The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is no friend of Republicans or conservatives, but it has traditionally been a defender of free speech and First Amendment rights, especially for marginalized and unpopular speakers.  While there are signs that its traditional support for civil liberties is waning and being replaced by support for liberal policy goals (the current pop-up on their website reads: "We need you with us: Donate monthly to fight Trump's attacks on people's rights."), the ACLU still will support some First Amendment rights.  For example, earlier this month, the ACLU sent a letter to the House Rules Committee opposing H.R. 1 despite supporting many of its election administration "reforms":

It is rare for a Senate Majority Leader to address legislation in the House.  That has changed with the unprecedented assault on our Democracy undertaken by the Democrats in the form of HR 1.  Or as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it in a speech today, "The Democrat Politician Protection Act":

This week, Democrats in the House are expected to pass the sweeping legislation I call the Democrat Politician Protection Act. It aims to give Washington D.C. vast new control over elections, give tax dollars to political campaigns, and give election lawyers more opportunities to determine the outcome of elections. 

Lawyers Democracy Fund's board member Joanne Young published an op-ed today cataloguing the many problems with California's automatic, or mandatory, voter registration system, which is especially relevant as the House debates and votes on H.R. 1 this week.  H.R. 1 would require all states to adopt automatic voter registration (AVR) according to the bill's requirements, regardless of each state's existing laws.  It would also require a massive data dump from various government databases in the states' voter registration systems, which would introduce errors in the voter registration databases that would only be exacerbated by the new required AVR systems.

The Democrat Politician Protection Act, or as it is officially called HR 1, the For the People Act of 2019, is being rushed to the House floor this week.  This unprecedented rewriting of all aspects of elections is ironic, because it does many things that the Democrats have screamed about for years. 

In today's markup of House Resolution 1, the House Committee on Administration defeated on party-line votes all amendments offered by the three Republican members to attempt to fix problems with the bill. The RNLA live-tweeted the markup, and here are some highlights (or, lowlights):

Yesterday was an emotional hearing of the North Carolina election board that generated a fair result, a new election for North Carolina’s ninth Congressional District as a result of ballot harvesting. “Ballot harvesting” is a practice in which paid or organized political operatives collect absentee ballots from voters to whom they have no familial connection and drop them off at a polling place or election office. As happened in North Carolina, critics complain that such actions leave open opportunities for tampering and taking advantage of society’s most vulnerable and those who have no interest in voting.

Yesterday, Mother Jones reported that current FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub has decided to vote against allowing the FEC to defend its positions in court.  Because the FEC currently only has four members and the affirmative votes of four members are required for the FEC to take any official action, this means that Chair Weintraub will prevent the FEC from appearing in court to defend its position.  

California has agreed via settlement to investigate its DMV's latest mishandling of voter registration information:

On Dec. 14, DMV officials revealed that staff members had not transmitted voter registration files for 589 people whose applications or updated applications were filled out before the close of registration for the Nov. 6 statewide election. At the time, state officials could not confirm whether any of those voters had been turned away on election day, or if any had cast last-minute provisional ballots that were rejected in the final tally.

Monday’s settlement raises the possibility that a full investigation of the delayed voter registration documents could reveal races in which the outcome might have changed had those voters been allowed to participate. State officials now have 60 days to complete an investigation into the identity of those voters and why DMV staff members failed to transmit the files in a timely fashion.

As we wrote last week, Lawyers Democracy Fund (LDF) has a full analysis of the election administration portions of HR 1 and how they would centralize control of elections and harm election integrity.  LDF has also released a shorter document highlighting the top ten problems with HR 1:

Lawyers Democracy Fund (LDF) has just released a summary and comprehensive analysis of House Democrats' attempt to commandeer America's elections. In short, the massive compilation of major election chances is being pushed through the House of Representatives, likely without any substantive hearings, expert testimony from election officials, or meaningful markup and on a blatantly partisan basis. As LDF describes: