This is the Kaderie Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 23rd, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The For The People Act has been characterized as voting rights legislation, but there's

a lot more to it than that.

The Senate is effectively shut down the measure, at least for now, but the interventions

into elections, the broad limitations on political speech, will certainly find a new life again

down the road.

Walter Rolson discusses the other parts of the proposal.

The For The People Act, so-called includes all sorts of provisions that have nothing to do with voting.

It's an omnibus, and that term in this case means that it rolls together dozens and dozens of previously separate bills that were supported by generally

left of centers, often good government, procedure-oriented groups that believe that Washington listens too much to, I don't know, people not like them to or to special interests, depending on who you ask.

So it's got lobbying stuff. It's got stuff about foreign influence. It's got attempts to rein in ethics both for presidents and for the Supreme Court. Nothing to do with voting. It's got controls on issue

advertising and controls extending to social media platforms, things that broadcasters currently have to do.

So, pages, dozens and dozens of pages go by with issues unrelated to voting.

And then there's also some voting stuff. All right, so in this giant piece of legislation, what's the most promising thing?

What stands out as in Walter Olson's view, common sense reform with respect to voting where Congress has a clear mandate and power to act.

The part of the bill that I sympathize with and would like to see refined and passed if it's

refined in the right way has to do with gerrymandering.

And let's start with the Constitution on that because the Constitution gives Congress a great deal of say about House elections. It says that the states have the first sort of the first row

responsibility to set rules but that Congress can then standardize and

prescribe rules that apply to all the states so long. standardized and

to prescribe rules that apply to all the states, so long as applying the same rule to everyone.

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