Capital Research Center expert: Democrats' alternative voting rights act could federalize nation’s elections

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The U.S. Capitol building as seen from East Capitol Street in February 2021. | Chris Jantsch, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped

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A telling sign of the true intent of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (House Resolution 4), the congressional Democrats' alternative effort at making sweeping changes to the country's election laws, is the support it has garnered from left-leaning activist groups, writes Hayden Ludwig, senior investigative researcher for the Capital Research Center.

The center says it supports "the principles of individual liberty, free market economy and limited constitutional government."

Ludwig says the legislation would federalize the nation’s elections “almost as effectively” as House Resolution 1, the so-called For the Peoples Act (stalled in a Senate split 50-50), which is why “many professional activist groups are trying to push it through the Senate.”

“H.R. 4, which the House passed in August on partisan lines (219-212), promises to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to end federal preclearance rules for certain, largely Southern states established in the 1965 Voting Rights Act," Ludwig argued. 

"The bill ostensibly looks to restore the federal preclearance rules. The court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder pointed out that preclearance was intended to ensure that states in the Jim Crow era do not discriminate against minorities’ voting rights by requiring certain states to preclear all redistricting plans with the U.S. Department of Justice," he added. "The requirement was meant to be temporary, and the court held in 2013 that it was no longer applicable.”

Bringing back preclearance would allow federal bureaucrats to block and overturn state-enacted voter safeguard measures such as voter ID, mail-in voting, and ballot signature matching among them, he said. This is precisely what the left has pursued for decades, Ludwig writes.

Major supporters of the legislation include People for the American Way, the Fair Elections Center and Demand Justice.

“Supporters include at least 30 groups focused on election ‘reform’—everything from replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote and warping the 2021–2022 redistricting process to court packing and gutting First Amendment rights to ‘save’ the republic from money in politics,” he writes.  

It’s unclear if the Democrats have the votes to send H.R. 4 to President Joe Biden, as Congress begins a showdown over infrastructure legislation, and a proposed $3.5 trillion budget bill.

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