House Democrats' H.R. 1 is the ballot harvester's delight
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cooked up something new for Monday morning, a so-called "sweeping anti-corruption package" communistically titled the "For the People Act." or H.R. 1, which pretty much seeks to bring the California model of politics to the rest of the states in terms of rigging elections. A more accurate title for this nasty brew would be the "Ballot Harvester's Delight Bill of 2019." Or as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put it, "The Democrat Politician Protection Plan."
Here's how bad it is, according to center-left Axios:
The bill's key provisions:
- Campaign finance: Create a small donor, matching-fund system for congressional and presidential candidates; expand the prohibition of foreign political donations; require super PACs and "dark money" political groups to make their donors public; and restructure the Federal Election Commission.
- Ethics: Mandate that presidents and vice presidents release 10 years of their tax returns; create an ethics code for the Supreme Court; and bar members of Congress from serving on corporate boards.
- Voting rights: Allow citizens to register to vote online and be registered automatically; require paper ballots in federal elections; make Election Day a federal holiday; prohibit voter roll purging; and end partisan gerrymandering by having independent commissions redraw congressional districts.
The matching fund system is disgusting all by itself, enabling leftists to not have to raise campaign money to hold onto office even after presenting a raft of bad ideas. Imagine Ilhan Omar getting free taxpayer money to buy television ads and take advantage of her name-recognition (bad as it is) to hold onto her congressional seat. Free money for pols to advertise themselves on television or in other matters always ensures that they'll find a way to get more of it. I always vote 'no' on that little tax box for the donation of a dollar of taxes to presidential campaigns and the fact that most of us do pretty well tells us how unpopular that idea is.
But it gets worse, far worse. The tax returns item is obviously aimed at President Trump because he made a lot of money in business before he became president, and as such amounts to a shot against him alone. Most us would be fine with billionaires releasing their tax forms if it included all billionaires, with George Soros in the mix. And everyone else, too while we are at it - I'm looking at you, Nancy Pelosi. If she doesn't want to join the fun, then maybe we should leave the IRS to look at the matter and inform us when there's a problem.
Worst of all is that third provision described in the Axios report. Online voter registation, the bots' paradise? Just say no. Automatic voter registration whether you like it or not? Such as they have in California, which has resulted in tens of thousands of illegally registered non-citizen voters? Way to go - just Californify the whole nation. Paper ballots? What they mean by that is involuntary mail-in ballots, the kind I get without ever asking for them here in California - which is precisely what enables ballot-harvesting by foreign nationals in California's election. Given the potential for fraud with electronic systems, paper ballots sound all so very nice, but we all know how Democrats use them to their advantage in California -- they were ahead of all of us. An end to voter-roll purging? After people have moved and registered elsewhere, but the mail-in ballots are still appearing at their mailboxes as the ballot-harvesters watch election returns and check voter rolls to see who hasn't voted? Such a huge recipe for fraud. Inactive voters should be thrown out immediately. Judicial Watc had to sue Los Angeles, home of the nation's largest concentration of illegal immigrants, to force the county to purge its massive, 1.5-million-strong inactive voter roll tally, given its potential for ballot-box stuffing.
As for partisan gerrymandering, yes, bad stuff, but since when has an independent commission ever been independent? Democrats will stack those things and call them 'independent.' To heck with that, far better to just elect people who will have to answer to the voters for sneaky maneuvers made. The voters are the only truly independent commission.
Bloomberg dismisses the bill contemptuously as a 'dead-end' bill because it has no chance of passing the Senate or being signed by President Trump. That's fair enough. But given that Democrats are laying out what they stand for by it, it also serves as a warning of what they really have in mind should they take power. This is it - the full Californification of U.S. electoral politics to ensure that the entire U.S. becomes a permanently blue state, based on tactics duplicated from Mexico's PRI party, the one Mario Vargas Llosa described as "the perfect dictatorship" given that it ruled unopposed in what was billed as a 'democracy' for more than 70 years.
This ought to be a rallying point for Republicans as the truth of the matter about this 571-page bill passes the House and gets touted as an 'anti-corruption bill' in the press. This one's overdue for some GOP truth-telling pushback.