In Connecticut, New York and Virginia, state voting rights acts also set up a process for certain local officials to get approval from their state attorney general’s office or a court before they can make certain changes to election rules — similar to the federal Voting Rights Act’s preclearance process that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively dismantled in 2013.
These kinds of legal tools can be empowering for voters of color in all states, voting rights advocates contend.
“In a blue state, people often think that voter suppression is a red-state thing and not a blue-state thing. But it’s not that simple,” Nott says, pointing to the Democratic-led states of Maryland and New Jersey, where state voting rights acts have been introduced. “They’re two of the most diverse states on the East Coast. And they both have communities of historically disenfranchised voters who could use these protections.”
Nuzhat Chowdhury, senior counsel for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice’s democracy and justice program, has been pushing for lawmakers to advance a proposed state voting rights act since 2023.
“The biggest struggle that we have faced over the past two years of this campaign has been getting any sort of urgent buy-in from the legislature,” Chowdhury says. “We hope and anticipate that the [2024 election] results really light a fire under them and really stress to them the urgency with which we need a state voting rights act, because it seems more and more likely that the federal VRA will continue to be quite gutted in the next four years.”