Fix What You Can Fix

 As I wrote about the other day, Yglesias thinks there is a decent chance you could pass a bipartisan bill to fix the Electoral Count Act. 

In it, he focuses on a few things that are important to discuss.

I think he downplays the pernicious impact that the Roberts' Court has had on democratic rights. Here is his quick take:

Virtually everything in Democrats’ voting rights package reflects a fairly longstanding grievance with some Roberts Court decision: in Citizens United, the court took a view of campaign finance law that Democrats disagree with; in Shelby County, it greatly weakened the Voting Rights Act; and in Rucho v. Common Cause, the court declined to strike down partisan gerrymandering as unconstitutional.

From there, he quickly moves on. But the Roberts' Court's decisions have had major impacts on the sanctity of voting rights. Hopefully, the courts will untangle some of the worst efforts at partisan and racial gerrymandering, but after that basket of decisions, does anyone have any confidence of that?

Where I agree with Yglesias is that we are likely overstating the actual impact of many of these impediments to voting that Republicans are coughing up. He cites studies that show that Voter ID laws have very narrow impacts, although a great many elections have very narrow outcomes. This is why Democrats oppose them and Republicans support them. If you moved a few hundred thousand votes around in 2020, Trump would still be president. 

The stronger argument is that Trump voters are typically the low-information, irregular voters that may or may not show up without Trump on the ballot. The assumption of making it harder for people to vote is that this will fall disproportionately on "working class" voters who can't afford to stand in line for hours. (It would be interesting to see if Republicans would fold making Election Day a national holiday into a ECA reform.) There's gathering evidence that making it harder to vote could very well backfire on Republicans, as their electoral coalition shifts from suburbs to the exurbs.

We should absolutely be making is easier to vote, as the John Lewis Act does. However, the most important issues that have to be solved are the ones that will prevent chaos in 2024: fixing the Electoral Count Act so that a mob cannot disrupt the certification of the election and possibly short-circuiting efforts to allow partisan legislatures to override the will of the voters. 

Who knows, maybe you can get enough Republicans on board with that.