The fight to protect voting rights

America needs to better provide access to and safeguard the fundamental right to vote.

If the need for updated protections wasn’t already clear, look no further than the fight to make it harder to cast ballots. As of mid-February, more than 250 bills had been introduced in more than 40 state legislatures that would restrict voting access, seven times the number of such bills introduced by the same time in 2020.

In Georgia, a state that went from red to blue and was key to President Joe Biden's win and his party's control of the U.S. Senate, Republican lawmakers moved to curtail voting options including early voting on Sundays, when Black churches conduct get-out-the-vote efforts. And many Republicans continue to call for strict voter ID requirements and more aggressive voter roll purges that will make it harder to cast ballots, even though there is no evidence that such measures are needed to prevent fraud.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed along partisan lines the For the People Act, but it's doomed in the Senate, where a version was introduced last week. However, a slimmed-down and more focused approach might lead to the enaction of some needed legislation. False claims about the 2020 presidential results that leading Republicans employed to cast doubt on the integrity of the election process are now being used as a justification for making it harder to vote in many states.

The For the People Act aims to create a minimum, national standard for election practices, including 15 days of early voting and a smoother process for online voter registration. This baseline is reasonable, necessary, and helpful for voters. The legislation also requires that early voting sites be placed as much as possible near public transportation and in rural areas, and stay open at least 10 hours a day.

New York has already come a long way via state law on issues like these, and during the pandemic we saw how crucial it is to have modern voting practices and reliable procedures for absentee ballot submission. But even Empire State voters would benefit from this federal legislation, including more days for in-person early voting, and perhaps more regularity of hours for that option.

Other provisions in the bill are needed to block efforts to impede voting in other states. Especially important would be rules to stop partisan gerrymandering by state legislatures, a vice succumbed to by both parties when they have the power. Creating congressional districts containing comparable numbers of Republicans and Democrats would foster competitive elections, reducing our sad state of hyperpartisanship.

Other key provisions include cybersecurity guidelines that would protect elections from foreign interference. The legislation would require testing of voting systems nine months before a federal general election, and also an "Election Security Bug Bounty Program" for outside expert assessments of election vulnerabilities. These changes should be a bipartisan priority.

Many pieces of the bill focus on the federal elections over which Congress has clearer power — although it is apparent that many states would likely use the new standards for state elections as well. But provisions that should be dropped include those that interfere with a state's prerogative in setting election rules, such as whether same-day registration should be allowed, how voting rolls should be maintained and whether photo identification is required. The same is true of extraneous items that go beyond voting rights, such as mandating the release of presidential tax returns and creating a code of ethics for Supreme Court justices. Even the ACLU has criticized language in the bill that it feels could restrict political advocacy.

Some of the most urgently needed voting protections are actually contained in a companion bill, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which first passed the House in 2019. It would remedy a 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down a key piece of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required states with a history of discrimination on voting issues to get approval for voting rule changes before they go into effect. The modern Lewis legislation would create an updated version of preclearance, in which states and local entities with recent voting rights violations would have to get changes approved ahead of time. The court's majority said the 1965 rule was no longer needed and that Congress should address current-day discrimination with new legislation. So here we are. As we watch the frenzied attempts to restrict voting rights, the primary and urgent goal is stopping voter suppression.

Access to the ballot is crucial to the functioning of the nation, and the integrity of our election system is vital to a healthy democracy. We have to get this right.