Protect Voting Rights Act

The 8th Circuit Appellate Court’s decision today to abolish private entities from bring suit to uphold the Voting Rights Act must be challenged and overturned. This means that only government entities can now bring suit against violations in Section 2 of the Act that forbids the adoption of district maps that lead to the “denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” It takes away yet another option for the public to protect it’s own fair voting interests, and permits political parties in statehouses across the nation to abuse fair public voting rights by not allowing their actions to be challenged by the public when district voting maps are drawn in ways that serve the controlling party’s partisan interests. The opposition by Republicans of the Voting Rights Act and the actions taken by the conservative judges sitting on the court in this decision is clearly an abuse of power and effort to obtain more political control for the GOP.