There is a ready response to the GOP's relentless campaign to restrict voting access: The "For the People Act" would create nationwide reforms like same-day and online registration in federal elections, expanded mail-in voting, making Election Day a federal holiday and more. The House passed the bill late Wednesday without a single Republican vote, but Senate Republicans' filibuster power makes the act's eventual approval unlikely. Democrats should push hard for it anyway to make crystal clear which side is trying to obstruct Americans' voting rights.

The bill would shed light on dark-money campaign contributions, require presidential candidates to release 10 years of income tax returns, require states to use a system of drawing congressional districts that would end partisan gerrymandering and make other changes under the broad category of political reform.

But election reform is at the heart of it — an appropriate priority after the nation just witnessed, on Jan. 6, how deeply anti-democracy contempt for free elections has infected one of America's two major parties. The violent insurrection against the U.S. Capitol, and the votes by Republican lawmakers to negate states' federal-election results, both had the same goal: to overturn a free and fair election because they didn't like the outcome. Falsely alleging voter fraud was just part of the strategy.

Critics claim the Democratic legislation is an unconstitutional imposition of federal power over state election processes. That's a rich argument coming from a party that still venerates ex-President Donald Trump after he spent months attempting to use the presidency to alter state election outcomes.

In any case, the constitutional argument falls flat because the legislation is limited to reforming federal elections — Congress and the presidency — not elections for state or local offices. Article 1 of the Constitution grants states the authority to set the "time, place and manner of holding" of elections, "but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such regulations." Further, the 14th and 15th Amendments, ratified after the Civil War, give the federal government the power to protect Black citizens' voting rights from state infringements.

Republican-controlled state governments are, right now, attempting to impose such infringements. In battleground states like Pennsylvania and Arizona, Republicans are attempting to roll back absentee and early voting and impose voter ID rules, which work against marginalized populations. Particularly offensive legislation in Georgia would specifically ban early voting on Sundays — a measure clearly aimed at thwarting traditional get-out-the-vote efforts at Black churches.

Critics charge the proposed rules are designed to help Democrats win elections. If ensuring that more Americans can vote would be inherently good for Democratic candidates and bad for Republicans, those critics might well be right. But that signals a problem with the GOP and its sagging popularity, not with the legislation. Its eventual passage is crucial to the future of democracy.

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