House Republicans have unveiled a bill that would open up the spigots of dark money nationwide and make voting more difficult, especially in D.C. What they are calling the American Confidence in Elections Act integrates nearly 50 stand-alone bills that House Republicans have introduced to please their grass-roots base and major donors.
This partisan power grab masquerading as a defense of election integrity would nullify President Biden’s 2021 executive order aimed at making voting easier.
So, what is “dark money” and what does it mean to “make voting more difficult?” Let’s take WAPO’s complaints in turn.
[The bill] would ban federal agencies from helping register voters or even encouraging people to participate in elections.
Do voters really need help registering to vote? One of the ways suggested by the meddlers is through automatic voter registration. New Jersey implemented automatic voter registration through the motor vehicle agency, of all things, in 2014. But what if someone decides not to be registered? I think this violates my rights, and I said so.
What does it mean to have the government “encourage” people to vote? This kind of meddling in people’s electoral choices is exactly what government officials should not be doing. People may not vote because they don’t like the choices, and abstaining from voting is the way of conscientiously objecting. Or they may not vote due to apathy or simply lack of interest. I think people should vote, and if not for a good reason. Private initiatives to encourage people to vote, such as through get-out-the-vote drives, are perfectly fine. But it’s none of the government’s business. Government officials should be strictly neutral.
[The bill would] reduce transparency by ratcheting back disclosure requirements to allow individuals and corporations to stay anonymous more easily as they pour money into electioneering.
Freedom of speech is integral to the election process. The freedom to spend one’s own money expressing one’s own views, individually or collectively, is integral to freedom of speech. The right to keep one’s election spending anonymous (private) is critical, and the courts, from NAACP vs. Alabama to New Jersey’s attempts to ban “dark money” have upheld these privacy rights repeatedly. People who want to end anonymous political spending have only one goal—to silence by intimidating people’s expression. How is it good for voters to stymie public debate?
Note WAPO’s contradictory stances. The WAPO thinks the government “encouraging people to participate in elections” is a good thing. But voting is not the only way to participate in elections. One of the main ways, and arguably a more important way than voting, is through political free speech, like donating money to issue advocacy groups. Yet WAPO wants the government to discourage such participation by forcing political action committees and issue advocacy groups to disclose their donors’ identities!
It would also treat the District as the proving ground for a wish list of aggressive proposals to make it harder to vote. The bill would require D.C. voters to show a photo identification card to cast a ballot or request an absentee ballot.
My first reaction was, “SO?”I have recently had to show my photo identification card to get on a plane, to cash in an old Series EE savings bond at my bank, to access my safe deposit box at my bank, and to register for knee replacement surgery at my medical center. How is it a hardship to produce one to vote? Would it make it “harder to vote?” No more than any effort to follow simple rules. Of all of the demonizing about GOP “voter suppression,” voter ID is the most ridiculous complaint. And this is the kind of thing that Biden refers to as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Give me a break! *
[The bill would] compel the District to create books that compile photographs of every registered voter for poll workers to check.
Finally, something that may be problematic. One can argue that this is a bit of overkill. After all, the poll worker could simply look at the person rather than thumb through a book. But this would seem to be an unnecessary burden on poll workers.
[The bill would] ban same-day voter registration.
It seems like a bad idea to burden poll workers, who are busy facilitating people there to cast their votes, with having to spend time checking individual credentials in order to register them. Even some powerful Democrats oppose it.
This looks like a “solution” in search of a problem. What’s so hard about individuals having to get registered in advance? It’s never been a problem for me or anyone I know of. Ok, some people may forget, and thus lose out on the chance to cast that vote. So what? A responsible person doesn’t forget, and if he/she does, they will learn their lesson and be sure to register before the next election. Same-day registration is not, and should not, be necessary.
[The bill would] restrict the use of ballot drop boxes.
The ballot drop box was one of the emergency innovations enacted to facilitate safe voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. They didn’t even exist prior to 2020. Now they have apparently become a permanent feature of our election. They have clearly made it more convenient (or “easier” in WAPO’s terminology) to vote. Why squabble over the number of drop boxes? Any voter who wants to use a drop box can surely locate one. Are a few less dropboxes really “a threat to our democracy?”
It would forbid D.C. from mailing absentee ballots unless requested by voters. . .
Once again, what’s the big deal? Absentee ballots have always been available on request, except that now they’re easier than ever to get one. Having to request one, as opposed to getting one unsolicited in the mail, makes it “harder to vote?” Well, maybe an itty bit. But how easy does it have to be to vote? Are we all children who need to be led by the hand to the “voting booth?”
. . .prohibit D.C. from implementing ranked-choice voting, even if voters passed a referendum to allow it.
I admit that I haven’t thought enough about ranked-choice voting to form an opinion on it. But this looks like GOP overkill. Yes, Congress has legal oversight authority over the Washington DC district. But why not leave it to a public referendum? On the face of it, that seems reasonable.
The legislation would prevent D.C. from counting ballots that arrive by mail after polls close on Election Day and require the city to announce unofficial results no later than 10 a.m. the next day, except for military and overseas ballots. It would also ban D.C. from counting provisional ballots unless they were cast in the proper precinct.
These are technical issues that undoubtedly have valid pros and cons worthy of debate. On the face of it, these do not seem like unreasonable requirements, but neither do compromises seem unreasonable. I’ll leave these issues to people more knowledgeable on the vote counting process. But neither of these measures sink to the level of hampering people from voting or, as WAPO puts it, a “drastic step backward.” The wide use of mail-in ballots is one of the emergency Covid innovations that is now a permanent feature of our elections. If someone wants to mail in their ballot, they can make sure to allow plenty of time rather than take the risk of waiting until the last minute, and missing out on having one’s vote counted.
As WAPO observes, “D.C. began sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters in 2020 because of the pandemic and has continued to do so.” The same was true around the country. This reform has now become a permanent fixture of our elections. WAPO does acknowledge the many problems this led to. Given that mail-in balloting was instituted on the fly during an emergency, this is understandable. It’s also understandable that efforts to smooth the process to minimize these problems, like requiring voters to actually request a mail-in ballot, are reasonable.
Wapo does find one good provision in the GOP bill:
We agree with the substance of one major provision in the GOP legislation. We have strongly opposed noncitizen voting in the District, which the bill would stop from going into effect. But Congress already tried and failed earlier this year to overturn the new law. The House passed a disapproval resolution. It died in the Senate.
The GOP legislation would also require the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to provide voter data to states at no cost so they can remove dead voters and noncitizens from their rolls.
All and all, I see nothing in the legislation that makes it hard for any reasonably intelligent, minimally motivated individual to vote in this country. As WAPO observes, this bill is an integration of “nearly 50 stand-alone bills that House Republicans have introduced to please their grass-roots base and major donors.” If this is the worst the Leftist fanatics can dig up to back their hysterical accusations of “Jim Crow 2.0” hurled against the Republican Party, they have nothing. The fact is, it is easier than ever to vote in America today, thanks in large part the the COVID innovations—many of which have now become permanent—than ever. It’s easier to vote now than when Bill Clinton (1992, 1996), George W. Bush (2000, 2004), Barack Obama (2008, 2012), and Donald Trump (2016) were elected.
It’s time for the WAPO editorial board and other Leftists to stop undermining Americans’ confidence in our electoral process bu hurling these the false accusations that the GOP is attacking voting rights, which is unequivocally not the case, and start rationally debating the pros and cons at the various election reforms and rule-changes being advanced around the country. And, above all, we must defend freedom of speech from the attacks on anonymous political spending, commonly demonized as “dark money.”
* [Wapo claims that this bill “curtails D.C. autonomy.” Maybe. But that is a different issue and not the focus of this post. I have no opinion on the pros and cons of DC autonomy.]
Related Reading;
The Vote: Get Off Your Butt and Register—But Keep the Nanny State Out of It
Free Speech Wins in NJ
Why Free Speech and Spending on Speech are Inextricably Linked
The Anti-Free Speech Fallacy of ‘Dark Money’
‘Dark Money’ is Free Speech. Protect It
The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech--by Kimberley Strassel, especially Chapter 2, “Publius & Co.”
Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right
Jesse Jackson’s Big Lie: ‘American Democracy is Under Siege’
Statistical Disparities Don’t Prove Discrimination in Voter ID Laws
