To Save Our Democracy, We Need to Pass the For The People Act
By Senator Jeff Merkley
On January 6, Americans across the nation watched in horror as a violent mob descended on the Capitol, breaching the Senate Chamber to hunt the Vice President of the United States and members of Congress and overturn the results of a free and fair election. It was disturbing, premeditated, and deadly—but it was far from the first attack on the heart of our democracy.
The powerful and the privileged have slowly and quietly been capturing Washington and our politics for decades, by tipping the scales in election after election through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and dark money. They’ve done this with the goal of empowering politicians who will cater to their needs at the expense of the majority of the American people. And because they have to win elections to stay in power, they’ve done everything they can to divide us and keep Americans from making their voices heard.
We saw it in the lead up to the presidential election, when state election officials purged hundreds of thousands of voters—disproportionately likely to be minority voters—from the rolls. We’ve seen it in the extreme partisan gerrymandering that has allowed politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around. And we see it in the massive sums of dark money that flow into Super PACs and shadow organizations to fund misleading attack ads that stoke fears among the American people.
One would hope that the shocking violent attack on our democracy would bring people together to stand for democracy as the only legitimate way to decide who governs, but no. Since the Georgia runoffs, efforts by Republican legislators to undermine Americans’ constitution right to choose their representatives has accelerated at a terrifying clip.
According to the Brennan Center, 253 bills across 43 states were introduced between January 2021 and the end of February to block people’s right to vote. That’s more than four times as many bills restricting people’s voting rights as were enacted in all of 2020. And more are being introduced. Instead of responding to the tremendous victory of Black organizing power and the cross-racial coalition that elected Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff by adjusting their policies to win over these voters, legislators across America have responded by proposing new laws to restrict people’s ability to vote.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that if we want America to remain a democratic republic, we have a lot of work ahead of us. That’s why I am leading the effort to pass the For The People Act, the most important legislation since the Voting Rights Act to make our nation’s promise of government of the people, by the people, and for the people a reality.
The For The People Act repairs major cracks in our democracy through four key areas: ensuring that Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote; ending the dominant role of secret, wealthy donors in campaigns; ending gerrymandering; and putting ethics back at the heart of governance. Polling shows that Americans agree—it’s time to take back our democracy. In new polling from Data for Progress, 67% of all likely voters say they support the For The People Act—including a majority of Republicans, as well as 68% of Independent voters and 77% of Democrats.
When passed, the For The People Act would enact many long-overdue, common-sense reforms to make voting easier and get big money out of politics.
Instead of making voters deal with confusing voter registration laws every November, the For The People Act would automatically register new voters and let those who haven’t yet registered register on election day.
It would address our nation’s corrupt and broken campaign finance system by requiring SuperPACs to disclose their big donors, matching campaigns’ grassroots contributions from a fund supported by corporate wrongdoers’ fines and settlements, and giving Americans the transparency they deserve.
And after the most corrupt administration in our lifetimes, the For The People Act would prevent corrupt figures like Donald Trump from taking advantage of the American people, by requiring presidential candidates to disclose 10 years of tax returns and ensuring the President and Vice President actually follow conflict-of-interest rules.
There’s a reason our founders minted the first three words of the U.S. Constitution—We the People—in supersized letters. The whole idea behind the Constitution is that the American people get to decide. We decide who should govern. We decide if they’re doing a good job and deserve to stay in office, or if they should be replaced.
That We the People vision is destroyed if a violent mob installs a losing candidate. But it’s also destroyed if elections are so compromised by voter suppression, dark money, and gerrymandering that the people can’t get the representatives they actually want. We dodged the first bullet on January 6, but we’re still very much in danger of losing our democracy to the second.
This year may be our last chance—to pass the For the People Act, to show that small-d democracy can still work and produce results for the American people, and make sure We the People decide. Let’s get it done.
Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) is a Senator from Oregon.
Survey Methodology
From January 15 to January 19, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1164 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±2.9 percentage points.