In response to the cavalcade of “progressive” leftist groups that have submitted within these pages support for the various pieces of “voting rights” legislation over the past year, I note that never is there a defense or discussion of the actual contents of these bills. There are simply appeals to emotion, together with some blood-drenched history, for which, ironically, the Democrat Party political machines of the time were wholly responsible. That last part is always omitted, of course.
Let’s begin with the fact that the central concept of these bills — the nationalization of elections — is abhorrent to the Constitution and would likely not survive a court challenge. Further, many of the provisions within these bills are invitations to massive fraud on their face. The most egregious offense is legalizing on a national scale the outrageous practice of third-party ballot harvesting, or “vote trafficking,” whereby the end result is paid operatives showing up at local polling places with thick stacks of ballots with other people’s names on them. Anyone concerned about election integrity cannot in good faith possibly support these bills.
Therefore, the left has resorted to bad faith, by accusing anyone opposed of “voter suppression” or, more sinisterly, in league with racists. Also, that the various states that have or will enact voter-integrity legislation have unreconstructed motives. My son, a Black man, asked me once if the policy opposition of the modern Democrat Party leadership to voter integrity is entirely dependent upon the infantilization of voters who shared his skin color — that they could not be reasonably expected, as modern American adults, to provide photo ID, for example. The left has given no other public reason.
The behavior of our elected officials, past and present, in regards to the filibuster being used to extend debate against these bills has been quite entertaining of late. The loudest voices for ridding the Senate of the filibuster are on record as having supported it just a few years ago. If the filibuster is a racist institution, then is one of its past defenders, Barack Obama, also a racist? “If the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse,” Obama said. In his short tenure as a U.S. senator, Obama used the filibuster himself two dozen times.
Joe Biden on getting rid of the filibuster: “It is not only a bad idea. It upsets the constitutional design. … No longer would the Senate be that ‘different kind of legislative body’ that the Founders intended. No longer would the Senate be the ‘saucer’ to cool the passions of the immediate majority.”
Question: Since the Democrat leadership in the U.S. Senate used the filibuster a record-busting 314 times during the Trump years, just how racist are they, by their own standards?
Nonetheless, there is a strong chance the filibuster in its current form will not see the end of this decade. Donald Trump raged against Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to do away with it, but McConnell demurred. A future Republican Senate majority with a strongly held policy position, faced with a recalcitrant Democrat minority, may not have the will McConnell had, whatever his other faults, in preserving Senate tradition.
Ultimately, posturing for these nationalized voting schemes is no more than a cynical ploy by the Democrat leadership to set up the 2022 election results as suspect. The national Democrat Party will lose the U.S. House this year and likely the Senate, as well, now that their policies are bearing rotten fruit within the homes, schools and businesses of everyday Americans. For all their posturing about the “big lie,” the left is preparing its base to refuse to accept (because of “suppression,” of course) the results, much the way they used the now entirely discredited “Russian collusion” ruse to refuse to accept the results of the 2016 election. Whether any of these voting schemes pass (which it seems none will) is incidental.
Overwhelming majorities of Americans want strong election integrity, including voter ID laws — and that includes 62% of registered Democrats. Making an election secure and fair is and should always be the primary concern of all reasonable people who claim to care about our national experiment in self-government. Let us be clear: No Republican-controlled state legislature has ever suppressed the vote. Plenty of Democrat-controlled legislatures have, and that is a matter of the historical record.
Matt Bucher of Milford is the chairman of Delaware’s 33rd District Republican Committee.
