If you think New Jersey is immune from existing and future voting barriers, think again, the authors write. (Ed Murray for New Jersey Monitor)
By Isabel Molina and Nuzhat Chowdhury
Rep. John Lewis would have turned 85 last week. A towering figure in the civil rights movement and a beloved champion for voting rights, it is easy to imagine the critical assignment he would give us in these perilous times: No matter how bleak things seem, do not give up the fight.
He’d likely remind us to remember our history and our obligation to protect our hard-won successes. And he would implore us to use all the tools available to us not only to protect our democracy, but to expand it.
Unfortunately, by failing to move the New Jersey voting rights act named after Lewis in the Legislature, New Jersey is falling woefully short — at a time when it couldn’t be more important to protect voting rights.
Right now, Congress is proposing passage of the deceptively named “SAVE Act” (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act). Put simply, this bill would require Americans who newly register, reregister, or update their voter registration to provide their birth certificate, passport, or other documentation in order to prove their citizenship. Common IDs like driver’s licenses, military IDs, or tribal IDs would be no longer accepted. Voters like married women who have changed their names and voters who don’t have access to birth certificates may be prevented from registering. Moreover, registration updates would have to be done in person, making registering online or by mail impossible and making voter registration unworkable for millions of eligible voters. Make no mistake: the SAVE Act is a thinly veiled attempt to prevent people from voting.
For decades, voting rights have been gradually weakened on the federal level, including by the U.S. Supreme Court. A case called Shelby v. Holder tore the heart out of the Voting Rights Act, leading to a wave of voter suppression laws across the country. Voters — particularly voters of color — now face more barriers to voting, including longer lines, fewer polling sites close to their homes, and limited language access.
In addition, the federal Voting Rights Act continues to face attacks from the court, Project 2025, and the Trump administration. New Jersey must protect our voters from this assault on our rights.
If you think New Jersey is immune from existing and future voting barriers, think again.
Black voters and other voters of color in New Jersey are already more likely than white voters to face long lines and late poll openings. Voters in New Jersey face registration issues, voter intimidation at the polls, incorrect and discriminatory requests for voter identification, and a lack of accessible polling locations. Lack of language access is also a persistent barrier for New Jersey voters, depriving a significant number of New Jersey voters of voting materials or assistance in the language they speak — either because their community falls under the population threshold required by the federal Voting Rights Act or because they speak a language like Portuguese that’s not covered at all.
Fortunately, our own state voting rights act — the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act of New Jersey — would offer robust voting protections and has already passed through a committee in the New Jersey Assembly. This legislation would provide essential voting protections, including increased language assistance and strong safeguards against voter intimidation, deception, and obstruction at the polls. It would also provide oversight to ensure that local and state voting rules do not unfairly limit the ability of voters of color and other protected groups to cast their ballots.
Yet, with the New Jersey voting rights act still awaiting its next hearing, New Jersey legislators have their collective foot off the gas. Despite the state of emergency for our democracy, we remain lagging behind seven other states — including New York, Virginia, and Connecticut — that have passed their own state voting rights acts.
It becomes clearer every day that our federal government is in the business of destroying — not protecting — our democracy. That means it’s up to the states to step up, protect our rights, and exercise our power.
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the iconic march for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Rep. Lewis and other brave activists were brutally beaten in their quest for equal voting rights, New Jersey needs to step up.
Isabel Molina is the environmental justice policy manager at the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters and Nuzhat Chowdhury is the director of the democracy & justice program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.
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