H.R.1 Represents Progress and Democracy - Colin Allred WSJ letter
Regarding David Rivkin Jr. and Jason Snead’s “H.R.1 Would Steamroll the Constitution” (op-ed, June 4): The authors’ demonization of H.R.1 as a federal takeover wildly inflates its reach and plays down the wave of racially motivated voting restrictions being implemented across the country.
What H.R.1 does is simple: It sets national standards for access to vote by mail, early voting and voter registration so that our democracy isn’t radically different from state to state. Within those standards, states will still have the ability to administer elections, the way they always have.
The same fear-stoking arguments about the national government telling states how to run their elections were made during the Jim Crow era when black Americans were blocked from the ballot box through terror and violence. With passage of the Voting Rights Act, we worked to move away from that.
What we are seeing now is an attempt to go back to an era in which there are discriminatory laws on the books to stop certain groups from voting and consolidate power for the minority. I am a voting-rights attorney and member of Congress representing Dallas, Texas. The restrictions taking place in my home state and others are egregious and have put our democracy at a tipping point. H.R.1 serves to bolster access to voting so every eligible American can be involved in our democracy. It really shouldn’t be a partisan issue. We’ve made so much progress and can’t go backward now. H.R.1 will restore our democracy and expand access for all Americans. We must get this done.
Rep. Colin Allred (D., Texas)
Dallas
https://www.wsj.com/articles/h-r-1-represents-progress-and-democracy-11623346771 (subscription)
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