How would HR 1, which the House passed on March 3rd, change American elections?

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DEMOCRATS PORTRAY it as the saviour of American democracy, Republicans as a betrayal of the Constitution. HR 1—so named because it was the first piece of legislation that the Democratic majority introduced in this Congress—is known as the For the People Act. It is a sweeping campaign-finance, election-law and ethics-reform bill. On March 3rd, it passed the House on a near party-line vote, with no Republican support and just one Democrat voting against.

Like the covid-19 relief bill introduced by President Joe Biden, HR 1 is gargantuan, measuring 791 pages, stuffed with Democratic dreams and ambitions. The most discussed provisions aim to maximise turnout and minimise barriers to voting in federal elections. People would be automatically registered to vote when they apply for state services, such as drivers’ licences or enrolment at public universities. States would have to enable voters to register online. HR 1 would restrict efforts to purge voter rolls of those who are inactive or suspected of being illegitimate. Voting by mail would become universal, as would at least 15 days of early voting—in polling places, wherever possible, accessible by public transport. States with voter-ID laws would have to let people without identification cast ballots provided they sign a sworn affidavit. Felons, whom some states permanently strip of the right to vote, would have these rights restored.

These measures are at the core of the controversy. The debate over what Democrats call “voter suppression” and Republicans call “election integrity” has never been genteel. But Mr Trump’s demagoguery over stuffed ballot boxes and rigged voting-machines has driven it to a new, particularly ugly phase, culminating in the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters aiming to “stop the steal”.

States now have wildly different election laws. Felons in Kentucky are permanently disenfranchised; those in Maine and Vermont can vote from prison. Voters in Georgia and Mississippi must show photo ID to vote; those in Massachusetts and New Jersey need not. Democrats want to harmonise such laws to the same maximalist standard, while Republicans, fuelled by Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the presidential election was stolen, want to make them more restrictive. According to the Brennan Centre, a left-leaning think-tank, so far this year legislators in 43 states have introduced measures to make it harder to vote. Republicans in Iowa want to cut early voting by nine days; those in Georgia want to curtail voting on Sundays, when black Georgians often vote after church, and end automatic voter-registration.

It does not take a hardened cynic to reason that legislators would probably avoid changing election laws in ways that might harm their party. Yet political scientists who try to pinpoint the exact effects of restrictive laws on turnout and election results have difficulty in detecting a clear signal. It is true, for example, that non-white voters are more likely to lack voter identification, and might thus be dissuaded from the polls. But whether this is meaningfully changing the results of elections is hard to determine. Still, Republican justifications for making it harder to vote—to prevent vanishingly rare election fraud—remain flimsy.

The most consequential change in HR 1 is a less-discussed one: states would be barred from gerrymandering districts and would cede boundary-drawing to nonpartisan commissions. The effects of voter-ID laws may be hard to determine; those of partisan gerrymanders are not. A particularly effective gerrymander in Michigan nine years ago yielded nine of 14 seats for Republican congressmen even though Democrats won 53% of the overall vote.

Nearly half of HR 1 covers other ethics and campaign-finance reforms. These include long-held Democratic objectives of requiring greater disclosure for political expenditures channelled through charities; setting up a publicly financed donation-matching scheme to dissuade candidates from courting large-pocketed benefactors; and clamping down on super PACs (nominally independent fundraising outfits without limits on donations). The bill would require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns—a shot at Mr Trump, who refused to do so. None of these measures will appeal to Republicans, who have resisted efforts to restrict fundraising for decades.

Getting through the House is not the real test for HR 1. Because of the filibuster, it needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, meaning that it would need to attract ten Republicans. That seems improbable. Unlike Mr Biden’s stimulus measure, which is being passed through a special measure called budgetary reconciliation, HR 1 would not qualify for expedited treatment because it is not principally about taxing or spending. There are calls for Democrats to break the filibuster for this specific bill, which could be done with a simple majority vote. That would require complete agreement among all 50 Democratic senators, some of whom seem to think the filibuster a quasi-sacred institution. For all the fuss it has stirred, HR 1 may end up dying without any serious debate.

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