Week One: Voting Rights
This summer’s series of curated videos and associated print material will focus on major issues of public policy facing America in summer 2021. We now begin that series with the issue of Voting Rights.
Lee, R., photographer. (1939) Sign, Mineola, Texas. United States Mineola Mineola. Texas, 1939. Jan. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress
Through March 30, legislators in 43 states — including Michigan — have introduced 361 bills that, if enacted into law, would make it significantly less convenient and more difficult to vote in future elections. Despite no evidence of widespread election fraud, most of these bills are being portrayed as efforts to protect the integrity of the vote. That characterization of the proposals is resonating with much of the American people who are convinced, also without evidence, that surely there must have been fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.
Faced with a growing likelihood that a crazy quilt of new restrictions (and lawsuits challenging those restrictions) will emerge between now and the 2022 mid-term elections, Democratic members of both houses of the US Congress crafted the “For the People Act.” The Act is aimed at precluding many, if not most, of the new state-level restrictions. Known as H.R.1 in the House and S.1 in the Senate, the For the People Act has been called a “power grab” by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell while his opposite number, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, says its purpose is to “undo some of the despicable and frankly racist changes that these Republican legislatures have made or trying to make in the way people vote."
It seems safe to conclude that McConnell and Schumer both consider the For the People Act important. A third source, however, is clearly needed to help us understand what the Act says and, if adopted, will or will not allow. For that, we turned to the nonpartisan Brennen Center for Justice at NYU Law.
Brennan Center staff have been following the legislation closely and prepared two items to which we want to turn to your attention. The first is a text-based “explainer” that separates fact from fiction about the Act. Click or tap here to read more.
The second item is our video for the week — Brennan Center Director Michael Waldman’s testimony on the For the People Act given to the Senate Rule Committee’s Subcommittee on Campaign Finance, Voting Rights, and Ethics. Waldman’s testimony runs 5:27