Expect this to be the next in a long line of The Day editorials calling attention to the urgent need to preserve voting rights in all states of the United States. No issue is more important to American democracy.

Spurred by flurry of bills proposed in state legislatures to limit voting access in a variety of ways — 30 of which have passed — and by the ongoing refusal of many Congressional Republicans to put an end to false claims of fraud in the last presidential election, the House of Representatives set aside a bill with broad structural changes, the For the People Act. Instead, in August the House passed a revised version of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in hopes that it could somehow clear the Senate.

Almost all Democrats in the Senate have now joined in introducing the Voting Rights Advancement Act, led by four senators, including Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

While the danger to some Americans' freedom to vote is clear and urgent, the provisions of the bill sound numbingly technical because they have to be. The intent is to put teeth back into the 1965 Voting Rights Act with provisions that answer Supreme Court decisions in 2013 and this year. When the court struck down a section of the original law in 2013, the door opened for states to change voting laws as they pleased, rather than being subject to "preclearance" provisions, in the case of states with a history of voter suppression. The 2021 decision made it harder to make a claim of voter discrimination.

The Democrats, in an evenly divided Senate, face an uphill procedural fight but they will be pointing out that the Voting Rights Act was enacted by bipartisan vote and similarly re-enacted several times, most recently in 2006.

In Connecticut, episodes of voter suppression or intimidation are so rare that they may seem not to be our problem. But this is a congressional redistricting year, with allotment of House seats underway. For state officials and their national supporters who wish to keep some people away from the polls entirely, this is a rare opportunity to change the voting districts to favor Republicans and white voters; change the voting laws to keep non-whites out of the poll lines. Then those states are more likely to elect election officials who value partisan outcome over their sworn duty to hold fair elections. A person elected to Congress from a state that scoffs at fair elections has a lawmaking vote that affects the whole country.

That is how it could work.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.