Republicans are resisting a sweeping bill that Democrats have cast as a necessary remedy for what they describe as voter suppression.
But the legislation, the For the People Act, most commonly known by the title it carried in the House, H.R. 1, although it has become S. 1 in the Senate, contains a litany of controversial provisions that go well beyond easing voters’ paths to the polls on Election Day.
SENATORS SPAR OVER VOTING RIGHTS AND FRAUD IN S1 MARKUP
At a markup of the bill earlier this week in the Senate Rules Committee, both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell showed up to make personal appeals against the bill — a sign of the likely bitter fight ahead for the legislation. McConnell accused Democrats of attempting “to rewrite the ground rules of American politics for partisan benefit,” while Schumer charged Republicans with “oppression.”
Here’s why the battle over S. 1 is heating up.
FEC SEATS
The bill would make changes to the membership of the Federal Election Commission that critics say would transform it into a partisan body.
The FEC is typically controlled by three Democratic and three Republican members, and it oversees the enforcement of campaign finance laws. No more than three members from the same political party can sit on the regulatory commission, preventing the FEC from drifting too far in either direction.
But S. 1 would reduce the membership of the commission to five in order to, its supporters say, break the deadlock that has, in the past, prevented the FEC from regulating aggressively.
The text of the bill specifies that no more than two of the FEC’s members can come from the same party and stipulates that the fifth commissioner must be an independent.
However, FEC commissioners are nominated by the president. Critics of S. 1 contend that the party in charge could select a nominally independent member to fill the fifth seat and provide itself with effective control over the FEC.
In February, a group of former FEC commissioners wrote a letter to congressional leaders warning against the changes to the commission laid out in the bill.
“It would lead to more partisanship in enforcement and in regulatory matters, shattering public confidence in the decisions of the FEC,” the group wrote.
FEC POWER
The bill would also give the FEC new powers to regulate political speech.
S. 1 dramatically broadens what kind of activity falls under the umbrella of campaign rules, which could force groups that aren’t even supporting a candidate to follow rules meant for political action committees.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former FEC member and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said this part of S. 1 could hit a wide range of groups that organize around policy, not politicians.
“Because the definition now includes any kind of advocacy in which you name a federal official, that’s now considered a campaign activity,” he told the Washington Examiner. “You’re going to have to file the same kind of reports exposing your donors as if you were a political action committee.”
Von Spakovsky gave an example of a Second Amendment rights group, such as the National Rifle Association, that might want to run ads urging people to call their senator and ask him or her not to support a specific gun control bill. Even if the issue-focused ads were running years before that senator was up for reelection and therefore not related to any campaign, that group would likely need to disclose their donors simply because they named a federal official, von Spakovsky said.
The requirements extend to naming federal judges as well, which could force groups that advocate for or against Supreme Court nominees to reveal their donors to the FEC, too — even though federal judges don’t run for office.
Supporters of the bill say these requirements would strengthen transparency in politics.
But critics contend that forcing groups, especially conservative ones, to divulge their contributors will only lead to harassment and attempts to silence the corporations or individuals who give to them.
PUBLIC FUNDS ON CAMPAIGNS
Among the campaign finance reforms in S. 1 is a provision that would funnel taxpayer funds into campaigns so the government could provide a 600% match of donations up to $200.
According to the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, “small donor matching would free members of Congress to spend less time dialing for dollars and more time connecting with voters.”
Supporters of the legislation argue taxpayers aren’t really footing the bill for campaigns they may not agree with because the funding would come from adding a 2.75% fee to criminal and civil penalties owed to the government.
But critics say that money would have covered other taxpayer obligations if it wasn’t being diverted to campaigns, so taxpayers would effectively pay the price. And some question whether the funding mechanism as currently laid out in the legislation would generate enough money to cover the ambitious program — or whether the government would need to skim public dollars from other sources to fund campaigns.
REDISTRICTING CHANGES
Unelected officials could draw the lines of congressional districts if S. 1 passes, due to a section that creates commissions to make redistricting decisions.
Most state legislatures currently have the authority to create congressional maps. While this can lead to gerrymandering, or carving up the state strategically to give an advantage to one party, the process gives voters at least some level of input because they select the state lawmakers who draw the lines.
S. 1 would create independent commissions of bureaucrats that take districting decisions out of the hands of legislatures. The bill would set uniform rules for commissions in every state, requiring each commission to be made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents. As with the requirement for an independent member on the FEC, critics fear the independent slots on state commissions could be filled with left-leaning officials who would give Democrats effective control of deciding districts, even in red states.
The legislation would also set stricter rules across all 50 states for how maps can be drawn. Race would become a bigger factor in determining where district lines can go, and the bill would empower political groups or activists to file lawsuits against maps they don’t like by making it easier to sue.
“It makes race the predominant feature that commissions are supposed to take into account when they are drawing up boundary lines, and that’s a big no-no under Supreme Court precedent,” von Spakovsky said. “It can be one factor, but it can’t be the predominant factor.”
Membership on the independent commissions that would dictate the new districts is also subject to racial and gender requirements under the bill.
IRS ENFORCEMENT
Conservatives were outraged when, under the Obama administration, the Internal Revenue Service was accused of using political leanings to screen organizations applying for tax-exempt status. But S. 1 would give the IRS the authority to consider the political beliefs of nonprofit groups in a provision that critics argue could lead to more targeting of conservatives.
Von Spakovsky said the shift could empower the IRS to target conservative groups the way it did during the 2012 election, when right-leaning groups faced lengthy delays or denials of their applications for nonprofit status.
“Rather than simply making sure that it really was a nonprofit, they were actually looking at, for example, the websites, asking for all kinds of documentation to look at what the policy positions were of these nonprofit organizations,” he said. “Republicans were putting a policy rider in an appropriations bill every year to bar the IRS from doing this, and that bar is lifted by H.R. 1, which means the IRS can now go right back to what it was doing.”
VOTING OVERHAUL
S. 1 is most closely associated with voting reform, despite containing so many other major changes.
The bill would override the voting rules individual states have in place, stripping away voter ID requirements or limits on mail-in ballots in states that have such laws on the books.
No state could require identification to vote, and all states would have to offer universal mail-in ballots that election officials would be forced to accept up to 10 days after Election Day.
Thirty-six states currently have some form of voter ID laws in place, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. S. 1 would require states that don’t already do so to accept a voter’s sworn statement affirming his or her identity in lieu of identifying documents.
Anyone could register to vote on Election Day and cast a ballot immediately after, which is already permitted in some states. All states would need to implement automatic voter registration as well.
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Potentially compounding an existing problem in many places, election officials would face new hurdles to cleaning up their voter registration records because S. 1 would place new restrictions on when voters can be removed, even if they haven’t cast a ballot in many years.
Democrats have highlighted these parts of S. 1 when arguing the legislation is necessary to overcome laws that some legislatures, most notably Georgia, passed in the wake of the 2020 election chaos.
