Democrats Plan Voting Overhaul That Will Change the Face of US Elections
If you have been debating about electing Democrats, this news may sway you to vote against. And interestingly enough, it has to do with voting.
Among other “reforms” proposed by Democrats should they take control of Congress, is this doozey about how they want to impact the very face of U.S. elections. According to The Huffington Post, under the guise of “anti-corruption and voting rights reforms,” the Democrats plan on passing a bill that is “a comprehensive package of campaign finance, voting rights, redistricting and ethics reforms.”
Not only is the bill co-sponsored by 165 Democratic members of the House, but it is endorsed by a coalition of 100 groups using the umbrella name of “Declaration for American Democracy” (for the record, the United States is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy), including Planned Parenthood, the NAACP, and the Sierra Club. These groups are all known as highly left-leaning organizations.
The Huffington Post wrote that the main goal of the bill will be to “the creation of a small-donor public financing system for congressional elections, the restoration of the Voting Rights Act, nationwide automatic voter registration, nonpartisan redistricting reforms for congressional elections and a host of ethics reforms to rein in corruption in Congress and the executive branch.”
Let’s take “the restoration of the Voting Rights Act” as an example of why the Democrats’ plan is a bad idea. In 2013, The New York Times addressed the ruling by the Supreme Court which struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act.
“The majority held that the coverage formula in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, originally passed in 1965 and most recently updated by Congress in 1975, was unconstitutional. The section determined which states must receive clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones, like redrawing electoral districts.”
And, even though Section 5 was supposed to expire in five years, Congress not only kept extending it, but used old data to justify doing so. Chief Justice Roberts explained why that was such a big problem, writing that it was “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.”
“Congress — if it is to divide the states — must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions. It cannot simply rely on the past.”
So even though the Supreme Court ruled parts were unconstitutional, the Democrats want to “restore” it. They want the federal government to dictate voting rules to states.
If the Democrats take control and pass this bill, they would be dictating voting laws to states. Logically, do you think they would allow states to have laws that don’t benefit them as a party?
And while they are litigious and fight a number of state voting laws, there is one that could be argued is their biggest bone of contention following the Supreme Court’s ruling: voter I.D. laws.
The day after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Texas shared its plans to pass a strict voter ID law. Building a Democratic majority in the state House is the first step toward ending voter suppression and flipping Texas blue. https://t.co/bONuGdHpzD
— Flippable (@flippable_org) October 26, 2018
Another target area is campaign finance reform. The Huffington Post wrote that the president of Democracy 21 elaborated on the need for campaign finance reform with quite the hyperbolic statement.
“We have a system of campaign finance that takes us back to the Gilded Age and the robber baron era, a voting system that takes us back to the poll tax and voter suppression era and a redistricting system that allows representatives to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. The very health of our democracy is at stake in this fight to repair our political system for all Americans.”
Have you heard the saying that “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?” The same applies to steaming heaps of cow dung. No matter what pretty name you apply to bad ideas, they are still bad ideas.
So while voting laws are still the way they are, it is more important than ever to use them and keep them fair. Plans that would give the Democrats power when it comes to elections and voting controls is not what the U.S. is all about.
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