1. HR4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act April 23, 2019
LWVUS Policy Briefing
HR4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act
April 23, 2019
2019

2. Welcome Thank you for attending! We have: Muted all the lines;
Set aside designated time for Q&A; and
Staff monitoring the “question” box.
Please note:
This call is being recorded.
Slides and a recording will included in follow up materials

3. Introductions Celina Stewart, Esq. Jessica Jones Capparell
Director of Advocacy and Litigation
LWVUS
Jessica Jones Capparell
Policy and Legislative Affairs Senior Manager

4. Goals for Today
Provide an overview of HR4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. Give YOU the resources to talk with your members of Congress and move this to final passage.

5. Roadmap for our Discussion
History of the Voting Rights Act of
Shelby v. Holder decision
Movement to Restore the VRA
HR4 Overview
What can you do to help?
Questions

6. History of the Voting Rights Act (VRA)
Celina:
HI Everyone! Thanks again for some space to talk about one of my very favorite topics both in my legal and real life: The Voting Rights Act.
I wanted to start by sharing some background on the VRA so we are all working from same understanding and frame of reference.
After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Nevertheless, in the following decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote.
Nearly 80 years later, during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to mistreatment and violence in their pursuit of "separate but equal" rights. What really brought things to a head was an event in the Spring of 1965, when peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refusing to turn back. To make matters worse, the incident  was broadcasted on television, it caused unrest throughout the country.
Now, let's take a look at what the VRA did. (next slide)

7. What did the VRA do in 1965? Reinforced the 15th Amendment
Gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout
Banned literacy tests
Provided federal oversight for voter registration
Authorized investigations into use of poll taxes
Celina:
As discussed even with the ratification of the 15th amendment, African Americans in the South faced tremendous obstacles to voting, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions to deny them the right to vote. AA also risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register or vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered voters, and we had very little, if any, political power, at both the national and local level.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The VRA aimed at overcoming legal barriers at the state and local levels, and specifically practices and laws that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in a landslide victory. Lyndon B. Johnson knew what President Kennedy wanted to accomplish in passing laws that would stabilize America, but he was hesitant. However, the increasing violence toward AA and his acquaintance and then later friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr. paved the way towards the VRA which is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. 
The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a vote on May 26, After debating the bill for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of on July 9. What you may not know is that the VRA was backed primarily by Republican legislators, because southern Democrats were hesitant to expand and solidify rights for AA. In fact, in the Senate 82 percent of GOP legislators voted yes versus 61 percent of Democrats; in the House 80 percent of GOP legislators voted yes versus two-thirds of Democrats. Facts like this are really compelling and confirms that the VRA, from it's inception, was not a political issue, it was simply Congress addressing an equal rights issue intended to decrease racial hostility across the south and hopefully the nation as well. So, after many months of advocay, lobbying, floor debates, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony.
Ultimately, the act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the minority population had not registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections. This is important because In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; but it wasn’t until 1966 that poll taxes in state elections were banned by the U.S. Supreme Court (Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections).
Here's the takeaway: that the Voting Rights Act gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among AA increased dramatically after the passage of the VRA, it rose from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

8. Reauthorization of the VRA
Courtesy of
Photo: National Review
Reauthorized with overwhelming bipartisan support in 1970, 1975, 1982,
Added protections for additional minority groups and language minorities
Renewed support for preclearance and federal oversight
Courtesy of
Courtesy Nixon Foundation
Celina:
In teaching some young folks about the VRA, a student asked why is there re-authorization with the VRA. I thought it was a pretty astute question. Does anyone on the phone know the answer to that? Well, the VRA was successful in being passed because it had a clause that forced Congress to review whether AA should/would continue to have protection in our right to vote. Under the VRA, Congress had to review the law every 25 years and re-authorize the protections under the VRA. 
If you're wondering why the next authorization occurred before 1990, it's because Congress continued to "tweak" the law based on issues that came up after the initial law of Here's a quick recap of relevant re-authorization purposes.
In 1970 and 1975, Congress expanded the coverage formula, supplementing it with new 1968 and 1972 trigger dates. Coverage was further enlarged in 1975 when Congress expanded the meaning of "tests or devices" to encompass any jurisdiction that provided English-only election information, such as ballots, if the jurisdiction had a single language minority group that constituted more than five percent of the jurisdiction's voting-age citizens. 
Separately, in 1975 Congress expanded the Act's scope to protect language minorities from voting discrimination. Congress defined "language minority" to include "persons who are American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Natives or of Spanish heritage." Congress amended various provisions, such as the Section 5 preclearance requirement and Section 2 general prohibition of discriminatory voting laws, to prohibit discrimination against language minorities.
reauthorizations: enacted on June 17, 1970 as the Voting Rights Act were Amendments that Congress put in place and extended the special provisions that were tied to the coverage formula, such as the preclearance requirement (the requirement of covered jurisdictions to get approval for any proposed voting changes from the court). These provisions were extended for five years in 1970, seven years in 1975, and 25 years in both 1982 and 2006.

9. 2013 Supreme Court Decision
Shelby County v. Holder
In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court called Section 4b of the VRA unconstitutional
Photo: NY Times
Celina:
Shelby County v. Holder, decided in (2013), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4(b), which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subjected to preclearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting.
On June 25, 2013, the Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that Section 4(b) is unconstitutional because the coverage formula is based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states. The Court did not strike down Section 5, but without Section 4(b), no jurisdiction will be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.
The Court expressed that Congress cannot subject a state to preclearance based simply on past discrimination. It noted that since the coverage formula was last modified in 1975, the country "has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions". The Court declared that the Fifteenth Amendment "commands that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race or color, and it gives Congress the power to enforce that command. The Amendment is not designed to punish for the past; its purpose is to ensure a better future.
While the courts opinion seems to present the problem in a pretty package, we have seen the impact of that false narrative. Five years after the ruling, nearly 1000 polling places have been closed in the U.S., with many of the closed polling places in predominantly African-American counties. Research shows a direct correlation between changing voter locations and reduction in voting locations, leading to reduced voter turnout. This decreased voter turnout is also exacerbated by cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls and imposition of strict voter ID laws. Virtually all restrictions on voting happened AFTER this ruling and all conservative legislatures.
I hope this brief history lesson is helpful in setting the stage for better understanding the tone of the country that led to VRA being necessary, and importance of the HR4 bill introduced this year. Now, I will turn it over to Jessica to break that down for everyone. 

10. Movement to Restore the VRA
Jessica: Since the 2013 decision in Shelby there has been strong momentum to restore the Voting Rights Act.
2015 was the 50th anniversary of the VRA
2016 was the first modern presidential election without the protections of the VRA

11. Movement to Restore the VRA
Legislation introduced since 2014
House Judiciary Committee Movement
Currently two competing pieces of legislation
Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc.
Jessica:
Bipartisan legislation was introduced in 2014, immediately following the decision. The legislation called the Voting Rights Amendment Act was introduced by Congressmen John Lewis, James Sensenbrenner, Steve Chabot and John Conyers in the House and Senator Leahy in the Senate. The legislation wasn’t perfect but it was the first step toward restoring the protections of the Voting Rights Act. in 2015 another pieces of legislation from Rep. Terri Sewell was also introduced called the Voting Rights Advancement Act. This is now the legislation known as HR4.
In the House and Senate, the legislation was assigned to the Judiciary Committee. At the time in the House, Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia was in charge of that committee and he put up roadblocks to holding a hearing and allowing this legislation to move forward. The League worked in his district to write LTE’s and hold meetings with his staff about what could be done to move this forward. The League also joined other coalition partners at a rally in the Congressman’s hometown of Roanoke, VA to show support from his own constituents for passing and hearing this legislation but he was unwilling to budge.
The League has continued to engage in grassroots advocacy efforts around the need to restore the VRA including a Lobby Day at the 2016 convention focused around the VRAA. League leaders from all around the country came together on capitol hill to meet with their Representatives and Senators about the need to restore the voting rights act.

12. HR4: The Voting Rights Advancement Act
Introduced on Feb. 26, 2019 by Representative Terri Sewell (AL)
Restores Section 4 of the VRA
Re-establishes preclearance coverage
Modernizes the coverage formula
Defines voting rights violations
Jessica: So let’s talk a little bit about the specifics of this legislation.
HR4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act will re establish pre clearance coverage in states who have a history of voting rights discrimination. It modernizes the original coverage formula by requiring coverage for states that have had 15 or more violations over the past 25 years. And it covers political subdivisions (like counties, cities or other areas if they have three or more subdivisions in a calendar year. It clearly defines what a voting rights violation is and reestablishes the preclearance process which requires those who are covered by the formula to have those rules approved by the Department of Justice before they are implemented.

13. HR4: The Voting Rights Advancement Act
National notification of voting changes
National notification of polling place resources
Allows DOJ to request federal observers anywhere in the country
Senate Companion S. 561
In addition to restoring the provisisons that were struck down the Supreme Court, the bill also expands voting rights protections that promote transparency in our elections. It requires every state to notify its voters about the change within 48 hours of the change being made. This must happen for any change that occurs at least 180 days before an election.
It also requires notification of any changes to polling place resources be sent 30 days before the election. This ensures that there are no last minute, night before changes to polling places.
The bill also allows the Department of Justice to request federal election observers present at any jurisdiction in the country.

14. Key Messages
Since 2010, 25 states have put new restrictions making it harder to vote in place
These restrictions include voter ID laws, reduction of early voting hours, restrictions on registration, and more
Map:
Since 2010, 25 different states have put new restrictions making it harder to vote. After the Shelby County decision these changes were no longer required to be pre cleared for covered states or that would be considered for future coverage in the formula. Without the Justice Departments enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, several states were allowed to implement strict voter ID laws, roll back early voting hours or eliminate them altogether, reduce the numbers of polling places and restrict registration through the use of proof of citizenship requirements. Because of the lack of enforcement by DOJ, it is now up to nonprofits and community groups like the League of Women Voters to stand up and fight back against these voter suppression tactics.

15. Key Messages Continued
The Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA) seeks to protect the rights of all Americans to vote.
The VRAA will restore the Voting Rights Act to its former strength after being gutted by the Shelby County v. Holder decision.
The VRAA is a robust solution to ensuring that all Americans, no matter their race, ethnicity, language, or disability are able to vote.
It restores the Voting Rights act to its former strength by modernizing the coverage formula, clearly defining voting rights violations and reestablishing the preclearance process.

16. Key Messages Continued
The VRAA is needed to prevent states from passing suppression laws that disproportionately prevent minorities, the elderly, and young voters from voting.
The VRAA requires states with a recent history of voter discrimination to seek federal preclearance for election changes.
Read the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2018 report here:
The VRAA is needed to prevent states from passing voter suppression laws. It should be unacceptable in the greatest democracy in the world that we are working to prevent eligible persons from exercising their greatest constitutional right: the right to vote and have a say in their democracy.
The VRAA takes bad actors, those states or jurisdictions with a history of passing these suppressive laws, and requires them to seek preclearance for elections changes. It ensures that these states are being held responsible for any discriminatory actions that they are trying to take with regards to voting.
US Commission on Civil Rights Report

17. Field Hearings and Evidence
Photo courtesy Karen Ehrens, LWV Bismark-Mandan, ND
Field Hearings and Evidence
House Administration Subcommittee on Elections Field Hearings
February: Texas and Georgia
April 16: Standing Rock, North Dakota April 18: Halifax, North Carolina 
April 25: Cleveland, Ohio  
May 6: Broward County, Florida
May 13: Alabama (City TBD)
TBD Date in May – Washington, DC
Unfortunately, discrimination in voting against racial, ethnic, and language minorities continues in America.
4 hearings have already happened: TX, GA, ND, NC
House Administration Committee Subcommittee on Elections
Rep. Marcia Fudge
Hearings around the country
LWV submitting written testimony and presenting as a witness when possible
Build a record and present a report to Congress in the fall

18. What can you do to help?
Attend a Field Hearing Near You Call your Representative or Senators Capitol Switchboard number: Respond to LWVUS Action Alerts Write Letters to the Editor Share messages on Social Media

19. Materials Available from LWVUS
Action Alerts
Policy Memo to Congress
Talking Points
Testimony Template

20. Next Steps
A recording of this call will be available with the slides on the League Management Site Links to the resources mentioned will be included in a follow-up message

21. Join Our Next Briefings
Tuesday, May PM Eastern LWVUS Policy Update: The For the People Act Join LWVUS policy and advocacy staff for an update on the movement of the For the People Act. We will discuss updates on the Senate version of the bill. Register Here! Tuesday, June PM Eastern LWVUS Policy Update: 2019 Legislation and Litigation Efforts Join LWVUS Director of Advocacy and Litigation, Celina Stewart, and Policy and Legislative Affairs Senior Manager, Jessica Jones Capparell, for a mid-year update on LWVUS legislation and litigation efforts.

22. Questions?

23. Thank you!