Marc Elias comes out swinging on voting rights laws

| 2:00 pm EDT July 3, 2021
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Many of you remember Marc Elias as the lawyer who led the way in fighting against Donald Trump’s attempts at getting the 2020 election overturned in court, and defeating Trump in dozens of cases. Now Elias has turned his attention to fighting against state level voter suppression laws.

After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Arizona voter suppression law, Marc Elias tweeted this: “To naysayers who say all is lost, I remind you that the effects test was narrowed, but not eliminated. Purpose claims remains. To the GOP legislatures who cheers the narrowing of protections for minority voters, we are not done fighting your suppressive laws.”

Then the next day the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck down that state’s voter suppression laws. Marc Elias tweeted this in response: “Waiting to hear from the doomsday pundits who just yesterday said that we would never win another voting rights case in court.”

It’s clear that we’re going to win some of these court battles and lose some of them. People like Marc Elias and his outfit Democracy Docket will do everything they can to help us win as many of these battles as possible, and Elias’ efforts should be thoroughly supported. But he’s right: in the end we’ll need to pass federal voting rights legislation in order to have a level 2022 playing field. Democrats will bring it up for a vote again later this year. Your job as an activist is to continue applying pressure to the likes of Manchin and Sinema, so they know they’re not off the hook.