The Senate will vote on a bill that would dramatically change how elections are run next month, the body’s top Democrat said Friday.
S. 1, also known as the For the People Act, will be voted on during the last full week in June, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Democratic colleagues in a memorandum.
Schumer called the bill, which mirrors a version the House of Representatives passed in March, “legislation that is essential to defending our democracy, reducing the influence of dark money and powerful special interests, and stopping the wave of Republican voter suppression happening in states across the country.”
The act would federalize components of the election system, eliminating nearly all qualifications such as photo identification. It would also require states to implement a system of automatic voter registration and to allow same-day registration on any day voting is allowed.
Critics have promised to bring a flood of lawsuits if it’s passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.
“In my state in Oklahoma, we have great voting engagement. We want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. S1 takes away a state’s ability to hold people accountable for cheating,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told colleagues on the Senate floor this month.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) has described the bill as “a massive federal takeover of elections.”
Democrats largely support the legislation.
“The freedom to vote is fundamental to all of our freedoms. It is how Americans control their government and hold their elected officials accountable,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told a Senate Rules Committee hearing on May 11.
