Preserving democracy through the ballot

President Biden marked the anniversary of Selma's Bloody Sunday in 1965 -- when Alabama state troopers broke up a peaceful civil rights march with clubs, whips and horses -- with a strong call to protect every citizen's right to vote.

“The legacy of the march in Selma is that while nothing can stop a free people from exercising their most sacred power as citizens, there are those who will do everything they can to take that power away,... Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted, ... If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let more people vote.”

Today, the Republican Party has become the enemy of inclusive voting rights. They don't believe they can win if everyone can vote. GOPers have introduced 253 state laws to make voting harder. One version just passed Monday in Iowa. Some really bad state laws are advancing in Georgia.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives has passed, and sent to the Senate, the For the People Act which would create nationwide rules for open and fair federal elections by outlawing many of the tactics that Republicans are using to make voting harder. There's going to be a knock-down, drag-out process which will reveal whether the tiny Democratic majority will act to protect democracy. They'll have to be willing to modify the filibuster rule which enables a minority to block legislation; Senators fear any change would lessen their individual power. Are they for the people, or for their own quaint privileges?

This process is likely to be confusing, so I thought I'd reproduce here an exhaustive catalog from DailyKos Elections of what's in the bill that will be generating all this noise and fury. It's a lot of positive changes. I've divided the list so the various categories of changes are grouped:

Using Congress’ power to regulate Senate and House elections under the Elections Clause and enforce anti-discrimination laws under the 14th Amendment, the bill would:

            Drawing district boundaries: 

    •    Require states to establish nonpartisan redistricting commissions for congressional redistricting;
    •    Establish nonpartisan redistricting criteria such as a partisan fairness provision that courts can enforce starting immediately no matter what institution draws the maps;

           Registration:

    •    Establish automatic voter registration at an array of state agencies;
    •    Establish same-day voter registration;
    •    Allow online voter registration;
    •    Allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register so they'll be on the rolls when they turn 18;
    •    Allow state colleges and universities to serve as registration agencies;
    •    Ban states from purging eligible voters' registration simply for infrequent voting;

           Polling places and procedures:

    •    Establish two weeks of in-person early voting, including availability on Sundays and outside of normal business hours;
    •    Standardize hours within states for opening and closing polling places on Election Day, with exceptions to let cities set longer hours in municipal races;
    •    Require paper ballots filled by hand or machines that use them as official records and let voters verify their choices;
    •    Grant funds to states to upgrade their election security infrastructure;

           Voting by mail:

    •    Provide prepaid postage on mail ballots;
    •    Allow voters to turn in their mail ballot in person if they choose;
    •    Allow voters to track their absentee mail ballots;

           Voting rights for prisoners:

    •    End prison gerrymandering by counting prisoners at their last address (rather than where they're incarcerated) for the purposes of redistricting;
    •    End felony disenfranchisement for those on parole, probation, or post-sentence, and require such citizens to be supplied with registration forms and informed their voting rights have been restored; 

Campaign finance:

    •    Provide public financing for House campaigns in the form of matching small donations at a six-for-one rate;
    •    Expand campaign finance disclosure requirements to mitigate Citizens United;
    •    Ban corporations from spending for campaign purposes unless the corporation has established a process for determining the political will of its shareholders;

Honest administration:

    •    Make it a crime to mislead voters with the intention of preventing them from voting.

That's a lot of new rules. People in California already vote under a voting regime much like this, as do quite a few blue states. It's taken some years to get this huge state onto this system; election administration has become more and more professional despite being underfunded. 

There's no reason except that Republicans think it gives them an advantage that any eligible citizens should find voting hard, anywhere in this country.