New York passes landmark voting rights legislation

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By MAYSOON KHAN

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York’s governor signed a law Monday intended to prevent local officials from enacting rules that might suppress people’s voting rights because of their race.

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, named after the late civil rights activist who represented Georgia in the U.S. House, makes New York one of the first states to bring back a version of a process known as “preclearance” that was gutted by a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2013.

Under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, states and counites with a record of suppressing the rights of Black voters once had to seek U.S. Justice Department approval before changing voting rules.

The court’s ending of that practice, on the grounds that federal oversight was no longer needed, helped clear the way for multiple states to enact new rules around voting in recent years.



FILE - Residents of the Flatbush neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York register to vote at a voter registration event on Sept. 29, 2021. New York's governor has signed a law intended to prevent local officials from enacting rules that might suppress people's voting rights because of their race. The law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, Monday, June 20, 2022, will make New York one of the first states to bring back a version of a process known as "preclearance." (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-new-york-congress-3817014bdb762ce24feba4cbc89728f0

[BumRushDaShow]

1. Good!

Sadly until we can get either VR bill passed in Congress, it's left to the states again to get rights back... and the loon GOP states will ensure that all rights are removed except the right to skeet-shoot the fetuses they force women to bear.

[elleng]

2. 'Under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, states and counites with a record of suppressing

the rights of Black voters once had to seek U.S. Justice Department approval before changing voting rules.

The court’s ending of that practice, on the grounds that federal oversight was no longer needed, helped clear the way for multiple states to enact new rules around voting in recent years.'

ONE of the worst decisions.

*Justice Ginsburg understood that the act was a levee keeping a whole press of problems at bay. Even though she couldn’t, as a justice in the minority, prevent the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, she devised an analogy of such power that anyone who heard it understood why it was so important to keep the act in place. “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet,” she wrote.'

https://time.com/5890983/ruth-bader-ginsburg-voting-rights/

[brooklynite]

3. Admirable, but NYS has never really had election suppression problems.

[Stuart G]

4. K and R ... Thank You for Posting This