Protect the Right to Vote

Background

For a century after Reconstruction, Louisiana and its neighboring states built an entire system to keep people from voting: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and outright violence and intimidation, all aimed at Black voters and anyone else who threatened the political order. It took the civil rights movement to force passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which finally put federal teeth behind the promise that every citizen gets a say.

That history is not abstract here. To Lauren, growing up in a town not far from Seneca Falls, New York and the origin of the women’s suffrage movement taught her something from an early age: the right to vote has never been handed to anyone in this country. It's been fought for, generation after generation, against people determined to deny it or take it away.

Today, the tactics have changed, but the goal hasn't. Voting rights are under attack, both in Washington and right here at home. Steve Scalise personally championed the SAVE America Act, a law that requires documentary proof of citizenship just to register to vote and photo ID at the polls. This isn't election security. It's a solution in search of a problem, and the real effect falls on eligible citizens especially seniors, rural voters, the disabled, working families, and married women who don't have easy access to a passport or certified birth certificate.

Here in Louisiana, we watched our own primary get delayed and our congressional maps redrawn behind closed doors after the Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. This has left voters confused about their own district in the middle of an election cycle. Whether it's a literacy test in 1955, a redrawn map in Baton Rouge in 2026, or a new documentary-proof requirement in Washington, the pattern is the same: when the people in power are worried about who might vote them out, they make it harder to vote at all.

We don't have to accept that. This district has always been worth fighting for. So is every voter's right to be heard.

Lauren’s Priorities in Congress

• Protect voting rights and fair maps by co-sponsoring the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and co-sponsoring the Freedom to Vote Act. We must commit to restoring federal protections gutted by the Supreme Court, addressing voter disenfranchisement, and banning partisan gerrymandering nationwide.
• Oppose the SAVE America Act and similar documentary-proof-of-citizenship requirements that burden eligible voters without addressing any real problem.
• Support automatic and same-day voter registration to make it easier, not harder, for eligible citizens to vote.
• Push for independent redistricting commissions to end political control over how congressional maps are drawn.
• Expand no-excuse absentee and mail-in voting so elderly and disabled voters aren't required to justify voting by mail.
• Guarantee ADA-compliant polling places and accessible voting machines (ramps, curbside voting, and audio ballots) at every precinct, not just some
• Create permanent absentee voter lists for elderly and disabled voters so they don't have to reapply for a mail ballot every election
• Advocate to make Election Day a federal holiday