As the #FreedomToVote #JohnLewisVotingRightsAct makes it way to the floor today, expect a lot of disinformation and misunderstandings about what this critical democracy-saving legislation does. This thread will set the record straight. /1
2/ (1) Despite the record number of new laws this year making it harder to vote, and the persistent racial turnout gap, some claim that new voting restrictions don’t matter. @smoralesdoyle of @brennancenter buries that argument here:
https://twitter.com/SMoralesDoyle/status/1480655474865446919
3/ Here is more evidence of how much new voting restrictions can impact voters and elections: brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
4/ And here is a rundown of recent social science showing that these vote suppression laws are discriminatory.
brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
5/ (2) @smoralesdoyle also bats down the absurd argument that Congress shouldn’t respond to the vote suppression wave sweeping many states because states like NY and DE have weaker voter access.
https://twitter.com/SMoralesDoyle/status/1481483364586737668
6/ (3) Contrary to what some are saying, the #FreedomToVoteAct *does* in fact address election subversion. It has some of the strongest possible responses to that threat. We wrote a paper on it: brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
7/ And @danweiner329 of @brennancenter lays out how the #FreedomToVoteAct responds to election subversion in a thread here:
https://twitter.com/DanWeiner329/status/1481431686982377473
8/ (4) Despite the widespread redistricting abuses piling up this year, some say not to worry because the maps so far are not so bad or not so bad for Democrats. My colleague @mcpli takes down this argument step by step in @washingtonpost here: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
10/ Key points: Keeping and extending the extreme gerrymanders from last decade is still gerrymandering. These gerrymanders are at the expense of communities of color. And they eliminate competition. So voters lose, lose, lose. (unless Congress passes these bills)
11/ (5) While it's a good idea for Congress to clean up the Electoral Count Act, fixing that law will *not* solve the vast majority of vote suppression & election sabotage schemes, not to mention redistricting abuse & dark money. The #FreedomToVoteJohnLewisVotingRightsAct does.
12/ @Sifill_LDF, @NormEisen & @FredWertheimer, and @JRubinBlogger make clear why it would be a huge mistake and betrayal of voters for Congress to abandon its big democracy bills to focus on the ECA now.
https://twitter.com/Sifill_LDF/status/1478173230955483144?s=20
(6) The #JohnLewisVotingRightsAct's protections against discrimination in voting are emphatically *not* intrusions on state sovereignty, unless you are protecting the authority to discriminate.
The @BrennanCenter's Andrew Garber knocks down the Senate Republicans' arguments against the Voting Rights Act (which are eerily reminiscent of the arguments against the same act in 1965), here: brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…
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