As corporations line up to endorse opposition to state-level voting reforms, the country’s largest corporate lobby announced Tuesday that it opposes a Democratic bill aimed at expanding voting access.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to senators this week urging them to vote against S.1, or the “For the People Act” — a sweeping piece of legislation that would federalize many of the ways states run their elections and impose new campaign finance and redistricting rules.
“The Chamber believes it is crucial to democracy to bring more people into the political process,” the chamber wrote in its letter Tuesday. “Significant portions of S. 1 are clearly intended to have precisely the opposite effect – pushing certain voices, representing large segments of the electorate and U.S. economy, out of the political process altogether.”
The For the People Act would ban voter ID laws, expand absentee voting, and allow mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted even if they arrive up to 10 days late, among other things.
The chamber, a traditionally Republican-leaning group, took particular issue with parts of the bill that would seek to end so-called “dark money” in politics by forcing donor disclosures, as well as a provision of the bill that would allow taxpayer money to be spent on political campaigns.
The group’s letter came just a day before hundreds of major corporations signed a statement supporting the same vague idea of “voting rights” that the For the People Act claims to represent.
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Businesses from Amazon to Starbucks signed the statement, which appeared as a paid advertisement in the New York Times and the Washington Post on Wednesday.
“We all should feel a responsibility to defend the right to vote and to oppose any discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot,” the signatories, who called themselves the Black Economic Alliance, wrote in the statement.
Ramesh Ponnuru, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted the companies and executives who signed the statement took no stands on any specific provisions of voting reforms.
“Businesses are really feeling their way through this political minefield, and they’re not sure where the land mines are going to be,” Ponnuru told the Washington Examiner. “They have tried to solve the problem there by having this totally vague statement that means everything and nothing but tries to have the mood music that aligns them with liberal critics of these laws.”
Ponnuru said the political calculations for individual companies that oppose state-level voting reforms are going to be different than that of a bigger representative organization like the chamber.
“These larger businesses in particular — if they have a lot of younger employees based in metro areas, they’re concerned about recruiting employees and keeping them if they don’t take a certain political stance,” he said.
Liberal activists have pressured corporations in recent weeks to oppose voting reforms advancing through the legislatures of several states.
In Georgia, the passage of a new voting law late last month triggered a corporate backlash that began with Delta releasing a statement in opposition to the reforms. Major League Baseball then pulled the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in a move that sparked outrage among conservatives and some Atlanta businesses that were counting on the revenue from the event to help recover from the pandemic.
Delta, however, did not sign on to the statement pushed by corporations on Wednesday, nor did Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, whose CEO had also criticized the Georgia law.
Companies based in Texas are facing boycott threats as state lawmakers consider a voting reform package that would, in part, stop political parties or election workers from sending out unsolicited absentee ballot applications.
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American Airlines and Dell, both based in Texas, have released statements opposing the change, and both signed the statement, but other businesses in the Lone Star State that are facing political pressure, such as Frito-Lay and Southwest Airlines, did not.
The Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, is urging senators not to back a law that would, by Democrats’ telling, stop the kinds of measures that corporations are publicly opposing. Democrats have characterized the For the People Act as a way to undo voting reforms in GOP-controlled states.
“I think that the chamber’s opposition to [S.1] and the surprise it has occasioned in some corners shows the cross-cutting pressures that business groups are under right now,” Ponnuru said.
