Demand Progress

Across the country, right-wing organizations and politicians are working overtime to chip away at and roll back our voting rights.

A recent New York Times report found that a network of state-based actors are working to challenge voter registrations and purge voters from the rolls.¹ Just last month, Axios reported that Republican lawmakers in Georgia are pushing legislation that targets automatic voter registration.² Right now, in Minnesota, the GOP is fighting to eliminate remote voting.³

We aren’t letting right-wing efforts to block Americans from exercising their right to vote go unchallenged. That’s why we’re building support for the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Sign the petition: Join us in telling Congress to pass landmark voting rights legislation.

The Freedom to Vote Act would counter current efforts to strip voters of their rights and safeguard voting rights by: expanding early voting and mail-in voting, making automatic voter registration the standard and allowing for same-day registration, countering discriminatory election practices, banning partisan gerrymandering, countering dark money via campaign transparency requirements.⁴

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would combat voting discrimination by restoring “preclearance,” a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that was gutted by the right-wing Supreme Court.⁵ Preclearance requires that any jurisdiction wishing to make changes to their election laws receives federal approval to do so. Under the Act, states with a history of implementing discriminatory voting laws would face scrutiny at the federal level for any changes to their voting laws. The act would also empower voters to take legal action against voting discrimination.

With our democracy under relentless right-wing attacks, the work to pass voting rights legislation at the highest levels has taken on a new urgency. In the face of such attacks, we desperately need to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would safeguard and expand our democracy by expanding voting rights and protecting voters from voting discrimination.

If passed, these two bills would be the most important pieces of voting rights legislation on the books since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

We need you with us: will you call on your members of Congress to take action and work to pass these transformative voting rights bills?

Sources:

1. New York Times, “Trump’s Allies Ramp Up Campaign Targeting Voter Rolls,” March 3, 2024.
2. Axios, “State Senate targets automatic voter registration,” February 27, 2024.
3. Minnesota Reformer, “Minnesota senate majority leader denounces GOP’s effort to eliminate remote voting,” March 11, 2024.
4. Brennan Center for Justice, “What the Freedom to Vote Act Would Do,” July 13, 2023.
5. Brennan Center for Justice, “The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” February 29, 2024.