A Governor Just Suspended His Own Election. Here Is What We Must Do.
A Governor Just
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Yesterday Louisiana’s governor announced he would suspend his state’s primary election so the legislature could redraw the congressional maps before voters reached the polls, even though early voting was set to start Saturday and absentee ballots had already been submitted.
I want to break down what happened, what it means for our community, and what we can do about it.
What happened?
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s congressional map (which included a second majority-Black district drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act) was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, effectively ending the federal government’s ability to require states to protect Black voters from having their representation eliminated through map-drawing. Justice Kagan wrote in dissent that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is now “all but a dead letter,” and she is right.
What happened next?
Within hours, Florida’s legislature passed a new congressional map designed to create four additional Republican seats, Senator Blackburn called for eliminating Tennessee’s last Black-represented congressional district, Mississippi’s governor called a special session, and Louisiana’s governor moved to halt an election that was already underway.
Every one of these states had been preparing for months. Louisiana’s legislature delayed its own primary earlier this year in anticipation of exactly this decision, and the legal team that argued the case was funded by the same dark money network that helped build the Supreme Court majority that decided it. The ruling, the maps, and the legislative sessions were all part of a coordinated project, years in the making, that used the courts to deliver a result the architects had already prepared to act on.
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The same lawyer who helped legalize partisan gerrymandering at the Supreme Court in 2019 argued the case that gutted racial vote protections yesterday, and the same network funded the litigation and selected the judges who decided it. They built the legal theory, funded the plaintiffs, confirmed the justices, and pre-positioned state legislatures to move the moment the decision came down. |
Why does this matter in Massachusetts?
Our congressional maps are not at risk, but the principle underneath them is, and when the federal government stops protecting your rights, state law becomes the last line of defense.
Massachusetts has already proven it can do this. When the federal government turned ICE loose on our communities, the House passed the PROTECT Act, the most comprehensive immigrant protection legislation in state history, which limits ICE in our courthouses, stops police from sharing immigration status with federal agents, and requires employers to notify workers about ICE inspections within 48 hours. I fought for that bill because I have heard from our neighbors who are afraid to go to court, afraid to go to work, and afraid to take their children to school while ICE operates in our communities. That is the model for what we must do now on voting rights.
I filed H.4033 to restore voting rights for noncitizen residents at the municipal level. I filed legislation to limit ICE collaboration and restrict immigration detention agreements by law enforcement in Massachusetts. I fought for the $5.2 billion Housing Bond Bill because where you can afford to live determines whether you can vote in the communities you belong to. And I have pushed for data privacy protections so that ICE cannot buy geolocation data or mine health records to track our neighbors, because surveillance is how disenfranchisement works in the 21st century.
The same dynamic driving the Callais decision is driving decisions right here in Massachusetts. When an energy bill gets rewritten behind closed doors so that approximately one billion dollars is cut from programs that help families lower their bills while gas companies secure a fast track to own replacement infrastructure, when a state contract affecting 40,000 employees moves forward without public review, that is the same erosion of democratic accountability. The mechanism is the same whether it operates through a Supreme Court ruling or a committee vote that happens in secret: someone else decides what you are allowed to know, and by the time you find out, the decision has already been made.
What can we do?
Massachusetts must lead, and that means we must:
| • | Pass a state-level voting rights act that fills the gap the Court just created |
| • | Lock anti-gerrymandering protections into our state constitution |
| • | Expand immigrant voter access at the municipal level |
| • | Close the remaining gaps in the PROTECT Act, including ending the DOC’s 287(g) agreement with ICE |
These bills exist or can be filed, and the question is whether the State Senate will take them up, which is why I am running for that seat.
No matter what we look like or where we come from, we all deserve to have our voices count equally, and yesterday the highest court in the country said that principle no longer applies at the federal level. It has to apply here, and I intend to make sure it does.
What you can do: Please share this newsletter with your neighbors and your networks. If you want to talk about what Massachusetts must do to protect voting rights, please reach out at erika@electerika.com or call (617) 237-7762. And if you want to support the kind of representative who responds to a national crisis with a plan and not just a press release, please chip in what you can today. This is the work your contribution goes toward: reading the rulings, connecting them to what is happening here, and building the state-level protections our communities need.
| Protect Voting Rights in MA → |
P.S. The full Supreme Court opinion in Louisiana v. Callais is available at supremecourt.gov. Justice Kagan’s dissent begins on page 60. Democracy Docket is tracking every state’s redistricting response in real time. If you want to support the kind of representative who does the reading, please chip in here.