Laws that limit voting rights. What can motivate the views of people about the laws that limit their voting rights and how do these laws affect people?
Editor’s note: A recap of this year’s voting laws as well as a look ahead at upcoming voting legislation in 2022 can be found here.
The 2020 federal election drew the United States’ highest voter turnout in more than a century, breaking records despite the Covid-19 pandemic and efforts to undermine the election process with the Big Lie of a stolen election.
In a backlash to this historic voter participation, many state lawmakers have proposed and enacted legislation to make it harder for Americans to vote, justifying these measures with falsehoods steeped in racism about election irregularities and breaches of election security.
In all but seven states, regular legislative sessions are now over.footnote1_2lypyhd1 Between January 1 and September 27, at least 19 states enacted 33 laws that make it harder for Americans to vote.
At the same time, lawmakers in many states responded to Americans’ eagerness to vote by making it easier for eligible voters to cast their ballots. Between January 1 and September 27, at least 25 states enacted 62 laws with provisions that expand voting access.
But this expansive legislation does not balance the scales. The states that have enacted restrictive laws tend to be ones in which voting is already relatively difficult, while the states that have enacted expansive laws tend to have relatively more accessible voting processes. In other words, access to the right to vote increasingly depends on the state in which a voter happens to reside.
Congress has the power to protect American voters from the kinds of restrictions enacted so far this year. The Freedom to Vote Act, which is currently before the Senate, is a comprehensive package of voting, redistricting, and campaign finance reforms. It includes national standards for voting that would ensure access to the ballot across state lines
. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which has passed in the House, would complement the Freedom to Vote Act. In many instances, it would prevent changes to voting rules that discriminate on the basis of race or membership in language minority groups from being implemented, and it would restore voters’ robust ability to challenge discriminatory laws. Three of the four omnibus restrictive laws were enacted in states that would be subject to preclearance under the John Lewis Act (FL, GA, TX).