Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) believes minorities will lose their ability to vote for “the change that we need” if the filibuster remains in place, making the remarks after the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision to uphold Arizona’s law banning ballot harvesting and out-of-precinct voting.
“It can’t be made any clearer: Black, brown, and Indigenous people are going to lose their ability to vote for the change that we need to literally save our lives if the Senate doesn’t abolish the filibuster and pass our agenda,” Bush said Thursday.
” We’re tired of waiting. Our lives are on the line,” she asserted:
It can’t be made any clearer: Black, brown, and Indigenous people are going to lose their ability to vote for the change that we need to literally save our lives if the Senate doesn’t abolish the filibuster and pass our agenda.
We’re tired of waiting. Our lives are on the line. https://t.co/CIxfJyWn76
— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) July 1, 2021
The Minnesota lawmaker’s warning followed the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision, upholding two key election integrity measures in the Grand Canyon State. In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that neither HB 2023, which bans ballot harvesting, nor the policy prohibiting out-of-precinct voting, violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Penning the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “Arizona law generally makes it easy to vote. All voters may vote by mail or in person for nearly a month before election day, but Arizona imposes two restrictions that are claimed to be unlawful.”
“In light of the principles set out above, neither Arizona’s out-of-precinct rule nor its ballot collection law violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” he continued.
“The Court holds that Arizona’s out-of-precinct policy and its ban on ballot harvesting do not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and the ban on ballot harvesting was not enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose,” Alito added.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is among Republican lawmakers praising the SCOTUS decision, taking his criticisms directly to Democrats, who he says are trying to “protect themselves from the voters.”
“Democrats who try to equate laws limiting the influence of political operatives on state elections to Jim Crow-era repression make their real aim even clearer: not to protect the voters from discrimination, but to protect themselves from the voters,” the Kentucky Republican said in a Thursday statement, concluding the Supreme Court “discharged its duty to uphold the rights and protections underpinning our system of representative government.”
