Marc Elias of Democracy Docket yesterday analyzed Sen. Joe Manchin’s compromise voting rights bill and found it … surprisingly acceptable. And in some ways “an improvement.”
Elias explains:
Much of the new bill is familiar to those concerned about voting rights in our country. The new bill establishes minimum requirements for how states conduct federal elections. It expands voter registration, requires a minimum number of days and hours for early voting and creates a nationwide right to vote by mail.
With respect to voting by mail specifically, the bill rolls back many of the Republicans’ latest disenfranchisement schemes. For example, the bill forbids states from requiring notarization or witnesses to vote by mail. It also requires states to count ballots cast by Election Day if they are received up to seven days after the election. It provides for a free postage system for returned ballots, requires states to notify voters whose ballots are rejected due to a signature omission or mismatch and creates an easy way for voters to cure those ballots.
What makes this new bill exceptional, however, is its attention to several small, but important details that have been raised in the last few months. For example, it requires states to count provisional ballots cast by eligible voters in the wrong precinct but in the correct county. It also imposes a 30-minute limit on wait times for in-person voting. And, in a nod to a significant court victory in Florida, it requires polling locations on college campuses.
To prevent voter intimidation, it prevents frivolous challenges to voter qualifications. This provision alone would undo the worst provision of the Georgia suppression law. It bans the pernicious practice of voter caging as a technique to illegally purge voters. It restricts who can serve as poll observers and how close they can be to a voter (no closer than eight feet). It prevents states from outlawing the provision of food and water to voters waiting in line to vote.
Manchin’s bill imposes standards on gerrymandering as well:
But, the crown jewels of the Freedom to Vote Act are contained in the judicial review provisions. The bill not only creates a specific “right to vote” in federal elections but guarantees it. Under the new bill, states would be prohibited from enacting laws or policies that are “retrogressive” — i.e., that make voting harder. In addition, the bill would subject significant state restrictions on the right to vote to heightened judicial scrutiny. In another small but important improvement, the new bill allows for virtually all voting rights cases to be filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which has the promise of creating a national, uniform pro-democracy jurisprudence.
Put simply, if the new bill is enacted, more citizens will be able to register to vote, vote in person and by mail and have their votes counted. And, those of us fighting suppression laws in court will have the tools necessary to achieve fast, consistent victories for voters when states fail to follow the law.
As drafted, the bill is not without flaws, Elias explains, but no omissions or flaws are deal breakers. “All can be fixed as the legislative process proceeds.” Even while acceding to the demands of voter ID proponents, the bill expands acceptable forms of ID so broad as to render the impact all but moot.
None of that makes any difference if Manchin, failing to find 10 Senate Republicans to join him in passing it, would rather watch his bill go down in flames rather than allow a “carve out” on the filibuster he refuses to extinguish.
Ed Kilgore explores how that might work (New York Magazine):
Manchin explicitly ruled out supporting a voting rights carve-out in a July meeting with Texas Democrats who had flown to Washington to ask for Senate action to preempt the voter suppression law the GOP legislature in their state was trying to (and subsequently did) enact. But if Senate Republicans continue to refuse to consider any voting rights legislation, and Manchin and others grow frustrated, the carve-out remains the least obtrusive measure for dealing with the problem without disturbing the underlying “tradition” any more than it has already been disturbed by earlier actions. The real key is whether all Democrats share the view of most Democrats that preemptive federal voting rights legislation is both a moral imperative and a practical necessity. It’s not something anyone can afford to be too mush-mouthed or lily-livered about in the current political environment. And the time for action is right now, before the Democratic trifecta in Washington becomes a thing of the past, which could very well happen next year.
Time is running out to save our democracy from a Republican Party that has rejected it.