Election overhaul should clear Senate hurdle, murky after
A key Senate committee on Tuesday began debating Democrats’ sweeping elections overhaul, muscling toward a vote on a landmark national expansion of voting rights meant to blunt ballot restrictions by Republican-controlled statehouses.
Liberals who have made the bill, HR 1, their top legislative priority hailed the debate and anticipated vote in the Senate Rules Committee as a significant milestone. If enacted, it would effectively override laws emerging in states like Georgia and Florida that raise barriers to vote with national requirements meant to lower them — like automatic voter registration, no-excuse early and mail-in voting and the reenfranchise-ment of former felons.
But with Republicans digging in to oppose the 800page bill, the parties were expected to deadlock on a final vote by the committee, which is evenly divided between the two parties. That outcome would deny the bill its outright approval, and complicate an already steep path forward to passage on a Senate floor, where Democrats’ only chance of making it law most likely requires them to change chamber rules to bypass the legislative filibuster.
During a tense debate Tuesday, Democrats feigned trying to build bipartisan support. But they spent much of their energy attacking Republicans for what they called an orchestrated campaign, staked on false claims of election fraud by President Donald Trump, to make it harder for Americans of color and young people to vote.
“What are my Republican colleagues in the Senate going to do?” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, said at the session’s outset, calling the debate a “legacy defining choice.”
“These laws carry the stench of oppression, the smell of bigotry,” Schumer added. “Are you going to stamp it out, or are you going to spread it?”
Republicans showed no signs they would change course, and adamantly defended states’ rights to set elections laws. Schumer’s Republican counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, slammed the bill as a liberal power grab “cooked up at the Democratic National Committee and designed to advantage one side to the disadvantage of the other.”