Conservatives – Tell Your Senators Don’t Get Suckered On The John Lewis Voting Rights Act

Bloomberg’s Ros Krasny reports Senator Joe Manchin said Sunday he will vote against the For the People Act passed by House Democrats in March, and also will not support ending the filibuster rule.

The Democrat announced his position in an op-ed for the Charleston Gazette-Mail in his home state of West Virginia.

This is good news because without Manchin’s support, the sweeping federal takeover of election -- approved by the House without a single Republican vote -- seems doomed to fail in the evenly-divided Senate.

“I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act,” Manchin wrote.

“Furthermore, I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster,” he wrote. That rule allows the minority party to block most legislation by requiring 60 votes to allow debate to go forward. Manchin has said repeatedly he wouldn’t support ending it.

This is great, but there are other bills that are just as bad – maybe in some cases even worse than H.R.1/S.1, among them is the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

As Leftwing elections law expert Ed Kilgore argued in an article for New York Magazine:

…the president and congressional Democrats should consider making a strategic shift to less controversial voting-rights measures, particularly the John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act, another bill that passed the House in the last Congress. And now, such advice is being advanced via the much more morally compelling voices of the Congressional Black Caucus, Politico reports. As CBC member Anthony Brown of Maryland told reporters, the more focused legislation “would provide a real good opportunity for a handful of Democratic senators who want to hold onto the filibuster [to say] ‘Yes, we can do it on this John Lewis Voting Rights [Act].’” There’s also sentiment in the CBC that a decent number of Republicans might be brought onboard, thanks to widespread GOP support for the original VRA, expressed most recently when Congress enacted, and George W. Bush signed, an extension of the law in 2006.

The John Lewis Act would restore the Justice Department “preclearance” regime the Supreme Court struck down in 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder and extend it to all 50 states.

This means that every local decision from the shape of congressional and state legislative distircts, to the location of precinct voting stations, to city annexation ordinances would have to be cleared through the now radical Democrat controlled federal Department of Justice.

Mr. Kilgore explained that the Democrats’ target date for the House version of the John Lewis bill is June 30, so that they can get it passed and on the books in order to affect the 2022 congressional elections.

As Mr. Kilgore explained:

Proponents want to get a restored VRA in place before states that might be subject to the pre-clearance requirements finish up the decennial redistricting process and create congressional and state legislative maps intended to stay in place until 2032. These are precisely the kind of decisions the Justice Department used to scrutinize under the pre–Shelby County VRA.

The person who would be in charge of the pre-clearance process is Far Left radical Democrat Kristen Clarke, who was recently confirmed as Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

Who is Kristen Clarke? As Jonathan S. Tobin pointed out in an article for the New York Post:

While a Harvard undergrad, Clarke argued in the student newspaper that blacks had greater “mental, physical and spiritual abilities” than whites because of the amount of melanin in their skin, a racist theory advocated by race-baiters like Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

As president of the Harvard Black Students Association, she invited author Tony Martin to speak on campus, despite his rabid anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. She then defended him as a “black intellectual who bases his information” — i.e., his anti-Semitic slurs — “on indisputable fact.”

Clarke was also credibly shown to have given false testimony on numerous occasions, especially about her associations with Far Left anti-white, anti-Semitic and ant-police radicals, but Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine voted to confirm her anyway.

And now she will be in charge of pre-clearance if the John Lewis Bill passes.

Having confirmed Kristen Clarke Republicans can’t put that evil genie back in the bottle, but they can make sure that she doesn’t get the power to pre-clear everything from the location of precinct voting stations to the shape of congressional and state legislative districts.

Last Congress Senator Lisa Murkowski was a co-sponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, it is imperative conservatives stand against this bill just like we stood against H.R.1 and S.1. Call the toll-free Capitol Switchboard (1-866-220-0044), tell your Senators and Representatives the John Lewis Act is as bad or worse than H.R1 and S.1 and that you demand that they oppose it.

• H.R. 1

• S. 1

• First Amendment

• For the People Act

• Mail-in voting

• Voter ID

• Voter integrity

• Speech regulation

• intimidation

• redistricting

• John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act

• Preclearance

• Department of Justice

• 2022 Elections

• redistricting

• Kristen Clarke

• Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice