Lawmakers should honor those who marched 50 years ago, the authors write. We need a new Voting Rights Act

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington — an historic event that helped to build the political will to pass the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the Civil Rights Act in 1964 — we do a disservice if we commemorate the day as if it made this historic legislation inevitable.

Let’s not forget the brutal congressional fight that only ended when dozens of senators and representatives, particularly Democrats, voted for what is right at direct cost to their party’s political interests. Now 50 years later, saving the VRA might require a similar act of statesmanship, this time by Republicans, to put the integrity of American democracy above Machiavellian partisan interests.


Put bluntly, every effort to restrict voting rights across America is being pursued by Republicans. That’s new: During the most vicious periods of racial segregation, laws designed to suppress African-American votes were motivated overwhelmingly by insidious racial bigotry and were heavily concentrated in the South by leaders from both parties. But today, Republicans across the country are designing laws to suppress African-American, Latino, and young votes primarily to rig the electoral system in swing states that determine control of Congress and the White House, independent of traditional racial animus as a motivating factor. Yet because of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to gut the core provision of the VRA, the task of guaranteeing the votes of minorities, young people, and the elderly now sits in the hands of congressional Republicans.

In June, the court’s conservative majority struck down the constitutionality of Section IV of the VRA, which designates the states and localities that must pre-clear changes to voting laws with the Department of Justice, thus creating a pre-emptive protection of the right to vote. In explaining the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that “nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically” relating to race and voting in America.

But egregious attempts to restrict voting rights can still be found in old Dixie states. Within days of the Supreme Court decision, six states with histories of pernicious voting suppression moved swiftly to restrict voting rights, unchecked by the preclearance process, with Florida looking to resume its voter purge.

Many of the most aggressive current efforts to rig elections, however, are taking place in Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and Ohio – swing states where Republicans have realized that suppressing the votes of young people, Latinos, and African-Americans is a winning strategy. Conservative efforts to demonstrate the voter fraud they claim to be the cause of such laws have backfired, and Republican officials in multiple states have admitted the intent is to help Republicans win elections. The unmistakable effect of such laws is the disenfranchisement of voters whose views tend to align more closely with Democrats, and a new VRA that blocks efforts to make it harder for these individuals to vote will also make it harder for Republicans to win elections.

So the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is technically right: Things have changed dramatically since the VRA was originally passed. Bigotry isn’t the main motivation behind these new voter-suppression efforts; winning elections is. But does it really matter what the reason is?

President Lyndon Johnson would answer no. When he signed the VRA, he explained: “This act flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny.”

Johnson’s words still ring true today. The wrong that needs righting may have evolved over the last five decades, but it is still a wrong “which no American, in his heart, can justify.”

When they handed the task of updating one of the greatest legislative achievements in America’s history to Congress, the conservative justices were acting at best on naïve and at worst on disingenuous expectations that Congress could provide this sort of leadership.

But members of Congress have provided this leadership in the past. When they passed the original VRA, they put what was right ahead of what would help their party at the polls. Today, we hope some members of Congress will muster the courage to do the same in producing a modern formula to protect our democracy. We hope they will honor the legacy of those who marched on Washington 50 years ago, and remember that the march did not end until Congress had cast tough votes to protect the right to vote and the integrity of our democracy. And that the march continues today.

Tom Perriello is president and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund; Daniella Gibbs Léger is senior vice president for American Values & New Communities at the Center for American Progress Action fund.