H.R. 1 Is a Partisan Assault on American Democracy

[Muda69]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/h-r-1-is-a-partisan-assault-on-american-democracy/

Quote

Late Wednesday night, the House passed H.R. 1, the “For the People Act.” It passed by ten votes, with every Republican voting against it, as well as Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, who fears that the bill will abolish majority-black districts like his in the Deep South. Thompson deserves credit for reading past the title of the bill, which its cheerleaders in the media seem not to have done.

 

As to that title, H.R. 1 says that it is “For the People,” but tellingly, not by the people, or of the people. Quite the contrary.

It would be an understatement to describe H.R. 1 as a radical assault on American democracy, federalism, and free speech. It is actually several radical left-wing wish lists stuffed into a single 791-page sausage casing. It would override hundreds of state laws governing the orderly conduct of elections, federalize control of voting and elections to a degree without precedent in American history, end two centuries of state power to draw congressional districts, turn the Federal Elections Commission into a partisan weapon, and massively burden political speech against the government while offering government handouts to congressional campaigns and campus activists. Merely to describe the bill is to damn it, and describing it is a Herculean task in itself.

States have long experience running elections, and different states have taken different approaches suited to their own locales and populations. The federal government traditionally intervened only to prevent serious abuses of voting rights. H.R. 1 would upend that balance for no good reason, wrecking carefully refined state regimes for securing the vote. It also throws out much of the work of federal election laws passed with extensive bipartisan support in 1993 and 2002.

The first target is to wipe out state laws that allow voters to be checked against a preexisting list of registrations. H.R. 1 mandates that states provide same-day registration and allow people to change their name and address on the rolls at the polling place on Election Day, then forbids states from treating their votes as provisional ballots that can be checked later. It mandates online registration without adequate safeguards against hackers. It mandates automated registration of people who apply for unemployment, Medicaid, Obamacare, and college, or who are coming out of prison. The bill’s authors expect this to register noncitizens: They create a safe harbor against prosecution of noncitizens who report that they have been erroneously registered.

H.R. 1 bars states from checking with other states for duplicate registrations within six months of an election. It bars removing former voters from the rolls for failure to vote or to respond to mailings. Outside election observers are an important check on the system; H.R. 1 bars anyone but an election official from challenging a voter’s eligibility to vote on Election Day — thus insulating Democrat-run precincts from scrutiny.

State voter-ID laws are banned, replaced simply by a sworn voter statement. The dramatic expansion of mail-in voting during the COVID pandemic is enshrined permanently in federal law. States are banned from the most elementary security methods for mail-in ballots: They must provide a ballot to everyone without asking for identification and may not require notarization or a witness to signatures. States are compelled to permit ballot harvesting so long as the harvesters are not paid per ballot. Curbside voting, ballot drop boxes, and 15 days of early voting are mandated nationwide, and the bill micromanages the location and hours of polling stations, early voting locations, and drop boxes.

States are compelled to accept voter registrations from 16-year-olds, although they still cannot vote before turning 18 (an amendment to mandate that, too, was defeated). Democrats and their political allies, who rely on the youth vote, traditionally expend extensive resources registering young people. The bill shifts the job of signing up young voters to the federal government, which will pay to teach twelfth graders how to register, create a “Campus Vote Coordinator” position on college campuses, and award grants to colleges for “demonstrated excellence in registering students to vote.” This is measured in part by whether campuses provide rides to get students to the polls and whether they encourage both students and the communities around the campus to get “mobilized to vote.”

Restrictions on felon voting in federal elections in many states are overridden. This exceeds Congress’s constitutional authority over the conduct of elections by directly regulating who may vote, rather than how. In fact, the 14th Amendment expressly permits felons to be disenfranchised — as the Supreme Court held in 1974. State elections officials would be effectively banned from running for federal office by recusal requirements.

Not content to remake the American voting system, H.R. 1 takes the drawing of congressional districts out of the hands of elected state legislatures — who have done the job since the Founding — and turns them over to “independent” commissions, while banning mid-decade readjustments of district lines. It also counts inmates as residents of their last address (even if serving a life sentence), a provision aimed at reducing the representation of rural areas where prisons are located.

These are just the warm-ups. H.R. 1’s crackdowns on political speech are at least as extensive and biased as its changes to election law, and some of the provisions on coordination and foreign-related activity are so complex that even election-law experts warn that their impact is impossible to determine. For example, one provision could be read to bar corporations from political activity if they have even a single foreign shareholder. The new anti-speech laws would generate years of litigation, and many of them would likely be struck down by the Supreme Court.

New disclosure rules would treat huge amounts of speech and advertising on matters of public concern as if they were campaign contributions, including any advertisement urging viewers to contact elected officials to support or oppose a program, policy, or law. This would require donors to, say, the AARP to be identified as supporters of any candidate if the AARP demands that the candidate keep a promise to protect Social Security. The cumulative effect is to further burden citizen rights to petition and further insulate the government from criticism.

501(c)(4) nonprofits would be required to disclose their donors, another potentially unconstitutional burden on the freedom to speak and associate. New limits on corporate political activity are extensive, and similar restrictions are not placed on unions. Previous rules in place to enable free speech on the Internet and prevent political bias in IRS audits are repealed.

What would an omnibus bill be without handouts to unworthy causes, starting with the people who wrote the bill? H.R. 1 includes extensive public-funding giveaways to candidates, including a six-to-one public match for some donations to congressional and presidential campaigns. It also establishes a pilot program that gives voters $25 apiece to make government-funded donations to campaigns.

The labyrinth of new speech rules would be administered by the FEC, and so H.R. 1 eliminates the commission’s longstanding bipartisan structure and makes it more directly accountable to the president. We are sympathetic to efforts to make executive agencies more politically accountable, but the newly partisan structure of the FEC that would be created by H.R. 1 only illustrates why it should not wield such vast powers over elections.

There are reasonable issues to be taken with the current system of voting and elections, and constructive steps Congress could take. But not since the Alien and Sedition Acts has one political party in Congress sought to bend the power of the federal government, on partisan lines, toward crushing political opposition to this extent. H.R. 1 is not merely a bad idea; it is a scandal.

Agreed.  I heartily urge all Americans to contact their U.S. Senators and urge them to vote against the major usurpation of state power and authority.

 

[DanteEstonia]

10 hours ago, Muda69 said:

end two centuries of state power to draw congressional districts

You say this like it's a bad thing. 

[DanteEstonia]

10 hours ago, Muda69 said:

while banning mid-decade readjustments of district lines

Indiana's Constitution bans the same thing. 

[Muda69]

7 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

You say this like it's a bad thing. 

Because it is.

 

[DanteEstonia]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Because it is.

Quite the contrary; it ensures any districts are done in a non-partisan fashion. In my opinion, a certain percentage of a State's congressional districts would be elected at-large as compensatory districts. 

[DanteEstonia]

In my opinion, it's time to start enforcing Section 2 of the 14th Amendment and apportion representatives based on the number of people registered to vote in a State. 

[DanteEstonia]

19 hours ago, Muda69 said:

State voter-ID laws are banned, replaced simply by a sworn voter statement.

... just like North Dakota. 

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

Quite the contrary; it ensures any districts are done in a non-partisan fashion. In my opinion, a certain percentage of a State's congressional districts would be elected at-large as compensatory districts. 

Sorry, these "independent commissions", whose members will most likely be appointed by politicians in Washington,  will be anything but "independent".  They will be as politically motivated as anything done at the state level.

 

[Muda69]

H.R. 1 Is a Partisan Disgrace

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/h-r-1-is-a-partisan-disgrace/

Quote

It’d be fitting if Democrats undertook a radical procedural step to pass a radical piece of legislation.

That’s what the Left is pressuring Senate Democrats to do by eliminating, or significantly curtailing, the filibuster to pass H.R. 1, the sweeping voting proposal that is one of the most execrable bills to pass the House in a very long time.

H.R. 1 would federalize the conduct of elections and codify what were supposed to be emergency voting procedures during the pandemic, in frankly partisan legislation sheathed in the rhetoric of “voting rights.”

 

According to advocates of the bill, anything to tighten up or maintain good practices regarding ballot security is “voter suppression” worthy of the old Jim Crow South.

By this way of thinking, Republican efforts at the state level to, say, reduce the days available for early voting — Iowa is reducing its early-voting period from 29 days to 20 days — will disenfranchise millions, never mind that deep-blue New York State allows only about a week of early voting.

Voter-identification laws, a bogeyman of supporters of H.R. 1, were recommended by a 2005 bipartisan commission jointly led by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, neither of whom will ever be mistaken for Bull Connor. Not too long ago, it was a feature of big bipartisan voting bills to require states to periodically clean up their voter rolls, another commonsense measure that is now considered tantamount to wielding billy clubs and police dogs.

There may be many problems besetting American democracy, but people turning out to vote isn’t one of them. Turnout exploded in the 2018 midterms before the pandemic, and turnout exploded in 2020 during the pandemic, with both Democrats who availed themselves of early voting and Republicans who voted same day showing up in historic numbers.

In response largely to a non-problem, Democrats want to trample on the prerogatives of states to conduct elections, mandating their electoral priorities throughout the land.

States would have no choice but to accept same-day registrations. People applying for various government programs or for college would be registered automatically. States couldn’t turn away the registrations of 16-year-olds, even though they can’t legally vote.

States couldn’t require voter ID. They couldn’t remove inactive voters from the rolls. They couldn’t work with other states to try to find duplicate registrations six months before an election.

It would be pandemic-era mail-in voting forevermore, with no ID or witness signatures required and ballot-harvesting and drop boxes mandatory everywhere.

Felons could no longer be barred from voting. The federal government would pay to train high-school students how to register people to vote and fund “campus voter coordinators,” as well as give colleges grants to register students.

To truly bring home that the states are being divested of powers that go back to the founding of the republic, state legislatures would no longer draw congressional districts; instead the task would be taken up by purportedly independent commissions. The FEC would no longer be bipartisan, and sundry provisions would prohibit or chill unwelcome political activity.

That many Democrats say that the filibuster should fall for this bill is a symptom of the fevered state of the party, which despite holding or winning every elected branch of the federal government has conjured out of nothing a vast conspiracy to stop people from voting that allegedly justifies one of the most blatant federal power grabs in memory.

Early voting isn’t going away, but there should be protections against potential abuses, and voting on Election Day should be encouraged — it’s the most secure and private, and least error-prone, way to vote.

It’s a symptom of what a wrecking ball H.R. 1 is that, in the course of mandating the opposite on all counts, it could kneecap both the states and a longstanding Senate procedure in one fell swoop.

 

[DanteEstonia]

4 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Sorry, these "independent commissions", whose members will most likely be appointed by politicians in Washington,  will be anything but "independent".  They will be as politically motivated as anything done at the state level.

Based on what evidence?

Why not just have the federal courts draw the districts? Or, even better, why not abolish districts altogether?

[Muda69]

5 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

Based on what evidence?

Why not just have the federal courts draw the districts? Or, even better, why not abolish districts altogether?

History.

Mixing the legislative and judicial branches like that is not a good idea, IMHO.  And again, the federal government should have no business deciding how a state decides what geographical areas its representatives represent.

Without geographical districts who exactly would a member of the house of representatives represent?  A call comes in from a state citizen and then a wheel is spun to decide what representative's office takes the call?

 

[DanteEstonia]

5 hours ago, Muda69 said:

And again, the federal government should have no business deciding how a state decides what geographical areas its representatives represent.

Current federal law already dictates how States can apportion representatives.

 

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/39/more-at-large-districts/

[DanteEstonia]

Also-

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/2c

 

[Bobref]

1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

Also-

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/2c

 

The statute hardly “dictates” how states draw Congressional districts. States are now — and should be — free to draw districts in any fashion they want, provided they do not unconstitutionally infringe the principle of “one man, one vote,” i.e., all votes count equally.

[DanteEstonia]

1 hour ago, Bobref said:

The statute hardly “dictates” how states draw Congressional districts.

Other than "no at-large districts", and that is a dictate on how districts can be drawn.

[Bobref]

6 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Other than "no at-large districts", and that is a dictate on how districts can be drawn.

No, it isn’t. It dictates how districts can’t be drawn. It doesn’t tell anything about how to do it. Just says one way they can’t.

Edited March 10, 2021 by Bobref

[swordfish]

[DanteEstonia]

3 hours ago, Bobref said:

No, it isn’t. It dictates how districts can’t be drawn. It doesn’t tell anything about how to do it. Just says one way they can’t.

By banning a method, it's telling a State what they can and can't do.

I'll offer up a compromise- State legislatures can draw congressional districts, but 1/3rd of their districts have to be elected at-large using the additional member system.

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/additional-member-system/

[DanteEstonia]

6 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

I'll offer up a compromise- State legislatures can draw congressional districts, but 1/3rd one-half of their districts representatives have to be elected at-large using the additional member system.

This is better 🙂 

14 minutes ago, swordfish said:

The Founders owned slaves, and they are dead. They were not gods, they were men. 

Edited March 10, 2021 by DanteEstonia
Formatting error

[DanteEstonia]

Also, they used at-large districts. 

They as in the Founding Fathers. The posts didn't merge.

[DanteEstonia]

State governments can draw Congressional district, if we use this system:

 

 

[Muda69]

The Two-Pronged Assault on American Democracy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/the-two-pronged-assault-on-american-democracy/

Quote

A full-out assault on our election system — a two-pronged project of the Democratic Party and the vast and crazy-funded left-wing conspiracy — is underway, threatening a radical transformation of our republic, making mincemeat of the notion of states (those things currently considered “united”), and erasing our Declaration’s assurance that America operates via “the consent of the governed.”

 

Can this actually come to pass?

Well, can Joe Biden be elected president? So, yes — fret.

This effort’s success may prove dependent upon a passive, dispirited, and divided conservatism. Our movement’s central tenet — to protect the Founding — demands a rousing, a call to arms, and forceful and determined counterattack that gives no quarter and allows for no sunshine patriots.

When you’re a bull, and when you’re trying to gut the last best hope of earth, two prongs are better than one. The one of more immediate concern protrudes from Capitol Hill, where Democrats have unleashed the “For the People Act.” Granted the legislative prestige of being designated “H.R. 1,” the massive proposal would dismantle our election system by federalizing election laws, appropriating the constitutional rights of states to oversee the ballot box, hampering protected political speech, exposing and intimidating donors, making hash of voter verification and restrictions on voter registration, and burying once and for all the notion of an Election Day. It is nothing less than a partisan assault on our democracy.

We’ve seen the trailer: The bill would make permanent and supersize the pre-election chaos of 2020, the consequence of widespread bureaucratic and judicial whim that exploited the pandemic and lockdowns and that monkeyed with ballot deadlines and voter integrity. This new normal would make rampant the chicanery that is the expertise of the party of street money and ballot-harvesting and voter intimidation. As an important Heritage Foundation analysis summarizes the bill:

H.R. 1 would federalize and micromanage the election process administered by the states, imposing unnecessary, unwise, and unconstitutional mandates on the states and reversing the decentralization of the American election process—which is essential to the protection of our liberty and freedom. It would implement nationwide the worst changes in election rules that occurred during the 2020 election and go even further in eroding and eliminating basic security protocols that states have in place.

The bill would interfere with the ability of states and their citizens to determine the qualifications and eligibility of voters, to ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, to secure the fairness and integrity of elections, to participate and speak freely in the political process, and to determine the district boundary lines for electing their representatives.

Nasty stuff, but for good reason, at least from the Democrats’ perspective: If this travesty becomes law, the Republican Party’s electoral goose is cooked. On deck for the stove: our principles.

There is no certainty to this outcome, though, and the jihad is clearly at odds with the views of most Americans. Some evidence: On the heels of the 2020 elections, Scott Rasmussen surveyed 1,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania, who knew a thing or two about ballot chaos, and found these overwhelming numbers:

88 percent want cleaned-up voter-registration files — no dead, no moved — prior to the next election.

75 percent strongly approve of requiring all mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day.

68 percent want all the votes counted on Election Night.

75 percent say photo ID should be required for in-person voting.

58 percent want a copy of photo IDs to accompany mail-in ballots.

56 percent want to ban ballot harvesting.

Who is pushing back against the Left — for this majority, and for the essence of the republic?

Things are percolating. One example is Honest Elections Project (HEP), founded last year, which concentrates on the state-based efforts to strengthen voting laws and integrity (it’s not involved in conducting forensics on, or defending cases for or against, the 2020 presidential results) and restoring public confidence in the fairness of elections. Its new report, Safeguarding Future Elections, lays out eleven areas for “critical reform” and voter security such as protecting a proper absentee-ballot process — which when abused is a mother lode for election fraud:

A. Ban “ballot trafficking” (also known as “ballot harvesting”) by third parties. No one other than a voter’s caregiver, an immediate family member, or fellow household resident should be permitted to handle his or her ballot.

B. Prohibit all forms of compensation for ballot collection.

C. Individuals should be permitted to “assist” no more than three voters with filling out or casting a ballot in a given election.

D. Each absentee ballot should be signed by a witness, and there should be reasonable limits on the number of ballots an individual may witness.

E. Candidates for public office should be barred from collecting, returning, or assisting with the completion of absentee ballots.

F. Each absentee vote must have a clear and auditable chain of custody, including the identities of anyone who assists a voter in completing or returning a ballot.

G. Drop boxes should be subject to clear and uniform rules that govern deployment, that mandate adequate security (e.g., through security cameras viewable by the public), require placement inside a government building, and that limit drop-box availability to regular business hours.

H. Secrecy envelopes including a signature and date should be required for all absentee ballots.

HEP founder Jason Snead wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal that these kinds of guidelines, which are the province of state legislatures, so explains our Constitution, are exactly what H.R. 1 would blow up. Comparing Pennsylvania, where ballot-counters in Philadelphia took two weeks to count 700,000 ballots, to Florida, once the hanging-chad laughingstock of election tabulating, where all votes were counted (accurately!) on Election Night in 2020, Snead says that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pet bill

would put Florida’s success at risk. Its law requires voters to show identification and return absentee ballots by Election Day, bans organized ballot trafficking, and requires that voters cure problems with their mail-in ballots no later than two days after an election. Common-sense measures like these help the state deliver honest elections with prompt and accurate results even in the face of a pandemic. For H.R.1’s drafters, though, these are instruments of “voter suppression.” The bill would dilute or prohibit all these measures.

The second prong — dicier, but still quite dangerous — is the leftist campaign to gut America’s election system, to be accomplished by eviscerating the Electoral College. It goes by the innocuous-sounding National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (and naturally has the enthusiastic support of major liberal editorialists).

Though it lacks congressional approval (a requirement stipulated on that parchment kept in the National Archives), the Compact pinkie-swears that its member states agree to designate their Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate earning the most votes nationwide; i.e., not necessarily to the candidate who prevailed among that state’s voters.

(Asking for a friend: Why do we have states?) From the Compact:

Prior to the time set by law for the meeting and voting by the presidential electors, the chief election official of each member state shall determine the number of votes for each presidential slate in each State of the United States and in the District of Columbia in which votes have been cast in a statewide popular election and shall add such votes together to produce a “national popular vote total” for each presidential slate.

The chief election official of each member state shall designate the presidential slate with the largest national popular vote total as the “national popular vote winner.”

The presidential elector certifying official of each member state shall certify the appointment in that official’s own state of the elector slate nominated in that state in association with the national popular vote winner.

At least six days before the day fixed by law for the meeting and voting by the presidential electors, each member state shall make a final determination of the number of popular votes cast in the state for each presidential slate and shall communicate an official statement of such determination within 24 hours to the chief election official of each other member state.

This shenanigan gets activated when enough states — representing over 270 electoral votes — become parties to the Compact. Currently, 15 states, along with the District of Columbia, accounting for a combined 196 Electoral College votes, have passed laws supporting the national popular vote (the most recent was in Colorado last November, when voters approved a Proposition 113 by a 52-to-48 percent margin).

This is a new but more nefarious take on an old desire for direct election of the president. It would be our law, but for one man. In 1970, with strong bipartisan support (including that of President Nixon), the Senate (the House had given its overwhelming support the previous year) was on the cusp of voting on, and possibly for, the legislation, to be sent to the states for expected ratification. Here came the freight train.

But a report by the late Michael Uhlmann, then a young aide to Senator James Buckley, derailed it. His epic and thorough defense of the Electoral College, and why its demise would deeply wound the republic, proved so influential that it persuaded some senators (key to this was Eugene McCarthy) to flip-flop. The expected amendment vote never happened. The Constitution remained as written.

On Uhlmann’s death, National Review friend Chris DeMuth recounted how that defense — better known as the Uhlmann Report (in fact, it was the Senate Judiciary Committee’s “Minority Report” on the proposed amendment) — indeed saved America. (DeMuth’s essay, published in the most recent issue of National Affairs, is a must-read.)

America still needs saving. The arguments made by Uhlmann in 1970 — echoed more recently in NR by colleagues such as David Harsanyi (Electoral College: A Defense), Dan McLaughlin (What the Electoral College Saves Us From), and Michael Brendan Dougherty (Our Shared Electoral College), amongst others — are evidence that the intellectual battle is far from over.

And then there is the trench warfare. In the trenches, opposing the threat of NPV, is Save Our States. Actually, it has been there for over a decade, created after Maryland became the initial NPV Compact member in 2007, and has increased its efforts as the Electoral College trashers have gained more traction.

It may be a David-Goliath challenge, but there are stones to be slung by SOS, such as its excellent 2020 documentary, Safeguard: An Electoral College Story, a persuasive effort to combat the NPV crusade. Here’s the trailer:

Among its many resources, SOS offers a variety of handouts on NPV-related topics (such as how an NPV would turn America’s urban-rural divide into an abyss).

But one handout that proves timely keys in on the Left’s two-pronged attack on American elections: An enacted NPV, combined with an H.R. 1–gutting of state control of election integrity, makes for a toxic brew:

In presidential elections, these types of fraud are less likely and more difficult because of the Electoral College’s state-by-state process. Fraud within a state can only affect the results in that one state. A state where one party is overwhelmingly popular — and where one-party control might make vote fraud easier — is probably already going to vote for that party’s candidate anyway. The most competitive states tend to have two strong political parties and higher levels of oversight, making fraud more difficult.

With NPV, however, fraudulent ballots anywhere — even in just one state — could steal an entire election. For the first time in American history, a presidential election could be stolen by vote fraud in one-party controlled “safe” states. This would create a new incentive to suppress the vote of the minority party in order to drive down its national vote total.

The increased risk of election fraud under NPV, combined with the fact that it fails to establish a single official vote count or create a process for a nationwide recount, would lead to countless lawsuits and even worse voter distrust.

This fight may indeed be that one, rightly feared, that fits the billing — “for all the marbles.” The one whose outcome could mean the fundamental redefining of America, and an end to its 244-year experiment. By perverting elections, by diminishing the legal rights of states and local authorities to maintain control and battle fraud, by loosening voter-ID integrity and other critical confines (such as when an election can take place, and where and how, who can and can’t handle absentee ballots, and much more), what the Left will accomplish is much more sinister. It will reconfigure and redefine just what is citizenship and who are “the governed.”

Oh, you will indeed be governed. But good luck in trying to give your “consent.”

 

[DanteEstonia]

23 hours ago, Muda69 said:

federalizing election laws

https://www.justice.gov/crt/about-national-voter-registration-act

We've already done it

23 hours ago, Muda69 said:

unconstitutional mandates

Why you always lying? 

 

On 3/12/2021 at 10:09 AM, Muda69 said:

But a report by the late Michael Uhlmann,

Looks like we need another Cadaver Synod for this one. 

 

On 3/12/2021 at 10:09 AM, Muda69 said:

saved America

Lol

[DanteEstonia]

Quite frankly, H.R. 1 doesn't go far enough. 

[DanteEstonia]

Particularly considering this country has a history of disenfranchising people of color.

And now one of you will pull the usual "the democrats disenfranchised people" BS, but just as a reminder-

"Film does not lie." -Coach Bret Szabo