The Senate is poised to consider rules changes to allow passage of the Freedom to Vote: John Lewis Act, which includes the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This is a high stakes moment in the fight for the right to vote. Congress must do the right thing to preserve our democracy.

One threat that the Freedom to Vote Act would help address is unfolding in races across the country for thousands of local and state offices that control how elections are administered and certified. Campaigns for positions from county clerk to secretary of state are focused on the issue of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen.”

In battleground states, these normally low-profile contests have been nationalized by the election sabotage movement. The result is a huge spike in fundraising. For example, in three key states — Georgia, Michigan, and Minnesota — donations to secretary of state candidates are already towering above what they were at this point in the last two election cycles:

The Freedom to Vote Act would help safeguard the integrity of elections by enhancing protections of ballots and records, providing remedies for the failure to certify results, and setting rules for any post-election reviews to guard against partisan sham audits.

A new series of Brennan Center resources reports on candidates’ positions with respect to the Big Lie and examines campaign finance trends in these races.

As the showdown over voting rights approaches, opponents are scrambling for reasons not to pass the landmark legislation. For example, some claim that gerrymandering isn’t a big problem. Reality would beg to differ. The redistricting process is finished in over half the states, and aggressive gerrymanders have defined it. New voting maps in Texas and North Carolina, for instance, make it nearly impossible for the party in power to lose, by dividing and disempowering communities of color. The Freedom to Vote Act’s redistricting provisions would ban partisan gerrymandering, while the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would further protect voters of color by restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act to full force.

Another key issue the Freedom to Vote Act would respond to is the Supreme Court’s chipping away at campaign finance law. Wrongheaded rulings like Citizens United have opened the door to (among other things) unlimited corporate donations and the proliferation of “dark money.” On Wednesday, the justices will hear Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate, in which the Texas Republican is challenging a federal anti-corruption rule.

The law in question limits how much candidates can raise after an election to recoup money they loaned to their own campaigns. In other words, Cruz wants to make it easier for donors to put money directly into the pockets of public officials. Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules in this case, the Freedom to Vote Act would increase campaign transparency, shore up protections against foreign donations, and do more to shrink the outsize role of big money in politics.

After years of court orders and scandalous reports, the conditions at New York City’s jail on Rikers Island remain dangerous and unconstitutional. Rikers holds thousands of people who have not been convicted of a crime — a difficult reality considering that 16 people died in custody just last year, the highest count since 2013. This moment demands a bold new solution: receivership, which would put the failing facility under emergency control by a nonpartisan expert. Turning around conditions at Rikers must be a priority to avoid further needless suffering and death.

A survey shows that a U.S. government program is making Chinese and Chinese-American scientists fearful about working in the United States. At fault is the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” a program designed to crack down on economic espionage and trade secret theft by the Chinese government but instead mainly just resulted in cases brought against scientists of Chinese ancestry for minor administrative violations. Scientists shouldn’t have the government looking over their shoulder, especially not at a deeply precarious time for American science and technology research — the China Initiative must end.

The Fight to Vote: A Conversation with Michael Waldman and Yamiche Alcindor
Wednesday, January 19 // 6–7 p.m. ET
Donald Trump’s Big Lie isn’t just about what the defeated president felt or did, but rather the impact of his actions on American democracy and millions of voters. In conversation with acclaimed political journalist Yamiche Alcindor of PBS and NBC News, Michael Waldman (Brennan Center president and author of The Fight to Vote) tracks the current wave of voting restrictions sweeping statehouses around the country in the context of the nation’s history of voting rights — from the Founders’ debates to the civil rights era. RSVP today.

Reframing the Constitution
Tuesday, January 25 // 7–8 p.m. ET
In The People’s Constitution, Wilfred Codrington III and John Kowal present an alternative history to our founding document and a vital guide to our national charter. That history, they argue, “has been, for the most part, an inspiring story of progressive legal change, driven by powerful social movements and an evolving array of civil society organizations.” But in our fractured, hyper-partisan politics of today, are we still able to amend the Constitution? Codrington and Kowal try to answer this question and discuss their book. RSVP today.

The wave of voter suppression laws passed in 2021 will disproportionately harm voters of color. The Senate must respond by passing democracy reform now. Read more on Instagram >>