‘We need to save our democracy.’ NC lawmakers rally for voting rights legislation.

In the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, Democratic state lawmakers from around the country rallied to implore the U.S. Senate to pass voting rights legislation before its scheduled August recess.

Four North Carolina lawmakers participated in the “Recess Can Wait” rally, which was attended by more than 100 state lawmakers from nearly 30 states including Democrats from Texas, who left the state for D.C. to deny Republicans the quorum necessary to pass legislation.

Reps. Kandie Smith, Ricky Hurtado and Pricey Harrison also attended the rally from North Carolina.

“In these times of Jim Crow 2.0, voter suppression is not as flagrant as it was when my ancestors fought. The fire hoses and attack dogs have been replaced with complex and oppressive laws, fueled by the big lie, that not only make it harder to vote, but harder for those votes to count,” said state Sen. Natalie Murdock of Durham, who is Black.

More than a half-dozen Democratic U.S. Senators spoke to the crowd, urging the state legislators to continue to raise their voices and bring pressure on national lawmakers to pass the For the People Act — sweeping legislation that would establish national standards for federal elections, end congressional gerrymandering and change federal campaign finance laws.

The bill passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. House in March, but faces slim prospects in the evenly divided U.S. Senate, where its consideration was blocked by Republicans in late June. The bill and rallies, Democrats say, are needed to counter voting rights legislation being passed in Republican-controlled states after the 2020 election amid complaints about election security and integrity from former President Donald Trump.

Some Democrats have called for eliminating the filibuster or, at least, changing it to allow for passage of the bill.

Harrison, from Greensboro, called the voting laws an “emergency.”

“You’re just watching what is happening in some of these states with terribly oppressive voter suppression bills that are pretty broad-reaching. It’s going to affect national elections, it’s going to affect what happens on Capitol Hill and that affects our whole country,” she said.

Making it harder to vote

Eighteen states have passed 30 laws this year that will make it harder to vote, according to the liberal Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. The center said some of the laws contain measures they consider pro-voter and some have a narrow scope.

Republicans have argued that their goal is “election integrity” and making it “easier to vote and harder to cheat,” as North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley put it in a recent editorial.

“The Democrats’ assault on election integrity is taking place on several fronts,” Whatley wrote, including attempts to pass the For The People Act, which he called “a federal takeover of elections.” In another piece, published in the Salisbury Post, Whatley called the bill “an all-out assault on a state’s right to determine its own election laws.”

In North Carolina, Republicans have included several election-related provisions in the Senate-passed budget, one targeting the type of out-of-court settlements that the State Board of Elections and Attorney General Josh Stein made before the 2020 election that led to the election changes, including an extension of the deadline for mail-in voting.

The budget also targets the state board’s ability to investigate claims of election fraud, moving that to the State Bureau of Investigation, and clamps down of its use of emergency power.

“We aren’t facing the horrible voter suppression bills we have in the past,” Harrison said, referencing partisan gerrymandering and voter ID bills in particular.

“The courts have saved us. We need our democracy to save us, and we need to save our democracy. And the way we save our democracy is to put an end to these voter suppression bills and end this partisan gerrymandering. .... Providing this fundamental sort of ground floor for what all states have to do, even though elections are up to each state, is really important.”

In 2013, state Republicans passed a bill that included strict voter ID requirements, reduced early voting and eliminated same-day registration among other changes. The law was struck down in 2016 by the U.S. Court of Appeals, which said the law was drafted to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision,” a phrase that comes up over and over and over, including in Tuesday’s rally.

Many of the lawmakers at the rally were Black or people of color and said the laws were aimed at making it tougher for them to vote. Democrats win the overwhelming majority of Black votes.

“Some people don’t want some people to vote,” said U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is Black.

Redistricting due to Census results

The next election fight is likely to center around redistricting.

North Carolina will redraw districts for both the state legislature and U.S. House later this year based on results from the 2020 U.S. Census. North Carolina will gain a 14th seat in the U.S. House as a result of population growth since 2010. Democrats are worried about what those districts may look like — and how it might impact their chances of winning in November 2022 and beyond.

Court decisions led to North Carolina redrawing its districts several times in the last decade.

“That has always been one of my biggest concerns,” Hurtado said. He said gerrymandering has an impact on how “neighborhood concerns and voices and issues are heard at the state level and then at the national level.”

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.

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