After its disgraceful performance of two weeks ago, when it buried campaign finance reform with an argument over the rules of debate but no actual debate, the U.S. House of Representatives this week begins the process of redeeming itself. Like most redemption, this one requires nothing more, or less, than courage and conscience.

The tool for this simple but difficult task is a discharge petition, which will force House Republican leaders to schedule a straightforward vote immediately after Congress’ August recess on Shays-Meehan, the House version of the nearly identical McCain-Feingold passed by the Senate in June. The discharge petition is a rarely used device, it being an undisguised rebuke to leadership. In this case, the rebuke is warranted and necessary; the elegant simplicity of an up-or-down vote on this important legislation will be a striking contrast to the chicanery used to avoid one.

It takes a majority, the signatures of 218 members, to impose discharge. Given that 252 members voted for Shays-Meehan both in 1998 and 1999, the petition would seem easily done, but those two enactment votes were taken in the safety of knowing McCain-Feingold was bottled up in the Senate. Senate enactment blew the House’s cover; now it must vote for real.

Signing the petition will take courage for House Republicans; it is they who will have to openly defy their leadership, particularly Speaker Dennis Hastert, who proposed the unacceptable rules for debate that led to the bill’s withdrawal in mid-July. Conviction is what Democrats must prove – those two votes for Shays-Meehan when McCain-Feingold was safely stalled don’t count.

Shays-Meehan/McCain-Feingold is a modest bill; its central provision is a ban on soft money, such as the half-billion in unregulated funds that the parties raised and used in the last election. While it may be true, as some reform opponents allege, that closing this loophole only will lead to the opening of new ones, to accept that cynical argument is to accept that American elections can never aspire to being anything more than the buying and selling of influence.

House Republican leaders first tried to block reform by proposing an alternate version that offered sham reform. That fizzled, so procedural tactics were employed to prevent a vote. All that’s left now is for those leaders to promise, unequivocally, an up-or-down vote on Shays-Meehan immediately after Labor Day or for the rank and file of both parties to force one through the discharge petition. It’s that simple.