‘There is a real urgency.’ House Democrats pass overhaul to election laws

March 3, 2021

Kansas City Star

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article249666058.html

The U.S. House passed legislation Wednesday evening that would massively expand mail voting, enable same-day registration for federal elections and ban partisan gerrymandering among other major election reforms.

H.R. 1's passage by a vote of 220 to 210 in the Democratic-controlled comes as GOP state legislatures, including in Kansas and Missouri, are contemplating an array of new restrictions on voting in the wake of the 2020 election.

The bill passed without a single Republican vote.

Congressional Democrats — who will struggle to pass election reforms in the 50-50 Senate — find themselves in a race to pass their proposals to expand voting access before state policymakers can enact new roadblocks.

"There is a real urgency right now. We have one party that has introduced 253 voter suppression bills in 43 states across the country, including Kansas," said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote, two of the organizations leading the movement to pass the federal overhaul.

Muller, a former Topeka City Council member, said H.R. 1 "would negate about 90 % of the bills and restrictions we're seeing across the country if we can get it signed into law."

Muller touted H.R. 1 as a bill that would make it easier to vote and end the dominance of money in politics by strengthening campaign finance enforcement and creating new transparency requirements for independent expenditure groups.

Republicans, however, maintain the bill's purpose is to help Democrats win elections.

In a Wednesday floor speech, Missouri GOP Rep. Ann Wagner blasted the bill "as a cynical and partisan measure that will erode faith in our democracy and not restore it."

Among the provisions Wagner pointed to was the bill's ban on voter ID requirements such as the one Missouri state legislators are looking to pass this year, and its restoration of federal voting rights for convicted felons who completed their sentences.

Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver rejected Wagner's characterization. He said the bill's provisions would ensure greater ballot access for communities of color.

"I never even thought about this creating opportunities for Democratic wins until I started hearing people talking about it in the last few days," Cleaver said. "I would want all of my colleagues in Missouri to understand the historic and contemporary challenges people of color have as related to access to voting."

Cleaver compared voter ID requirements to Jim Crow-era poll taxes, which prevented Black Americans from voting, including his grandfather. He said H.R. 1, like the voting rights legislation of the 1960s, would dismantle state-level restrictions.

"My grandpa was 103 when he died and he never voted," Cleaver said.

The nine House Republicans from Kansas and Missouri uniformly opposed the bill.

Freshman Kansas GOP Rep. Jake LaTurner, a former state legislator and treasurer, decried the bill as a federal power grab in a statement Wednesday.

"H.R. 1 would consolidate election regulation under the federal government, contrary to the system of state-controlled elections outlined in our Constitution," LaTurner said.

LaTurner contended that the bill's expansion of mail voting, loosening of signature standards and ban on voter ID "would encourage voter fraud."

The House vote comes two months after baseless claims of widespread voter fraud led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of former President Donald Trump's supporters.

On a call with Muller Wednesday, Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids explicitly linked the thwarted attempt to overturn the election to the crop of bills moving through statehouses across the country, including in Topeka.

"In the wake of this past election, which resulted in a deadly assault on our Capitol, we're seeing new voter suppression in Republican-led legislatures across the country," Davids said.

The GOP-led Kansas Legislature is considering a range of measures, including moving up the deadline for mail ballots, limiting who can return mail-in ballots and prohibiting election officers from processing "incomplete" mail ballot applications.

The Kansas House passed a bill Wednesday that is linked to election controversies in other states. The bill from Rep. Blake Carpenter, a Sedgwick County Republican, prohibits "the governor, the executive and the judicial branch from altering election laws."

The proposal, which passed 84 to 39 along party lines, follows the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision last year to extend the deadline for mail ballots in that state. Mail voting formed the basis of congressional Republicans' objections to Pennsylvania's electoral votes in January.

Carpenter did not return a phone call Wednesday.

H.R. 1 was the first piece of legislation Davids co-sponsored during her freshman term. It passed the House within her first 100 days in Congress in 2019, but "that bill sat on Mitch McConnell's desk for two years," Davids noted Wednesday.

The bill's ban on partisan gerrymandering could be crucial to Davids' own political fortunes. Kansas Republicans have been vocal about plans to use their supermajority to redraw Davids' district to be more GOP-friendly when the state redistricts for the 2022 election.

"Voters should pick their representatives, not the other way around. We need an independent, fair restricting process for every state, and that's exactly what the For the People Act would do," Davids said in an email.

But the bill's future in the Senate remains uncertain.

Democrats control the chamber now and will be able bring it to the floor for a vote, but the Senate's 60-vote threshold for most legislation will be a difficult hurdle to overcome.

"The bottom line is this bill needs to pass. It is way too important not to pass and we're not going to take any procedural measures off the table," Muller said.