A key GOP lawmaker made clear in an interview published Thursday that Republicans plan to push for a pair of their voting-related bills when they take control of both chambers of Congress and the White House next month.
Congressman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), who campaigned for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), chairs the Committee on House Administration. He shared the GOP’s plans for the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act in comments to The Associated Press.
“As we look to the new year with unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not only out of committee, but across the House floor and into law,” he said. “We need to improve Americans’ confidence in elections.”
The AP pointed out that “Republicans are likely to face opposition from Democrats and have little wiggle room with their narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. Steil said he expects there will be ‘some reforms and tweaks’ to the original proposals and hopes Democrats will work with Republicans to refine and ultimately support them.”
Steil’s ACE Act, which “includes nearly 50 standalone bills sponsored by members of the House Republican Conference,” is “the most conservative election integrity bill to be seriously considered in the House in over 20 years,” according to his committee.
Dozens of organizations wrote to Steil and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, last year that “we believe Congress has an important role to play in safeguarding free and fair elections and ensuring all Americans have the freedom to vote. Rather than furthering this goal, the ACE Act would be a substantial step backwards.”
“The act would nationalize harmful and unnecessary restrictions on voting rights and roll back many of Washington, D.C.’s current pro-voter laws,” the coalition explained. “Instead of proceeding with this legislation, Congress should take actions that will help voters and promote democracy such as passing legislation that will strengthen protections against discrimination in voting and expand access to the ballot for all communities.”
While that bill didn’t get a floor vote in the House this session, Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) SAVE Act did — it was passed by the House 221-198 in July. Every Republican present voted for the bill and all but five House Democrats rejected it.
However, Democrats narrowly controlled the Senate, so the SAVE Act — which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections — never went further in Congress, despite GOP attempts to tie it to government funding.
Morelle suggested to the AP there could be bipartisan support for some voting policies — such as federal funding for election offices, restricting foreign money in U.S. races, and possibly even identification requirements with certain protections for voters — but he also called out Republicans for spreading conspiracy theories about widespread voting by noncitizens in November.
“You haven’t heard a word about this since Election Day,” he noted. “It’s an Election Day miracle that suddenly the thing that they had spent an inordinate amount of time describing as a rampant problem, epidemic problem, didn’t exist at all.”
Speaking broadly about voting bills, Morelle told the AP that “our view and the Republicans’ view is very different on this point.”
“They have spent most of the time in the last two years and beyond really restricting the rights of people to get to ballots — and that’s at the state level and the federal level,” he added. “And the SAVE Act and the ACE Act both do that — make it harder for people to vote.”
Responding to the reporting on social media Thursday, lawyer and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias said that “Trump is an autocrat. The GOP wants these ‘changes’ to spread disinformation, justify election denialism, and gain partisan advantage.”
“Democrats need to oppose this effort,” he warned. “If the GOP enacts new voter suppression laws, I can promise we will sue and win.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.