Your Right To Vote
With pressure from NEA and other civil rights groups, Congress renewed three critical sections of the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in July, ensuring the voting rights of millions of racial, ethnic, and language minority citizens.
“NEA believes the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted, is the most basic tenet of a democratic society,” NEA President Reg Weaver wrote to Congress, in a series of letters that encouraged lawmakers to pass the bipartisan reauthorization bill. NEA members also bombarded their Senators and Representatives with more than 2,200 e-mails, marched in Atlanta to “Keep the Vote Alive,” and joined a national petition.
Although the VRA has been successful, lingering inequities and obstacles made it necessary to reauthorize the law. The three sections, which expired this year, work to prevent voting practices with a discriminatory purpose or effect; to require language assistance to voters in some areas; and to authorize the federal government to use election observers.
The bill, which extends the VRA for another 25 years, was signed into law by President Bush on July 27. For more information, go to www.nea.org/lac.
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