Good morning from the Senate, where the group of 8 Senate Dems who have spent the last several weeks working on a revised voting/democracy reform bill are set to unveil their final product, called the Freedom to Vote Act, a slimmed-down HR1/S1 cnn.com/2021/09/14/pol…
While the text of the bill is not yet out, it reportedly *does* include a voter ID req, Election Day as a holiday, automatic/same-day registration, a floor for required early voting/no-excuse absentee + anti-gerrymandering and campaign finance provisions cnn.com/2021/09/14/pol…
^Needless to say, it'll be a very, very heavy lift to get any Republicans on board with the broad of strokes of this proposal, despite the presence of (what I expect) is a non-strict, non-photo ID requirement for voting
Blog post from @Nedfoley expressing concern about the (reported) same-day registration requirement in the compromise bill. Currently, under half of US states + DC have SDR on Election Day or during early voting electionlawblog.org/?p=124561
@Nedfoley Will try to figure out today whether this has any provisions related to election subversion, like the Preventing Election Subversion Act (aimed at protecting election off'ls) or the Protecting Election Administration from Interference Act, which relates to chain of custody
The bill text/summary for the Freedom to Vote Act is out. The 3 sections are 1) voter access & election administration 2) election integrity and 3) civic participation empowerment. It cuts out a lot of the campaign finance/ethics stuff from the original S1 klobuchar.senate.gov/public/_cache/… 
Overall, still a lot of the same federal (and many unfunded) mandates for states to massively expand voter reg/voting opportunities as were in S1
Seeing that it has grants for AVR, poll worker training/recruitment, voting system & elex security upgrades, but not other aspects
Seeing that it has grants for AVR, poll worker training/recruitment, voting system & elex security upgrades, but not other aspects
Lots going on here re: redistricting. Has a ban on mid-decade redistricting and says states should redistrict w/ these ranked criteria:
-Equal population
-Complying w/ VRA
-Communities of interest
-Cannot favor one political party (as proven by computer modeling)
-Equal population
-Complying w/ VRA
-Communities of interest
-Cannot favor one political party (as proven by computer modeling)
The Freedom to Vote Act does *not* require states to adopt independent redistricting commissions, it basically gives them a set of criteria and requirements to work backward from which they can achieve by a commission or not
On election subversion, it does include elements from previous bills such as 1) protection for local officials from being fired w/o cause 2) federal bans on intimidation towards officials & 3) stronger protections for chain of custody of election materials (cc: @Nate_Cohn)
@Nate_Cohn Re: the voter requirement, it is non-photo and non-strict. Acceptable docs include gov't issued photo IDs, student IDs, gun permits, voter reg cards, Medicare/SNAP/TANF cards, birth certificates, debit cards, pay stubs, utility bills, mortgage/loan documents, bank statements, etc
.@SenatorRomney told me just now that he hasn’t read the bill (the Manchin-approved freedom to vote act) yet, says “we’re taking a look at it.”
And @SenatorCollins: “The fundamental problem of federalizing state elections appears to remain in the bill. I represent a state with one of the highest turnouts in the country…& I do not see why they should have to jettison its system and adopt a new federally mandated system.”
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
