However, the two alliances split in 1890 over a Federal Elections Bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Henry Cabot Lodge, which authorized federal supervision of voter registration and voting. It was designed to end the suppression of Southern Republican votes, particularly black votes, which had been under considerable pressure by the Democratic state legislatures. Virtually all white Southerners, including the Farmers' Alliance, denounced the bill as a return to the policies of Reconstruction, and the Democrats succeeded in making it the central issue of the 1892 Presidential election in the South. Humphrey sought to downplay the issue, insisting that black suffrage would be protected through the Alliance movement. The majority of black Populists supported renewed federal intervention to preserve their civil rights, which were being eroded by state changes to voter registration and electoral laws.