Early this summer, Senate Democrats tried to advance H.R. 1, a sweeping bill designed to launch a partisan federal takeover of America’s elections. They failed to win over even every Democrat in Congress. Now, they are offering a bill they’ve dubbed the Freedom to Vote Act, though a more honest name would be the Freedom to Cheat Act. Democrats say it’s new, but it’s really just a fresh face for the same federal takeover.
Progressives are working overtime to brand the Freedom to Vote Act as a bipartisan “compromise.” In truth, Democrats negotiated with themselves and once again are pushing a partisan agenda aimed at eliminating the most popular and proven safeguards that preserve Americans’ confidence in democracy.
Take voter ID laws, for instance. The left rails against requiring an ID to vote, claiming — despite all evidence to the contrary — that it is “voter suppression.” With H.R. 1, they tried to abolish voter ID requirements outright. But four in five Americans actually want everyone to show a photo ID when they vote, and these ID laws have grown more popular this year — especially among Black voters. Black voter support for photo ID laws jumped 13 percentage points in five months; today, more than three in four Black and Hispanic voters back them.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats have walked back their rhetoric. But even as they publicly feign support for voter ID laws, they privately work to neuter them. For instance, progressives will be quick to say that the Freedom to Vote Act preserves voter ID. What they leave out is that the bill bans wildly popular photo ID requirements, bars ID for mail-in ballots, and imposes an identification standard for in-person voting so watered down that all you need to prove identity is to find another person willing to say they know you. Try that the next time you go through TSA.
Voter ID is just the beginning. The Freedom to Vote Act has most of the major elements of H.R. 1. The bill makes it harder for states to clean up voter rolls, even though studies have shown that as many as one in eight voter registrations are wrong. It forces every state to offer no-excuse mail voting, weaken absentee ballot safeguards, and accept ballots up to a week after election day. The bill mandates insecure drop boxes be made available in the dead of night, opening the door to vote trafficking by political operatives. And it hands out voting rights to violent felons the moment they leave prison. Have they completed their sentences or paid restitution to their victims? The bill’s proponents do not care.
Advocates do seem to care a great deal about making sure that politicians get paid to run for office, though. Like H.R. 1, the Freedom to Vote Act creates a program for House races that pays campaigns $6 in public funds for every buck they raise in private small-dollar donations. In other words, a $200 donation from a voter would stick taxpayers with a $1,200 bill. In a typical election year, the Freedom to Vote Act could direct billions of dollars in public funds to the politicians who enact it.
Democrats say the Freedom to Vote Act is needed to stop a wave of “voter suppression” in Republican states. Hardly. Conservative states are making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Georgia lawmakers, for instance, added days of early voting and tackled chronic long lines that plague places like Fulton County — which just so happens to be run by Democrats. These reforms are not only good policy, they are popular with voters, and they are crucial to maintaining trust and confidence in democracy. That’s why two-thirds of Americans want to strengthen election safeguards, not eliminate them.
But that is exactly what Democrats aim to do, and there is no rule too small or innocuous to escape their scorn. Sen. Amy Klobuchar recently said that even requiring a voter to write his own birthday on a mail ballot was “voter suppression.”
Progressives have a vision for voting: lax rules, bloated voter rolls, endless legal challenges, and no way to detect or stop fraud. Whether they package it in a bill called H.R. 1 or the “Freedom to Vote Act,” it is a recipe for distrust and division, and Democrats know that it is profoundly out of sync with the desires of most Americans. Their response is not to listen, but to use dire cries of “voter suppression” to smear their opponents, frighten their voters into turning out, and manufacture support for a federal takeover of elections.
That is a deeply cynical and irresponsible strategy, but it is also a revealing one. For the left, it isn’t about boosting democracy. It’s about boosting Democrats.
Jason Snead is executive director of Honest Elections Project Action.
Yet almost all the same language that makes up H.R1 is also included in the current reconciliation bill being feverishly pushed along by the Democrats. They have been inserting this language in the reconciliation bill since day one. Keep you eye on all the balls the Democrats have in motion, not just the one dedicated solely to the subject of federalizing elections.
There are certain ones in the DemocRat party that really don’t know what the truth is and they will do anything to maintain their power. Sometimes I believe they have lied so much that they actually believe their own lies. Where are the dedicated ones in the Republican party that will fight tooth and nail to defeat these sluggs. Thank GOD that there are two Democrats that will not be intimidated and are preventing these DemocRats from pushing these bills through.
We need to be ready to vote in larger turnouts to get rid of the Dems and have senators and congressmen who will clean up the mess the Dems are making if we don’t America will be like other countries and we will be run over by the Dems and illegals please go out and vote and handcuff Biden. I still do not believe he actually one .
Power must feed itself. That includes FEAR and push all they can for themselves. Citizens don’t matter. Power has attempted and to some degree achieved that result. Not all Democrats are just Followers as Not all Republicans are either. Most, if asked will confirm: They are Americans First. The Press as a whole used to be Amercia’s source of Information. China and Russia have diluted that process so well that United States Citizens must find another reliable source or sources.
Facebook , Twitter and others were used as a communication vehicle for the citizens. That has been tampered with so badly that conversations have been deleted and users blocked off no one trusts any of social media.
This Freedom to Vote Act needs to be shut down and scrapped. It ONLY promotes dishonest elections. The Federal Government has no business in our voting system. Only the states have that authority and it needs to stay that way. The Federal Government is already too big and too powerful. It needs to be scaled back before our country turns into a Marxist regime. Every state needs to have voter IDs, NO mail in ballots that only promote fraud, in person voting and only legal absentee voting by American citizens only. Stop using the Chinese virus for an excuse either. People voted in person through 2 World Wars so what is the excuse now? Our current voting system used by the states that the power was given them by our Constitution and has worked since. So the Marxists in the Biden regime need to keep their hands off it. Why don’t they concentrate on our Southern border disaster or the Afghanistan flub up?