H.R. 1 (aka the For The People Act) initially caught my attention because I had the impression, based on this Bloomberg article, that the bill would “require the disclosure of large campaign donations to so-called dark money groups”, and I found the ACLU’s opposition mystifying. Why would the ACLU oppose common-sense campaign reform like this?

It’s complicated. The ACLU explained in a blogpost and a letter to Congress that they support most of the initiatives in H.R. 1, but they urge members of Congress to vote “no” on the bill. Why? Because it includes the DISCLOSE Act.

The DISCLOSE Act was originally written in 2010 (The ACLU opposed it then, too), and its overall goal was to increase transparency in campaign finance. The main idea was to require organizations to publish their big donors when broadcasting campaign ads. Its main problem was that it was too vague and too broad. Any political ad, not just ads explicitly endorsing a candidate, might be covered by this bill. Not only that, but organizations might be required to publish the names of donors, regardless of whether those donors supported (or even knew about) the organization’s ads. The bill passed the in the House, but got filibustered to death in the Senate.

A decade later, the DISCLOSE Act got rolled into the For The People Act, a heavy-hitting election reform bill. Predictably, H.R. 1 suffered exactly the same fate as the DISCLOSE Act did in 2010: It got filibustered out of existence in the Senate.

What did I learn from this?

First off, not to trust Bloomberg. The article itself had a misleading description of H.R. 1 and zero (I repeat! Zero!) links to primary sources. To make it worse, they referred to the bill as the “Disclose Act”, which made prompted me to look for information about a decade-old bill.

Other new sources were a little better. The Economist and the Washington Post correctly named the bill (a low bar) and described it in detail. They both made the argument that H.R. 1 would strengthen American democracy. The WSJ published an opinion piece arguing that H.R. 1 was nothing more than a cynical Democratic power grab.

The WSJ piece interested me because it clearly meant for its readers to feel outraged and scared at the news. Naturally, it mentioned the flaws in the DISCLOSE Act and implied that those flaws were intentional and part of a broader plan. It said that after organizations are required to disclose their donors, “the left’s pressure groups and media will then stigmatize” those donors. It also seemed to imply that auto-enrolling “anyone receiving food stamps” to voter rolls would be beneficial to Democrats and no one else.

What are my actual opinions about H.R. 1?

While I agree with the ACLU on the DISCLOSE Act, I might vote “yes” for H.R. 1 if I had to make a yes/no decision about it.

Although the DISCLOSE Act would cause harm to organizations and big donors, H.R. 1 would make elections more secure and more accessible for vastly more people.

Ideally, of course, congress would amend the DISCLOSE Act so that it would be more specific and narrow. Or congress could put forward several different bills to incrementally improve our democracy, rather than pass a monster bill with major flaws.

Of course, all of this is academic. No one expected the bill to pass the Senate. The most frustrating thing to me about this bill is that no one ever expected it to become law.