How the US Has Shifted Away from Pro-voter Legislation

By Betsy Lawson, formerly a senior lobbyist at LWVUS

Many of the League of Women Voters’ legislative campaigns take years to pass Congress. One exception was the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 2006. The Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 moved quickly through Congress with strong bipartisan support. The speed of passage showed our country’s bipartisan support of voting rights, support which has dwindled in recent years. 

Passing the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006  

The Voting Rights Act originally passed Congress in 1964. It was a landmark civil rights bill that provided federal protections against state laws, primarily in southern states, which discriminated against voters, particularly Black voters.  

The VRA was scheduled to be reauthorized in 2007, but in an unusual move, reauthorization was taken up a year earlier by the House Judiciary Chair, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a long-time supporter of the VRA. Sensenbrenner’s Chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee ended in 2006, so to shepherd the VRA through the reauthorization process, he moved it up a year.  

The bill was introduced on May 2, 2006, and passed the House Judiciary Committee on May 22, the full House by a vote of 393 – 33 on July 13, and then the Senate by a vote of 98 – 0 on July 21. That same day, President George W. Bush spoke to the NAACP convention and vowed to sign the bill, which he did on July 27, 2006. In under three months, the VRA reauthorization had gone from being introduced to becoming law.  

The legislation reauthorized the VRA for 25 years and was cosponsored by 152 House members, including Dennis Hastert, speaker of the House, and Nancy Pelosi, minority leader. 

The League of Women Voters, along with our allies in the civil rights and voting rights communities, lobbied hard in support of the reauthorization. League lobbyists visited House and Senate offices in support of the legislation, and action alerts went out to local and state Leagues, who in turn urged their members of Congress to vote for reauthorization. 

In anticipation of the bill’s introduction, hearings were held around the country. Americans provided thousands of pages of testimony to support reauthorization of the VRA, including instances where the law had helped preserve voting rights and descriptions of continuing problems that needed to be addressed.