With time running out, fervor to pass RI Voting Rights Act is heating up

• Advocates are urging Rhode Island lawmakers to pass a state-level Voting Rights Act.
• The bill was introduced to counter federal efforts to require proof of citizenship to vote.
• Concerns from the Attorney General’s office and a recent change in House leadership have delayed the bill’s progress.

With time running out and no action scheduled yet, advocates are escalating their campaign to convince lawmakers to pass the Rhode Island “Voting Rights Act” introduced by Senate President Valarie Lawson and House Majority Leader Katherine Kazarian.

But it appears the bill has already been declared dead for the year.

Lawson, House Speaker Christopher Blazejewski and Secretary of State Gregg Amore issued this joint statement on Monday, June 8:

“From the beginning, we have all understood the importance of passing a strong Rhode Island Voting Rights Act. But we also understand that as the federal administration continues to work to make it more difficult to access the ballot box, we have to do it right.”

“Advocates and other parties raised several concerns,” the statement said. “It is imperative that we enact as strong, enforceable, and defensible a bill as possible. With those priorities in mind, we recognize there is more work to do.”

“As drafted this year, the provisions of the Voting Rights Act would not take effect until the 2028 election cycle. Therefore, we will work over the course of the off-session to put forward as strong a bill as possible for consideration in 2027 and will continue to prioritize the Voting Rights Act in the upcoming session,” the statement continued.

The reaction from one angry advocate, Sen. Tiara Mack: “I’m not done fighting.”

How did we get here?

The legislation was introduced in response to thwarted Republican efforts to pass a federal SAVE Act to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and came weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court hollowed out a landmark Civil Rights-era law that has increased minority representation in Congress and elsewhere, opening the door for more redistricting across the country that could aid Republican efforts to maintain control the House.

“This is not abstract. This is about power,” Shahidah Ali, chairwoman of the political arm of the Rhode Island Coalition of Black Women, said at a voting rights rally that packed the State House Library on March 31.

“This is about who gets to participate in our democracy, and who is pushed out of it.”

On Sunday, June 7, Ali reiterated that warning and her frustration that the bill appears, despite its high-powered sponsors, to be in limbo going into the expected final days of the legislative session, saying she didn’t understand why the bill wasn’t moving as quickly as she thought it would.

“I feel like when you’re in a super majority and it’s something that’s needed after … the gutting of the Federal Voting Rights Act, I would think that this would be a no-brainer, that the Democrats in this state would understand the importance and the urgency of a bill to protect voters, especially Black voters,” she said.

Why hasn’t the bill moved?

As of Sunday, Rep. Kathy Fogarty, a co-sponsor of the House version of the bill (H8334), has not given up hope the bill would still pass. But, she said, “my understanding is that they were concerned …. [and] wanted to review” some of Attorney General Peter Neronha’s comments about the bill after Secretary of State Gregg Amore asked him for his input.

Fogarty said the May 7 leadership change in the House put the newly elected Speaker Blazejewski and Kazarian, in her newly elevated role as majority leader, in front of a proverbial “fire hose,” with the finalization of the proposed new $15.2 billion state budget their first priority.

With the need to finalize the budget, which won House approval on June 5, “I think that this just kind of got pushed to the side,” Fogarty said of the voting rights bill.

The backdrop

The proposed Rhode Island Voter Rights Act was introduced to enshrine federal protections against voter suppression, vote dilution and “racially-based gerrymandering” in state law.

The legislation was introduced in response to the push by President Donald Trump and his GOP allies in Congress for passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known more familiarly as the SAVE Act.

While Rhode Island already has its own Voter ID law requiring prospective voters to show a photo identification to cast their ballot, the SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship – such as a valid U.S. passport and certified birth certificate – to register to vote.

If the U.S. Senate were able to muster the votes to pass the SAVE Act, critics say millions could be disenfranchised, including married women whose adult names do not match the names on their birth certificates.

Speaking at the March 31 Rhode Island rally, U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner said not enough attention has gone to the proposed requirement that a voter present the same level of documentation to obtain a mail ballot, “but only if they showed up to their board of canvassers in person to prove their citizenship.” This would obviously be problematic for people too ill to leave their homes, hospitalized, out of the country or even, out of state on business.

As currently drafted, the proposed Rhode Island Voting Rights Act would take effect on January 1, 2027.

What were the concerns about the bill?

The edits Neronha’s staff suggested to the Secretary of State’s Office were largely cosmetic – the deletion of an extraneous word here or there, or clarification of a potentially muddy sentences.

In a June 6 letter to John Marion, executive director of the citizens-advocacy group Common Cause Rhode Island, Neronha said: “I do not view our comments on the proposed Act as particularly extensive nor burdensome nor time-consuming to implement, in whole or in part, should there be a desire to do so.”

Neronha’s letter said that his comments on the bill shouldn’t impede its passage, or be taken “even as a suggestion” that he doesn’t support the bill. His office’s role, he said, was to make a “laudable piece of legislation better if we could.”

“We undertook that task because we were asked to, and I agreed because I believe that passage of a Voting Rights Act is important to protecting the rights of Rhode Islanders and our democracy,” Neronha said.

Advocates are not giving up

In recent weeks, Ali said she went on radio to make an appeal to Black and brown men, in particular, to support the legislation, while she and other advocates distributed 3,300 postcards to be mailed to state lawmakers.

The message: “Dear Senator (Representative), The Voting Rights Act is one of the most important statutes we have in this country as it protects everyone’s right to vote and allows our country to function as a true democracy. Until it is codified into Rhode Island state law our fundamental Civil Rights are at risk.”

“We cannot afford to lose our Civil Rights with an election coming.”

This story has been updated with new information.