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In the last few years, many elected leaders have attacked voting rights, cast doubt on free and fair elections, and served private interests over the public good. To pull American democracy back from the brink, we must use the full force of the lawand four laws will, if passed, set us on the right track.

Lets pretend, for a moment, that its November 2022election season. Youre a proud Georgian, born and raised, and youre ready to cast your ballot. What do you do?

Well, voting is about to get harder. If you want an absentee ballot, youll need a state ID. If you dont have one, too badand if you do, youd better hurry: You have half the time you had before to request an absentee ballot. Did you use a ballot drop-box in 2020? Good luck finding one now. And if you do everything rightif you show up at the right polling place at the right time (easier said than done) and wait in line for hours in the sweltering Georgian heat, nobodynot your friend, neighbor, or pastorcan give you water to drink.

These are real requirements of a real law, rammed through by state legislators in March. And Georgia isnt unique. Across the country, legislators are cracking down on voting accessslashing early voting, purging voter rolls, and closing polling sites. They do so in the name of election security, but these reforms are new clothes for the old Jim Crow. Rather than make elections safer and fairer, they aim to make voters whiter and wealthier.

Consider photo-ID requirements. On the surface, they might seem benigndoesnt everybody have a photo ID? In fact, millions dont, and Black, Latino, and Indigenous people are less likely than white people to have them. Black voters are also more likely to take advantage of early voting, and in the 2020 elections in Georgia, more Black voters relied on mail-in voting than white voters.

These legislators may feign innocence, but they know who these insidious bills will hurt: Black people, young people, urbanites, and other voters of color. In fact, thats the point. For these officials, its hard to appeal to diverse constituents, and easier to keep them from voting at all.

So how do officials justify these measures? Often, with lies. By peddling falsehoodsthat voter fraud is rampant (its not), noncitizens vote in droves (they dont), and the 2020 election was stolen (it wasnt)unethical leaders can rationalize their assaults on free and fair elections. These lies have consequences, not only for those robbed of their rights, but for democracy as a whole: On January 6th, Trump supporters, wrongly convinced that Trump had won re-election, stormed the US Capitol in what many deemed an attempted coup.

But all is not lost. To restore American democracy, we must start with four laws.

If enacted, the law would:

In the US today, elections arent competitivein 2016, only 4% of House races were considered toss-ups. Because only one party can represent people in single-seat districts, millions of Americans are represented by leaders they oppose. Worse, this system makes it possible for a single party to control leadership in the House even if another party wins more votes.

The Fair Representation Act (FRA) would change this. If enacted, the law would:

That law, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, remains one of the nations greatest legislative achievements, a triumph of integrity and equity over racism and oppression. Among many things, the VRA required some states, those with histories of discriminatory voting practices, to get federal permission to make changes to their voting laws. This preclearance requirement kept jurisdictions from installing new barriers to voting, barriers that usually hobble the rights of Black and Brown voters. But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the VRAs preclearance requirement, a devastating assault on voting protections.

The JLVRAA, named after the late civil rights activist and House Representative John Lewis, would restore preclearance, expand the types of voting changes that would require it, and let federal courts scrutinize a broader array of potentially discriminatory voting laws. For decades, the VRA worked to protect people of color from voting discrimination. It is vital that the JLVRAA pick up the mantle.

More than 700,000 people call DC homemore people than live in Vermont or Wyoming. Per capita, DC residents pay more in federal taxes than any state, and men in DC must, like all US men, register for the draft. But while DC residents have the same responsibilities as residents of states, they dont have the same rights: They have neither senators nor voting representatives. In other words, the residents of DC endure taxation without representation.

This is not only undemocratic, but racist. Washington, DC is a historically Black city, and nearly half of DC residents are Black. The US government has long overrepresented white people and underrepresented everyone else. Nowhere is this more apparent than in DC, a diverse city with no voice in federal government.

The Washington, DC Admission Act would right this wrong, making DC the 51st state and giving it the same rights enjoyed by other states, including two senators in Congress and a voting representative in the House. After more than 200 years of systemic inequality faced by DC residents, its time for change.

Most Americans support these election reforms, but the path to passing these bills is long and difficult. Our congressional leaders are cleaved by bitter partisan divide, and the filibuster rule has left the minority party with outsized control and very little interest in representing the public.

But failure is not an option. Without a functioning democracy, none of our other hopesfor health, safety, clean air and water, good jobs, education, a stable climateare possible. What can we do?

Posted in: Science Advocacy, Science and Democracy Tags: Democracy Reform, election reform, Voting rights

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How to Stop the Dismantling of Democracy - Union of Concerned Scientists