Yesterday, at a campaign event in Iowa Republican contender Jeb Bush said he didn't think the Voting Rights Act-a cornerstone of the Civil Rights Movement-should be reauthorized by Congress after the conservative Supreme Court gutted it in 2013.
Here's exactly what he had to say: "If it's to reauthorize it to continue to provide regulations on top of states as though we're living in 1960, because those were basically when many of those rules were put in place, I don't believe we should do that. There's been dramatic improvement in access to voting, exponentially better improvement, and I don't think there's a role for the federal government to play in most places."
On this issue, Jeb is not only straying from his brother's position-given that George W. Bush signed reauthorization of the VRA in 2006-but he's also outflanking the Republican's resident crazy-talker, Ben Carson.
As the CNN reported yesterday, a policy divide has emerged within the party on the issue of restoring and protecting voter rights. "Of course I want the Voting Rights Act to be protected. Whether we still need it or not or whether we've outgrown the need for it is questionable," Carson told CNN. "Maybe we have, maybe we haven't. But I wouldn't jeopardize it."
For The Nation, Ari Berman explained exactly why Jeb Bush's notion that the VRA is no longer necessary is an absolute abomination. From 1965 to 2013, the section of the VRA that was struck down by the Supreme Court had stopped 3,000 discriminatory voting changes from happening. One only needs to look at what Alabama did last week to refute Bush. Berman also notes that in the past four years alone, 468 new voting restrictions have cropped up in 49 states-one of the most severe was in Jeb's home state of Florida.
"It's sad, but not surprising, that the same guy who said African Americans just wanted 'free stuff' from the government is now claiming that the VRA, the country's most important civil-rights law, is no longer necessary," Berman writes.
