In the aftermath of the Republican Party’s attack on the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and amid a torrent of Republican measures aimed at restricting voting rights in the name of security, Democrats are pushing for a far-reaching solution to curb attempts to restrict access to the ballot box.
HR 1, known as the Law for the People, seeks to abolish obstacles to voting, reform the role of money in politics and toughen federal ethical rules. Among the main principles of the bill to reform the country’s electoral system are: to allow postal voting without excuses, at least 15 days of early voting, automatic electoral registration and restoration of voting rights to criminals who have served their prison sentences .
The Democrats’ comprehensive bill passed the House – for the second time – almost following party lines earlier this month and was presented to the Senate this week. But it faces strong opposition from the Republican Party over its potential implications for future elections, including the mid-term elections of 2022, with some Republicans openly complaining that broader access to voting will hurt the party’s chances.
For Republicans, HR 1 represents a Democratic “takeover” that may skew elections in its favor in the coming years, as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., put it. An Arizona state legislature called him “anti-republican”.
“HR 1 is an attempt to use the slim majority of Democrats to level the playing field and take away the rights of almost half of the nation’s voters,” said Mark Weaver, an Ohio-based Republican Party consultant and electoral lawyer.
Other Republicans condemn the bill as a violation of state rights, saying the legislation will usurp the decentralized electoral system in favor of a nationalized and unique approach for all.
And some Republican lawmakers, officials and strategists go even further, signaling that the Republican Party’s opposition to these extensive electoral reforms is based on the fear that it will make them lose the elections.
“If Democrats pass HR 1, it will be absolutely devastating for Republicans in this country,” said Jay Williams, a Republican strategist in Georgia, a state that has seen one of the most aggressive campaigns to restrict voting. “They are basically going to put so many Republicans in places where they would really have an opportunity to pick up.”
In Arizona, another battleground that saw an attack of election-related legislative battles, state Rep. John Kavanagh, a Republican, told CNN: “Democrats value as many people as possible voting and are willing to risk Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in place that don’t allow everyone to vote – but not everyone should vote. “
After more than a decade of Republicans reducing access to voting, the last attempt came after former President Donald Trump and his allies spent months sowing distrust in the electoral system based on fabricated allegations of a “stolen” election.
The move comes when many Republican state lawmakers, some of whom propagated Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread fraud, are now leaning toward what they see as a lack of confidence in the democratic process to justify their election-related offensive. Republican state legislators in 43 states have submitted at least 250 bills so far with the aim of limiting absenteeism and early voting and implementing stricter voter identification laws, among other provisions, according to the Brennan Justice Center.
The HR 1 debate reflects the broader calculation within the Republican Party on how to win elections in the post-Trump era, when the most significant motivator for both sides is no longer on the ballot. With history and conventional wisdom pointing to an advantage for the out-of-power party in mid-term, some Republicans are convinced that HR 1 can make a difference.
“I think it’s stopping [H.R. 1] it is more about Republican success in the future than Donald Trump, “said Williams, as the former president remains the most influential Republican in the party.” The ramifications of passing laws like this would be very difficult for Republicans to obtain majority status after that. “
But Republican fears do not necessarily permeate states where – even with more people voting – they were successful in 2020, such as North Carolina, Ohio and Kentucky.
“I think it is a mistake for Republicans to believe that under any particular voting model they cannot win elections. I think this is wrong and absurd, but it is the same mistake that Democrats are making when trying to push HR 1,” said Michael Adams, O Kentucky’s Republican Secretary of State, before adding that in the last election, the high turnout resulted in more registered Republicans participating than Democrats for the first time in the state’s history.
Democrats, for their part, point to widespread Republican pressure to restrict voting rights as the impetus to move more urgently on HR 1, which could serve as support to prevent state restrictions on voting.
President Joe Biden made it clear in a statement that reforms to the bill were “urgently needed”, adding that he hopes to “make it law after passing the legislative process”.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., underlined the series of Republican attacks on the electoral system in his defense of the bill that accompanies the Senate.
“If a political party believes ‘man we won, crown you cheated’, if a political party believes that when you lose an election, the answer is not to win more votes, but to try to stop the other side from voting, then we have serious threats and existential to our democracy in our hands, “said Schumer on Wednesday. “That’s why we need S.1 so much.”
The proposal faces a complicated path to overcome the 60-vote limit in the evenly divided Senate, unless Democrats reformulate the obstruction.
Biden said in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday that he is not opposed to a return to “talking obstruction”, which would require opposing senators to speak incessantly in the Senate floor until the bill is withdrawn or proponents have votes.
Schumer made it clear during a news conference on Wednesday that Democrats “will decide the appropriate action to be taken” on the bill, as “failure is not an option”.