Klobuchar: Infrastructure bill could include voting measures

ATLANTA (AP) — Congressional Democrats are exploring ways to include financial incentives for states to expand voting access as part of a massive infrastructure bill, a key senator said Sunday.

Democrats have been struggling to get their marquee election reform bill passed in an evenly split Senate, where Republicans remain unified in their opposition and rules require 60 votes to advance most pieces of legislation.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota who chairs the powerful Senate Rules Committee, said in an interview that the priority continues to be passing the legislation known as the For the People Act, which would usher in minimum voting standards in the U.S. such as automatic and same-day voter registration, early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.

But Klobuchar noted that Democrats could also use the process known as reconciliation to advance financial incentives for states to adopt certain reforms. Election systems have been designated critical infrastructure on par with the nation’s power plants, banks and dams.

“You can do election infrastructure in there because that is part of infrastructure,” Klobuchar said. “It’s no substitute for the For the People Act, but it is something we can start working on immediately and are working on right now.”

Pushing election-related measures into the infrastructure bill would be a high-stakes gambit with no guarantee of success.

Under the congressional budget process, certain measures regarding revenues, spending and the debt can be approved with a 51-vote threshold, which is why Democrats are pursuing it. The process allows them to bypass a near-certain filibuster from Republicans.

But there’s a catch: The Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian can rule for the removal of any provision not directly related to...