Angelo Genova Discusses Voter Suppression and Ongoing Erosion of Voting Rights in New Jersey Spotlight News Article

Firm Chairman and Managing Partner Angelo J. Genova discusses potential ongoing erosion of voting rights in a recent New Jersey Spotlight News article entitled, "Voter Suppression in New Jersey: A Pivotal Episode That Still Reverberates."

"Today’s presidential election will be the first in four decades in which the national Republican Party will not be constrained by a federal court order that had kept its previous practice of voter suppression tactics in check.

The legal mandate, known as a consent decree, was enacted nationwide in 1982 after Democrats sued Republicans over the blatant intimidation tactics they employed at several polling places in New Jersey’s urban minority communities during that 1981 gubernatorial race."

"Angelo Genova, a prominent Democratic election law attorney in New Jersey, was a young untested lawyer three years out of law school in 1981. He was one of the authors of the original complaint that led to the consent decree, and has been involved in subsequent extensions and expansions of the court order."

Fears of Ongoing Erosion of Voting Rights

Mr. Genova "thinks the recent revocation of the decree comes at a time when it is needed more than ever; and even worse, is just one example of what he sees as the erosion of voting rights in America."

“Who would have imagined that our own president, now the uncontested leader of the RNC, would publicly embrace the kind of intimidating rhetoric and encourage like tactics to those which spawned the 1982 New Jersey lawsuit?” Genova said in an interview.

“The decree’s absence today is a tragedy, right up there with the systematic dismantling of the Voting Rights Act by our U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, and no different than the numerous state legislative initiatives adopted in Shelby’s aftermath making it harder for persons of color and the poor to vote.“

"Republicans agree with Genova on one point — that the end of the decree changed the playing field."

To access the full article, please click here.