OPINION:
H.R. 1 — the “For The People Act” — and its Senate companion, S.1, are built on lies. The insidious bill has been making its way through the legislative process, propelled by a false narrative that the White House and their allies in the biased media are all too willing to perpetuate.
Ostensibly, the For The People Act, which passed in the U.S. House without a single Republican vote, is being pushed — if you believe the left’s spin — in response to what Democrats say is an unprecedented assault on voting rights taking place in Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country.
This disingenuous storyline was propagated yet again in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday as the committee met for a hearing to examine the bill. The hearing’s title — “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote” — even pushes the despicable notion that equates states that are protecting electoral integrity with actual voter disenfranchisement.
Utah Congressman Burgess Owens, who testified at the hearing, outlined how divisive and insulting this comparison is. As he noted in his statement, Mr. Owens grew up in the era of institutionalized racism and, as someone who lived through Jim Crow, said the “disgusting” comparison to Georgia’s SB 202 election integrity law is “absolutely outrageous.”
In reality, states like Georgia are passing election integrity measures to ensure that every American citizen has the right to vote once, while ensuring that illegal votes don’t cancel out the voices of legal voters. After seeing all the irregularities and opportunities for fraud inherent in a universal vote-by-mail system, a commanding majority of Americans remain in favor of simple, common sense election integrity protections. Seventy-five percent of voters, including 69% of Black voters, support voter ID laws. Despite overwhelming public support for voter protections, Democrats continue to insist that H.R. 1/S.1 — which would destroy tried and tested voting safeguards — is must-pass legislation.
From the initial reaction by Democrats and liberal media pundits, you’d be forgiven for thinking that none of these partisans have actually read the bill that was approved by Georgia’s state legislature. Even President Biden falsely claimed that Georgia’s new law cut voting hours and compared it to segregation era Jim Crow laws. In the words of Mr. Owens, “Mr. President, you know better.”
In reality, the bill expands access to voting for all Georgians, as well as a number of other reforms that local elections officials welcomed in response to the historic voter turnout last November. It requires voter ID — many forms of which are considered acceptable — for requesting and returning an absentee ballot. If you consider, like I do, public trust in our electoral system as tantamount to a healthy Democracy, you will cheer these straightforward protections. Utah Sen. Mike Lee is exactly right when he says that Republicans “want it to be easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Naturally, as Democrats seem to be redefining words and meanings to gaslight the American people, you would not have seen any legitimate analysis of this bill and what it does to protect elections from Mr. Biden, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi or the liberal media. H.R. 1/S.1 is their attempt, not to protect voters like Georgia’s law, but to federalize elections and ensure the Democrats’ grip on power.
The only thing worse than Jim Crow is falsely linking something to Jim Crow in order to sow division in the quest for a political win. This is absolutely shameful behavior by Mr. Biden and the Democrats and the American people are sick and tired of it.
The Jim Crow era saw African-Americans denied their rights as U.S. citizens. To take that horror and real voter disenfranchisement and compare it to Georgia’s voter integrity law is supremely dishonest and shows an utmost contempt for historical context. But, the Democrats have a bill they want to pass more than any other, and misleading minority voters is a decades-long Democratic strategy. Sadly, the damage of their divisive words has already been done.
When Major League Baseball — pushed by the Biden administration — decided to move the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver over the passage of SB 202, it cost the state of Georgia tens of millions of dollars. Even Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Georgia, opposed the MLB’s move, since she knows it would adversely impact minority-owned businesses. The broken woke cabal essentially punished the state under false pretenses and hurt the communities it claims to fight for in the process.
Over the past year, Democrats have weaponized COVID-19 to impose changes on state election systems, including untested universal vote-by-mail procedures. These changes were made despite warnings by the 2005 bipartisan Carter-Baker election reform commission that found “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
To be clear, common sense voter integrity efforts that are supported by the vast majority of Americans from across the political spectrum — and are ubiquitous in other Western democracies — are not Jim Crow laws. The true aim of the For The People Act isn’t to respond to a problem that doesn’t exist — voter suppression — but rather to cement a permanent radical Democrat majority. If there were a commission studying the dangers to election integrity today, H.R. 1/S.1 would be on the top of the list.
• David N. Bossie is president of Citizens United and he served as deputy campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President.
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