Keystone Today

Advocates for secure election laws are on the lookout for what could be large-scale additions to legislation in Congress, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (House Resolution 4), now that the For the People Act (House Resolution 1 and Senate Bill 1) appears dead, according to the National Review.

Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican former Virginia attorney general and national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, said he expects Democrats, who have been behind the push for HR 1, to insert at least part of it into HR 4, but it remains to be seen how far they will go.

“Lewis died last year, July 17, so I would expect we’ll know more on or close to that date,” he told Keystone Today.

Sen. Jake Corman | Wikimedia Commons

The legislation bearing Lewis' name was a response to the 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, which ruled unconstitutional Congress’ pre-clearance authority over proposed changes to state-level election laws under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  

The For the People Act has been locked up in a Senate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans by the opposition of West Virginia moderate Democrat U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, as well as the filibuster rule, which requires 60 senators to agreed to end debate on legislation and bring it up for a vote. 

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) recently vetoed House Bill 1300, the Voting Rights Protection Act, but legislative leaders in the Republican-controlled General Assembly promise to be back in the fall with voter reform measures. They are also vowing to push for a proposed constitutional amendment that requires voter ID, one of the provisions in HB 1300, and one that a recent poll from a local college, Franklin & Marshall, shows has the support of 74% of Pennsylvania voters.

“In spite of this setback, Senate Republicans will continue our efforts to strengthen our election system, improve voter participation and access, and support our counties in managing our elections,” Senate President Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte) and Majority Leader Kim Ward (R-Hempfield Township) said in statement released after Wolf’s veto of the legislation. “Our special committee on election integrity and reform identified a more limited set of recommendations that were approved with bipartisan support. Those recommendations will form the basis of our election reform efforts in the fall.”

Many of the Pennsylvania election maneuvers follow former President Donald Trump's baseless arguments that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election. Trump lost Pennsylvania to now-President Joe Biden by more than 80,000 votes.

The John Lewis measure, if it includes major provisions from the For the People Act, could threaten proposed election reforms in Pennsylvania, and recently enacted reforms in other states, Cuccinelli warns, many of which include voter ID requirements.

“Voter ID has been targeted by those who oppose reform, but lately some Democrats including Stacey Abrams were behind a Manchin Voter ID proposal that was along the same lines as that in the Pennsylvania bill,” Cuccinelli told Keystone Today. “They are starting to see from the polls that charges of voter suppression and racism are not moving the needle on the debate.”

The efforts in Pennsylvania and other states were recently boosted by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, saying that two Arizona voting rules did not violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race. One rule restricts third-party collection of mail-in ballots -- also known as ballot harvesting -- and the other invalidates votes cast in the wrong precinct on Election Day.