By Mychael Schnell and Mike Lillis - 10/19/24

FREEPORT, N.Y. — A top House Democrat said this week that if the party wins the majority, its first priority in the next Congress will be election integrity — an issue that’s been front-and-center throughout a campaign in which former President Trump has floated baseless claims of voter fraud and laid the groundwork to challenge the results if he loses.

In a sit-down interview with The Hill on the campaign trail on Long Island, Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip, laid out the contours of an ambitious legislative agenda if Democrats seize the gavel next year, including restoring legal protections for abortion access that were eliminated by the Supreme Court in 2022.

But she emphasized that all of the Democrats’ policy priorities stem from the core constitutional idea that Americans, through voting, hold the keys to government and self-determination. With that in mind, she said Democrats would make efforts to protect democracy their first legislative proposal out of the gate in 2025, with a voting rights bill receiving the coveted H.R. 1 title.

“We know that everything flows from the right to vote and having voter security, and what we have seen are attacks on that right to vote — undermining, through misinformation, Americans’ belief in the integrity [of elections],” Clark said. “We have fair and secure elections in this country. … Donald Trump and JD Vance are still denying the 2020 election, which is outrageous.”

Under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democrats promoted sweeping election reforms — designed to expand voting access and curb the influence of money on elections — as their first bill introduced in both the 116th and 117th Congresses, when they last controlled the lower chamber.

Pelosi and her leadership team have since stepped aside. But Clark, the No. 2 House Democrat, said the new party brass would follow suit if they win the majority in November, making election integrity and campaign finance the top priority.

She did not reveal what voting rights bill a potential majority would charge ahead with, though she offered two options.

One is the For the People Act, which won the H.R. 1 denomination in the past two congressional terms when Democrats held the majority. The legislation — sponsored by Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) — sought to expand voter access, make it harder for states to purge voting rolls, overhaul the campaign finance system to reduce the power of well-heeled interests, and require presidential candidates to release 10 years of tax returns. Each of the issues has surfaced this year in the contest between Trump and Vice President Harris.

The measure cleared the House in 2019 and 2021, but it floundered in the Senate.

Clark also pointed to the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would reinstate a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act nullified by the Supreme Court in 2013. The axed provision had required states with proven records of voter discrimination — most of them in the South — to win federal approval before altering their election procedures. The Democrats’ bill, sponsored by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), would restore those preclearance protections by updating the formula that had determined which states were subject to the extra scrutiny.

“It is gonna be voting rights, whether it’s John Lewis or the Sarbanes,” Clark said. “But H.R. 1 will be a voting rights bill.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is in line to become Speaker if Democrats win the majority in November, has been reluctant to reveal specifics surrounding his party’s agenda should Democrats take the upper hand in the lower chamber next year. In addition to reproductive rights, he has pointed to efforts to lower housing costs and expand family tax credits as preeminent on the party’s early to-do list.

But during his last press conference in the Capitol before the long campaign recess, he told reporters he needs to talk to his caucus before committing to what bills they would bring to the floor in the first 100 days of a Democratic majority.

At a rally on Long Island in support of Laura Gillen, who is running to unseat Rep. Anthony D’Esposito in New York’s 4th Congressional District, a key battleground area, Jeffries underscored the importance of protecting Americans’ right to vote — and mentioned the John Lewis bill.

“This is one of just four seats that we need to win in order to flip control of the House of Representatives. No pressure on y’all, but one of four seats that we need to win,” Jeffries said. “When you send Laura Gillen to the United States Congress, we’re gonna make sure that we pass the John Roberts Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act so we can end the era of voter suppression in the United States of America once and for all. No one can take away your voice, your power, your ability to determine your future.”

The comments arrive as both parties are racing frantically, in the final stretch of the campaign, to shore up voter support in the parallel contests for control of the House and the White House, both of which remain too close to call.

Democrats have focused much of their campaign message on Trump’s actions following the 2020 election, when he promoted false allegations that he won the race against Joe Biden, only to have it “stolen” by a conspiracy of corrupt Democrats, state election officials, foreign governments and tech companies. That unfounded narrative, and Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, led directly to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump’s supporters sought unsuccessfully to keep him in office by blocking Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

House Democrats, joined by 10 Republicans, impeached Trump for his role in the rampage. But the Republican-controlled Senate, led by then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), declined to convict him, empowering Trump to run for a second term.

The saga remains an explosive issue in this year’s campaign, where Trump has continued to insist that he won the 2020 contest, and his closest GOP allies — from running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — have declined numerous opportunities to correct the record.

Instead, they’ve adopted Trump’s warnings that armies of undocumented immigrants are poised to vote illegally and flip this year’s race toward Harris and Democrats — another false claim that nonetheless resonates among the GOP’s conservative base.

“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections,” Johnson said earlier in the year. “But it’s not been something that is easily provable.”

While voting rights will be the top priority for House Democrats if they take the majority next year, women’s reproductive rights are poised to follow closely behind as frustrations remain high after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Democrats have also sounded the alarm about residual impacts of the Supreme Court decision, including efforts to restrict access to in vitro fertilization.

Asked what other matters a Democratic majority would take up immediately, Clark, without skipping a beat, cited “reproductive freedom.”

“We will take votes to make sure that the stories we are hearing about women being denied fundamental health care when they are in a crisis,” the whip said. “This is a national horror show that is playing out for women. It is a denial of health care.”

“This focus on health care and making sure that we restore parity for women in his country, that we have protection so that pregnant women can get the care that their doctors recommend when they need is, is going to be a top priority of this Congress going forward,” she added.

Clark would not say if women’s reproductive rights would receive the H.R. 2 denomination — “these will be decisions that Speaker Hakeem Jeffries will make with his leadership team” — though Democrats have consistently discussed the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify protections afforded by Roe v. Wade.

Democrats have to pick up a net four seats to take control of the chamber, a feat that would take the party out of the minority wilderness, where it has been for two years, and empower Jeffries, Clark and Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Clark said that troika has been hatching plans for a potential majority. For now, however, the group is focused squarely on the task just before them: Winning at least 218 seats to assume the majority of the House.

“We are making plans for the future. We will be ready,” Clark said. “But we are also, our priority is winning on Nov. 5. And that is the first step in the critical process of ending the chaos, ending this extremism, and restoring the people’s voices to the process.”