House Democrats passed HR 1, their bill to reform voting rights and anti-corruption, for the second time in two years. But while his party now has a majority in the Senate, the bill has a difficult road ahead.
As the numeral suggests, HR 1 and its S 1 component in the Senate – also known as the People’s Law – are Democrats’ first legislative priority. The broad democracy reform project has topped the list since House Democrats regained a majority in the 2018 elections and immediately started expanding voting rights and withdrawing money from politics.
There is a lot of ground covered in its almost 800 pages, but some of its main points are the creation of a national system of automatic electoral registration, imposing transparency requirements for political advertising and instituting nonpartisan redistricting commissions to end partisan gerrymandering.
Researching in 2019 and now shows that the bill is widely popular with the public, but it went nowhere in the Republican-led Senate in 2019. Even with current Democratic control (a 50-50 Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker), it will be incredibly difficult to get through with the 60 votes needed to get around the Senate obstruction. The policy is even tighter this time; some moderate House Democrats who voted in favor of the bill last time, for example, pressed more aggressively for changes this time around.
The future of the bill in the Senate has also not been tested, as the then majority leader McConnell never allowed it to go to the floor in 2019.
“If Mitch McConnell is not willing to provide 10 Republicans to support this historic reform, I think Democrats will step back and reevaluate the situation,” HR 1 author John Sarbanes (D-MD) told Vox in an interview. recent. “There are a number of ways to redesign obstructionism to [the bill] there would be a way forward. “
One way that is being discussed is to partially amend the Senate’s obstruction rules to allow democracy reform legislation, such as HR 1, to move forward by a simple majority of votes and, therefore, potentially be able to pass a party vote. This would be different from blowing up the obstruction entirely, but it could still be repelled by Senate institutionalists, even in the Democratic Party, such as Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), a staunch supporter of keeping the obstruction in place.
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which will mark the bill and take it forward, said she wants to take the bill to the floor and see what support is for it before moving on to potential reform obstruction.
“Let’s go to the floor; that’s when we see where we are, “Klobuchar told Vox in an interview, saying his committee will try to see,” is there an obstruction reform that could be done in a general or specific way? ”
Democrats argue that electoral and democratic reforms are popular – and long awaited
Democrats hope the 2020 election will give them an argument in favor of this bill. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans in many states had more options and flexibility to vote in the mail or with early voting in person. The results were a record 158.4 million votes cast; Participation in the 2020 presidential election was about 7 percentage points higher than in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.
“We had more people voting in the November election than before,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told reporters on Tuesday.
HR 1, among other initiatives, would cement many of these temporary expansions. And recent polls by progressive company Data for Progress have shown that the bill is popular with parties and supported by a majority of Democratic, independent and Republican voters. The poll found that 67% of likely national voters supported HR 1, including 56% of Republicans, 68% of independents and 77% of Democrats.
Republican legislatures in several states, however, are moving in the opposite direction. According to the Brennan Center, at least 33 states have already submitted, pre-filed or approved 165 restrictive bills to tighten voting requirements, including Georgia – the state that gave Democrats limited control of the Senate. The US Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments in an Arizona case that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act by limiting protections for minority voters across the country.
Klobuchar told Vox that in recent years, when parties lost national elections, they assessed where they went wrong. Republicans, she added, are easing the restriction on voting.
“These guys, instead of doing this, are saying let’s just get less people to vote, that’s how we do it,” said Klobuchar.
The recently proposed voting restrictions, driven by the fact that 30 state legislatures are controlled by Republicans – compared to 18 controlled by Democrats – mean that Republicans have more power to redraw Congress maps in the 2021 redistricting process. In the absence from non-party redistricting commissions (contained in HR 1), Republicans can once again redraw the maps to have an advantage in the mid-term trials of 2022 and beyond.
“If we can get this into law in the coming months, there will be enough time to implement many of these things in time for the 2022 midterm elections, including how this redistricting is reformed,” said Sarbanes.
What’s in the account
The People’s Law weighs around 800 pages. Broadly speaking, it can be divided into three groups: expanding voting rights, implementing campaign finance reform and strengthening ethics laws for members of Congress.
Here are some main points of the account, divided by category:
Right to vote
- Creates a new automatic national electoral register that asks voters to choose not to accept, ensuring that more people are registered to vote. It requires the state’s top election officials to automatically register eligible unregistered citizens.
- It requires each state to place online options for electoral registration, correction, cancellation or designation of party affiliation.
- Requires at least 15 consecutive days of early voting for federal elections; early polling places would be open for at least 10 hours a day. The bill also prohibits states from restricting a person’s ability to vote by mail and requires states to prepay postage in return envelopes for voting by mail.
- Establish independent redistricting commissions in the states as a way of attracting new congressional districts and ending party gerrymandering in federal elections.
- It prohibits the elimination of voter lists and prohibits the use of unsent mail as a way to remove voters from the lists.
- Restores the right to vote for people convicted of crimes that have served their sentences; however, the bill does not restore the rights of criminals currently serving sentences in a correctional facility.
Campaign funding
- Establishes public campaign financing, driven by small donations. This has been Sarbanes’ view: the federal government would provide a voluntary combination of 6-1 for presidential and congressional candidates, meaning that for every dollar raised by a candidate with small donations, the federal government would match it six times. . The smallest maximum donation that could be matched would be $ 200. This program is not funded by taxpayer dollars; instead, the money would come from the addition of a 2.75 percent tax on criminal and civil fines, fees, penalties or agreements with banks and corporations that commit corporate malfeasance (think Wells Fargo)
- Supports a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United.
- Pass the DISCLOSURE Act, pushed by Congressman David Cicilline and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats from Rhode Island. That would be they require super PACs and “dark money” political organizations to make their donors public.
- Pass the Honest Ads Act, defended by Sens. Klobuchar and Mark Warner (VA), who would require Facebook and Twitter to disclose the source of the money for political ads on their platforms and share how much money was spent.
- Discloses any political spending by government contractors and slows the flow of foreign money for elections, targeting shell companies.
- It restructures the Federal Electoral Commission to have five commissioners instead of six, in order to break the political stalemate in the organization.
- Prohibits any coordination between candidates and super PACs.
ethic
- It requires the president and vice president to disclose 10 years of their tax returns. Candidates for president and vice president should also do the same.
- Prevents members of Congress from using taxpayer money to resolve cases of sexual harassment or discrimination.
- It gives the Government Ethics Office the power to do more oversight and enforcement and to implement stricter lobbying registration requirements. This includes greater oversight of foreign agents under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
- Creates a new code of ethics for the US Supreme Court, ensuring that all branches of government are affected by the new law.
Democrats have a very narrow window to approve the bill
HR 1 could be a last-ditch effort for Democrats to be competitive in House contests, if they manage to get through Congress and to Biden’s table.
“The president remains committed to protecting the fundamental right to vote and facilitating the vote of all eligible Americans,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday, responding to a question from Vox. “That’s why we need to pass reforms like HR 1 and restore the Voting Rights Act. It is a priority for the president, something he will work with members of Congress to move forward ”.
Senate Democrats are not yet ready to blow up the Senate obstruction, but they are also finding ways to get around it to pass important pieces of legislation.
This week, Democrats are using budgetary reconciliation to approve President Joe Biden’s current Covid-19 stimulus bill in the Senate with just 51 votes. There is a good chance that they will do the same with Biden’s infrastructure plan, depending on the size of the package and how many Republicans will support it.
But Democrats can only use budgetary reconciliation twice, and it can only be used for things that directly affect the federal budget. Voting rights and anti-corruption measures do not fall into this category, and the authors of HR 1 do not have the impression that this could go through budgetary reconciliation. This leaves them with a narrower set of options for HR 1 and even less options for other priorities, such as passing universal background checks or immigration reform.
While Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have repeatedly said they will not get rid of the Senate obstruction, some of their Democrats hope they will change their minds if the party’s agenda encounters repeated opposition from Republicans.
“You bring it to the floor a few times and allow them to obstruct you and you see the effect that obstruction in bad faith has on some members’ views on the obstruction,” Senator Whitehouse told reporters recently. “It is one thing to say, ‘I don’t want to get rid of the obstruction’; it is quite another thing, after encountering repeated obstructions in bad faith, to say: ‘Okay, this is getting out of hand’ ”.
This can be very optimistic. When asked by reporters again this week if there was a point where he would change his mind about the obstruction, Manchin shouted, “Never!” according Jordain Carney from the hill.
“Jesus Christ! What do you never understand about?” Manchin added.
Unless the obstruction blows, Senate Democrats will need to continue to find loopholes to approve their agenda.