Panelists urge national voting regulations as states pass restrictive laws

Congress must pass national voting rights legislation in the face of state laws that could make it harder to vote, panelists said during a virtual National Press Club Newsmaker on Thursday.

After the 2020 election, several states either passed or are debating bills that panelists said would restrict voting access. The bills would curb mail-in ballots and same-day voter registration and ban ballot drop boxes, among other provisions. They would do nothing to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Advocates have said the legislation is necessary for election integrity.

To try and pre-empt those state bills, Congress has debated various pieces of national legislation, and panelists noted the popularity of many of their provisions.

“The American people are saying yes to accessible and safe voting, yes to making our elections fair and more transparent, to ensure that each ballot cast is counted and certified, and yes to democracy,” said Diana Philip, chief of staff at the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of 75 civil rights and social justice groups.

Elsewhere, President Joe Biden has said some state-level election bills pose a “grave threat to America’s democracy,” and urged action. But progress looks unlikely in the evenly divided U.S. Senate, despite House passage of voting rights, as Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has said she did not support changing the chamber’s filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation.

Taifa Smith Butler, president of New York-based think tank Demos, which conducts research on voting rights and money in politics, said the filibuster is a vestige of the country’s segregated past, and that Senate rules cannot stand in the way of progress.

“Are we going to stand on the right side of history when we think about an inclusive democracy?” she said. Philip said “uniform national rules” for elections would help restore provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court.

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of the watchdog and advocacy group Common Cause, blamed disinformation from social media and former President Donald Trump for undermining the public’s confidence in elections and mail-in voting, which proved to be highly effective in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump’s allegations of voter fraud from mail-in voting have then been amplified by his followers, she said, leading to legislation in states that looks to make it more difficult.

“This reversal of expansive vote by mail, rules that worked very well in 2020, is driven in no small part by the former President’s war on mail-in voting, because he claimed falsely that it led to fraud,” Flynn said.

Smith Butler warned of the impact on minority communities if states are able to act without national oversight or accountability and urged people to “fight like hell” to prevent it.

“If we again do not do anything to pre-empt and change what has already been codified, unchecked by our federal government, through the erosion of our Voting Rights Act through the Supreme Court, we will continue to say to Black and brown communities across this nation that your vote does not matter,” she said.