As Democrats take a second shot at passing voting rights legislation after their sweeping election overhaul legislation was blocked in the Senate, Republicans are signaling that they will not support their smaller-scale but still significant plan B.
The House will vote this week on H.R. 4, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after the late Georgia representative and civil rights icon. Unlike the H.R. 1/S. 1, the For the People Act, which would have imposed a swath of restrictions on how states administer elections, the bill aims to counter a conservative Supreme Court by bolstering the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“H.R. 4 is just another attempt to exert federal control over states and localities. It’s a partisan power grab,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said Monday in a House Rules Committee hearing.
Fifteen House Republicans led by New York Rep. Claudia Tenney, who co-chairs the House Election Integrity Caucus, sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday opposing the bill.
HOUSE DEMOCRATS PASS VOTING BILL THAT AIMS TO UPEND SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
“Moving from consideration of H.R. 1 to H.R. 4 is a classic bait and switch that will continue to undermine confidence in the democratic process and make elections less secure,” the 15 lawmakers wrote, urging her to “work in a bipartisan fashion with Republicans on targeted election reforms that respect our Constitution as well as the primary role of states in administering elections.”
In response to the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that determined preclearance requirements in the 1965 Voting Rights Act were unconstitutional because they were no longer responsive to current conditions, the bill in part would create a new formula to determine which states need federal preclearance before implementing changes in voting requirements.
It would empower federal authorities to review changes in specific practices, including implementing voter identification laws and the reduction of multilingual voting materials.
And in response to the Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee case that the Supreme court decided earlier this summer, which created a higher standard to challenge voting laws on the basis of racial discrimination, the bill would codify a lower, previously used court standard used to rule on discrimination challenges.
Republicans say the changes are unnecessary.
“If you listen to my Democratic colleagues, you would believe that the Voting Rights Act was not enforced. It is,” Texas Rep. Chip Roy said at the Capitol on Monday. “It’s actually a disservice to those who have fought to defend the Voting Rights Act to allow this to be politicized the way by this bunch in this House of Representatives.”
“Democrats are now trying a back-door attempt at nationalizing our elections to ensure their party remains in power for years to come,” Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, the Republican ranking member on the Committee on House Administration, said in a statement last week. “Thankfully, today, voting discrimination and suppression remain against the law. Every eligible voter who wants to vote must be permitted to cast a ballot and their vote be counted. 2021 isn’t 1965, and Republicans celebrate the progress we’ve made since then.
The Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House, drafted a list of concerns about the bill shared with the Washington Examiner. Among their criticisms was the new formula determining which states must go to the federal government for preclearance for voting changes. A 25-year window for counting voting rights violations is “unfair and impractical,” the group said, adding that it counts settlements as an admission of guilt for counting a violation.
Banks, the RSC’s chairman, called both the voting rights legislation and infrastructure legislation that Democrats brought forward this week “shameful,” tweeting that it would “federalize elections to take control from the states to help Dems win on Election Day.”
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Concern about state power and swipes at the House speaker are at the core of the message against the bill in the right-wing political sphere. Conservative outside political groups have also mobilized against the bill. Statements from both the Honest Elections Project and Heritage Action dubbed the bill a “Pelosi power grab.”
A version of the bill passed the House during the last Congress in 2019, with only one Republican, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, joining with Democrats to vote for it. His office did not immediately respond to an inquiry on his position on this session’s version of the bill.
