In the News

By Dave Umhoefer

Republican U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy of northwestern Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district said Wednesday that Congress will come together in bipartisan fashion to update the Voting Rights Act in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision this week.

Duffy made clear he thinks that any bipartisan legislation would have to address voter fraud as part of ensuring access to voting.

“I want to make sure everyone has a right to vote, but I want to make sure they have the right to vote one time and not more than that,” Duffy said on CSPAN’s Washington Journal call-in show. “I think we can find bipartisan support for that movement.”

But a day earlier, House Democrat Gwen Moore of Milwaukee called Republican-backed voter ID laws the problem, not the solution, on voting rights.

“This Act is still vitally needed to ward off discriminatory polling practices, evidenced by biased voter identification laws disallowed in Texas and South Carolina last year," Moore said in a press release.

The deeply divided high court voted 5-4 to strip the government of its most potent tool to stop voting bias: the requirement in the Voting Rights Act that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting, mainly in the South, get Washington's approval before changing the way they hold elections.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a majority of conservative, Republican-appointed justices, said the law's provision that determines which states are covered is unconstitutional because it relies on 40-year-old data and does not account for racial progress and other changes in U.S. society.

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