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Lawsuits that seek to support voter rights have been dwindling since the U.S. Supreme Court mangled the Voting Rights Act in 2013 by ruling void a key provision that monitored states with long histories of racial discrimination. Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data this week on what looks like a shrinking number of such suits:
The problem here is that these lawsuits are becoming more rare at precisely the moment when more are needed. The preclearance provision that SCOTUS extinguished in 2013 was created as a preventive mechanism to catch potential voting rights violations before they happened, to minimize lawsuits. Without that provision in place, the burden is on the U.S. Justice Department and civil rights organizations to catch violations after they happen, then sue to correct them. There has been no shortage of voting rights problems in recent years, and there are not enough legal resources available to catch them all.
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