Power Grab - Jason Chaffetz Page 0,40
prosecute political targets and politicized the Federal Election Commission. It created a new avenue for political campaigns and political consultants to fleece taxpayers.
Like the deceptively named Affordable Care Act, the For the People Act was named to create the illusion that it would do exactly the opposite of what it actually does. This was not an anticorruption bill. It legalized corruption. This is a bill designed For the Democrats, For the Incumbents, For the Consultants, and For the Deep State.
Fortunately, this bill is dead on arrival in the Republican U.S. Senate. Even if by some miracle it were to pass the Senate, it would certainly be vetoed by President Trump. The bill itself has no path to become law in this Congress, but that didn’t stop Speaker Pelosi from wasting valuable floor time to pass it. Nor is it a reason to write the bill off. The provisions of this legislation are a chilling indication of where Democrats want to take this country. Even though the For the People Act will not become law as long as Donald Trump is president, we need to understand what Democrats will do if they regain power.
That preserving their power was their highest priority should be a wake-up call to every American. The For the People Act is a manifesto of everything the Democrats need to do to manipulate the electoral process in their favor and insulate themselves from the will of the people.
Facilitating Voter Fraud
Whether by design or by accident, the Democrats’ signature legislation removed important safeguards used to prevent voter fraud (which Democrats claim to be a myth). Whatever their justifications, a professional fraudster could hardly have designed a system more susceptible to abuse than the one dictated by this bill. No one tell the Russians.
Theoretically, if you were serious about stealing national elections, you would need to figure out how to exploit vulnerabilities in more than three thousand different counties, all of which operate their elections differently. Having one unified electoral system to exploit would almost certainly be easier. President Obama said as much in an October 2016 speech at the White House. “There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized, and the numbers of votes involved,” he said.
On this point, President Obama was right. Decentralized elections are a deterrent to fraud and corruption. Not if the Democratic Party gets its wish. The For the People Act reverses that protection—abandoning our federalist tradition of locally controlled elections and empowering Congress and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to take charge. Federal bureaucrats and politicians would take over decisions about how to secure election integrity, manage voter lists, and ensure ballot access. What could possibly go wrong?
Now, instead of being run by someone chosen within the community, elections would be run by 535 members of Congress, only three of whom represent any given voter. They would be regulated by appointed federal bureaucrats at the FEC (newly empowered with openly partisan agendas under this bill). Say good-bye to trying to influence election policy in your county. To effect change, you would need to persuade a majority of the 100 senators and 435 House members to listen to you. But they only meet with people who live in their districts. Good luck with that. How this can be described as “For the People” is a mystery.
When Congress sets the rules for elections, that body will not be able to resist the urge to set those rules with an eye to the political implications. This should frighten both Democrats and Republicans, as we know both parties would be loath to give up such an advantage once secured.
Fortunately, H.R. 1 gives us the perfect preview of what elections will look like if we put Congress in charge. The bill is replete with provisions that would secure electoral advantages for Democrats.
By some strange coincidence, the vast majority of the election provisions in the bill make elections less secure rather than more secure. By another strange coincidence, the very provisions that help Democrats win elections also help fraudsters manipulate them.
Weakening Election Security
The list of unfunded federal mandates imposed upon states by this bill is too long to exhaustively catalog here, but we can hit a few of the highlights of those that make our elections less secure.
No-fault absentee ballots: The Heritage Foundation calls these ballots the “tool of choice for vote thieves” because they are so easy to manipulate. But Democrats have long