Chuck Todd On Reforming Voting Rights: ‘Congress Is Not Mature Enough To Do This Right Now’

On Tuesday, The Supreme Court struck down provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act relating to the regions covered by the preclearance provision. The Court advised Congress to devise a new formula to determine which region should be covered by that requirement. Asked for his reaction, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd said that President Barack Obama would have to “own” the issue of VRA reform. “Congress is not mature enough to do this right now,” he opined.

RELATED: BREAKING: Supreme Court Strikes Down Provisions Of The Voting Rights Act

“The president is going to have to own this,” Todd observed of the task ahead of the government relating to the reform of the VRA. “He’s going to have to be big about it.”

“Frankly, I think, all of us that watch Washington, I don’t think Congress is mature enough to do this right now,” he continued. “That the political, ideological, sort of the way some of these members conduct themselves, I am a pessimist on their ability to do something like this. But, they’re going to have to.”

Todd said that VRA reform would likely have to work in the same way the immigration reform proposal has worked, emerging from the Senate first. Todd repeated that the president would have to lead the effort and find a bipartisan coalition of individuals outside Washington to drive the reform plan.

“A functional Washington would approach this in sort of this holistic manner, saying ‘Okay, we know we had problems on election day. There were too many lines, people waited too long,’” he said. “A functional Washington would look at this in a big way and say, ‘This is an opportunity to fix what is a messy, flawed voting system.’”

Watch the clip below via MSNBC:

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