With the expected defeat of Democratic voting reform legislation looming on Capitol Hill, lawmakers may turn their attention to a compromise proposal that has attracted the support of marquis names on the Left, including Georgia activist Stacey Abrams.
That compromise, however, proposes some election reforms that are more restrictive than those in a recent Georgia law Abrams and other Democrats described as a “Jim Crow”-style suppression effort.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, floated the proposal last week as an alternative to S. 1, a sweeping election overhaul he described as overly broad and excessively partisan. Manchin’s opposition to S. 1, as well as his refusal to budge on scrapping the filibuster, effectively dashed Democrats’ hopes of passing the bill on a party-line vote.
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Manchin’s proposal includes a voter ID requirement, a provision voting rights activists typically oppose, arguing it could disenfranchise minority voters. The compromise measure specifies states can allow voters to use alternative forms of documentation if they don’t have a photo ID.
“That’s exactly what the Georgia law does,” Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, told the Washington Examiner. “If you don’t have a photo ID and if you don’t get the free photo ID the state gives you, Georgia put in a provision that you can use a utility bill, bank statement, a paycheck, or other government document with your name and address on it.”
Abrams, who led fierce opposition to the Georgia law but endorsed Manchin’s measure, opposed the nearly identical voter ID requirements in the Peach State’s reforms, which applied ID requirements for the first time to anyone requesting an absentee ballot.
“Voters without a driver’s license or state ID must surrender their personal information and risk identity theft just to receive an absentee ballot,” Abrams said in April. “And then there are the 200,000 Georgia voters who don’t have either ID and the punitive free ID, which is not free when you factor in the cost of transportation and the cost of underlying documents.”
In announcing her support for Manchin’s compromise, however, Abrams told CNN last week, “No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote.”
Multiple polls conducted since the Georgia voting battle earlier this year suggest voter ID laws are broadly popular.
A Monmouth University poll released on Monday found 80% of respondents support requiring voters to show their ID to cast their ballots.
The Manchin compromise also sets a minimum time frame for early, in-person voting that mandates that states provide at least 15 days of early voting.
The Georgia law expanded early voting even further, offering Georgians at least 17 days to cast their ballots in person before Election Day.
Meanwhile, blue states where some of the most vocal voting rights advocates hail, such as Massachusetts and Delaware, offer fewer days for early voting than the 15-day requirement Manchin proposes.
The compromise proposal notably omits a provision Democrats have fought to expand across the country: no-excuse absentee voting.
Many states, including Georgia, allow voters to request an absentee ballot for any reason if they prefer to vote by mail.
But some do not. At least 16 states require voters to provide a legitimate reason to vote by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
S. 1 would override laws in states that prevent universal mail-in voting. Manchin’s compromise, on the other hand, imposes no such requirement.
Republicans have signaled they oppose Manchin’s compromise proposal despite the softening of several provisions they did not like in S. 1 and the elimination of many others, including what critics described as a partisan restructuring of the Federal Election Commission.
Manchin’s proposal still contains several reforms Republicans have fought against, including automatic voter registration and several lobbying and ethics reforms Republicans argue are unrelated to elections.
“S. 1 is so big, it has so many bad provisions, that just eliminating a couple of the bad provisions doesn’t save all the other bad provisions in the bill,” von Spakovsky said. “I just think that this compromise, while it might not be quite as bad as the original bill, it’s still one of the worst bills I’ve ever seen dropped in Congress.”
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Senate Republicans started signaling last week they would have little interest in the compromise measure, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggesting it might not attract the support of a single GOP lawmaker.
Republicans have argued election laws should be handled exclusively by the states, even though the successful passage of election reforms in red states this year is the very reason Democrats rallied behind S. 1 in the first place.
“Unfortunately, what [Manchin] does is what the larger bill, S. 1, does, which is it takes the election system in this country and federalizes it,” Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “So, it’s a federal takeover of our election system.”
