Democrats Lay Out Their Agenda as Shutdown Fight Casts Shadow – The New York Times

In a speech accepting the speaker’s gavel on Thursday, Ms. Pelosi said the bill would “restore integrity to government so that people can have confidence that government works for the people, not the special interests.”

Leaning on constitutional authority to determine the parameters of House elections, the bill would effectively outlaw the gerrymandering of congressional districts, a practice employed by both Republicans and Democrats to maximize one-party control of individual states by sorting voters into districts according to their politics. Instead, states would be required to form independent commissions to draw districts based on apolitical metrics; state legislative districts would be unaffected.

Seeking to reverse Republicans’ state-level efforts to tighten access to polling places, the legislation mandates that state election officials automatically register eligible citizens to vote and outlaws certain tactics meant to remove voters from the rolls — provisions that would most likely protect minority voters.

Though it would take a constitutional amendment to limit the amount of money being spent to influence elections, the legislation would ban contributions by corporations substantially owned or controlled by foreigners and would require nonprofit organizations like unions and organizations registered under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code that participate in political activity to disclose the identity of donors who contribute more than $10,000. It would also require large digital companies to make public who is purchasing political ads, provisions included in the high-profile Honest Ads Act during the last Congress.

The legislation would also try to effectively prohibit coordination between campaigns and outside groups and expand the public financing system for House and presidential candidates. And it would require presidential inaugural committees, which are subject to very little oversight, to publicly account for their expenditures.

Directly targeting Mr. Trump, who has broken with decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns, the legislation would require presidents, vice presidents and candidates for those offices to make public 10 years of those files.

In response to Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 elections, the bill would allocate money for federal grants to states to update their elections infrastructure, mandate certain routine security checks by state election authorities and require the executive branch to develop deterrence strategies.