“‘We cannot wait’: Democrats craft voting bill with eye on Supreme Court fight” wlwt.com

“What it feels like is a shifting of the goal posts,” said Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the left-leaning Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Sparring in Congress for months has focused on a different Democratic bill overhauling elections, known as the For the People Act, which Republican senators blocked from debate on the chamber’s floor last month.

Separately, however, Democrats have held a marathon series of low-key “field hearings” to prepare for votes on a second measure, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which could come to the House floor for a vote in September. The bill would allow courts and the Department of Justice to once again police changes to voting rules in places with a history of electoral discrimination against minorities, a practice the Supreme Court put on hold in 2013.

Democrats hope the hearings they have conducted with little fanfare will help build a legislative record that could withstand a court challenge. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday that the process will document what he called “the disgraceful tactics that Republican-led state legislatures are using across the country to keep people from voting.”

That’s criticism that Republicans reject, arguing that the courts and Democratic administrations have selectively enforced the law in the past.” wlwt.com

Comment: For the benefit of people who are not American or perhaps are just ignorant of the subject, it was not possible under the Voting Rights Act of the 60s to move a polling place 100 yards in Alexandria City in what was once Virginia (now the New Dominion) without the explicit prior permission of the US Department of Justice. There were many such restrictions under that law. The Democrats liked that and wish to return to that situation. They are afraid that the conservative majority in SCOTUS will block reenactment of restrictions based on the perception by lefties that such places as the former Virginia are evil. pl

https://www.wlwt.com/article/democrats-voting-bill-eye-on-supreme-court-fight/36990397

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