GovTrack A Bill A Minute: Two bills federalizing election rules

Welcome to A Bill A Minute from GovTrack - your 60 second breakdown of interesting bills in Congress. I’m Jesse Rifkin. Elections are primarily run by states - not the federal government - and each state does things a little bit differently. No matter which party a member of Congress is in, if they don’t like how a state is running their elections they can try to use their position in Congress to try and override it. Here we have one bill from a Republican and one bill from a Democrat, both of which try to set rules nationwide for elections. Here’s the Republican bill: 18 states plus the District of Columbia allow mail-in ballots to be counted after election day if they arrive after election day so long as they were postmarked by election day.

00:39 - Texas Republican Representative Louie Gohmert has introduced a bill that would require all mail-in ballots for federal offices nationwide arrive by election day. This would primarily help Republicans since especially during the covid-19 pandemic Republicans are much more likely to vote in person while Democrats are much more likely to vote by mail. Here’s the Democratic bill: some states allow most ex-felons to vote but only after they’ve paid off all their court fines and fees. This is particularly important in Florida, one of the most important swing states in presidential elections. New York Democratic Representative Nydia Velazquez has introduced the Removing Monetary Barriers to Voting Act which would institute a nationwide ban on states which have allowed ex-felons to vote from denying their right to vote because that individual owes an outstanding fine, fee or restitution related to conviction of a criminal offense.

01:34 - This would primarily help Democrats since ex-felons tend to disproportionately be members of demographic groups which are more likely to support the Democratic party. I’m not so sure about creating national rules for elections - I mean the last time we did that… Adam Lambert lost to Chris Allen for American Idol. .