Hans von Spakovsky:
The bills that Biden and Harris want the Senate to pass – S.1, the For the People Act; S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act; and H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act – would, taken together, federalize and micromanage the election process. They would impose unnecessary, unwise and unconstitutional mandates on the states that would severely damage the integrity and security of our elections.
So what are the 10 worst provisions in these three bills? They would:
*Ban state photo voter ID laws, including prohibiting any ID for absentee ballots or the signature of a witness, making it impossible to verify the authenticity of the vote;
*Make it easy to commit fraud and promote chaos at the polls by requiring states to implement same-day voter registration, giving election officials no time to verify the accuracy of the registration and the eligibility of the voter or to anticipate the number of ballots and election workers needed at polling places;
*Degrade the accuracy of voter registration lists by severely restricting the ability of states to verify the eligibility and qualifications of voters and removing ineligible voters;
*Require states to allow online voter registration not tied to an existing state record on an individual, such as a driver’s license, which would open up registration systems to massive voter registration fraud by cyber criminals;
*Require states to automatically register individuals to vote from state and federal databases, such as state Departments of Motor Vehicles, which would result in the registration of ineligible voters, including aliens, and cause multiple registrations of the same individuals (the sponsors know this, which is why they’ve put in an immunity-from-prosecution provision for aliens who get registered);
*Give unaccountable and unelected bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Justice veto authority over most election changes made by state legislatures – an invasion of state sovereignty that violates federalism and overrides the decisions of the voters and their elected state representatives to determine the election rules for their state;
*Require states to restore the ability of felons to vote the moment they exit prison, voiding state requirements that criminals first complete all the requirements of their sentence such as parole, probation and restitution payments to their victims;
*Provide a public funding program for congressional candidates, forcing taxpayers to support candidates they would never vote for or send campaign contributions to;
*Force states to provide drop boxes for absentee ballots without requiring any security protocols, as well as force states to allow voter trafficking, i.e., letting paid political operatives, candidates, campaign staffers and others with a stake in the outcome of the election to pick up and handle absentee ballots;
*Implement a whole series of restrictions and changes to federal campaign laws that would limit political speech and turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan law enforcement agency