Nelson Araujo

Special to the RGJ

This past Sunday, we celebrated the 52nd anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which enshrined into law the protections for our most fundamental American right: the right to vote. However, instead of celebrating a law that has done so much good, the Washington Republicans have signaled their intent to send it to an early grave.

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress must update certain provisions in the Voting Rights Act in order to better serve our rapidly evolving society. But instead of working together to protect America’s most fundamental right, bureaucratic gridlock and partisan brinksmanship led to Congressional inaction and failure. Now, President Trump’s administration has made it clear that they are resolved to destroy this law and erode our right to vote.

Just over six months into his first term, President Trump has repeatedly made false allegations of voter fraud; ordered his Justice Department to take steps to sue states that do not arbitrarily and illegitimately remove voters from voting rolls; and, created a dubious “electoral commission” whose only intent is to establish national voter suppression laws.

President Trump even went so far as to order the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to withdraw its opposition to a Texas election law that a federal judge found was written with “the intent to discriminate against protected voters,” the exact type of voter suppression laws that both the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Division were created to stop.

What binds us as a society and as a nation is the legitimacy of our participatory democracy. Anything that hampers, denies or disenfranchises an American from engaging in our most fundamental right to vote makes our government – and our nation – less legitimate.

While philosophical differences between political parties naturally exist, protecting an American’s fundamental right to vote should never be one of them. That is why I am proud of Nevada’s 2017 legislative session, where Republicans and Democrats alike joined forces to protect every Nevadans’ right to vote.

We – your state legislature – passed critical pieces of legislation that Gov. Brian Sandoval signed into law, including: Protections for Native Americans that will give every tribe the ability to have a polling site on their land throughout Early Vote or on Election Day, an extension to the deadline for Nevadans to register to vote before an election, and an expansion to ballot access for our Asian-American community. Each of these important pieces of legislation were signed into law by Gov. Sandoval.

Furthermore, in the 2018 November election, Nevadans will be able to vote for a common sense ballot initiative, that will update and modernize our voter registration process – a process that will help replace our outdated paper-based system, reducing human error and strengthening oversight. This updated system will automatically register eligible voters or update voter registration information, when eligible voters apply for, or renew, their driver’s license.

Nevadans agree that we should have a voting system that protects the fundamental right of every eligible voter - Democrat, Republican, Non-Partisan or otherwise - to have their vote counted. It is this core belief that binds Nevadans together and it is this fundamental right that we must continue to fight for and protect.

Nelson Araujo is a Democrat from Las Vegas who is the Assistant Majority Leader of the Nevada State Assembly.