If conservatives don’t act quickly on election law, the Left will — to disastrous results.
Democrats reportedly plan to move rapidly to reform federal elections standards in ways that would make it easier for them to commit voter fraud, using recent events such as the objection to fraudulent state results and the January 6 storming of the Capitol as justification for their agenda.
The mainstream media, of course, is on board with the push. The Associated Press bemoans the fact that “states have long had disparate and contradictory rules for running elections,” even though that’s the way it’s supposed to be — the Constitution largely places responsibility for handling elections in the hands of the states, which is a key way of ensuring state sovereignty.
AP reports on Democrats’ plan to standardize many election practices across all 50 states:
Democrats, asserting constitutional authority to set the time, place and manner of federal elections, want national rules they say would make voting more uniform, accessible and fair across the nation. The bill would mandate early voting, same-day registration and other long-sought reforms that Republicans reject as federal overreach.
“We have just literally seen an attack on our own democracy,” said U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in reference to the events of January 6. “I cannot think of a more timely moment to start moving on democracy reform.”
The bill Democrats are pushing was first introduced two years ago and is known as the For the People Act. One of the biggest changes it would make would be to give independent commissions the job of drawing congressional districts, rather than letting state legislatures do it as is currently the case.
This would fly in the face of Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states clearly that “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
While the same section does state that “the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations,” altering such an established tradition would be nothing more than an obvious power grab intended to weaken the power of the states further while ensuring the creation of gerrymandered districts favorable to Democrats.
After all, there’s no doubt about the type of officials who would comprise such an “independent” redistricting commission. It would doubtless be full of leftists intent on drawing Republicans out of political relevance.
It’s easy to understand why Democrats are so eager for this change. The year 2021 will see redistricting based on the 2020 Census going on around the country. With Republicans in control of more state legislatures than Democrats, the Left fears their chances of keeping the House will go down for the 2022 midterms.
But shaking up the redistricting process isn’t the only change Democrats want. They’re also intent on requiring political groups to disclose high-dollar donors, creating reporting requirements for online political ads, and forcing presidents to disclose their tax returns.
Some of these are not-so-subtle attempts to prevent another President Trump. Democrats have never forgiven him, for example, for not releasing his tax returns. And the political ad requirements are simply another way of suppressing conservative grassroots candidates’ use of online advertising, which lets them compete with deep-pocketed establishment figures.
It goes hand in hand with the constant release of new “safeguards” from social-media companies such as Facebook; they roll out new rules under the guise of stopping disinformation and Russian bots, but really they do it because they know how integral social media was to Donald Trump’s 2016 win and how important it continues to be for galvanizing his supporters online.
Republicans have shot down the For the People Act in the past. During the last session of Congress, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it the “Democrat Politician Protection Act” and said in an op-ed that Democrats were seeking to “change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.”
Democrats now control Congress for the first time in a decade, but Republicans can still stop the proposal due to rules that require 60 votes in the Senate to advance legislation. Democrats, however, may remove this roadblock by eliminating the Senate filibuster.
That effort, and the effort to erode state sovereignty in elections, must be stopped. Conservatives, in fact, should go on the offensive and, in state legislatures, pass legislation to further safeguard elections, demanding, for example, voter ID and requiring the presence of poll watchers who are allowed to be stationed at adequate distances throughout the vote-counting process.
