OPINION:
Although the Republican-backed SAVE America Act has faced intense scrutiny from the mainstream media since it was first proposed, the press has given the For the People Act hardly any attention. This bill has been the leading election proposal of congressional Democrats for the better part of the past decade.
The For the People Act passed the House of Representatives the last time Democrats controlled that chamber, but only the filibuster prevented it from being considered in the Senate.
Unlike the SAVE America Act, the For the People Act is truly radical. It would not merely tinker with a few election rules; it would fundamentally restructure American elections.
Given that Democrats could very well win control of one or both houses of Congress later this year and resume their push for this extreme overhaul of American elections, a close examination of the legislation is long overdue.
Maybe the most extreme provision of this bill, and the one that would likely draw the biggest public backlash, is the one establishing public financing of campaigns.
The program would be similar to public campaign finance programs already in existence across the country. After meeting minimum qualifications, certain small-dollar contributions to candidates for Congress would be matched with public dollars.
Although advocates of these programs promise they will eliminate corruption and improve the quality of political discourse, history shows otherwise.
In fact, they usually end up serving as little more than a government subsidy for political consultants or a hotbed of corruption where unsavory political actors, through straw donor schemes, can get their hands on thousands — and sometimes millions — of taxpayer dollars.
The New York City public campaign finance program, for instance, has been rocked by scandal after scandal since it was established more than 30 years ago. As recently as May 14, a former candidate was charged by federal prosecutors with misusing public funds in her 2025 run for New York City public advocate.
This candidate is only the latest of many to have been accused of misusing public campaign funds in the program’s history.
Equally radical is the For the People Act requirement for same-day voter registration. Under this provision, voters would be permitted to register to vote and cast a ballot — all on the day of the election. All commonsense registration checks and safeguards on voter eligibility would be eliminated.
Same-day registration was too radical even for the voters of deep-blue New York state to swallow. In 2021, New Yorkers defeated a referendum to amend the state constitution to allow for same-day voter registration. Yet this remains a key provision in the For the People Act.
Finally, the bill mandates so-called independent redistricting for congressional seats, including a ban on mid-decade redistricting and a requirement that states establish “independent” panels to draw congressional districts.
The hypocrisy is galling when you consider that, just this year, blue state leaders such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom killed off their states’ independent redistricting panels, and others, such as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, have started the process to change the state constitution to allow for the return of partisan gerrymandering in 2028.
The last time the For the People Act came before the full House for a vote, every Republican member voted against it — and for good reason, because so many of the bill’s leading provisions are far outside anyone’s notion of the sensible center of American politics.
In just a few months, Americans will begin voting in the midterm elections. As in other recent election cycles, election policy will once again be a hotly debated topic, and the debate is not just between the SAVE America Act and the status quo. It is also a contest between two visions of how America should run its elections.
One offers increased electoral safeguards with overwhelming public support; the other would completely upend our current system and impose policies that have struggled to gain support even in the country’s bluest states.
Before voting begins this fall, the most radical provisions of the Democrats’ For the People Act deserve scrutiny from journalists, editorial boards and, most important, voters.
• Joseph Burns is a Republican election lawyer and a partner at Holtzman Vogel.
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