Article 1 Section 4: Elections
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.
If you look at a typical general ballot (every 2 years), the most choices are for local, county and state offices and initiatives. Usually, one may make up to 3 federal office choices: always a congressman, often a Senator and every 4 years POTUS (through electors). The direct election of Senators is provided by the 17th Amendment. The staggered election of Senators is by design to provide a form of continuity from the first Congress. You may occasionally see a special election to fill the remainder of a senator's term, e.g., Georgia's two senators in 2020 in which Rev. Warnock won the last 2 years of Johnny Isakson's 2016 election. term. (Isakson resigned for health reasons, and Loeffler was appointed in the interim.)
So the immediate observation is that national elections are by default decentralized, managed by state and local authorities. The federal government does cast some constitutional constraints on voter eligibility for federal election ballots (primary or general), including equal racial access (15th Amendment), equal gender access (19th Amendment), and repeal of any poll tax requirement (24th Amendment). There are other constitutional constraints on state/local handling of federal elections, including extra-constitutional office constraints, such as supplemental candidate qualifications or limits on eligibility (such as limited or nonconsecutive terms). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was constitutionally an enforcement action with respect to said amendments.
Other legislation on federal elections was more nuanced:
On occasion, Congress has exercised its power to “make or alter” rules concerning congressional elections, and some of its laws lie at the very heart of the modern electoral process. It has established a single national Election Day for congressional elections, and mandated that states with multiple Representatives in the U.S. House divide themselves into congressional districts, rather than electing all of their Representatives at-large. Congress also has enacted statutes limiting the amount of money that people may contribute to candidates for Congress, requiring that people publicly disclose most election-related spending, mandating that voter registration forms be made available at various public offices, and requiring states to ensure the accuracy of their voter registration rolls.
Sore Loser Trump's post-election actions, including efforts to deny Biden clinching victory electors from narrowly won states through false allegations of fraud and a series of red state voting reform laws provided political opportunity for Congressional Dems to intervene. There have been baseless allegations of "voter suppression":
A study that appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in May...found, based on extensive datacrunching, that voter ID laws “have no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.” ...In the 2020 election, following years of claims of mounting voter suppression, voter turnout soared to a level not previously seen in modern times. The jump was seen across racial lines, both in states that had eased ballot rules greatly in response to the pandemic and in those that had made minimal changes or tightened some rules...A September Morning Consult poll found that by a margin of 44 percent to 33 percent, more Americans thought current rules make it too easy rather than too difficult to vote
Biden has lost credibility, referring to Georgia's modest reforms as "Jim Crow on steroids". In fact, the much-cited restrictions on partisans bribing voters in line with refreshments are also in some blue states' laws. The Georgia law also liberalized early voting and made alternate accommodations. The Dems attempt to moderate some pandemic-related liberalizations as "suppression", even if the reform laws improved over pre-pandemic access.
This is not to say that the GOP's post-election rationale for reforms was based on proven allegations of election fraud. These were nothing more than a face-saving excuse for an unpopular incumbent who had trailed Biden in the polls over the prior year; he had notably dodged a question of whether he would accept election results weeks earlier. He lost nearly every one of dozens of court challenges, presenting no accepted evidence of fraud. Even an Arizona post-audit confirmed Biden's victory.
I don't doubt that certain red states were under tremendous Trumpkin pressure to update state election laws in the aftermath. But whatever the motives for reform, suspicion is not evidence of unconstitutionality and the need for a relevant federal response. States and localities have a vested interest in election security; disputed results undermine credibility of our election system. Arguing that tweaks (e.g., in the number of drop boxes) amount to "voter suppression" is patently absurd. There is a lot to say for improving the convenience of voting, without a tradeoff in election integrity. The problem is, under my preference for the principle of Subsidiarity, these decisions are best driven by local context, not by a remote general government imposing one-size-fits-all policy based on partisan preferences of a tyrannical majority. A state or municipality should not have to face a Justice Department approval or veto to exercise its duly elected legislative authority. That is against the letter and spirit of Article1 Section 4.
The Democrats overplayed their hand in their initial offering, the failed oxymoron For the People Act, as the above-cited Olson notes;
an omnibus bill that proposed an extraordinarily ambitious federal power grab over election law, among many other topics. The bill was assembled from elements — for example, replacing the bipartisan structure of the Federal Election Commission with one‐party control — that assured that even the most moderate and pragmatic Republicans would oppose it....H.R. 1 was full of affronts to the Constitution, from federalism‐mangling to separation‐ofpowers problems to likely problems with the Electors Clause, which reserves to state legislatures the power to prescribe how presidential electors are appointed, and the Qualifications Clause, which states that the electors (voters) in House elections “in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature,” and does not by its terms bestow on Congress a power to broaden qualifications beyond that...Notably, it also menaced First Amendment liberties, greatly expanding the definitions of “electioneering” and “public communication” so as to chill the speech of nonprofits that speak out on legislation. (It even contained a provision seeking to regulate ads in newspapers and on other media that a federal appeals court had already struck down as a violation of the First Amendment.)
So, what was in the voting rights bill that the Republicans successfully filibustered, resulting in the failed Dems' attempt to carve out an exception to the filibuster/
- Voter Protections. "The bill called for automatically registering citizens to vote in every state, required that all states allow anyone who wants to vote by mail be able to do so, and said that mail ballots postmarked by Election Day could be counted as long as they arrived within seven days of the close of polls. It would have required a minimum number of drop boxes...The measure would have allowed documents such as a utility bill to serve as identification for voting."
- Election Administration. "The bill would have made interfering with the vote count or failing to accurately report the results of that count a violation of the Voting Rights Act. It would have made it possible for nonpartisan election officials to sue if they were removed for partisan reasons, mandated a paper record trail for all ballots so they could be easily recounted and created cybersecurity standards for election machines."
- Other Election Policies. "The bill would have banned partisan gerrymandering...On campaign finance, the bill would have required any entity that spends more than $10,000 on elections to disclose its major donors...The bill would have allowed states to offer matching funds for small-dollar donations to races for seats in the House of Representatives."
- Voting Rights. "The bill would have provided a new formula to start the “preclearance” process. ..In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the formula used to determine whether a state, county or city has such a history of discrimination that it needs to get permission from the Justice Department before changing voting laws and redrawing political lines. At the time, nine predominantly Southern states, including Republican stronghold such as Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, and dozens of counties required such federal approval...It would have strengthened provisions of the Voting Rights Act to counter a Supreme Court decision last year that made it harder to sue over laws that hamper minority voting."
- Gerrymandering happens because congressmen/representatives aren't elected at large. SCOTUS finds no constitutional federal authority for deciding partisan gerrymandering. There is an exception for racially-based gerrymandering. Does that mean there are no solutions to gerrymandering? No, many states empower nonpartisan groups for redistricting, and gerrymandering cases can often be tried under state constitutions.
- Trump's attempts to intervene in election results were already illegal, most prominently under Georgia law. a Fulton County prosecutor is already investigating the interference.
- There is no basis for believing that existing or modified state laws would suppress voting. Maybe a lower number of ballot boxes maybe makes it more inconvenient for some voters who opt out of voting in-person or mailing them in. There was robust voter participation across the board, regardless of restrictions, across voter groups, including minorities. There may be unintended consequences to micromanaging election processes with a one-size-fits-all approach.
I certainly think the Dems overplayed their hand, particularly in trying to take out the filibuster. One of the things they could have done (and probably still can) was reforming the 1887 Electoral Count Act to mitigate against Trumpkin-like plots to subvert electoral college votes.
