The Independent: Republicans are working ‘to rig every election from 2022 onwards’. If Democrats don’t pay attention, it’ll happen
The Independent: Republicans are working ‘to rig every election from 2022 onwards’. If Democrats don’t pay attention, it’ll happen
With Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in the rearview mirror, the Biden administration is moving forward with an aggressive legislative agenda. That starts with relief from the coronavirus pandemic. But with the House poised to take action on a sweeping ethics and election reform package next month, current and former Congressional staffers and experts are warning that legislation to strengthen democracy needs to be pursued with the same vigor as any infrastructure or stimulus package.
In a letter to House members on Tuesday, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the House will take up H.R. 1, the For the People Act, during the week of March 1, after spending the last week of February on passage of the Biden-backed American Rescue Plan, a massive wilderness protection bill, and the Equality Act, which bans discrimination against LGBT Americans. …
Sponsored by Maryland Representative John Sarbanes along with all but four members of the House Democratic Caucus, the For the People Act was House Democrats’ signature piece of legislation during the 116th Congress. The sweeping 791-page bill aims to “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy.” …
According to Common Cause Senior Counsel Stephen Spaulding, the implications of not getting H.R. 1 passed could be extremely serious.
Spaulding, who helped write H.R. 1 while serving as Senior Elections Counsel to the Committee on House Administration, warned that the damage Republicans could inflict on democracy in the absence of federal action could be irreparable.
“For democracy in general, the danger of not taking action is potentially catastrophic, given the precision and targeting and manipulation of the rules that some state legislators are doing to make it harder to vote,” he said.
Spaulding explained that Republican efforts to restrict voting took off after the Supreme Court’s decision inShelby County v. Holder, which invalidated the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s requirement for states with a history of racial discrimination to submit changes in voting rules to the Justice Department for pre-clearance. But he added that establishing uniform standards for voting across all 50 states would not have a partisan tilt one way or another. Until Trump started attacking the validity of postal ballots, Republicans had made use of them in greater numbers than Democrats in many key states.
“Ever since then, we know that there are elected officials at the state level who have been working tooth and nail to make it harder to vote, so this is an opportunity to really level the playing field,” he said. “I think these are basic, common-sense solutions to make voting more convenient no matter what party you’re in…. We just had the most the highest turnout election… in the middle of a global pandemic, and that’s because people took steps across the country to make voting more convenient. Now we need to lock those in.”