Moderate Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who often work together on legislative issues, are appealing to congressional leaders to reauthorize a version of the Voting Rights Act that is most likely to get bipartisan support.
Manchin and Murkowski, like-minded on many legislative issues, sent a letter (pdf) on Monday to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying that voting rights should not be allowed to become a partisan issue.
“Protecting Americans’ access to democracy has not been a partisan issue for the past 56 years, and we must not allow it to become one now,” they wrote in the letter.
The two senators argued that the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder on Section 4 of the Voting Rights law, “effectively gutted” the law. While the two senators did not name any specific piece of legislation, Democrats have been calling for enacting the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (S. 4263), which they say would strengthen the 1965 law.
The legislation seeks to bring back the pre-clearance formula that would require states with a history of voter suppression of minorities to obtain pre-approval from the Justice Department or federal courts before making changes to election processes.
But the John Lewis version of the bill would most likely not get the 60 votes required by the Senate filibuster rule and in the 116th Congress, Murkowski was the only GOP co-sponsor for the legislation. It has yet to be introduced in the current Senate.
“We reflect not just on the positive impact this legislation has had on individual Americans’ ability to exercise their most fundamental right–the right to vote–and the strength of our democracy writ large, but on the important work we still have to do to realize that promise of ensuring the right of all to vote,” the two senators went on to write.
BY MASOOMA HAQ
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