Today, the Supreme Court gave us two decisions that will directly impact the strength and integrity of our democracy.
The Court has blocked the President’s plan to add the citizenship question because it was designed to exclude immigrants and communities of color from the census. Today’s decision preserves the integrity of the census by ensuring that everyone is counted.
However, the Court’s decision to allow partisan gerrymandering is an assault on the integrity of our democracy. There is nothing more foundational to our system of government than free and fair elections, and by explicitly authorizing partisanship, we are anointing politics over people. We should be shaping our districts to make sure that people pick their representatives, not the other way around.
The struggle for voting rights is not a fight from a bygone era, but an ongoing battle for fair representation. Over the past decade, governments at various levels have attempted to systematically disenfranchise people of color by finding ways to lower turnout and make it difficult to vote. Like every generation before us, we have to reaffirm our commitment to the most basic American principle: government of, by, and for the people.