SEC. 3. FINDINGS OF GENERAL CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY.
Congress finds that the Constitution of the United States grants explicit and broad authority to protect the right to vote, to regulate elections for Federal office, to prevent and remedy discrimination in voting, and to defend the Nation’s democratic process. Congress enacts the “For the People Act of 2021” pursuant to this broad authority, including but not limited to the following:
(1) Congress finds that it has broad authority to regulate the time, place, and manner of congressional elections under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, article I, section 4, clause 1. The Supreme Court has affirmed that the “substantive scope” of the Elections Clause is “broad”; that “Times, Places, and Manner” are “comprehensive words which embrace authority to provide for a complete code for congressional elections”; and “[t]he power of Congress over the Times, Places and Manner of congressional elections is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and to any extent which it deems expedient; and so far as it is exercised, and no farther, the regulations effected supersede those of the State which are inconsistent therewith”. Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, 570 U.S. 1, 8–9 (2013) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Indeed, “Congress has plenary and paramount jurisdiction over the whole subject” of congressional elections, Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. (10 Otto) 371, 388 (1879), and this power “may be exercised as and when Congress sees fit”, and “so far as it extends and conflicts with the regulations of the State, necessarily supersedes them”. Id. At 384. Among other things, Congress finds that the Elections Clause was intended to “vindicate the people’s right to equality of representation in the House”. Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 16 (1964), and to address partisan gerrymandering, Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. ____, 32–33 (2019).
(2) Congress also finds that it has both the authority and responsibility, as the legislative body for the United States, to fulfill the promise of article IV, section 4, of the Constitution, which states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government[.]”. Congress finds that its authority and responsibility to enforce the Guarantee Clause is particularly strong given that Federal courts have not enforced this clause because they understood that its enforcement is committed to Congress by the Constitution.
(3) (A) Congress also finds that it has broad authority pursuant to section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to legislate to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, including its protections of the right to vote and the democratic process.
