When House Democrats passed their flagship voting rights bill in the last Congress, Republicans denounced it as a federal takeover of elections.
The legislation would have made sweeping changes to federal election law, touching everything from redistricting to the way campaigns are financed.
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Republicans uniformly opposed the bill and blocked its passage in the Senate. But now that they control the House, their own desire to influence the election process has the party balancing its long-standing call for states’ rights with another goal — election security.
House Republicans introduced a bill to that end on Monday titled the American Confidence in Elections Act. The legislation, sponsored by Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI), advanced to the House floor three days later.
In many respects, the bill is the polar opposite of the one Democrats passed in 2021. It would give donors more privacy in the name of free speech. Democrats, by contrast, pursued transparency to combat the influence of “dark money.”
The differences boil down, in some cases, to a stated desire to protect states’ rights. The legislation would express a sense of Congress, for example, that state legislatures should be in charge of redistricting, a process that Democrats wanted to hand over to nonpartisan commissions.
House Republicans argue the federal government should be a partner, not a decision-maker, in the process. They would make federal records available to states, for example, so they can audit and update their voter rolls.
“This bill protects our federalist principles,” Steil told the Washington Examiner in a brief interview on Wednesday. “What it does is it provides states the tools that they need to be able to enhance election integrity, but does not tell states specifically what to do.”
The legislation, while expansive, does not rival House Democrats’ voting rights bill in terms of the mandates it would impose on states. Democrats unsuccessfully tried to include many of those provisions, such as expanded early voting, during the markup hearing for the bill.
But the Republican legislation would, in fact, impose new requirements on states, threatening to withhold grants the federal government doles out for the administration of elections.
Under the bill, states that allowed noncitizens to vote in state or local elections would lose some of that money. Funding would also be at risk for states that refuse to implement restrictions on so-called ballot harvesting, the practice of going door to door to collect ballots.
Steil, without prompting, acknowledged the mandates but said they were reserved for “egregious” state laws.
Congress does have a role to play in regulating federal elections. The Constitution says states shall set the “times, places and manner” of elections but gives room for Washington to “make or alter” them. It has a further interest through the 15th Amendment to protect the voting rights of minorities.
But Republicans take a very different view from Democrats on what’s appropriate intervention.
“Congress has a purely secondary role in this space and must restrain itself from acting improperly and unconstitutionally,” Steil said at the markup hearing.
What is egregious or not is, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder. Democrats have long accused Republicans of voter suppression under the guise of election integrity.
Republicans, meanwhile, claim Democrats’ desire to maximize voting is really about turning out their voting base.
The dramatic expansion of mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, combined with former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, have poured kerosene on those arguments.
“This bill, which the majority is calling the American Confidence in Elections Act, is really nothing of the sort,” Rep. Joseph Morelle (NY), the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said earlier this week. “It will do nothing to increase voter access to the ballot, which in my view, ought to be the primary goal and objective. Nor will it make Americans feel any more confident that Congress is addressing the real threat to the health of our republic, former President Trump and his supporters who have spent years now undermining the strength of our Democratic institutions.”
That Republicans chose to unveil their legislation on Monday at a field hearing in Georgia, a state that President Joe Biden claimed was implementing “Jim Crow 2.0” with a new election law, underscores how politicized the issue has become.
Republicans cite the record-high turnout there in 2022 to argue voting restrictions do not reduce turnout. A common refrain from Republicans is it should be “easy to vote and hard to cheat,” though Democrats counter that certain changes in Georgia, such as fewer ballot boxes, were designed to disenfranchise black voters.
Just as symbolic was the attendance of five secretaries of state at a press conference for House Republicans’ bill. The top election officials from Louisiana, Ohio, Iowa, West Virginia, and Alabama — each red states — attended as a way to emphasize the support it has at the state level.
Yet there is a fundamental tension in the bill, imposing restrictions that place it fundamentally at odds with some blue states.
The legislation, although it allows family members and caregivers to deliver ballots on behalf of voters, seeks to eliminate lax laws in states like California that allow anyone to deliver a ballot. The restriction seeks to eliminate ballot harvesting, which Republicans worry could lead to fraud.
Another tension is the way House Republicans would transform the District of Columbia’s election laws, with the goal of making it a model of how they believe elections should be run. The bill imposes a slate of requirements on the district that it does not for states, including restrictions on mail-in voting and ballot boxes, in addition to requirements for photo ID and the regular maintenance of voter rolls.
D.C., since it is not a state, falls under the jurisdiction of Congress, a fact that Steil says entitles the House to impose those mandates. Republicans had success earlier this year overturning the D.C. Council’s new crime code, the first time since 1991 that Congress had repealed one of its laws.
“Congress has the authority to oversee Washington, D.C.,” Steil said, “and so, I think it’s well within our constitutional obligations to make sure that Washington, D.C., elections have the integrity that’s required upon them.”
But Democrats believe the district is entitled to govern itself and have long advocated its statehood. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL), the ranking Democrat on the House Administration sub-committee on elections, bristled at the idea that Republicans would regulate D.C. with its legislation.
“This whole debate about D.C. is a debate we shouldn’t be having. They should have their own representation,” she said at the markup hearing.
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“I find it to be incredulous that we get to tell the citizens of D.C. what they can and cannot do when they are larger than a lot of the states that get two senators and get representatives,” Sewell added.
Steil said he’s hopeful the House will pass the ACE Act, citing the 100-plus Republican co-sponsors it has attracted so far. But it will likely face the same fate as its Democratic counterpart in the Senate, where Republicans are in the minority.
