Unfortunately, the reality is that the bill is bloated, overstuffed, and of dubious constitutionality.

While it has valuable provisions — protecting mail-in voting, making it harder to purge voters, gerrymander reform — it has all the makings of legislation crafted by an overcaffeinated committee of progressive activists. It overturns hundreds of state laws and essentially strips states of their ability to regulate voting. Not content with that, it matches campaign contributions with tax dollars and dramatically seeks to rewrite campaign finance rulings by creating new restrictions on constitutionally protected free speech.

And all of that makes it less likely to address the urgent challenge to democracy in a meaningful way, because it is almost certainly dead on arrival on the senate. Not even abolishing the filibuster can save H.R. 1.

Again, this is tragic, because the threats to voting rights are radical and call for a radical response. But this isn’t it.