Photo: LDF
Back from their summer recess, Senate Democrats announced last week that they have united behind the “Freedom to Vote” Act, a compromise bill that would expand and protect the right to vote in important ways.
It comes on the heels of a summer-long effort by poor and low-income people, as well as grassroots voting rights advocates, to demand that Democrats act now to protect the right to vote and defend democracy. But what Senate Democrats may or may not realize is that the bill includes language Republicans have used for years to attack and curtail voting rights.
Among the three sections of the bill is one titled “election integrity.” As someone who has been at the forefront of the fight for voting rights both on the streets and in the courtroom, I recognize that the phrase is not a neutral aspiration for free and fair elections, but rather a Republican-perpetuated lie designed to cast doubt on increased voter participation in a multiethnic democracy.
If Democrats are serious about protecting voting rights, the lie must not remain in the current version of the bill.
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