The Democrat Plot to Californicate Our Republic

Earlier this month, an electoral horror show unfolded in California, with results taking more than a week to finalize amid widespread allegations of fraud – including at least one Democrat activist in Los Angeles who will plead guilty to paying homeless people to register to vote.

While the votes are now finally counted (mostly, at least – Mendocino County somehow still has less than 70 percent of its vote in) Americans should not forget what they just witnessed. California’s chaotic and disastrous system is precisely what Democrats plan to roll out nationwide if they are able to capture Congress in 2026 and the presidency in 2028.

Specifically, Democrats plan to pass the “Freedom to Vote Act” and the “John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.” The “benefits” of this plan are described in the 2024 Democrat Platform, which claims the combination of these bills will “secure the right to vote in every state, ensure fair congressional maps for every American, modernize and secure our elections, and curtail the corrupting influence of money in politics.”

All of these vague goals are meant to achieve “structural democracy reform,” a term that should give everyone the creeps, considering that the Democrats came very close to passing their pernicious “reform” legislation in 2022. Had they succeeded, then-President Joe Biden (or perhaps his autopen) would certainly have signed it into law and the “fundamental transformation of the United States of America” begun by former President Obama would have been all but complete.

Are these “reforms” really that sinister? As California just showed us, yes – yes they are.

The Freedom to Vote Act

The far-left Brennan Center for Justice describes this bill, which might be the most egregiously misnamed bill since the “Inflation Reduction Act,” as “historic pro-voter legislation to strengthen our democracy, promote racial justice and equity for all Americans, and block anti-voter efforts in the states.” In reality, it is an assault on election integrity. Here are just a few of its nasty provisions:

• Automatic voter registration (AVR): The legislation makes AVR mandatory in every state so that allegedly eligible voters are automatically registered when interacting with state agencies. Oversight to ensure voters are actually eligible? Nonexistant.
• Same-day voter registration (SDR): The legislation would require every state to offer SDR such that any allegedly eligible voter would be able to register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day – a nightmare for verification purposes.
• Online voter registration: The legislation would require every state to authorize online voter registration. Election integrity experts have warned that this throws the door wide open to fraud.
• Early voting: The legislation would require all 50 states to offer early voting periods for at least two weeks prior to Election Day, including at night and on weekends, for at least 10 hours per day. It’s already difficult enough to find poll workers for one day. This provision would make it nearly impossible and strain the ability of poll watchers to guard against fraud.
• Mail voting: The legislation would impose no-excuse vote-by-mail for every allegedly eligible voter. States would also be required to permit voters to apply for absentee ballots online. If you think the 2020 election took a long time to certify, just wait until this provision becomes law and the country has to wait weeks to find out who won.
• Prohibitions on voter purges: The legislation purports to prevent questionable voter purging but it effectively renders legitimate voter roll maintenance impossible. The entire idea is to make it as difficult as possible to remove deceased or ineligible voters.
• Cracking down on deceptive and intimidating practices: The legislation would impose criminal penalties for the dissemination of misleading information to deter voters from casting ballots. But of course, Democrats get to decide what counts as “misleading.”
• Voting rights restoration: The legislation would require all 50 states to restore full federal voting rights to all formerly incarcerated citizens immediately upon their release from prison – even violent felons who have proven that they have no business deciding the policies that govern civil society.
• Countering long lines and related discriminatory practices: The legislation would require every state in the union to ensure that on Election Day waiting times last no longer than 30 minutes. How exactly this provision is to be enforced, no one knows.
• Banning partisan gerrymandering and establishing clear, neutral standards: The legislation would prohibit partisan gerrymandering yet allow the creation of majority-minority districts – in effect creating a situation where only Democrat gerrymanders are allowed.

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

The Brennan Center says this bill “would revitalize the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” In fact, its goal is to nullify three Supreme Court rulings meant to halt Democrat abuse of the Voting Rights Act: Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Brnovich v. DNC (2021) and Louisiana v. Callais (2026). The bill would require states with a “history of voting discrimination” to get preclearance from the DOJ before changing their voting laws or practices. It would make some voting changes subject to DOJ preclearance nationwide in certain instances, to include the following:

• Changing district boundaries to remove minorities from places with sufficiently large minority populations.
• Changing district boundaries where a minority group is sufficiently large and has had a population increase.
• Reducing, consolidating, or relocating polling places, early and Election Day voting opportunities, or absentee voting opportunities in places with sufficiently large minority populations.
• Making it easier to remove voters from the rolls in places with sufficiently large minority populations.

It doesn’t take an enormous amount of imagination to visualize the kind of skullduggery an unscrupulous attorney general such as Eric Holder or Merrick Garland would get up to with a federal law that overtly mandates special treatment to districts with “large minority populations.” They would certainly use it to destroy the remaining vestiges of equal representation in congressional elections. To paraphrase George Orwell, all voters will be equal but some will be more equal than others. Our national elections will resemble the L.A. primary.

To top all this off, this legislation would require the DOJ to approve any change in requirements for documentation or proof of identity to vote. In effect, this would mean that a Democrat-run DOJ could block state voter ID laws – precisely the opposite of what a large majority of voters of all political persuasions support, according to multiple polls.

Gallup, for example, found that 84 percent of Americans support requiring photo ID to vote, including 98 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of independents, and 67 percent of Democrats. Separately, 83 percent support requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote for the first time. And, as CNN’s Harry Enten notes, support for voter ID crosses racial lines: White, Black, and Latino.

The combined effect of the “Freedom to Vote Act” and the “John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act” would be to permanently eliminate election integrity nationwide and ensure that, the next time the Democrats gain a governing trifecta in Washington, they would impose “structural democracy reform” that would keep them permanently in power.

To put it more crudely, the Democrats are planning to Californicate our constitutional republic.

David Catron is a Senior Editor at the American Spectator. His writing has also appeared in PJ Media, the American Thinker, the Providence Journal, the Catholic Exchange and a variety of other publications.