Two years after false claims of voter fraud fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, those same lies are shaping restrictive voter laws in a slew of states nationwide, explains Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. And they are targeting primarily voters of color. He spoke with Ethnic Media Services about the January 6 anniversary and what he sees ahead in the fight for voting rights.
What are your memories from that day?
I was working. I was in my apartment in Brooklyn and of course, like much of the nation I was watching things develop on the news. It was a surreal moment… we were in this pandemic, and we had a lot of concerns starting in the Spring of 2020 in terms of how our nation was going to handle a presidential election. We had done a lot of very intense work to make sure our democracy fared well. And then it did. The fact that we had the highest voter turnout in a century at a time when we were going through these unprecedented circumstances was an overwhelming success. And then we’re caught up in non-stop election disinformation and it all ends with this terrifying attack on our democracy.
Two years out, what is the connection between January 6 and efforts to restrict voting?
Part of why we are seeing these attacks (on voting rights)… is a backlash to voters, and particularly voters of color participating at high rates. You see this in the way January 6 developed. The false narrative that Trump...
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