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1 Wendy Weiser, et al., Congress Must Pass the 'For the People Act' 1 (2021)

handle is hein.brennan/bccmpss0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congress Must Pass the 'For the People Act' By Wendy Weiser, Daniel I. Weiner, and Dominique Erney UPDATED APRIL 1, 2021 merican democracy urgently needs repair. We now have a historic opportunity to bring about transformative change. In both houses of Congress, the For the People Act - H.R. 1 in the House and S. 1 in the Senate - was designated as the first bill, a top priority this session. This historic legislation responds to twin crises facing our country: the ongoing attack on democracy- reflected in the assault on the Capitol on January 6 and the subse- quent flood of vote suppression bills across the country - and the urgent demand for racial justice. It is based on the key insight that the best way to defend democracy is to strengthen democracy. If enacted, it would be the most significant voting rights and democracy reform in more than half a century. The 2020 election, like the 2018 midterms, featured historic levels of voter turnout - the highest in over a century, even in the face of a deadly pandemic. But there were also unprecedented efforts to thwart the electoral process and disenfranchise voters, primarily in Black and brown communities, based on lies about voter fraud. Those efforts continue through restrictive voting bills in states across the country. Extreme partisan gerrymander- ing continued to distort far too many races for the House - a plot that is poised to be repeated in the upcoming redistricting cycle unless Congress steps in to prevent it. And despite increased engagement by small campaign donors last year, the most expensive campaigns in Amer- ican historywere still largely bankrolled by a small coterie of individual megadonors and entrenched interests, many of whom were able to keep their identities secret from voters. These problems were more extreme this cycle, but they are certainly not new. For decades, citizens' voices have been silenced through voter suppression, gerrymander- ing, and deceptive tactics. Wealthy campaign donors maintain outsized sway over policy. And the guardrails against discrimination, corruption, and manipulation of the system for personal gain have all been cast aside or eroded. The virulent coronavirus, whose worst effects in terms of both health and the economy have fallen dispro- portionately on communities of color, underscores the urgent need for a functioning democracy that serves all the people. The current assault on voting rights across the country underscores the urgency of reform. Even though our demo- cratic institutions survived an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election, unscrupulous state legislators have seized on the disinformation that fueled this attempt and have introduced an alarming number of regressive bills aimed at restricting access to the ballot, including by sharply restricting access to mail ballots, cutting back on early voting, and slashing voter registration opportunities. To date, more than 360 bills to restrict voting access have Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law 1

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