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Using Congress’ power to regulate Senate and House elections under the Elections Clause and enforce anti-discrimination laws under the 14th Amendment, the bill would:
- Establish automatic voter registration at an array of state agencies;
- Establish same-day voter registration;
- Allow online voter registration;
- Allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register so they’ll be on the rolls when they turn 18;
- Allow state colleges and universities to serve as registration agencies;
- Ban states from purging eligible voters’ registration simply for infrequent voting;
- Establish two weeks of in-person early voting, including availability on Sundays and outside of normal business hours;
- Standardize hours within states for opening and closing polling places on Election Day, with exceptions to let cities set longer hours in municipal races;
- Require paper ballots filled by hand or machines that use them as official records and let voters verify their choices;
- Grant funds to states to upgrade their election security infrastructure;
- Provide prepaid postage on mail ballots;
- Allow voters to turn in their mail ballot in person if they choose;
- Allow voters to track their absentee mail ballots;
- Require states to establish nonpartisan redistricting commissions for congressional redistricting (possibly not until the 2030s round of redistricting);
- Establish nonpartisan redistricting criteria such as a partisan fairness provision that courts can enforce starting immediately no matter what institution is drawing the maps;
- End prison gerrymandering by counting prisoners at their last address (rather than where they’re incarcerated) for the purposes of redistricting;
- End felony disenfranchisement for those on parole, probation, or post-sentence, and require such citizens to be supplied with registration forms and informed their voting rights have been restored;
- Provide public financing for House campaigns in the form of matching small donations at a six-for-one rate;
- Expand campaign finance disclosure requirements to mitigate Citizens United;
- Ban corporations from spending for campaign purposes unless the corporation has established a process for determining the political will of its shareholders; and
- Make it a crime to mislead voters with the intention of preventing them from voting.
Ending Republicans’ ability to gerrymander is of the utmost importance after Republicans won the power to redistrict two-to-three times as many congressional districts as Democrats after the 2020 elections. If congressional Democrats don’t act, Republican dominance in redistricting may practically guarantee that Republicans retake the House in 2022 even if Democrats once again win more votes, an outcome that could lead to congressional Republicans more seriously trying to overturn a Democratic victory in the 2024 Electoral College vote than they did January, when two-thirds of the House caucus voted to overturn Biden’s election.
If this bill becomes law, Republicans would lose that unfettered power to rig the House playing field to their advantage. Instead, reform proponents would gain the ability to challenge unfair maps in court over illegal partisan discrimination, and the bill would eventually require states to create independent redistricting commissions that would take the process out of the hands of self-interested legislators entirely.
Protecting the right to vote is just as paramount when Republican lawmakers across the country have introduced hundreds of bills to adopt new voting restrictions by furthering the lies Donald Trump told about the election that led directly to January’s insurrection at the Capitol. With Republican legislatures likely to pass many of these bills into law—and the Supreme Court’s conservative partisans poised to further undermine existing protections for voting rights—congressional action is an absolute must to protect the ability of voters to cast their ballots.
The most important remaining hurdle, however, is the legislative filibuster: The fate of these reforms will depend on Senate Democrats either abolishing or curtailing it. Progressive activists have relaunched a movement to eliminate the filibuster entirely, while some experts have suggested that Democrats could carve out an exception for voting rights legislation. Either way, Democrats will need to address the filibuster in some fashion, since Senate Republicans have made it clear they will not provide the support necessary to reach a 60-vote supermajority to pass H.R. 1 into law
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