[EL] House COVID-19 bill election provisions -- the ACCESS Act

[Mark Scarberry]

The House version of the emergency bill is the ‘‘Take Responsibility for
Workers and Families Act." Via NPR (
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/23/820155258/read-house-democrats-release-3rd-coronavirus-response-bill),
you can find the bill here:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6817711/Updated-House-Bill.pdf

Division L of the House bill is entitled the ‘‘American
Coronavirus/COVID–19 Election Safety and Security Act’’ (the ‘‘ACCESS
Act’’).

The ACCESS Act is at pp. 856-918 of the bill. I haven't read it completely.
It appears to include some provisions that will be controversial, such as
same-day voter registration,  online voter registration, and a prohibition
on state limits on the number of vote-by-mail ballots that can be gathered
by any person for mailing.

Comments?

Is there a sufficient need to adopt such provisions now that they should be
included in a must-pass emergency bill?

As a political matter, I'm not sure who will be blamed if the emergency
bill is held up indefinitely because of a difference of opinion in Congress
on inclusion of such provisions (and others that Republicans claim are
unrelated to the basic purposes of the bill).

Mark

[image: Pepperdine wordmark]*Caruso School of Law*

*Mark S. Scarberry*

*Professor of Lawmark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu
<mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu>*
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