What’s in Democrats’ big election-reform bill and why they might be willing to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass it – MinnPost

In early March, House Democrats passed H.R.1, an enormous anti-corruption and voting rights reform bill also known as the For the People Act. H.R.1 also includes a major overhaul of campaign finance and redistricting laws. The bill will next face a vote in the Senate, where it has a tough road ahead despite the Democrats majority in that chamber.

H.R.1 and its Senate counterpart S.1 are, as the numbers suggest, Democrats first priority in Congress. This is the second time in two years that Democrats have introduced this sweeping democracy-reform bill it first passed the House in March 2019 but faced defeat in the Senate.

At nearly 800 pages, H.R.1 covers a lot of ground. Some key points, though, are instituting nonpartisan redistricting commissions to end partisan gerrymandering, creating a national system for automatic voter registration and adding transparency requirements for political advertising.

There is a stark partisan divide on the bill that would overhaul the U.S. voting system as we know it. Congressional Democrats, along with President Joe Biden, say the country needs federal intervention to stop Republicans from reinstating racist Jim Crow-style rules that make it more difficult for minorities to vote. Republicans, on the other hand, view H.R.1 as a power grab that would remove protections on the right to vote and take away states authority to maintain their own voting systems.

Article continues after advertisement

With no support from Republicans, the bill has no chance of attracting the 60 votes in the Senate it would need to overcome a filibuster. That has led some Democrats including Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith to advocate for abolishing the filibuster in order to pass the bill.

Republicans are not as gung-ho on the topic of filibuster reform: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the result would be a scorched earth Senate, insinuating that by killing the filibuster, Democrats would release furies they can barely imagine.

The massive bill can generally be split into three categories: election integrity, expanding voting access and voting rights, and campaign finance reform.

Article continues after advertisement

Article continues after advertisement

When it passed in the House, H.R.1 contained some provisions and legislation written by Minnesota representatives.

Rep. Dean Phillips authored five provisions in the package, including the Voter NOTICE Act, which fights disinformation, and the FIREWALL Act, which strengthens safeguards around online advertising.

REUTERS/Erin Scott

Rep. Ilhan Omar

Along with Virginias Sen. Mark Warner, Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced the Honest Ads Act in response to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election. The act would improve disclosure requirements for online political advertisements and require digital platforms with at least 50 million monthly visitors to make public the communications between the platform and a person or group that spends over $500 on ads.

Article continues after advertisement

Why Republicans say theyre against it

For Republicans, the Democratic bill represents a power grab that could centralize control of elections in all 50 states in Washington Democrats hands, according to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Other conservatives condemn the bill as a disastrous federal overreach, saying it will destroy the decentralized electoral system in favor of a nationalized standard approach to elections.

REUTERS/Leah Millis

Rep. Tom Emmer

At the state level, Republicans have passed legislation that restricts voter access. According to the Brennan Center, at least 33 states have already introduced or carried over 165 bills that re-tighten voting requirements. In Georgia, a state in the voting-rights spotlight after its amplified role in the 2020 Senate race, the Legislature recently passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021, which voting rights advocates have decried as a method of restricting voting access for minorities. Three voting rights groups have already signed a lawsuit challenging the new law.

Under current rules, the Senate needs 60 votes to end debate and pass legislation. This requires Democrats to have the support of at least 10 Republicans to advance bills in the current 50-50 Senate.

Thats because of the filibuster, made famous by movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The filibuster used to necessitate that a senator speak on the chamber floor to block a bill for as long as they could keep standing and talking. But in the 1970s, the Senate changed its rules so that senators could trigger a filibuster simply by announcing they wanted to block a bill.

This rule change was meant to help the Senate run more efficiently, but as a result the filibuster became much easier to use and one of the largest obstacles to passing legislation

Some Democrats view abolishing the filibuster as the only way to pass the For the People Act in the closely divided Senate.

Minnesota Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar have both expressed their support for abolishing the filibuster, with Smith calling the filibuster undemocratic. Klobuchar said the likely death of the For the People Act in the Senate flipped her from a long-standing maybe to a yes.

I would get rid of the filibuster. I have favored filibuster reform for a long time and now especially for this critical election bill, Klobuchar told Mother Jones. As the chair of the Senate Rules Committee which oversees federal elections, Klobuchar has a lot riding on the For the People Act.

REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Creating a new Senate precedent, known colloquially as the nuclear option and more formally as reform by ruling, can happen with only a simple majority of senators. In 2013, after Senate Republicans continually filibustered former President Obamas nominations, Senate Democrats changed the baseline for overruling a filibuster on presidential nominations (except Supreme Court nominations) from a three-fifths majority to a simple majority. Then in 2017, Senate Republicans used this approach to reduce the number of votes needed to end debate on Supreme Court nominations in an effort to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Not all Democrats are on board with abolishing the filibuster. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin favors a more bipartisan approach to passing legislation. He told POLITICO, I want to make it very clear to everybody: Theres no way that I would vote to prevent the minority from having input into the process in the Senate. That means protecting the filibuster. It must be a process to get to that 60-vote threshold. Democrats need all 50 of their Senators to be on board for filibuster reform, so if Manchin or anyone else decides against reform, thats it.

MinnPost file photo by Briana Bierschbach

Sen. Tina Smith

Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock (D) said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday that the For the People Act was a moral imperative for Democrats.

I think that we have to pass voting rights no matter what, Warnock said when asked if he thought the filibuster had to be eliminated to get the bill passed. The filibuster at the end of the day is about minority rights in the Senate this is a defining moment in the American nation and I think all of us have a role to play.

Read the original here:

What's in Democrats' big election-reform bill and why they might be willing to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass it - MinnPost