By Tiffany Muller
This past month America lost a hero. Congressman John Lewis was a giant of American history, moving the country forward on civil rights, social justice, and equality.
Lewis was arrested more than 40 times fighting segregation, Jim Crow laws, and to secure the right to the ballot box. He helped lead the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march in Alabama. They marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, knowing full-well the violence that awaited them on the other side. State troopers brutally beat him and the other marchers. The images from that day shocked and galvanized a nation.
The work of Lewis and other civil rights leaders of the time led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the crown jewel of the civil rights movement.
Americans can look back to this moment and see an inflection point in our history. One in which we learned the power of the vote and the value to our democracy when everyone has safe and secure access to the ballot.
Senator Susan Collins tweeted she was “honored to be among those who joined him in Selma to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday March which he’d led.”
But behind her words of remembrance is very little action.
Last year, the House passed the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4) to restore the heart of the Voting Rights Act after it was eviscerated by the Supreme Court. Congressman Lewis was seated in the speaker’s chair when that bill passed.
The House also passed the For the People Act (H.R. 1), an anti-corruption and voting rights bill that included a litany of critical provisions authored by John Lewis designed to protect and expand voting rights amid renewed efforts in states across the country to make it harder for people to cast a ballot.
Sen. Collins hasn’t supported these bills. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to bring them up for a vote, and Collins has not once demanded he do so. Just a few weeks ago, McConnell even said that claims of voter suppression were “nonsense.”
More recently, to help respond to the coronavirus outbreak, the House of Representatives passed $3.6 billion in election preparedness funding supported by Lewis to make sure every eligible voter has safe, accessible, and secure options to vote, whether by mail, by extended early voting, or clean in-person polling places.
In fact, in this month’s primary, Mainers took out more than 200,000 absentee ballots, shattering state records for absentee ballot use in a primary. Despite voters across the country embracing safe voting options at unprecedented levels, Mitch McConnell has held that critical election funding up in the Senate.
With Congress expected to debate another Covid relief bill over the next two weeks, it is the final chance to make sure states like Maine have the resources they need to ensure people don’t have to choose between their health or their vote. And it is Senator Collins’ last chance to help secure this funding. Half measures are not enough.
In the past few months, the Supreme Court has voted four times to make it harder for people to vote in the middle of a global pandemic. Susan Collins voted for four of those conservative judges, who have repeatedly sided with the wealthy and powerful and against everyday people — especially communities of color disenfranchised by suppressive voting restrictions. Over the last four years, she’s voted for numerous other federal judges who have defended discriminatory voting practices and the rolling back of the Voting Rights Act.
Collins wasn’t always this way. In 2002, she supported the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that overhauled our country’s campaign finance laws. In 2006, she supported reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.
But 2002 and 2006 are a long time ago, and like on most issues, she’s changed. She hasn’t supported any major effort to protect voting rights or reduce the power of special interests. When given the opportunity to do so — like four times on the DISCLOSE Act to end dark money and on a constitutional amendment to overturn the disastrous Citizens United decision that led to a flood of Big Money in our elections — she voted against it.
While Collins called Lewis “a civil rights icon,” we need a politician who, like Lewis, will stand up with her actions, not more empty words. Someone who will fight to give people a voice in our democracy, not go along to get alone with her party leadership, big donors, and corporate special interests.
She should honor his life by supporting the very efforts he fought and bled for, including the right to vote and a more fair and just democracy. That includes, at a minimum, supporting election security and preparedness funding to respond to the pandemic, as well as co-sponsoring the Voting RIghts Advancement Act and the For the People Act. And she should demand Mitch McConnell bring them up for a vote.