Klobuchar: Infrastructure bill could include voting procedures

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On Sunday, a key senator said that Congressional Democrats are exploring ways to include fiscal incentives for states to expand access to voting as part of a multibillion-dollar infrastructure bill.

Democrats are struggling to pass a landmark electoral reform bill in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans remain united in their opposition, and rules require 60 votes to advance on most legislation.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Rules Committee, said in an interview that the priority remains to pass legislation known as the Act for the People, which would usher in minimum voting standards in the United States such as automatic registration and at the same time. Today for voters, early voting and absentee voting without excuse.

But Klobuchar noted that Democrats could also use the process known as reconciliation to drive fiscal incentives for states to adopt certain reforms. Election systems are allocated to critical infrastructure on a par with the country’s power plants, banks and dams.

“You can do the electoral infrastructure there because that’s part of the infrastructure,” Klobuchar said. “It’s not a replacement for the For the People Act, but it’s something we can start working on immediately and get to work on it now.”

Pushing election-related measures into the infrastructure bill would be a high-risk gambit with no guarantee of success.

Under the Congressional budget process, some measures on revenue, spending and debt can be approved by a minimum of 51 votes, which is why Democrats are going after it. This process allows them to bypass the near-certain disruption from the Republicans.

But there’s a problem: a nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian can rule to repeal any item not directly related to the budget, or items in which the budget’s effect is “only incidental” to intended policy changes.

Ultimately, Democrats will not achieve their goal of federal standards through the infrastructure bill alone, but they can motivate some states to move in that direction.

“Money with incentives has passed before. So let’s see what we can get,” Klobuchar said. But again, this is only part of it. See, that’s not all, is it? But it’s a tool you don’t want to give up.”

President Joe Biden’s big infrastructure proposals are moving through Congress on different paths — potentially complementing or undermining each other. A bipartisan group of senators has unveiled a package of nearly $1 trillion in traditional road and bridge infrastructure, broadband and some climate change investment. The rest of Biden’s ideas are bundled into a broader multibillion-dollar package that Democrats could agree to on their own.

Republicans are united against the larger infrastructure package and the election law. The latter says the latter represents a Democrats’ seizure of power that amounts to a federal seizure of elections, which are administered at the state and local levels.

Last month, Republicans stopped trying to debate the bill, and Democrats will have to decide whether they want to change Senate rules for the bill’s eventual passage. At least two Democratic senators, Kirsten Senema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have said they oppose repealing the disruption rule.

Klobuchar was in Georgia ahead of a rare field hearing for the Senate Rules Committee, which will take place Monday at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The hearing is part of a sustained push by Klobuchar and his fellow Democrats to pass their election bill. They say federal voting standards are needed to counter a raft of new laws that Republican lawmakers in several states, including Georgia, have pushed to toughen voting rules.

Her visit also included an event on Sunday with voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams. The two were due to meet at a polling station in an Atlanta suburb, where voters waited in long lines during early voting last year.

Georgia Republicans have disputed claims that their bill, known as SB 202, is suppressing voters, noting that the state introduces many of the measures Democrats seek in the federal bill, such as early voting, unexcused absentee voting and automatic registration.

Campaign spokesman for Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who will be re-elected next year, described Sunday’s event and Monday’s hearing as “nothing more than political theater.”

“Following the astonishing failure to pass an unconstitutional federal takeover of the election in Washington, Democrats are now using one public relations stunt after another to garner support for their far-left and deeply unpopular agenda,” Kemp spokesman Tate Mitchell said. “SB 202 led the country in enacting logical electoral reforms, and any honest look at the bill reveals that.”

While some of the more controversial aspects of the Georgia bill were rescinded during the legislative process, what passed was notable in its scope and for the new expanded powers granted to the state over local election offices.

The bill also adds a voter ID requirement for mail-in ballots, shortens the time period for requesting a mail-in ballot, leads to fewer ballot boxes available in Metro Atlanta and prohibits the distribution of food and water by various groups and organizations to voters standing in line to cast their vote. Several lawsuits have been brought due to the law, including one by the US Department of Justice.

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