The Voting Rights Advancement Act would fill the hole in the Voting Rights Act gouged out by our Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder. The Voting Rights Act gave our Justice Department the ability to reject discriminatory voting law changes in several Southern states; our Supreme Court found that discriminatory against Southern states, many of which rushed to change voting rights laws after the ruling, but the Voting Rights Advancement Act would give our Justice Department the ability to reject discriminatory voting law changes in any state or locality that's demonstrated a hostility to voting rights, no matter where in the country they are. The only folks who would object to that are folks who want Republicans to suppress the vote and thus win elections -- Republicans won't win very many more fair elections, given how much they've thrown in with the folks who tried to destroy our country earlier this month. So go ahead and call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass the VRAA.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania residents, take note: the state House plans to vote on HB 38, the "sore loser" bill, next week. Why do I call it the "sore loser" bill? Because the bill aims to gerrymander the state judiciary, which our legislature finds insufficiently Republican, due to Republicans not winning judiciary elections. And how would it accomplish that? By changing the state constitution so that judges "represent" regions of the state, even state Supreme Court judges who are the last court of appeals for all Pennsylvania residents. And then the Republican-dominated legislature would carve out judicial "districts" that would more reliably return Republicans to the state bench, just as they carved out judicial districts that reliably returned Republicans to U.S. House seats -- until 2018, when our state Supreme Court stepped in and remade those districts so they better-respected town and county lines and didn't resemble Rorschach blots. Fair Districts PA helps you tell your PA state legislators to reject the "sore loser" bill, HB 38.
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