Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly reaffirmed his support Tuesday for the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2017, which was recently reintroduced. The bill would restore voter protections that were undermined by the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Donnelly supported similar legislation in the last Congress and visited Selma, Alabama, in 2015 for the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the marches from Selma to Birmingham.
Donnelly said, “The right to vote is fundamental to our country’s values and to what it means to be an engaged citizen. We should all be working together to ensure that the right to vote is not denied on a discriminatory basis because when people are denied the right to vote our democracy is harmed. I am hopeful that we can find ways to make it easier for our fellow Americans to exercise this right, not harder.”
The Voting Rights Advancement Act would do the following:
· It would amend the Voting Rights Act to require a state or political subdivision of a state to preclear changes to their election practices with the U.S. Department of Justice or U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for a period of 10 years if that jurisdiction has a persistent record of voting rights violations in the previous 25-year period.
· The legislation would also require notice and disclosure of late-breaking changes in voting procedures when a federal-level election is involved.
· In addition, this bill would require all jurisdictions that enact specific voting changes that historically have been found to be discriminatory to be subject to federal preclearance for those changes.
