Scholarship@WashULaw

The Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019

Document Type

Blog Posting

Language

English (en)

Publication Date

2019

Publication Title

Election Law Blog

Abstract

Democrats in the House and Senate recently unveiled the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019 (“VRAA”), the latest version in a series of bills intended to restore the coverage formula invalidated in Shelby County v. Holder. Democrats decoupled the VRAA from H.R. 1—the omnibus voting rights and campaign finance bill introduced in January—because the inevitable constitutional challenge requires Congress to build a legislative record of racial discrimination in voting. Although the VRAA is unlikely to survive the Senate in the near future, it will almost certainly pass the House, and the record that Congress starts building today will come in handy if and when the VRAA is enacted into law. In this post, I discuss how the new VRAA resembles and differs from prior versions of the bill and highlight an overlooked provision—namely, practice-based preclearance—that should receive more attention from the voting rights community.

Keywords

Election Law, Voting Rights, Redistricting, Gerrymandering, Supreme Court, Civil Rights, Electoral Law, Political Representation, Voter Suppression

Publication Citation

Travis Crum, The Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, Election Law Blog (Mar. 1, 2019), https://electionlawblog.org/?p=103838

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