President Joe Biden traveled to Selma, Ala., last weekend to mark the 58th anniversary of the 1965 march for voting rights, known as “Bloody Sunday.”
“As I come here in commemoration, not for show, Selma is a reckoning,” Biden said. "The right to vote...to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty.”
The reckoning to which Biden refers is the result of a decade of political machinations that have steadily eroded protections against racial discrimination once enshrined in the Voting Rights Act and removed by the Supreme Court in 2013.
That single decision has reshaped elections and the voting experience in the past few years:
- Allegations of racist redistricting
- Onerous eligibility challenges in Black neighborhoods
- Unchecked voter discrimination and intimidation
"It keeps me up at night," Doug Spencer, an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado, tells NPR of the most recent signal that the Supreme Court is likely to gut what's left of the Voting Rights Act this session.
While the fight continues on other fronts—check out my reporting on the NAACP’s new voter protection hub and its fascinating alliance with mapping software firm Esri—the politics of justice remain tough.
In 2021, the House passed a bill named for the late congressman John Lewis that would restore many provisions of the Voting Rights Act if it makes it into law. On the anniversary two years ago, Biden signed an executive order to remove persistent barriers to full voting access. A report coauthored by dozens of civil rights groups, including the ACLU, NAACP, National Congress of American Indians, National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, and the National Disability Rights Network, says the order “has the potential to make registration and voting more accessible for millions of Americans, including many communities historically excluded from the political process.”
But many of the provisions have yet to be enacted.
More recently, lawmakers in Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New Mexico introduced measures that would ban suppression and intimidation tactics, restore rights to people with previous felony convictions, and make it easier for voters with disabilities and non-native English speakers to navigate ballots. Nice, but not enough.
As piecemeal remedies struggle to take hold, corporations seem to be staying on the sidelines, a much different approach from, say, the unified front opposing trans bathroom bills in 2016. According to progressive nonprofit watchdog Accountable.US, 60% of big companies get an “F” on voting issues, and that’s a shame.
Voting is a threshold of democracy, a reckoning, and a basic right of employees. Why not put the corporate shoulder to the wheel? What a difference an election cycle makes.
More news is below.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ruth Umoh.
