Voting rights protections needed

Voting rights are under assault in a number of mostly Republican-led states. Much of it is being done under the guise of "election integrity" and fraud reduction. But that's just the window dressing. What these bills are mostly about is making it harder for Americans to vote.

The congressional Democrats' answer to that was a sprawling, complex bill that would have created national voting standards and tackled campaign finance, where dark money has come to dominate. It was far from a perfect bill. And Senate Republicans used the filibuster power of their minority to block so much as a debate on its merits.

Their chief objection? States should be allowed to run their elections the way they want. Yet the sordid history of how some states ran elections in the past makes that absurd on its face. And now, left to their own devices, some of these states are imposing new restrictions as fast as they can. In Georgia, newly adopted laws make absentee voting harder, limit ballot drop boxes, enable state officials to take over local election boards if they see fit, and even make it a criminal offense to give water to voters standing in line.

In Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered lawmakers into special session to reconsider a bill that would have banned drive-through voting, limited voting hours, made absentee voting more difficult and empowered partisan poll watchers.

In Iowa the Republican governor has signed a bill that closes the polls an hour early, and lops nine days off the early voting period. The new law makes absentee voting more difficult and, more disturbingly, reduces county auditors' ability to run local elections. All this has happened without any evidence of voter fraud, either in Iowa or any other state.

It should be clear that some national floor of voting standards must be re-established. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's compromise proposal is a good place to start an honest, hopefully bipartisan debate. Narrower than the "For the People Act" that the Senate GOP blocked, this proposal would create automatic voter registration, make Election Day a federal holiday, require a minimum 15-day early voting period (including weekends) and institute model training programs for election officials. It would end random voter roll purges, instead using state and federal documents to keep voter rolls updated. It also would take on a narrower set of needed campaign finance and ethics reforms.

What's in it for Republicans? Something they have said would be an absolute necessity for election integrity: voter ID. That is a major olive branch to Republicans, one many Democrats are dubious about.

Nevertheless, the proposal has drawn some powerful backers, from former President Barack Obama to voting rights activist Stacey Abrams.

"I give Sen. Manchin credit for trying really hard to find common ground," Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith told an editorial writer. "I don't agree with everything in his proposal. But the point of negotiations is to work out your differences. This is a place to start. Many of the measures in it are already in place in Minnesota, which is why we have the highest voter participation in the country."

Obama, Abrams, Smith and others see enough value in the benefits of the compromise proposal to at least begin serious talks on it. Regrettably, Republicans have drawn the same line in the sand on the Manchin proposal as on the broader bill. No debate, no compromise. No vote.

That Americans should have equal access to the ballot should have been a long-settled issue. It should not depend on which state or county one lives in. Most of the reforms in the Manchin bill amount to common sense. Why shouldn't there be automatic voter registration, unless the intent is to create obstacles that weed out some potential voters? Can anyone doubt the ease or value that mail-in balloting provided in the depths of the pandemic?

There is no right that should be more jealously guarded than the right to vote, and we should be wary of those who would make it more difficult for some.