as photo id laws and the closure of polling sites near their campuses.
Voter rights also intersect with criminal justice reform. Earlier this year, I assisted with strategy meetings involving NAACP activists for a voter restoration case in Tennessee. At issue was the status of 45,000 people that state officials want to disenfranchise because of prior convictions. Tennessee ranks second in the country in ‘felony’ disenfranchisement, already disqualifying 470,000 people including one-fifth of voting-age Blacks. Yet, state officials are now targeting a new group of eligible voters, which despite their histories in the criminal justice system, never lost their right to vote. The decision is pending due to litigation later this year. If implemented, the state will disenfranchise people who have been eligible to vote for most of their adult lives.
As we head toward November 5th, voters must be reminded of the importance of voting rights. The Brennan Center for Justice’s “Voting Laws Roundup” tracks restrictive voter laws across the country. Dozens were adopted since 2020. These entail laws that reduced early voting days, required proof of citizenship, restricted mail-in drop-off boxes, rigged legislative districts, and the criminalized voter registration drives. If Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008 is a barometer of white backlash, we can expect that states controlled by Republican Party supermajorities will pass more restrictive laws in response to the Harris campaign.
The presidential winner will appoint life-time judges to federal courts. The next round of appointees will shape voting rights and ballot access litigation for a generation. Based on the previous four years, Harris will appoint pro-voting rights judges if elected. The Biden-Harris administration appointed the most diverse group of judges to the federal bench in US history, several of whom were prominent voting rights litigators such as Nancy Abudu, Dale Ho, and Myrna Pérez.
A Trump victory, however, would usher in federal judges that will roll back voter protections. Racial conservatives successfully pushed the Supreme Court to invalidate the Voting Rights Act’s pre-clearance formula in the Shelby County v. Holder case a decade ago. Pre-clearance gave the federal government the power to monitor abuses in states with histories of racially discriminatory electoral practices.
The current round of voting rights’ disputes targets Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This provision provides minimum safeguards against voter suppression for minoritized communities in every jurisdiction in the country. The Supreme Court weakened Section 2 in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee in 2021, a case that allowed states to limit ballot access procedures championed by civil rights groups.
Opponents of voting rights are obsessed with Section 2. Their main goal is to eliminate private right of action claims, or lawsuits brought by civil rights, civic, and grassroots organizations. This legal approach asserts that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which is underfunded and poorly staffed, is the only entity that can bring lawsuits. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed support for this theory in Brnovich. A year later, the Trump-nominated judge in Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment used this rationale to prevent civil rights groups from moving forward with a voter dilution claim.
The widely reported Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan backed by Trump, is another obstacle to voting rights. It aims to deconstruct the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, an agency that enforces federal voting rights laws. It gives standing to Trump’s election denialism, even proposing to prosecute state and local election administrators. The far-right plan further proposes to reorganize the Federal Election Commission by stacking it with partisan appointees.
The 2024 election is consequential for voting rights. The growth of non-whites—now comprising one-third of the electorate—has fueled white backlash and antagonism to voting rights laws. The confluence of racial animus, conservative judges, far-right state lawmakers, and partisan gerrymandering created a voter suppression regime that is determined to turn back the clock.
In Obama’s eulogy of Lewis, he said that honoring the late congressmember means “revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for.” It also requires that people of good will must do their best to get folks to the polls during early voting and on November 5th. Electing candidates that embody the vision of Lewis is critical to ensure that this generation and the next have free and fair access to the voting booth.
Dr. Sekou Franklin is a Professor of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author of After the Rebellion: Social Movement Activism and Popular Mobilization among the Post-Civil Rights Generation, co-author of Losing Power: African Americans and Racial Polarization in Tennessee Politics, and editor of State of Blacks in Middle Tennessee. He served as the Redistricting Coordinator for the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP and has authored expert reports on voting rights cases.
Editor’s Note:
“At Issue” is a weekly series featuring publicly engaged scholars whose work highlights key issues of importance. From efforts to reframe discussions about justice and inclusion, to the impact of public debates surrounding immigration and race, the series concludes with a prescription for how we move beyond the election to analyze, organize, and strategize on mutual priorities. The series challenges us to consider how key policy issues within this election may impact the future of higher education and beyond. The editor of the series is Dr. Khalilah L. Brown-Dean, the Rob Rosenthal Distinguished Professor of Civic Engagement and Executive Director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University. A scholar of voting rights, punishment, and civic engagement, she is author of the book “Identity Politics in the United States” and hosts the Gracie Award-winning radio show and podcast, “DISRUPTED.”
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