Democrats press for broader voting access as GOP resists

WASHINGTON — Republicans in the U.S. Senate mounted an aggressive case Tuesday against sweeping election and voting-access legislation from Democrats, pushing to roll back proposals for automatic voter registration, 24-hour ballot drop boxes and other changes in a charged national debate.

The legislation, a top priority of Democrats in the aftermath of the divisive 2020 election, would bring about the largest overhaul of U.S. voting in a generation, touching nearly every aspect of the electoral process. It would remove hurdles to voting erected in the name of election security and curtail the influence of big money in politics.

At the end of a long, contentious day, the Rules Committee deadlocked 9-9 over advancing the bill to the full Senate in its current form. That leaves it to Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to try to invoke a special process to force the legislation ahead.

Though it is federal legislation, Republicans are fighting a national campaign against it rooted in state battles to restrict new ways of voting that have unfolded during the pandemic. Just Tuesday, the Arizona Legislature sent the governor a bill that would make it easier to purge infrequent voters from a list of those who automatically get mail-in ballots, the latest battleground state to push through changes likely to take months or years to finally settle in court.

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is so determined to stop the legislation that he made a rare appearance at Tuesday’s Rules Committee session in Washington. McConnell and other Republicans on the panel argued for a wave of amendments against key sections of the bill, which Democrats turned aside in an hours-long voting session.

“We’ll hear a lot of flowery language today,” McConnell said. But he declared, “Our democracy is not in crisis” and he wasn’t about to cede control of elections to new laws “under the false pretense of saving it.”

With Democrats holding the White House and narrow control of Congress, they see the legislation as crucial — perhaps their best chance to counter efforts by state-level Republicans who have seized on former President Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 election to push ballot restrictions.

Yet even as they tout the measure, Democrats find themselves playing defense, unable to push their legislative response to President Joe Biden’s desk. While the elections overhaul has passed the House, there’s no clear path forward in the Senate, which is split 50-50. Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have both said they oppose making changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules, which would be needed to maneuver the bill past unified Republican opposition.

Trump’s election claims, which have only increased in the six months since his defeat, were rejected by Republican as well as Democratic election officials in state after state, by U.S. cybersecurity officials and by courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court. And his attorney general said there was no evidence of fraud that could change the election outcome.

“President Trump told a big lie, one of the biggest ever told. We all know that. Every single person in this room knows that,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, said at the hearing. “And it’s taking root, this big lie is taking root in our country, not just in the minds of his voters but in the laws of the land.”

The laws emerging around the country “are about one thing and one thing alone: making it harder for Americans to vote,” he said.

The Democrats’ measure would not stop every bill being passed in Republican states across the country. But it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for states to press ahead with many of the new rules.

That’s because the legislation would create nationwide rules for early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, standardizing the process. Currently, six states don’t offer early, in-person voting and a third of states still require an excuse — such as illness or planning to be away from home on Election Day — to vote by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.