Last month, the Department of Justice announced it was suing Georgia, claiming the state’s election integrity law violates the Voting Rights Act.
This is yet another abuse of power by President Joe Biden’s DOJ. Earlier this year, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pam Karlan attempted to intimidate the people running the Maricopa County audit in Arizona.
The DOJ complaint reads like a swampy fever dream, full of conspiracies and plots to block access to the ballot box.
Remember, the Georgia law merely requires mail-in ballots to have what in-person voters have: proof the person casting the ballot is who they say they are. The burden? Write down some numbers from a voter card the state sent the person for free.
Georgia’s election integrity law mirrors what the DOJ pre-cleared more than a decade ago. Back then, the DOJ had to approve or reject Georgia’s election changes under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Back then, the plaintiff in today’s lawsuit had no problem with voter ID.
Times have changed.
Now, the radical activists running the DOJ are claiming that commonsense reforms such as voter ID are racially motivated.
This lawsuit is not only an abuse of power but also an attempt by the Left to turn the Voting Rights Act into a one-way partisan ratchet.
This is why the organization I lead, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, was the first group to stand up to the DOJ and file a motion to intervene to help Georgia defend its election integrity legislation. We cannot stand by and let this abuse of power stand.
When I was at the DOJ, I saw firsthand how these same bureaucrats abused power. So did federal courts, sanctioning the same Voting Section with millions of dollars in fines for abuse of power in Georgia redistricting lawsuits.
DOJ bureaucrats will abuse any power given to them. When I was in the Voting Section, partisan campaign posters hung on office walls.
How does Congress react to the DOJ abusing its power in the Peach State? By giving it more power, of course. A new bill being pushed in Congress would give DOJ bureaucrats complete and total control over every single change in our elections. This bill, H.R. 4, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, is a blatant power grab and an attempt to federalize our elections.
If the 2020 election proved anything, it was that there are vulnerabilities in our electoral system that need to be addressed. We should continue to fix those at the state level. The answer is not giving Beltway bureaucrats more power.
The founders intended for states to run their own elections, not the federal government. We should leave power closest to the people.
J. Christian Adams is the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a former DOJ attorney, and current commissioner on the United States Commission for Civil Rights.
