Posted on 02/03/2021 3:38:56 AM PST by Kaslin
The right to vote is one of the most sacred rights that we as citizens can exercise. We select the individuals who will lead us and the policies we will live under in our daily lives. Yet the system is broken.
Growing up as a black teen during the 1960s, I knew of the tremendous sacrifices and the dangers that my friends and relatives endured to secure the right to vote for black people. So before I go any further, let me be clear: I have zero interest in disenfranchising or suppressing the vote of any portion of the population. I am keenly aware of our country’s history of doing just that— from poll taxes to literacy tests and other obstacles that were constructed in the South to prevent blacks from voting.
I am also painfully aware of how both political parties have used our electoral system to gain and maintain power in our country, from gerrymandering to creating election laws that favor one party over the other.
In 2016, I watched with dismay as some on the left questioned the integrity of the process that elected Donald Trump as president. They boldly declared that he was illegitimate, promptly launched the “Resist” movement, and called for the end of the Electoral College.
Now I watch as the fraud, mismanagement, and last-minute election rule changes that occurred in 2020 have caused those on the right to question the electoral process and Joe Biden’s legitimacy as president. In other words, hardly anyone—Democrats, Republicans, and independents—trusts the process anymore, and legitimate concerns exist about the fairness and accuracy of our elections.
Citizens are demanding that their elected leaders do something. Yet a bill currently in Congress, ironically called the For the People Act (H.R. 1), would only make things worse. It would create a federal takeover of elections and force changes to election laws that would actually allow for greater fraud and election tampering.
Firstly, federalizing elections is a bad idea. Placing more power with the federal government just makes it easier for fraud, corruption, and abuse to be housed in one place. At least with 50 states controlling their individual elections, we have a better chance of avoiding near-universal corruption, and the people of each state have greater access to their governors and legislators and can more easily demand reform of their election laws to ensure fairness and accuracy (and people can more easily vote those politicians out of office who refuse such reforms).
Secondly, H.R. 1’s proposed changes to election laws do exactly the opposite of creating trust. Under H.R. 1, no one has to prove they are who they say they are in order to vote. It essentially outlaws voter ID laws and other identity verification procedures. It severely restricts the ability of states to check the eligibility of individuals registering to vote. It prevents states from participating in programs that compare state voter registration lists to detect individuals registered in multiple states. And it keeps them from removing many ineligible voters from their voter rolls.
At the same time, the bill forces states to automatically register individuals from databases like department of motor vehicles lists, allowing ineligible people and non-citizens to be automatically registered and allowing for multiple registrations of the same individuals.
The bill also forces states to implement same-day and online voter registration. Same-day (on Election Day) voter registration makes it much easier to commit fraud, as election officials have no time to verify the accuracy of registration information. Online voter registration creates the possibility of massive registration fraud by hackers and cyber criminals, both foreign and domestic.
Common sense election integrity measures such as requiring voter ID, not allowing non-citizens to vote, and making sure people can’t vote more than once in an election have nothing to do with suppressing the vote. Instead, they’re about ensuring that every single American’s legally cast vote gets counted, isn’t lost to some glitch or human error, and isn’t cancelled out by an illegal one.
President Joe Biden says he wants to unify us. One of the biggest ways he can do that is to get Republicans and Democrats working together on ways to reform our election system. Unfortunately, H.R. 1 will only make the uncertainty and division over our elections grow.
Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our constitutional republic, and every citizen, no matter their political persuasion, must be able to trust the voting process and its results. Otherwise, our democratic system itself breaks down.
For every American to have the assurance that his or her vote means something -- indeed, for our republic to survive -- we must do better to restore confidence in our elections.
“Law”? We have law? Where?
uhh...relying on the same processes that created the problem to cure the problem ...is one measure of the definition of just plain nutz!!!
You need a Constitutional Amendment to actually do that. Or, I suppose, you could just do whatever you like because it's an Oligarchy and not a Republic.
Left: “what problem?”
The next pandemic (which I predict will occur every 4 years) will wipe out any existing laws.
It is not a problem for he Left.
With the media and the Tech Oligarchs on their side, they have no worries any election tampering *from them* would be covered up, as with the last election.
Attempts to do the same by conservatives would be met with strict punishment.
The author wrote ...
“So before I go any further, let me be clear: I have zero interest in disenfranchising or suppressing the vote of any portion of the population. “
In addition to your pointing out the insanity same processes run by the people that created the problem will cure the problem, I am more than tired that conservative Americans believe they must put a personal disclaimer before giving their ideas that they are not trying to disenfranchise anyone, or not racist, bigots, etc. The left has successfully planted in the average mind that people who oppose the left are racist, bigoted, etc people if they speak against anything that the left says or does. And even when the disclaimer is made, the conservative person’ viewpoint is expressed, the left’s first and only response is that the conservative person is an evil bigot, racist, etc.
The author would be better off ignoring that and instead of “apologizing”, start by saying that for the record, he is not one who will make proposals that will disenfranchise the voters like the demonkkkraps have done throughout their party’s history and it continues today in overt and hidden systemic ways.
They will use the fifteenth amendment:
Section 1
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude–
Section 2
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
More Salem crypto-liberal claptrap
Your Democrat state didnt need your underage non-vote
in 1960 because Illinois cheated
Go board up some polling place windows, pull
out suitcases of ballots from under tables and
reenact how #BidenCheated
Good morning S P
“he is not one who will make proposals that will disenfranchise the voters like the demonkkkraps have done throughout their party’s history and it continues today in overt and hidden systemic ways.”
I love it when someone has the crystal balls to accuse the left of what they have been accusing American’s of doing to protect the integrity of elections much less the survival of our Republic.
We get to witness the further bastardization of the English language when the oft used and abused words such as voter suppression, systemic racism, our democracy, are used to describe what in reality does not exist in order to capture a narrative that will be used in an attempt to suppress the white majority of the population.
How about throwing in the words, gerrymandering, and literacy tests as something to be considered worrisome along the lines of disenfranchising voters rather than the real intent to keep elections fair and honest.
...and if that isn’t enough how about a little controversy on the side.
Not to mention apologizing for history. I ask you, was not the deep south required by history in the eighteen hundreds to consider the takeover of the South by African Negroes not even citizens of this country should they be given the vote? Seems to me the Constitution attempted to address the issue.
Remaining comments self censored.
It would not require a Constitutional Amendment. The Congress can change State election law in federal elections. I am not sure if the States can have separate laws regarding Statewide elections or how expensive it would be to have two different voting systems. As I read the Election Clause, Congress only can change laws related to Federal Elections. I know that in our State we vote for county offices during the primaries, not the general election. I wonder if States could mandate that Statewide offices be voted on separate from Federal elections. Separate Ballots maybe?
You hit it exactly on point what is going on in the current arena of racial politics.
“We get to witness the further bastardization of the English language when [words are manipulated and used] to describe what in reality does not exist in order to capture a narrative that will be used in an attempt to suppress the white majority of the population.”
About 20 years ago, as part of my job then, I had the good fortune to learn from a guest speaker (a journalist with 15 years experience) for half a day - educate us on how journalists are taught to frame an issue. It was quite fascinating to see how writing about the same facts in different ways could manipulate some “dry facts” into a controversy, or distrust, or paint someone as evil or no good, etc. Journalists were taught they are the “4th estate”, and need to “get behind the facts” to what the real story is about, after all, a journalist cannot let someone else (a company, a GOP politician, a religious person, anyone not on the left) present things as favorable to themselves even if there is nothing there but just dry facts. No the journalist is morally superior and must expose the “real story”, never believing that they are wrong, or biased, etc. ... they can’t let the “other side’s story” control the public conversation.
Face it, the left controls the media and the education system today. They not only set the terms of what and when things are discussed, there are so few to no journalists who trying to get behind the real story of the left...b/c they no longer report, they control and propagandize. Too many elected GOP politicians have platform. they let the left set the issues and terms of debate ... always discussing the left’s issues ALWAYS. Trump was a major earthquake to the monopoly.
In football terms of years past (I don’t watch political organizations with overpaid people dressed in stupid sports outfits chase a ball), the left is always on offense, at the 10 yard line, and should they turn the ball over to the GOP while attempting to score, the GOP must run out of bounds, let the replay officials nullify the turnover and give the ball back to the left.
As it is written, the world as we know it is passing away before our eyes.
Amen.
In consideration of elections have consequences I think your present tense is more like past tense. “the world as we know it is passing away before our eyes.” The Jury on future elections is still out.
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