by Joy Pullmann at The Federalist
On Wednesday, House Democrats passed an 800-page bill that would mandate insecure voting processes and subject voting tallies to partisan manipulation. It’s a slap in the face to the half of Americans, including many Democrats, who believe the 2020 election was riddled with fraud and errors, largely due to the rapid expansion of mail-in balloting and other suspensions of state election laws.
“It is difficult to imagine a legislative proposal more threatening to election integrity and voter confidence,” write 20 Republican attorneys general in a Thursday letter about the ridiculously named For The People Act of 2021, or H.R. 1. Democrats have made the bill their top priority this Congress to permanently cement their current unified control of the federal government.
The bill “would (among other things) implement nationwide the worst changes in election rules that occurred during the 2020 election; go even further in eroding and eliminating basic security protocols that states have in place; and interfere with the ability of states and their citizens to determine the qualifications and eligibility of voters, ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, secure the fairness and integrity of elections, and participate and speak freely in the political process,” says a Heritage Foundation analysis.
H.R. 1 broadcasts Democrats’ goals for unending electoral dominance through openly rigged voting processes. It would engineer an unconstitutional federal takeover of state elections for national office. No surprise, then, that Joe Biden says he will sign this legislation if it reaches his desk.
Here are just some of the unconstitutional, absurd, nakedly partisan, and crime-assisting provisions in this bill that 220 House Democrats voted for and every House Republican voted against.
1. Openly Breaks the Constitution
As the attorneys general note, “Under both the Elections Clause of Article I of the Constitution and the Electors Clause of Article II, States have principal—and with presidential elections, exclusive—responsibility to safeguard the manner of holding elections.” This bill would instead unconstitutionally give Congress primacy over state elections, in numerous ways.
Yet the Constitution expressly affords the states, not Congress, the power to determine how presidential electors are selected. Mandating mail-in voting, requiring states to accept late ballots, overriding state voter ID laws, and mandating that states conduct redistricting through unelected commissions all violate states’ constitutional authority in conducting elections.
2. Set Up Star Chambers to Intimidate Judges
The bill would establish a “Commission to Protect Democratic Institutions” that would have the power to force judges to testify before a panel of unelected federal bureaucrats. According to the bill on page 389, the commission, or any member or subcommittee of the commission, may “hold hearings and sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers advisable.”
This commission, the Heritage analysis finds, “would be given the authority to compel judges to testify and justify their legal decisions, threatening their independent judgment and subjecting them to political pressure and harassment.”
3. Mandate Mail-in Ballots, 10-Day Delay in Results
Rather than reject the 2020 electoral chaos caused by bureaucrats suspending state election laws to further unreliable mail-in voting and suspend legal deadlines for mailed ballots, H.R. 1 would mandate this electoral chaos forever.
The bill mandates universal mail-in balloting and requires states to wait ten days after election day for any outstanding tranches of ballots to be suddenly discovered in Democrat-run strongholds — oops, I mean, allow all ballots to arrive. The Heritage report notes that “no-fault absentee ballots” “are the tool of choice for vote thieves.”
Besides a recipe for chaos and partisan election manipulation, this is unconstitutional. The attorneys general note that “The exclusivity of state power to ‘define the method’ of choosing presidential electors means that Congress may not force states to permit presidential voting by mail or curbside voting.”
4. Eliminate Voter ID Election Security
“Perhaps most egregious is the Act’s limitations on voter ID laws,” write the attorneys general. “Fairly considered, requiring government-issued photo identification at the polls represents nothing more than a best practice for election administration.”
After a brief overview of this history of bipartisan support for voter ID laws, the letter continues: “Voter ID laws remain popular, with thirty-five states requiring some form of documentary personal identification at the polls. Yet the Act would dismantle meaningful voter ID laws by allowing a statement, as a substitute for prior-issued, document-backed identification, to ‘attest[] to the individual’s identity and . . . that the individual is eligible to vote in the election.’ This does little to ensure that voters are who they say they are. Worse, it vitiates the capacity of voter ID requirements to protect against improper interference with voting rights.”