Even if Democrats somehow find a way to pass a voting rights bill, they would face an uphill battle in trying to block already-enacted maps – as primary elections for those congressional seats up for grabs in next year’s midterms.
The candidate filing period has already opened in Texas and is set to begin soon in North Carolina, noted Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, making courts more reluctant to step in. Congress has made things “messier”, Li said, because it is harder to challenge maps after they go into effect and the electoral calendar is under way.
“If the goal is to fix maps for 2022 … it’s becoming dangerously late in the game,” he said.
Several provisions in the Freedom to Vote Act, one of the voting rights bills in limbo on Capitol Hill, also would require some states to make significant changes to the way elections are run.
It requires states to offer same-day registration (not currently offered in 30 states), online voter registration (not offered in eight states). Election officials need time to implement those changes, and it will be harder on the eve of elections.
If the legislation were enacted, states could probably pivot to implement changes and the more time they have , the smoother that will be, said Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund, who specializes in election administration.
“I think that it’s doable. But if we want to ensure that it’s done correctly and well, it’s going to take some time and definitely some resources. So the sands in the hourglass are slipping away,” she said.
As the window to pass legislation closes, some voting rights activists say the White House is too passive.
After Biden made his strongest signal to date of altering the filibuster, activists had high hopes for getting details on strategy during a 15 November meeting with Kamala Harris, whom Biden asked to lead the White House’s voting rights effort.
Instead, Harris gave six minutes of remarks and then left staff to answer questions. Some attendees were upset and one, Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, told the Guardian of the meeting: “Nothing substantive came out of it, it was very frustrating.”
Like Butler, Albright said he was concerned about the message to Black voters who turned out and helped elect Biden and Harris.
“You’ve got people in the White House and friends of the White House that believe ‘if we get it done, people don’t care how long it took.’ I think that they’re dangerously mistaken,” he said. “People remember that you prioritized everything else above our interests.”