Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) became the first Republican senator to sign on to Senate Democrats’ legislation to restore a piece of the Voting Rights Act, The Nation’s Ari Berman noted Thursday.
The bill addresses the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which gutted a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states and localities to get changes to their voting laws pre-approved by the federal government. Called the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015, the proposal would bring back those requirement for states and localities that have had certain number of voting rights violations in a given period.
As University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen noted on his election law blog, the Democrats began pushing the Senate legislation after a weaker House version with some Republicans’ support failed to gain traction.
