This article is part of Equal Citizens’ Substack Series, “Dispatches on the For the People Act.” If you want these weekly updates delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here!

This week the two of us, Kevin Rissmiller and Kate Travis, will highlight the For The People Act’s mandates for same day registration and early voting. These provisions will curtail some of the most egregious voter suppression efforts and reduce the barriers to voting. …

By Lawrence Lessig

The first step has been taken. The hardest step is yet to come.

Last night, the House passed (again) the historic H.R. 1. This massive democracy reform package — establishing an equal freedom to vote, blocking partisan gerrymandering, enacting public funding for congressional elections, to name just the three most important elements — would assure almost immediately the equal freedom of Americans to participate in elections, and the essential freedom of representatives to serve without dependence on large campaign donors.

Now comes the hard part: The Senate. If the filibuster stands, Democrats would need to find 10…

By Lawrence Lessig

Yesterday, I awoke to the extraordinary news in Georgia — that Mitch McConnell would no longer be Senate Majority Leader. I crafted an email to celebrate, which we were holding for official confirmation of Jon Ossoff’s victory.

Then the darkest images from America’s democracy began spreading across the net.

I join with many in believing that either Congress or the Vice President needs to act now to remove this most dangerous President from a position in which he can do more harm.

But this post is not about that. …

By Lawrence Lessig

It’s all-but over. Monday, 306 officially appointed presidential electors cast electoral college votes for Joe Biden. As importantly, zero competing electors in key swing states cast votes for Donald Trump under the purported authority of their rogue state legislatures or governors. Though the President’s drumbeat of fraud continues, that means the election is essentially over. Even Mitch McConnell has recognized the victory. Democracy has prevailed.

Thank you for your support to safeguard the election. As many of you know, with your help, we produced a huge volume of op-eds, explainers, and a 10-part podcast with a deep…

by Michael L. Rosin

Michael L. Rosin is a guest contributor and a constitutional historian. He is the author of amicus briefs in Equal Citizens’ previous Electors’ Freedom Litigation in Colorado and Washington. He can be reached at mlrosin@att.net.

As Donald Trump spews distrust of “mail in” voting, it would serve us well to make sure we understand what federal law says about absentee ballots and the role of the United States Postal Service.

Start with the basics: In the hierarchy of federal law, the Constitution comes first followed by statutes and then agency regulations. …

By Evelyn Li

The United States government is predicated on a system of checks and balances. But one such check appears nowhere in the Constitution and is the biggest hindrance to a productive federal government.

The filibuster is a procedural rule in the Senate that allows senators to delay or prevent voting on a piece of legislation, traditionally through a prolonged speech that extends the debate until the filibustering Senator yields the floor — which never actually happens without the vote of a supermajority of other Senators. Senators in opposition to a bill are motivated to filibuster when they know…

By Jason Harrow

This article was original published by The Globe Post.

COVID-19 hit the US big time in mid-March, so we’ve now had about three months to assess how litigants, courts, and election officials are planning to handle upcoming elections. In most of the country, officials have stood up for voting rights, as many states have quickly made voting-by-mail easier and more available. But a few states and some right-wing outside groups have resisted that common-sense change and have insisted that most voting will be done in person, pandemic be damned.

These states — let’s call them the “Intransigents”…

By Evelyn Li

After the primary election in Georgia on June 9th, we now know what the worst case scenario looks like. A perfect storm created an election meltdown, where voters were subjected to confusion, exposure to the virus, and wait times upwards of four hours.

Georgia voters faced the set of problems present in other states’ elections during the COVID-19 era. People, rightfully, feared gathering at the polls, and the transition to vote-by-mail was messy, to say the least. Instead of automatically sending ballots to every registered active voter, the Secretary of State’s office chose to mail out absentee…