Five Years Later, the Opportunity Again Looms Ahead to Enact Historic Democracy Reforms
In 2022, Congress came within two votes of passing historic democracy reform legislation. 
The effort to enact the legislation – H.R. 1 in the House – was a three-year effort that culminated in January 2022 when the Senate failed by two votes – those of Democrats Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Manchin (WV) – to adopt a limited exception to the filibuster rule for a revised democracy reform bill.
(These Senators had supported the legislation but claimed they were against changing the filibuster rule. This claim rang hollow because just weeks earlier, the two Senators had voted for an exception to the filibuster rule for a different bill.)
The fundamental democracy reforms in H.R. 1 focused on three areas: a corrupt campaign finance system, voting rights discrimination and suppression, and extreme partisan gerrymandering.
The Supreme Court gave us Super PACs and dark money, which gave billionaires and millionaires enormous capacity to buy corrupting influence over decisions by the Executive Branch and Congress.
The campaign finance reforms in H.R. 1 would provide an alternative way to finance elections, end secret money in elections, shut down individual-candidate Super PACs, and strengthen the rules to prohibit coordination between candidates and other outside spending groups.
The Supreme Court eviscerated the voting rights protections in the Voting Rights Act. H.R. 1 would expand voter access and strengthen protections against voter suppression. It would guarantee vote by mail and early voting, provide protection against voter discrimination and voter suppression, create automatic voter registration, and strengthen election administration. Separate legislation, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would restore key protections of the Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court unleashed a wave of extreme partisan gerrymandering by washing its hands of repairing a system in which officeholders pick their constituents rather than voters picking their representatives. H.R. 1 addresses this problem by making independent redistricting commissions responsible for drawing congressional districts and making it illegal to enact redistricting plans that “unduly favor or disfavor any political party.”
Today, five years later, a renewed three-year effort could lead to a very different result — enactment of these historic democracy reforms. (It likely will require three years because Trump can be expected to veto any democracy reforms that pass in the new Congress.)
Just as the Democrats got a trifecta in the 2020 elections – control of the presidency, the House and the 50-50 Senate (through Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote), the chances are very good that Democrats will again get a trifecta in 2028.
The size of the Democratic victories in the House – headed toward 260 Representatives and as many as 56 seats in the Senate – makes it hard to imagine that Democrats will lose control of Congress in the 2028 election.
Furthermore, Trump apparently is doubling down rather than correcting his highly unpopular ways. He has appointed Stephen Miller, the lead extremist in the administration, as Chief of Staff and has given no indications he will change his narcissistic, corrupt behavior. When you add Trump’s two-year record that led to the Democratic landslide last week to this, Democrats should have a strong chance of winning the presidency in 2028.
The approach last time started just a few months into the new Congress when the House on March 8, 2019, quickly passed H.R. 1, which contained the three fundamental democracy reforms. No House Democrat voted against the bill.
Just as in 2019, the House should move early in 2027 to pass the democracy reform legislation.
The House will no doubt move immediately on affordability issues, such as health care and other cost-of-living issues. But the House should also again move H.R. 1 early, with whatever revisions are needed, recognizing that it has already passed the House twice (in 2019 and 2021) and that Democrats campaigned heavily on corruption as well as costs.
In a post-election poll, 90 percent of voters said corruption was a crucial or major factor in their votes. And corruption will never be brought under control in Washington until a new campaign finance system gives candidates an alternative system for funding their campaigns – like the one in H.R. 1 that allows them to use small contributions and matching public funds to run their races without becoming dependent on influence-seeking big donors.
Moving early on H.R. 1 will show voters that the House Democrats are ready to deal with the corruption issue in Congress and will also allow time to build the support in the Senate necessary to ensure there is not a replay of the defeat in 2022 on the filibuster issue.
Of course, there are other key democracy reforms that must be enacted, some of which may be incorporated into H.R. 1 or else moved separately.
The ban on stock trading is likely to move quickly, and this time it must cover the President and Vice President as well as Congress. Other democracy reforms include Supreme Court reforms, tough new ethics rules to prevent Presidents and Vice Presidents from abusing their offices for personal gain, new pay-to-play prohibitions, and new enforcement bodies.
Over the next few years, we should have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restore and revitalize the rules of our democracy. It is an opportunity that the American people must take.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. It was delayed this week because of the worldwide Outlook outage. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
