President Joe Biden will launch a national campaign to expand voter access this week and push back on Republican-crafted laws that have been slammed by Democrats, heeding calls to elevate the issue before the 2022 midterm elections.
But while Republican lawmakers and state officials continue pushing new bills they say will shore up election security amid their claims, amplified by former President Donald Trump, of faulty vote-counting during the 2020 cycle, Biden’s strategy has two objectives: making it easier for Democratic-leaning people to vote and to motivate members of his own party to turn out next year.
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Republicans are criticized by Democrats for stoking culture wars. Yet, Democrats are hoping to produce a similar phenomenon with voter access by spinning GOP opposition to federalized elections and their push to secure them after the pandemic prompted many states to relax their rules. That is because critics suggest Republican reforms disproportionately affect minority people and those communities that lean Democratic.
Pete Peterson, a voting expert with Pepperdine University, said H.R. 1 or S. 1, bills that would have overhauled public campaign financing regulations and rolled out automatic voter registration, failed in both scope and scale.
“Constitutionally, states are the level at which election administration processes are determined, and H.R. 1-S. 1 sought to supplant the states’ role in establishing these policies,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Democrats erred in trying to ram H.R. 1 and S. 1 through Congress without attempting bipartisanship, according to Peterson. He believes bipartisanship is achievable after the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002. Instead of introducing mandates, that framework funded states modernizing their election systems, including updating their voter rolls and improving poll worker training.
But Peterson warned Republicans their approach may backfire, providing a boost for Democrats.
“What we have seen in the past is, when states move to add security measures, there is an uptick, if not a surge, in voter engagement — particularly by minority voters,” he said.
Convincing 10 Republican senators to back broader voter access, though, seems almost impossible. And Biden is facing pressure from Democratic power brokers, such as House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, to signal he is behind creating an exception to the Senate filibuster rules, so Democrats do not have to have 60 votes to pass election reforms.
For Democratic strategist Donnie Fowler, Biden’s problem is that he will suffer politically if voters do not see or experience his legislative accomplishments.
“Sometimes, voters want to see action, to see their elected officials working, even when they might not agree with a policy,” he said. “George W. Bush made this case in his reelection in 2004, when he told voters that they might not agree with him on all policies, but they knew what he stood for and saw him producing results.”
Biden is due to speak Tuesday about “the sacred, constitutional right to vote” at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, the White House announced last week. Pennsylvania, a state Biden won last year by 1 percentage point or 81,000 votes, is hosting a Senate race in 2022. Democrats are looking to flip the Republican-held seat in the evenly divided chamber. Pennsylvania’s 1st, 6th, and 10th congressional district contests will also be competitive.
The Philadelphia event was scheduled after Biden and the White House had touted for weeks that June would be a “month of action” for voter access. Liberal Democrats were among the administration’s toughest critics, such as New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
Biden will argue “the moral case” for greater voter access on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki previewed Monday.
“He will redouble his commitment to using every tool at his disposal to continue to fight to protect the fundamental right of Americans to vote against the onslaught of voter suppression laws based on a dangerous and discredited conspiracy theory that culminated in an assault on our Capitol,” she told reporters.
“He’ll also decry efforts to strip the right to vote as authoritarian and anti-American and stand up against the notion that politicians should be allowed to choose their voters or to subvert our system by replacing independent election authorities with partisan ones,” Psaki said.
Steps Biden supports, other than Congress passing H.R. 1 and S. 1, is the clearing of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and collaborating with civil rights organizations to mobilize voters against “the worst challenge to our democracy since the Civil War,” she added.
Biden and his volunteer voter access czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, have promised to keep advocating for the issue after Republicans blocked H.R. 1 and S. 1 and the Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s ballot harvesting and out-of-precinct voting bans in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. That decision further eroded the Voting Rights Act, infuriating liberals.
“We will fortify and expand the nationwide coalition on voting rights, and promote voter engagement and registration nationwide,” Harris wrote in a statement after Senate Republicans filibustered S. 1. “We will lift up leaders in the states who are working to stop anti-voter legislation, and work with leaders in Congress to advance federal legislation that will strengthen voting rights.”
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Biden’s trip coincides with Texas progressing its election security measures. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott convened a 30-day special session after Democratic lawmakers staged a walkout in the spring, thwarting GOP plans because the statehouse did not meet quorum.
