Labeled by some as the most ambitious election overhaul in a generation, Democrats’ H.R.1 or the For the People Act of 2021 aims to strengthen voting rights and access. The bill, which easily passed the House, faces its toughest challenge in the Senate. The Republican minority in the Senate is expected to block the bill but that is not the only hurdle. Democrats themselves are secretly splintering over which strategy for passing the bill. This article published by the New York Times is by Nicholas Fandos and Michael Wines:
Democrats in Congress are quietly splintering over how to handle the expansive voting rights bill that they have made a centerpiece of their ambitious legislative agenda, potentially jeopardizing their chances of countering a Republican drive to restrict ballot access in states across the country.
President Biden and leading Democrats have pledged to make the elections overhaul a top priority, even contemplating a bid to upend bedrock Senate rules if necessary to push it through over Republican objections. But they are contending with an undercurrent of reservations in their ranks over how aggressively to try to revamp the nation’s elections and whether, in their zeal to beat back new Republican ballot restrictions moving through the states, their proposed solution might backfire, sowing voting confusion and new political challenges.
The hand-wringing demonstrates how urgent the voting issue has become for both parties since November, when President Donald J. Trump spread false claims of voter fraud that many Republicans believed. In the months since, Republican-led statehouses have advanced a wave of new laws clamping down on ballot access.
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