The right to vote is a keystone of our democracy but Texas’ voter ID law intentionally stripped hundreds of thousands of Texans of that right. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice reversed course; instead of fighting the discriminatory law, it is pulling away from its previous opposition, turning its back on the hundreds of thousands of Texans who simply don’t have the kind of ID required by the strictest photo ID law in the land.

When you choose an unrepentant critic of the Voting Rights Act to lead the Department of Justice, more and more Americans will lose their right to vote. This about-face by Jeff Sessions’ DOJ is exactly the type of action Common Cause warned of when it opposed Sessions’ nomination to serve as U.S. Attorney General. Jeff Sessions’ see-no-evil posture on voting rights abuses naively lets discrimination stand – and flies in the face of a representative democracy.