I’m Raphael Warnock: This is why I want Georgia’s vote in the midterm election to be counted.
In order to save our democracy, a majority in both houses of Congress and the White House must support a Constitutional amendment. This is not an exercise of party-building or a way to “rebrand” one party or the other. It’s a clear and simple message: Congress has the authority to enact a law that makes it harder for states to pass voter ID laws that make it harder for people who need to vote to cast their ballots.
The Constitution grants to Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. In the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, Congress has the authority to enact laws to ensure equal access to opportunity for citizens in the United States. The Commerce Clause is there for a reason. That’s where the real work of Congress is, and the Constitution gives Congress broad authority to make sure that American workers get affordable health care and that working families have affordable and quality education.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Supreme Court rewrote our laws on voting rights. In the most notorious case in the post-Civil War period — the case of Texas v. White — the Supreme Court affirmed that states were free to make voting laws that discriminated on the basis of race. However, in the following 50 years, the Supreme Court made an extraordinary reversal. The Court held that there was no constitutional right to vote, and states could not deny someone the right to vote because of their race.
This ruling completely reversed the past 25 years of Supreme Court rulings on the constitutionality of voting discrimination. There are many people around the country who say this is a bad country. They say we don’t live in a democracy. That’s wrong.
This isn’t just about Georgia’s elections; it’s about the entire country. We need the support of every American state, and Georgia is now part of the “big three” battlegrounds for the 2018 midterms. It’s time to stand up for our laws on voting rights.
I started out working in the Clinton administration as a lawyer at the Department of Justice. When I joined the legal staff of the NAACP in the late 1980s, I was a young attorney who had no
