It is possible to believe the 2020 presidential election was fair and legitimate and also understand that tighter voting requirements are necessary to preserve the integrity of our elections if mail-in voting is to be the norm moving forward. Unsurprisingly, Democrats disagree.
The House passed a sweeping bill, called H.R. 1, on Thursday that would essentially prevent states from passing any type of election reform and roll back a number of important voting requirements, such as voter ID laws. The legislation would also mandate several controversial policies, including automatic and online voter registration and at least two weeks of early voting, and it would bar state officials from purging voter rolls of ineligible voters, including deceased residents or residents who moved away, from the system.
Speaking about H.R. 1 before the House’s vote on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was as hyperbolic as ever.
“This reminds me of what it must have felt like at Valley Forge,” she said. “Everything is at stake. We must win this race, this fight.”
She has a point. This bill really is the Democratic Party’s Hail Mary. Because if it passes, Democrats will be able to nationalize election law and force every locality to play by its rules — rules that would intentionally loosen voting regulations, opening it up to potential fraud and abuse. Make no mistake: H.R. 1 is the Democrats’ attempt to rig the game and make sure they’re always the ones in power.
There has been quite a bit of debate about whether the bill is constitutional. I side with those who argue it is not. The U.S. Constitution clearly gives state legislatures the right to dictate their own election policies, but it also explicitly states Congress has the power to “make or alter such regulations.” But this power is necessarily limited, especially in regards to presidential elections. The electors clause in Article II, Section 1, says Congress has the final say over the timing of federal elections, but nowhere in the Constitution does it say Congress can mandate a federal elections code for the states — not even in the 15th Amendment, which bars racial discrimination in voting.
Democrats are trying to hide this attempted power grab behind a dishonest, bad faith accusation that Republican states are attempting to disenfranchise voters by restricting voting “access.” This is not true. GOP state legislatures are simply doing what they are constitutionally permitted to do and revising election policies so that mail-in and absentee voting is as secure as possible moving forward. It just so happens that the vast majority of voters agree that some sort of voting security, such as photo ID requirements, is necessary.
The Democratic Party used to agree with that as well, but H.R. 1 suggests the party’s opinion has changed. Perhaps it’s just the cynic in me, but it’s difficult to see this switch as anything but an attempt to take advantage of the shift toward mail-in voting, which statistically favors Democratic candidates, by loosening any and all restrictions on it.
This bill isn’t about voting rights at all; it’s about power. And Democrats are doing their best to take as much of it as they can.
