Pelosi’s election ‘reform’ would make 2020’s chaos the norm

Nancy Pelosi wants to turn America into a one-party nation. The House speaker has no qualms about trashing the Constitution to kneecap her Republican opponents. Her bill HR 1, which will be voted on this week, would rig the electoral system to favor Democrats.

HR 1 is being sold as a reform to make voting easier. In truth, it makes cheating easier. The bill eviscerates state voting laws and imposes a set of national rules. For starters, it bans state voter-ID requirements. Anyone can show up on Election Day to vote, registered or not, and simply sign a statement claiming to be a legal voter.

It also compels states to send out absentee or mail-in ballots universally and to count ballots that arrive by mail as late as 10 days after the election. Say goodbye to Election Night finality. The chaos of election 2020 will become the norm.

Pelosi’s bill also legalizes ballot-harvesting, a practice many states are struggling to stop. Political organizations and advocacy groups send in workers to walk through neighborhoods, knock on doors and offer to help residents return the ballots they’ve received in the mail. It’s a recipe for fraud, since these harvesters are invariably trying to get a particular candidate elected.

Another rule broadens automatic voter registration. Anyone who goes to a DMV or applies for food stamps, Medicaid or other social services, or attends a public college will be automatically enrolled to vote.

Noncitizens are obligated to opt out, but there are no criminal penalties if they don’t. From California to New York, Democrats have tried but failed to get laws changed to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. This bill will allow it to happen de facto in all elections.

All this interference with state election safeguards is unconstitutional.

The Founders worried that legislators in Congress would seize control of presidential selection using methods like those in HR 1. That’s why they acted to “to take the business as far as possible out of their hands,” as one Founder, Charles Pinckney, put it.

Congress, said Pinckney, “had no right to meddle” in it. As legal scholar David Rivkin argues, the Founders provided in Article II of the Constitution that state legislatures would decide how the president is chosen. Not Congress.