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Annotated Guide to the For the People Act of 2021 | Brennan Center for Justice
A Summary of H.R. 1, the For the People Act | League of Women Voters
H.R.1 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): For the People Act of 2021 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
H.R. 1 can’t pass the Senate. But here are some voting reforms that could. – The Washington Post
Voting Rights Roundup: Georgia GOP unveils sweeping new voting limits in response to 2020 losses
The Facts About H.R. 1: The “For the People Act of 2021” | The Heritage Foundation
Opinion | Want to fix the filibuster? All it takes is guts. – The Washington Post
Opinion | For some Republicans and Democrats, the 2020 race still isn’t over – The Washington Post
How minority rule plagues Senate: Republicans last won more support than Democrats two decades ago
Third (successful) March from Selma to Montgomery – Wikipedia
#MLK: How Long? Not Long! – YouTube
TRANSCRIPT
Martin Luther King, Jr. 0:42
In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origins, the root cause of racial segregation in the Southland.
Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock 1:02
Some politicians did not approve of the choice made by the majority of voters and a hard fought election in which each side got the chance to make its case to the voters. And rather than adjusting their agenda, rather than changing their message. They are busy trying to change the rules. We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights, unlike anything we’ve ever seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim Crow in new clothes.
Jeff Timmer 1:31
That was Dr. Martin Luther King 56 years ago this week, and Senator Reverend Raphael, Warnock two weeks ago, Dr. King spoke at the end of the Selma to Montgomery March (the third one), and Reverend Warnock focused his first speech as Georgia’s newly elected senator on the legacy of the man whose pulpit he inherited, as well as that of one of his congregation members, the late John Lewis. The battle to save our democratic republic goes on.
Joining our discussion this week, is one of the nation’s leading experts on voting rights Michael Li. Mr. Li is Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program, where his work focuses on redistricting, voting rights and elections. He’s the author of a widely cited blog on redistricting and election law issues that the New York Times has called indispensable. He’s a regular writer and commentator on election issues on cable news, and in the nation’s leading newspapers and periodicals. In addition to his election work, he previously served as executive director of be One Texas, a donor alliance that oversaw strategic and targeted investments in nonprofit organizations working to increase voter participation and engagement among historically disadvantaged African American and Hispanic communities.
In Texas, Mr. Li also was an unofficial adviser to Michigan’s Voters, Not Politicians, as that grassroots group was developing the constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering in our state back in 2018. Welcome to “A Republic, If You Can Keep It.”
Michael Li 3:12
Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.
Mark Brewer 3:14
Well, Michael, let me just kick it off by talking about voter suppression going on all over the country, hundreds of bills, even here in Michigan, and I was looking at HR-1. And I seem to notice the fingerprints of the Brennan Center and you all over HR-1, it looks like the combination of your career in terms of the kinds of things you’d like to see changed in the country to prevent and push back on voter suppression. But HR-1 is the the work of a lot of groups over many years to sort of try to put together many people have worked on these issues separately, or in smaller packages. But, you know, there has been this, with everything that’s going on, I think there has been a recognition that, you know, we need a new, great civil rights bill for our age, and HR-1 can be that bill, you know, it really brings together a strong suite of reforms, you know, everything from making sure that people have the time to early vote that people can vote by mail easily that, you know, a lot of these rules that are being put in place, you know, really very punitive rules in many places. Can’t take effect, right. But the and this is something well, within Congress’s wheelhouse Congress has the power to set the rules for federal elections under the Constitution under the elections clause. And it’s done that by setting the National Election Day November. It’s done that by the National Voter Registration Act. It’s done that in many different ways. The fact that we use single member districts and redistricting is, you know, Congress using its power under the elections clause. And so, hmm. One builds on all of that, and it really brings together the best practices from around the nation. It really creates a national floor for what what states have to do, right? It’s not states can do of course more, but there’s a national floor so everyone will have sort of be on a on a level playing field,
Jeff Timmer 5:02
there really seems watching the republicans response to the last election, that they’re so focused on Trump’s loss, that they failed to see how increased participation of both democrat voters and Republican voters, arguably helped them considerably on down ballot races. And it’s really self defeating, I think to watch the republicans response to HR one to watch what they’re doing in state legislatures to try to curtail access to voting. That seems to be counterproductive to their own self interest.
Michael Li 5:39
But that’s absolutely right, Jeff if you listen to some Republicans, you would think that more people voting is a bad thing to yet more people voting in many places helped Republicans win seats, you know, up and down the ballot. Right. You know, this was in many ways, a very good year for Republicans. 2020 was a very good year for Republicans, in part because of the higher turnout, you know, it was not only low propensity Democrats who came out it was lower propensity Republicans who came out. The idea that, like, more people voting somehow inherently helps Democrats is, you know, demonstrably proven false just by the last election. In fact, many of these reforms are, you know, would do things that, you know, make it easier to vote by mail, which is something Republicans do a lot of. Early voting is something that, historically, in many states has leaned toward Republicans, right, you know. The rules are agnostic, you know, the parties then have an opportunity to go out and mobilize their voters around these rules, but the rules are … nobody sat down and said, like, how could we draw a set of rules that would benefit Democrats. These are good rules for democracy. You know, either party, can, you know, use though,
Mark Brewer 6:48
We saw some of that last fall here, Michael, in Michigan, as I was working on our Voter Protection Program. I was getting calls from around the state from Republican areas where there have never been lines before. And people were lined up to vote. And I expect a lot of those folks weren’t even registered. And so they were able to take advantage of our same day registration, and then vote for Trump and vote Republican if that’s what they wanted to do. So there is evidence of that, certainly here in Michigan, that is occurring. I find it really ironic, and you’re the national expert on this, that in many of these states, Republicans are now attempting to rollback vote by mail and other changes that they made themselves just in the last few years, because of this hysteria about last fall’s election.
Michael Li 7:33
Yeah, I mean, that that’s the the downside of the big lie that, you know, like, was propagated, you know, by former President Trump, you know, the idea that he lost the election only because massive voter fraud, which, you know, you know, just isn’t, isn’t true, but, you know, it means that, you know, again, like Republicans are the strange position of attacking many things that, you know, historically have benefited them, that may benefit them in the future. Right. These are, these are reforms that in many places were instigated by, you know, by, by Republicans, right, you know, these are common sense reforms that, you know, and you see this, like, you know, they’d like to to be destroyed, or like, where you have Democratic election administrators or Republican election administrators, and they all, you know, really do sort of agree, like, you know, this is stuff that, you know, from the, from the standpoint of customer service to the voter really do make sense. It makes their lives easier, you know, it does all of this, like, it truly does make sense. But, you know, there, we seem to live in a hyper-partisan moment where, you know, the, the actual truth of the matter is sometimes not what drives the, you know, the conversation nationally. And unfortunately, as you point out, I mean, there, there have been hundreds of bills that have been filed, to to roll back, the ease, the ease of voting by our count, there are at least 253 numbers probably well over 300. Now, you know, it’s, there’s so many like, it actually takes a lot of work for us to track them. You know, it’s notable that that’s seven times the number of voter suppressive bills that were filed, you know, after the 2018 election, right. So think, you know, 253, well, probably well over 300. And these run the gamut, right, you know, like, ending automatic voter registration in Georgia or, you know, eliminating, you know, Sunday early voting, but, you know, there’s even a bill at Georgia that would penalize, you know, make it a crime to give people water while they’re waiting in line. Right. You know, and that is just like how far people are willing to go to make it hard to vote. And, you know, that is, this is unprecedented territory that we’re in.
Mark Brewer 9:41
What do you think the prospects are for those bills, Michael, and then you know, what happens when they pass? What other kinds of remedies that the Brennan Center and others are looking at, to fight those bills if and when they pass?
Michael Li 9:53
Well, you know, the good news is that there you know, Georgia, there was a lot of outcry not only from, you know, advocates on the ground, but you know, in large corporations like Coca Cola and others, Home Depot, you know, both of whom were based in Georgia who said, like, you know, this is like going to far, right? And that tells you a lot, because, you know, corporations usually try to stay out of anything that feels too political, they’ll say go out and vote or something like that, that they won’t sort of say, like this bill is, is, is bad generally, and the fact that they were willing to do so has brought about changes, right. Which is not to say that it solves the problem, because they’re still trying to do a lot of really bad things, but it is at least caused people to pull back on some of the more extreme things that they were trying to do. And but it probably won’t cure everything, you know, like there literally are hundreds of bills around the country, and many of those will pass and many of those will be challenged in court, you know, under the the tools that are that are available. Unfortunately, one of the most powerful tools that we used to have, which is section five of the Voting Rights Act, which states that the history of discrimination meant that you had to get your election law changes pre-approved by the federal government, either by the Department of Justice or by a three judge court in Washington, that no longer applies, because the Supreme Court said that the formula for determining what states are covered is outdated. And Congress unfortunately, has not reenacted that new formula, mainly because it got blocked in the Senate, by Mitch McConnell. But you know, Congress does have an opportunity. You mentioned HR-1, there’s also HR-4, which is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which will create a new formula for determining what states have to get their election laws pre-approved. That is something that probably will be taken up over the course of the summer, pass perhaps in the fall of this year, maybe a little later than that. But that wouldn’t be a powerful tool. But you know, now that states are, are not required to like Georgia and Texas, you know, aren’t required to get their election laws pre-approved. that’s a that’s a big hole, right. And there are a lot of bad laws coming down the pike. In Texas, they have some they have an omnibus election bill, which kind of humorously in the press release of this Omnibus election bill, which has a lot of voters supressive elements in it. They call it an ominous election bill, which is more of an accurate descriptor with a 40. Yeah, 40 a typo. But you know, there’s a lot of stuff that’s coming in, it’s, I will tell you, like for advocates in the field, it’s almost overwhelming, just try to keep on top of it and try to like, you know, help people work to block this stuff. Because there’s just a lot of it.
Jeff Timmer 12:37
A lot of people involved in politics were don’t realize that Michigan was was covered under section five of the Voting Rights Act for a long time. I’m not sure quite how long but I know for the 30 years I’ve been involved in redistricting it’s been subject to section five preclearance. And so I don’t know if the if these changes would would put Michigan back into the pre-approval or not. But I think we’re going to expect that we’re going to see the Michigan legislature make some moves to change and tighten voting laws, tighten access to the voting booth, and in a game of politics do so in a way that can bypass the Democrat Governor Whitmer here in Michigan by if she vetoes any legislation they pass they can, by gathering enough signatures, initiate legislation that they can by simple majority adopt and bypass the governor’s signature, making it more restrictive to vote.
Michael Li 13:41
I don’t I don’t really have words for that. I mean, that’s sort of like, you know, like an incredible power grab there. Right, you know, which is you know, there’s there’s a whole structure of how things are supposed to work. And, you know, this just seems like a total end run on the democratic process, but I think it does show you how important some of this stuff is. You know Mitch McConnell was just on the hill just a few minutes ago talking about HR-1 and how they had to do everything they could just to stop it. Ted Cruz has said it’s an all hands on deck moment for Republicans that again, like you know, it seems like really kind of crazy. Mike Lee, Senator Mike Lee from Utah called HR-1 a bill drafted by the devil. And quite humorously, one of the Salt Lake papers pointed out that a lot of the stuff in HR-1 is stuff that the Utah legislature, the Republican legislature in Utah passed, right. So this is just like everybody has to play by the rules that Utah has, right and somehow suddenly becomes available. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Like suddenly that becomes by the devil, right. And that’s just an amazing thing. We’re here.
Jeff Timmer 14:47
This is the same world where you have the Senator from South Dakota talking about how Washington DC should not be admitted as a state. You know, in here you have South Dakota that’s only a state because of a partisan power play 130 years ago to pack the Senate with Republicans by separating the Dakota Territory into two, and he doesn’t get t he irony of his statement. It’s just lost.
Michael Li 15:13
I think his argument was that DC doesn’t have a car dealership or an airport located within its boundaries was though that that was sort of the touchstone for like whether your as the founders vision right, you’re right, right, like you know, and then like in you know, Reagan National Airport literally buttresses is up to the boundary of DC. Whether you have an airport or not probably should not be the test of statehood.
Mark Brewer 15:37
Well, we’ll continue our conversation with a national voting rights expert at the Brennan Center Michael Lee after a short break. (Commercial: EPIC/MRA)
Continuing our conversation with Michael Li, Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice Democracies Program. Michael, let’s talk about what may happen if some of these bills pass. Obviously there are federal court remedies. Under Section two of the Voting Rights Act, perhaps assisted by the new Justice Department. There may be some state court remedies in some states on their state constitutions. What’s your take on what happens if and when some of these state voter suppression bills…
Michael Li 17:01
I certainly think a lot of them will be challenged as racially discriminatory either under the Voting Rights Act or under the Federal Constitution, because when you look at the, the disparate impact. In Georgia, the proposal at one point, for example, was to limit no-excuse absentee mail voting to people over 75. And that seems to be an age that’s picked because everybody over 75 is disproportionately white in Georgia. Right. And so, you know, that’s a very targeted, that that seems to be targeted on the basis of race. And I, you know, there are lots of other laws that, you know, would really disproportionately impact racial language minorities. And so I think a lot of those laws will be challenged, of course, as you guys know, you know, like, that’s a hard slog, right, because the burden of a section two case or constitutional cases on the plaintiffs, so they have to run into court and make that case, whereas under Section five, the burden was on the state to prove that law wasn’t discriminatory and the state could use it, it couldn’t put the law into effect until it had proven that the law was not discriminatory. But now the burden is on the individual groups. But there is a lot of mobilization around this. And I fully suspect that a lot of those will be challenged. They will, of course, ultimately end up potentially before a very different Supreme Court, which is why I don’t think that you can count on litigation being the sole remedy. I do think things like HR-1 and HR-4, you know, which are things that Congress could do to sort of set the table are really key parts of this as well, right? Because, you know, like, almost every one of the major their voter suppression bills would be made moved by HR-1. Right, you know, to the extent that people were rolling back early voting feature once it’s two weeks, 14 days, straight days of early voting, you know, and then, you know, and similarly for other areas, and so getting those bills passed, I think is absolutely critical before the 2022 election. A lot, of course, there will depend on what happens with filibuster. And you know, how, in particular, Senator Manchin feels about this, because he’s the only Democratic senator who’s right now not signed on to what’s called S-1 (it’s HR-1 in the House and S-1 in the Senate), he’s not signed on to S-1 yet. So, you know, getting him on board. And, you know, at some point, I think I do believe that there will be a showdown on a filibuster, perhaps not over this bill, probably not over this bill. But you know, there will be showdown and then you’ll see what happens after that.
Jeff Timmer 19:21
Well, I think this underscores how partisan in how how politics drove the rush to confirm Barrett right before the election. Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society folks and the powers that be on the legal right envisioned exactly this scenario and this is their their Doomsday. They are going to throw it all up against the wall here and see what can stick and hopefully they know that they think they’ll be able to eke out some victories in a state like Arizona or Georgia when it comes to the US Senate. I happen to think that they are missing the forest for the trees. In a midterm election when Democrat voters typically suffer from some turnout problems, this will be, I think, the ultimate motivator, the ultimate mobilizer for center-left organizations and the Democratic Party to get every last voter, that they got out in 2020 out again in 2022. Because this is going to be a direct assault on the franchise itself.
Michael Li 20:32
Yes, I think that’s like, I mean, there’s lots of history that tells you when, when black voters see long lines on TV, they’re more motivated to go vote right, you know, like, they’re not like, I’m going to stay home or, you know, they’re, you know, that is increasingly the case for other racial and ethnic minorities. But, you know, people in general, right, you know, if you’re trying to, you’re creating a foil, which is just a motivator.
Mark Brewer 20:58
Michael you mentioned the filibuster a moment ago, in terms of HR-1. You know there’s so many carveouts from a filibuster rule already, right: budget reconciliation, some of the nominees can now go through without being subject to filibuster. Do you think there’s a possibility that there could be a carveout for something like voting rights or campaign finance reform into the filibuster, or now we hear talk of the talking filibuster, you know, the real filibuster actually coming back, where you just don’t have to give notice that you’re going to filibuster, you actually have to hold the floor? Are those kinds of tactics, the possibility to help us get S-1 at a time?
Michael Li 21:38
You know, I think, you know, there’s there’s a lot of things that are on the table with respect to the filibuster. You know, many times people say, Well, why does Chuck Schumer just sort of like make this happen? Right, and we don’t but it literally is like these people actually — it’s a senator by senator discussion about what they are comfortable doing and Senator Merkley is leading a lot of those discussions right now, there seems to be a lot of talk about a talking filibuster, which would require people to hold the floor. Perhaps you could require, you know, all of the people posing to be on the floor constantly, right? It was historically how it was done. And it was sort of changed in the 1970s. You know, that’s a possibility. But you’re also right, that there absolutely are lots of carveouts. The budget reconciliation is the biggest one. But you know, we also changed the filibuster rules for base closure, military base closures, which was something that was very hard to do, and people kind of forget that that was sort of like a, you know, that wasn’t like a really big grandiose sort of thing. It was just like, gosh, you know, we need to do this and like, we can’t keep having, you know, bases in the middle of like west Texas, or something that we don’t really need. We gotta have, you know, and so there’s sort of a whole process for that. You know, so I think that that’s something that I think, you know, lots of people will talk about voting rights, or, you know, what Senator Merkley calls the rules of the road carveout for things related to democracy? You know, I think that there’s a lot of that makes a lot of sense. But we’ll we’ll have to see where people get and I have no insight into the mind of Joe Manchin, unfortunately.
Mark Brewer 23:05
Is it Senator Manchin, who’s key at this point, Senator Sinema is on board with us?
Michael Li 23:10
Yes, she’s on board. She’s not on board from getting rid of the filibuster yet. But, you know, I think, you know, those are conversations that I think need to need to happen, you know, but we’ll, we’ll see.
Mark Brewer 23:23
Well, we’re having quite a debate here in Michigan, just to wrap up this topic. Former Senator Carl Levin, who is much beloved here in the state, is a pretty strong defender of the existing filibuster for a variety of institutional reasons, but we have people obviously, who feel otherwise. So there’s a pretty vigorous debate going on here in Michigan, at least, regarding the filibuster
Michael Li 23:43
A lot of democratic senators have felt like really close to the filibuster for various reasons, you know, you’re seeing that kind of change, you know, and I think people recognize to the title of your podcast, like, you know, like, this is a “Republic, if you can keep it” moment, right, you know, that we you know, that one side is determined to sort of like rig the rules, and you have to sort of fight back in some way. And you know, saving the Republic is probably more important than saving the filibuster.
Jeff Timmer 24:11
Let’s talk a little bit about redistricting in our time left. I noticed today that the chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee, Tom Emmer from Minnesota, guaranteed that the Republicans would take the US House back after the 2022 elections, that’s how sure they are at least how the forward face they’re putting on that, that redistricting will benefit them in this midterm election. What are you seeing, from your view, looking around the country? And how do you think Michigan’s changes that were adapted in 2018 will impact the process here in Michigan,
Michael Li 24:52
I tell people, it’s a tale of two countries. And you know, in some ways the landscape looks better in states like Michigan because of reforms that it did in 2011. Then, but there are four states in particular in the south that I think are flashpoints: Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina where the process is still, that the legislature has drawn maps. In North Carolina the governor doesn’t have a veto over redistricting plans. That’s something Democrats did when they were in control of the legislature. They were worried about a Republican governor vetoing the plan. So they took that power away. But lo and behold, now you have a Republican legislature. Yeah. So be careful what you wish for, right. But you know, those four states, you have single party control, you know, and not really a lot of rules in state law about how you draw districts. They’re all competitive, which is sort of why, you know, there’s a reason why you would want to gerrymander and so I think the Republicans could gerrymander their way back to a House majority, just from those four states, because Democrats fell short in both 2018 and 2020 at winning a seat at the table — Stacey Abrams didn’t win the governorship in Georgia or Andrew Gillum didn’t win in Florida, you know, they didn’t win a legislative chamber 2018 or 2020. And so that was a near miss, that could really be bad. Again, you know, HR-1 would fix a lot of this by setting national rules for how maps get drawn, they would ban partisan gerrymandering by statute. And so there’s a lot of good stuff in there. And you know, frankly, you know, HR-1, you know, the redistricting forms of HR-1 build on a lot of what happened in Michigan, that the stuff that Michigan voters put together, some of the language we read, it will seem strangely familiar in some ways. And so, you know, as you know, so it’s, you know, there to represent it to me was like, point. I mean, I do think like, they’re, you know, Republicans are in a pretty good position. They’ll control about 191 congressional seats, the drawing of 191 Square seats, Democrats will control many less about 49 or 74 if you count New York. They really have the upper hand, you know, unless something comes to pass. And so, you know, I think that this is a true, this is another component of the save the republic aspect, right? You know, there’s the voting suppression laws, but then there’s actually like, even if you had all of that, and you don’t fix redistricting people are just going to be voting under rigged maps, that is not good.
Mark Brewer 27:08
You’ve got districts, you know, moving out of the rust belt, as they call us, into the Sunbelt, which tend to be more Republican areas. And as I recall, I think that Supreme Court decision out of Carolina really gave a green light to gerrymandering. When the court said, you know, this is a political question, we’re not going to decide. So it almost seems like there are no restraints, apart from perhaps the Voting Rights Act, Section two, assuming that survives the current Supreme Court term, that are really a remedy of that…
Michael Li 27:36
There are a few constraints. You can’t draw maps, you know, using race to do … the racial gerrymandering cases, the Supreme Court said you can’t use race as a crude tool or tool to achieve a partisan effect. But you know, they, you know, with the sophistication of map drawing, you know, that may not prove to be that much of a barrier. And it’s also unclear that Supreme Court, like actually sticks with that language. Right. You know, this sort of footnote, you know, by Justice Kagan, and the you know, the court has changed a lot since 2016. And so, but you’re absolutely right. You know, the before. I mean, one of the reasons like Michigan had such gerrymandered maps in 2011 was, you know, the court had deadlocked on whether you could police partisan gerrymandering, and everybody thought, well, they can’t figure it out. So let’s go for the gusto. And, you know, like, let’s see what we can get. And they end up striking down Oh, well, we’ve had a few elections. Right. But now they absolutely know, but there’s no, no barrier. Right. And, you know, in the in the last cycle in the south, you have Republicans packed black voters in a district and said, we’re doing this to comply with the Voting Rights Act. And the Supreme Court said, No, you’re not, you know, go redraw all the maps, but this time, they could pack black voters and Latino voters into districts and say we were doing it because we were packing Democrats in districts and US Supreme Court is that that that’s okay. And that’s the real danger, right? It bears stressing that it’s almost always especially in the South people of color who bear the brunt of gerrymander, right, because there aren’t that many white Democrats in the south, right. They tend to live close to white Republicans. And that makes, that makes gerrymandering sometimes within the same house, and so that kind of experiment and really hard, it’s much easier because of residential segregation to pack and crack people of color.
Mark Brewer 29:12
We’ve seen that same tactic here in Michigan over the years, but hopefully, the new citizens redistricting commission, which Michael Li helped put together for us here in Michigan, will solve that problem. So that’s really our time for this week. I really want to thank Michael Li for his insights into voting rights, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and all the other very important work that he does. Thanks to him and the Brennan Center for all the great work that they do. And thanks for being our guest today.
Michael Li 29:39
Thank you for having me. I hope to make it back out in Michigan when all of this is over.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai