Our collective work to advance democracy continues, and despite the obstacles we’re facing, we’re making some actual headway. Since I last wrote to you earlier this month, the new Freedom to Vote Act introduced in the Senate has become the centerpiece of legislation advanced to safeguard our democracy on Capitol Hill, alongside the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the newly introduced Protecting Our Democracy Act, which would help protect against presidential abuses of power.
It’s clear that the congressional leadership agrees that safeguarding and improving our democracy should be central to the work of this session of Congress, and these developments showcase that.
From my perspective, the Freedom to Vote Act’s introduction represents a tremendous movement in the right direction; it’s obviously not a done deal, but we’re arguably closer to passing federal legislation to address gerrymandering, deliberate barriers to voting and money in politics than we’ve been for many years.
At Campaign Legal Center, we’re enthusiastic about this new piece of legislation. The CLC team put together an excellent, comprehensive look at what’s in it, and I encourage you to check it out here.
Importantly, this new bill addresses many of the deliberate barriers to voting that have been created by some state governments in the past few months, many of which we tracked in our 2021 state scorecard on vote-by-mail and early voting (click here to find our scorecard). In some ways, this bill is a significant improvement over earlier iterations. One notable example: it is arguably tougher on partisan gerrymandering than other provisions that have been advanced on the Hill this year. It would open up new judicial avenues to challenge maps that unfairly advantage one party over another, and it would undo the Supreme Court’s egregiously wrong North Carolina gerrymandering decision. Crucially, it contains a Federal Election Commission (FEC) reform provision that would end the current decade-old 3-3 partisan deadlock among Commissioners by requiring the votes of four Commissioners to overrule a determination by the FEC’s career Office of General Counsel that an investigation is warranted or that the law was violated. This would help ensure the FEC does its job and enforces our campaign finance laws.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat, helped drive the effort to craft a commonsense bill that could gain widespread support across ideological lines. This bill is both sensible yet transformative. The fact that Sen. Manchin is on board with it represents a significant step forward—I suspect Sen. Manchin would not take ownership of this if he were not serious about finding a path to passage.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has, predictably, signaled that he will oppose it. The question now is whether other Republican senators will break with him or force Democrats to find a path forward alone. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Senate this week that Sen. Manchin was in conversation with Republican colleagues, but he did not characterize how those discussions were going.
Our best hope is to keep the pressure on. The provisions in the Freedom to Vote Act are popular, and we should continue to advocate for them and spread the word. All our efforts over the past several months have helped get us to this point, and we mustn’t let up now.
If you want to learn more about the national landscape on voting, I invite you to attend CLC’s event on Tuesday, September 28, 2021 at 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific: “The Freedom to Vote in 2021 - What You Need to Know.” It should be a great discussion, and you can RSVP here.
Both Sen. Manchin and Senate leadership have reiterated that failure to do something is not an option, and I agree with them. Let's keep up the good work, and I’m optimistic we can make progress.
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center is dedicated to advancing democracy through law at the federal, state and local levels, fighting for every American’s rights to responsive government and a fair opportunity to participate in and affect the democratic process.
