Voting Rights
Voting Rights Are Personal. Every Voice Matters.
Jenn grew up hearing firsthand accounts from her parents and grandparents growing up in the Jim Crow South. Those stories have driven her commitment to protecting and expanding voting rights her entire career, from her first bill in the Virginia House of Delegates to her work in Congress today.
Fighting to Protect Voting Rights Jenn is a proud cosponsor of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has been gutted by decades of court decisions, including Shelby v. Holder and the most recent Louisiana v. Callais decision. Jenn also serves on the Task Force on Strengthening Democracy, where she fights to protect voting rights, ensure election integrity, reduce dark money in politics, and combat voter suppression.
Calling Out Modern-Day Voter Suppression When House Republicans advanced the SAVE Act, legislation requiring burdensome and expensive documents to register to vote, Jenn called it out as a modern-day poll tax. She led the Congressional Black Caucus’s Special Order Hour to expose the bill’s voter suppression intent, pointing out that eligible ID documents cost anywhere from $12 to over $1,000. Jenn will keep up the fight to combat voter suppression and protect Virginians’ rights at the ballot box.
Fighting for Our Democratic Principles Jenn’s commitment to voting rights runs the length of her career. She introduced her first voting rights bill in 2006 to make absentee voting easier in Virginia. As a state senator, she championed the Voting Rights Act of Virginia to make Virginia the first state in the South to enact its own comprehensive voting rights law. In Congress, she has co-led a package of eight bills to strengthen our democracy, including measures to expand language access at the polls and protect the voting rights of unhoused Americans. She also led her colleagues in introducing the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act to address the rise in deceptive voter suppression, misinformation practices and intimidation in federal elections.