The John Lewis VRA Should be Adopted
The unqualified consideration of your vote is one of the pillars America was founded on, that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Its authority is — or ought to be — uncompromising.
It may be said that the differences between America at its inception and today are plenty, but its aspirational spirit remains. Although the founders wrote with an idealism which exceeded their feelings toward gender or race, they afforded a constitutional amendment process so that future generations could advance their nominal goals of equality toward realization.
Voting threads our greatest civic aspirations to actionable change.
It can be difficult to understand the real value of a single vote, lost in the murk of abstract calls to civic duty. History, however, is a loyal attendant to these confusions. It testifies to how the casting of only a few votes can command the country.
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson tied for the presidency with his own running mate, Aaron Burr! The U.S. House took revotes 35 times over the course of a week until Jefferson won by a margin of one vote. The law didn't include a distinction between the election of the President and his Vice, but this Constitutional crisis was the impetus to the 12th Amendment.
In 2000, when George Bush Jr. ran against Al Gore, Florida became the linchpin state of that election. Following recounts and court clashes, Bush was dubbed the winner by less than a hundredth of a percent. Although this event is tied up in electoral mechanics, it's concretely tethered to the way just a few Floridians cast their ballots.
The above are only two times when the sway of single votes revealed their role on the national scope, so you can imagine those bright-lines are approached even more often in local races across the country: Washington saw a house race with nearly 12,000 votes assured by a single vote; a Virginia House seat from 2017 ended in a tie despite 23,000 votes cast; in Minnesota, a seat in the U.S. Senate was given according to just 312 votes, but this wasn't due to a democratic deficit - 2.9 million people turned out to vote.
Through these examples and more, we can be confident of the pronounced role every voter plays in the election process. We've recognized this in the past, which is why 6 of the last 17 Amendments have specifically related to the right to vote. Each of these was an occasion when we reassessed and reaffirmed our commitment to free speech, enfranchisement, and the American Dream.
Such a time to reaffirm these values is upon us again.
The path toward protecting civil rights necessarily involves legislation, but for citizens, that path begins through attentiveness to election cycles. The sheer number of offices may feel overwhelming, but we can triage our supervision to prioritize local elections. Not only do we know that down ballot elections are often controlled by more narrow voting margins, but the kind of change that withstands time is very often that which grows from the bottom rather than delivered from above.
Civil rights activist Medgar Evers said, "our only hope is to control the vote." This hope must be animated by a citizenry concerned not only with local elections but also local procedures, especially if turnout from marginalized demographics is disproportionately low. The monumental success of suffrage movements throughout American history has been earmarked by its grassroots organization.
The primary way to deliver on our pledge of "liberty and justice for all" is through leveraging the vote to speak our mind when the law is unfaithfully implemented. By doing this, we pick up the mantle of the founders and civil rights activists who have enormously elevated the stature of our national character.
While Congress is having more difficulty than ever passing legislation, the power vacuum has been filled by the Judiciary and Executive. This is because, when unimpeded, power tends to expand itself, and then only rarely does it contract to its former degree. For proof, we needn't look further than the inheritances of Presidential power during war time or the increasingly prominent role of the Supreme Court in daily life.
It is through this power analysis and historical review that it becomes most clear that considering the process by which we select our legislators is, in fact, a deeply involved process. This doesn't require every individual upturning life as they know it, but it does involve keeping your ear to the wall and your eyes open for the staking of contrived fences around the right to vote.
Two weeks ago, President Obama eulogized the life of John Lewis, a man who gave his blood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in defense of the universal right to vote. If people are going to own their futures, the keystone will be local change.
