Voting rights group Fair Fight commissioned surveys with Public Policy Polling, which does polling for progressive groups, in Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Between 54 percent and 64 percent of voters surveyed in each state support the idea of senators passing voting bills along a simple majority — not the 60 votes currently required by Senate filibuster rules…
While Americans support simple-majority votes, they’re split on whether Democrats should pass the bills without Republican support: support for such a move fell in each of the seven state surveys. In West Virginia, just 46 percent of voters believed Democrats should pass the bills without Republican support. Support for a single-party advancement of voting legislation was highest in Arizona, where 60 percent said they backed the idea.
In each of the seven states, at least 64 percent of voters surveyed support “allowing the Department of Justice to review state laws before they go into effect to make sure that they do not discriminate against voters based on race,” a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 known as preclearance. The formula deciding which states should be subject to that law was tossed out by the Supreme Court in 2013, effectively ending this practice. The bill named for John Lewis creates a new formula; the House of Representatives passed that bill last week.
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