For the People Act

The Freedom to Vote Act (formerly known as the For the People Act), introduced as H.R. 1, is a bill in the United States Congress intended to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, ban partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders.

The act was originally introduced by John Sarbanes in 2019, on behalf of the newly elected Democratic majority in the United States House of Representatives as the first official legislation of the 116th United States Congress. The House passed the bill on March 8, by a party-line vote of 234–193. The bill was viewed as a "signature piece of legislation" from the Democratic House majority. After the House passed the bill, it was blocked from receiving a vote by the then Republican-controlled Senate, under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In 2021, in the 117th Congress, congressional Democrats reintroduced the act as H.R. 1 and S. 1. On March 3, 2021, the bill passed the House of Representatives on a near party-line vote of 220–210, advancing to the Senate, which was split 50–50 between Democrats and Republicans (with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to bring it to the floor for a vote. On June 22, 2021, a vote on the bill was held in the Senate. It received unified support from the Democratic caucus, but Senate Republicans blocked the bill with a filibuster, as it lacked the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture after a party-line vote. Some Senate Democrats expressed support for abolishing the filibuster for the bill, but others in their caucus remained opposed or expressed reservations about doing so, including Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.