The proposal rewrote federal election laws but also included big changes on campaign finance and ethics — including some that have been blocked before.
Democrats’ self-proclaimed top priority in Congress this year is dead in its current form. But the fight over how Americans vote is still raging. The party’s “For the People Act,” a sprawling bill that would rewrite the rules governing federal elections, has been stalled in the Senate since narrowly passing the House on a near party-line vote earlier this year. But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) came out against the bill in his home-state Charleston Gazette-Mail over the weekend, dooming this version of the legislation in the 50-50 chamber. The fierce backlash to Manchin’s announcement reflects how important the bill was to many Democrats, even more than its label in the House and the Senate: H.R.1 and S.1, the monikers traditionally given to the majority’s top priority. Activists and lawmakers on Capitol Hill cast the legislation as a bulwark against restrictive new Republican proposals on voting in states across the country. But the bill also became a vehicle for all types of government reform — including proposals that have been bogged down in filibusters, partisan opposition and even internal resistance among some Democrats over the last decade, like sweeping rules about “dark money” disclosure and how campaigns can raise their money. Here are some of the provisions that are in the bill — and what could come next. The most heavily emphasized section of the For the People Act would set a slew of required policy mandates for voting in federal elections in every state. This includes mandating online, automatic and same-day voter registration, requiring at least two weeks of in-person early voting, and allowing anyone to vote by mail without needing an excuse. The bill would also require that sworn statements or student IDs could fill ID requirements for casting a ballot, and it requires the use of paper ballots, among its many provisions. Democrats have pushed the voting section with increased urgency since the 2020 election, as several Republican-controlled states passed bills that add new restrictions to their voting systems. The policies would amount to the first major federal overhaul of elections since 2002. It has been repeatedly derided by Republicans as a Democratic “power grab” — and Manchin prominently cites Republican opposition to the bill as why he can’t support it. “Democrats in Congress have proposed a sweeping election reform bill called the For the People Act. This more than 800-page bill has garnered zero Republican support.
