Whats in the Democrats Voting-Rights Bill – The Wall Street Journal

Democrats are pushing a sweeping voting bill that would make many changes to rules regarding voting and campaign finance. The bill is facing a tough battle in the evenly divided Senate in coming weeks, after the House version of the bill passed 220-210 with no Republican support.

Proponents say the bill is necessary to protect access to the polls, especially for minority voters. They also argue that it is crucial now because many GOP-controlled state legislatures are considering their own laws to tighten voting rules, saying they would improve election security. (You can see a guide to Georgias new rules here.) Republicans argue that the bill amounts to a partisan, federal takeover of elections that would make voting less secure.

Here is a look at what is in the roughly 800-page bill, known as the For the People Act.

Big chunks of the For the People Act lay out rules regarding voting. Bill authors say new national minimum standards are needed to ensure access to the polls, while Republicans argue that states should retain flexibility on how they run elections and that the proposal would represent a federal takeover of voting rules.

States currently have wide latitude on questions such as early voting and vote-by-mail options. Some federal restrictions on changes to election practices in Southern states, which had been a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, were nullified by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Read more here:

Whats in the Democrats Voting-Rights Bill - The Wall Street Journal