WASHINGTON (CN) — Documenting how the rollback of federal election protections has hurt voting rights in recent years, and why it is time for Congress to pass a new law, House investigators released a report Friday that looks at voter-roll purges targeted at Black communities and the closure of nearly 2,000 polling places, among other restrictions.
The nearly 125-page report, whose issuance Friday coincides with the 56th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being signed into law, is the product of five hearings over the past several months in which 35 witnesses testified about national voting statistics and voter-law restrictions that have been introduced in 30 state legislatures since the 2020 election.
Lawmakers say the eight chapters of evidence of voter suppression laid out in the report are essential to securing passage of H.R. 4, otherwise known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which is aimed, in large part, at restoring the tenants of the 1965 law that the Supreme Court dismantled with its ruling in Shelby v. Holder.
The 2013 decision tossed a "preclearance" provision of the Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of racial discrimination and voter suppression to submit changes to election procedures in advance.
Since then, according to one highlight from Friday's report, states once subject to Voting Rights Act preclearence procedures have purged voters at a 40% higher rate than the rest of the country.
The report also ties voter-identification laws to plummeting turnout at the polls, pointing to one study that says Latino voters were 10% less likely to vote if a state had voter ID laws. Apart from the cost of the license itself, according to the report, the price of traveling, getting time off work, and waiting for those IDs are factors that discourage people from obtaining them.
"The burden of these requirements disproportionately fall on Black, Latino, Asian American and Native American voters and newly naturalized citizens," the report states. "Recent studies have demonstrated that Black and Latino voters are less likely to have access to birth certificates and passports — documents often required to establish proof of citizenship — than white voters."
Other chapters of the report are devoted to lack of access to multilingual voting materials and long lines on Election Day, the latter of which are worsened as jurisdictions — predominately those in communities where racial minorities are in the population majority — shutter polling places and hire fewer workers. A report by The Leadership Education Fund found that 1,688 polling places shuttered in districts where access was already limited between 2012 and 2018.
"In 2021, our democracy is under attack," the report states. "According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of July 14, 2021, lawmakers had introduced more than 400 bills in 49 states to restrict the vote — at least four times the number of restrictive bills introduced just two years prior. To date, at least 18 states have enacted new laws containing provisions that restrict access to voting."
Voter-restriction efforts ramped up in Republican legislatures following their party's loss of control in every chamber of government in the 2020 election. Though cybersecurity and elections-security experts are in agreement that “the November
3rd [2020] election was the most secure in American history," lawmakers have leaned on unsubstantiated reports of fraud to tighten rules for casting a ballot.
Georgia state legislators introduced a bill in February that would impose ID requirements on voters for absentee voting, reduce the amount of time for voters to request those ballots and eliminate early voting on Sundays — all but eliminating the “Souls to the Polls” program run by Black churches in Georgia, which helped boost its turnout by 22% for a state record in 2020.
In the Arizona Legislatures, meanwhile, lawmakers have introduced bills to purge voter rolls and ban the return of ballots by mail — both of which helped the state’s turnout increase by 27% during the 2020 elections. The measures impose burdens both on Latino and Native American minority groups in the state.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Friday the report proves what Americans already knew: “voters of color across the country are being silenced by partisan forces.”
Congressman Al Green, a Texas Democrat who has protested and legislated in support of voting rights for years, noted Friday that, when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, there were only 14 people of color who were representatives and only another 13 women who served in Congress.
“There have been many attacks on the Voting Rights Act over the past 56 years and in 2021, we are still fighting for full enforcement of the 15th Amendment for all eligible voters in our country,” Green said in a statement. “With rampant voter suppression tactics and restrictive voting legislation introduced in 48 states this year, the right to vote is being aggressively threatened.”
The House Judiciary Committee announced it would hold a hearing on August 17 to examine voting restrictions around the country — asking questions of Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke. Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler called it was essential for Congress to examine legislative solutions to protecting the right to vote.
“Congress has the power — and indeed the obligation — to protect the right to vote for all Americans,” Nadler said in a statement. “The House Judiciary Committee will move expeditiously to complete its hearings establishing a record of the continuing current need for robust and enhanced voting rights protections and will be ready to bring the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to the House floor.”
Friday’s report comes four months after another report on H.R. 1, known as the For the People Act, which proposed automatic voter registration, transparency in donor data and widespread early voting. After sailing through the Democratic-controlled House, it failed in the Senate with a 50-50 split along party lines, ultimately falling 10 votes shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
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