By Jean Pierce, Trustee
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down decisions that challenge our polity and have inspired me to fight that much harder to preserve our democracy.
I was glad that the Independent State Legislature Theory gained no traction in Moore v. Harper. Like so many, I’ve been concerned with the ethics of the court when powerful and wealthy forces may be influencing our justices since “there are no binding ethical restraints on Supreme Court Justices like those that apply to lower courts and to government officials generally.”
Outside influence on any matter before the court forces us to consider, in particular, how the current limits on voting rights are against UU Principles and values which embrace radical inclusion in the creation of a healthy democracy.
In 1964, Delegates to the UUA Convention voted to support a General Civil Rights Resolution expressing support for enacting adequate state and local legislation toward ending racial discrimination in voting.
In 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA), saying, “The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.” More than 5 decades later, that instrument needs federal protection again.
The VRA ended literacy testing requirements for voting and ended the poll tax. Finally, people of low income and people of color could vote. Section 2 stated that the Department of Justice could challenge a state’s law or procedure which denies or abridges the right to vote on the basis of race or color. And Sections 4 and 5 required certain states to obtain “preclearance” – approval from the Department of Justice – before enacting electoral procedures.
Over the course of 50 years, the VRA was periodically re-authorized, each time with bipartisan support. In 1982, President Reagan signed a 25-year extension.
But in 2013, the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder ruled that the formula for identifying states needing preclearance was outdated and not “grounded in current conditions.” Famously, Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,” In the wake of the decision, more than 1600 polling places closed, and many states aggressively purged voters from their roles.
In 2021, Section 2 of the VRA was weakened when the Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s right to require voters to cast ballots at assigned voting places even though the state had a history of disenfranchising people of color by changing polling places frequently and locating them in highly unlikely places.
According to the Brennan Center, this year, 45 states saw 322 bills designed to restrict access to the ballot box. Thirteen of these bills were passed in 11 states.
Voter disenfranchisement legislation passed recently has disproportionately affected people of color. Indeed, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, data from the 2022 elections demonstrate a historically large racial turnout gap: one study found that Black turnout dropped by nearly ten percentage points from 2018, as compared to a 1.5 percent drop in white turnout, leading to the widest gap in any election since at least 2000.
A 2021 Action of Immediate Witness by UUs for Social Justice demanded that we stop voter suppression, expressing support for the For the People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and The Washington, D.C., Admission Act. It is important that the federal government standardize voting procedures throughout the country and give representation to citizens of Washington, D.C.
None of these bills has passed yet, and with the current composition of the House of Representatives, they are facing an uphill battle, but I know our UUSJ democracy action team has been working on what is possible.
At this time, our Unitarian Universalist efforts need to be two-pronged:
- We need to remind our legislators that voting rights have had a long history of bipartisan support. They need to remember that voting rights are essential for a strong democracy. Polling by Data for Progress and Vote Save America shows that provisions of the For the People Act receive bipartisan approval from the public, with 68% of those polled endorsing reforms in the measure.
- We need to oppose some of the provisions of the American Confidence in Elections Act (ACE), which would impose restrictions on voting by mail and further restrict voting by residents of Washington, DC.
We cannot take our democracy for granted. It is up to each of us to work for expanding voting rights. This begins with encouraging our legislators to talk across the aisle to find areas where they can work together to restore voting rights.
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