ANDREW YOUNG, WASHINGTON POST
Andrew Young, a former member of Congress, mayor of Atlanta and ambassador to the United Nations, is chairman of Why Tuesday?, a voting-reform organization. Martin Luther King III is president and co-founder of the Drum Major Institute.
Fifty years ago this week, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the crowning jewel of the civil rights movement — the Voting Rights Act — into law. This momentous occasion took place five months after peaceful advocates for voting rights were brutally beaten by police as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.
As we pay homage to the act, we are saddened by the state of our voting system and the lack of political will to fix it. Today, attention is focused on restoring Section 5 of the law, which required federal preapproval of any changes to voting law in certain states until it was invalidated by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. Although we do not oppose this “fix,” it is not the answer. For example, Indiana — which is not covered — had the worst turnout in the nation in the 2014 midterm elections. Focusing on restoring Section 5 is like treating a symptom and not the disease itself.
We should implement solutions that improve access to voting and get more citizens to participate in our democracy all over the United States. On such a fundamental issue, with Americans increasingly frustrated with government dysfunction and hyperpartisanship, why aren’t our leaders following the bipartisan blueprint of 1965?