Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and ranking member John Conyers (D-Mich.) along with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) unveiled the legislation on Thursday.

“Through months of negotiation and compromise, Congressmen Sensenbrenner and Conyers and I have agreed on a bipartisan and bicameral proposal to restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act that were weakened by the Supreme Court’s decision last summer,” Leahy said in a statement. “Our sole focus throughout this entire process was to ensure that no American would be denied his or her constitutional right to vote because of discrimination on the basis of race or color. We believe that this is a strong bipartisan bill that accomplishes this goal and that every member of Congress can support.”

Sensenbrenner said he has spoken with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about getting the bill a vote and is working to get an equal number of Republican and Democrat co-sponsors.

“Discrimination in the electoral process continues to exist and threatens the progress that has been made over the years,” Sensenbrenner said. “This is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation that has ever passed.”

In what appears to be a huge outreach to Republicans, the law specifically exempts voter identification laws from being included when determining if a state has a history of enacting discriminatory policies. Critics of voter ID laws have argued that they are being enacted to keep minorities and the poor from voting.

But the sponsors of the bill explained that regardless of whether a voter ID law is determined to be discriminatory, it would result in the state facing further scrutiny from the federal government.

Sensenbrenner acknowledged that the proposal needed to not only address constitutional issues, but also take into account political concerns in order to garner enough votes in a “fractured” Congress.

“I think we have threaded that needle — it was not easy to do and our staffs and we have spent a very long time trying to jump through both [hoops] at the same time,” he said.

Leahy said he doesn’t anticipate the bill would be subject to filibuster opposition from in the Senate and that he has spoken to several Republicans who will support the bill.

A bipartisan group began working on a new way to approach the law, which previously required that certain states with a history of voting discrimination receive clearance from the Justice Department or federal courts before changing their election laws. The Supreme Court ruled that the selection of states that must comply with “pre-clearance” could not be based on decades-old factors.

The proposed legislation would create a rolling trigger for states or localities to fall under pre-clearance that “have a persistent record of recent voting rights violations in the last 15 years,” which is defined as five court-assessed infractions, according to a summary provided of the bill.

The proposal would also allow courts to add states or localities to the pre-clearance list if they are found to have implemented rules that cause disenfranchisement instead of violating specific rules.

Four states would automatically fall under the new pre-clearance rules: Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. If those states are without an infraction for 15 years, they would be removed automatically from the list. Any other state that racks up five violations in a 15-year period would automatically be added to the list.

The proposal would also require more transparency when voting rules are changed for all states, not just those that are currently under pre-clearance as the previous law stated.

“Nearly fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful vision of ‘jobs, justice, and peace’ inspired my first run for Congress and became the cause of my life,” Conyers said in a statement. “After being sworn in as freshman Member of the 89th Congress, the first vote of consequence that I took was for the Voting Rights Act. Although the Shelby County v. Holder decision struck at the heart of the Act, today, it is with much pride that my colleagues and I are introducing a strengthened and renewed Voting Rights Act to reaffirm our constitutional commitment to the cornerstone of our democracy: the right to vote.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wouldn’t discuss any details of the new proposal, but praised its crafting.

“I’m pleased with what I see as birpartisan progress that is being made on addressing the Voting Rights Act,” Pelosi said. “While it’s not the bill everyone will love, it is bipartisan, it is progress and it is worthy of support.”