On Tuesday, Congressional Democrats reintroduced the Freedom to Vote Act as their top legislative priority in the 118th Congress. The Freedom to Vote Act is a transformational package of anti-corruption, voting, and ethics reforms that would shine a light on dark money, crack down on corruption in both parties, end partisan gerrymandering, and protect and expand access to the ballot box.
On the other side of the aisle, House Republicans recently introduced their Big Lie bill, the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act. The ACE Act will disenfranchise millions of Americans while opening the floodgates to more dark money and extremist billionaires and corporations buying our elections.
When it comes to protecting democracy, the election denier’s wishlist can’t compete where it doesn’t compare.
Let’s look at the stark differences between the House Democrats’ Freedom to Vote Act and the Republicans’ ACE Act:
Freedom to Vote Act:
-
Improves Voter Access
-
Enacts an automatic voter registration system for each state through the state’s motor vehicle agency and ensures voters in all states have access to online voter registration.
-
Ensures voters have access to at least two weeks of early voting for federal elections, including two weekends, while accommodating small election jurisdictions and vote-by-mail jurisdictions.
-
Ensures every state offers same day registration at a limited number of locations for the 2024 elections and at all polling locations by 2026, allowing election officials, especially in rural areas, time to implement the new requirements.
-
Ensures all voters can request a mail-in ballot, improves the delivery of election mail, and puts in place minimum standards to ensure drop boxes are available and accessible to all voters.
-
-
Ends Partisan Gerrymandering
-
Requires states to abide by specific criteria for congressional redistricting and makes judicial remedies available for states’ failure to comply.
-
Allows states to choose how to develop redistricting plans, including the option of having an independent redistricting commission.
-
-
Ends Dark Money in Elections and Improves Transparency
-
Requires super PACs, 501(c)(4) groups, and other organizations spending money in elections to disclose donors and shuts down the use of transfers between organizations to cloak the identity of contributors.
-
Ensures that political ads sold online have the same transparency and disclosure requirements as ads sold on TV, radio, and satellite.
-
Creates a reporting requirement for federal campaigns to disclose certain foreign contacts.
-
-
Increases Election Integrity
-
Establishes federal protections to insulate nonpartisan state and local officials who administer federal elections from undue partisan interference or control.
-
Strengthens protections for federal election records and election infrastructure in order to protect the integrity and security of ballots and voting systems.
-
Tasks the Election Assistance Commission with developing model training programs to recruit a new generation of election workers and provides dedicated grants for training and recruitment.
-
Requires states to use voting systems that use paper ballots that can be verified by voters and to implement reliable post-election audits. Also provides grants for states to purchase new and more secure voting systems and make cybersecurity improvements.
-
ACE Act:
-
Attacks the Freedom to Vote
-
Restricts the ability of voters to cast a ballot by mail and bans voters from seeking assistance from other people when they return their ballot.
-
Limits the options for voters to register to vote and prohibits federal agencies from engaging in voter registration activities.
-
Overrides popular, effective, locally supported pro-voter policies in Washington, DC, including erecting barriers for voters to register, vote in person or by mail, or have their vote counted, as well as prohibiting same day registration policies that help ensure voter rolls are accurate and up to date.
-
Targets voting restrictions to disproportionately impact voters of color, urban areas, and voters with disabilities.
-
-
More Money and Less Transparency in Elections
-
Allows increased contribution limits and empowers extremist dark money special interest groups that pollute our politics with hundreds of millions of dollars and drown out the voices of regular people.
-
Eliminates transparency requirements designed to prevent corruption and to allow Americans to learn who is trying to influence their vote and their representatives.
-
-
Allows Extreme Gerrymandering
-
Protects extreme gerrymandering, which dilutes the power of certain voters – especially voters of color – and allows politicians to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives.
-
-
Burdens Election Workers
-
Restricts funding to election administrators to maintain accurate and updated voter lists, modernize election systems, and administer safe, transparent, accessible elections.
-
Empowers partisan poll watchers with unfettered access, allowing them to threaten and intimidate voters as well as local election administrators and poll workers, who are already facing unprecedented harassment.
-
Allows partisan politicians to remove non-partisan election officials based on frivolous allegations.
-
###