Democrats urge action on voting rights as tribute to Lewis

This story in Star Tribune is by Matthew Daly in Associated Press:

Mourning the death of civil rights hero John Lewis, Democrats are urging the Senate to take up a bill of enduring importance to Lewis throughout his life: protecting and expanding the right to vote.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and other Democrats say the Senate should take up a House-passed bill to restore key sections of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act and rename it for Lewis, a longtime congressman who died Friday at age 80 of pancreatic cancer.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called Lewis a “great man” who helped bend the nation’s history toward justice, but Republicans appear unlikely to bring up the voting rights bill for a Senate vote. The impasse highlights how the bipartisan consensus around civil rights-era voting protections — and particularly the use of federal power to enforce them — has evaporated since a 2013 Supreme Court decision struck down portions of the 1965 law.

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