S. 1 Isn’t For The People, It’s For The Politicians

For Democrats, S. 1 Isn’t About Voting Rights Or Election Security, It’s About A Partisan Power Grab

S. 1 IS A FEDERAL TAKEOVER OF STATE ELECTIONS 

• Tomorrow, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will force a vote on S. 1 – the Senate version of Nancy Pelosi’s H.R. 1.
• Under this bill, states would be forced to allow ballot harvesting, meaning “paid partisan operatives could go door to door, amassing thousands of votes, as long as they billed by the hour.”
• S. 1 takes away state legislatures’ ability to draw congressional districts, forcing states to give unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats this power.
  • Democrats failed to win state House and Senate seats, so now they are trying to change the rules from Washington and take state legislatures’ power away.
• 20 state Attorneys General have signed a letter denouncing the bill’s seizure of state and local authority.
  • 20 state Attorneys General: S. 1 would “commandeer state resources, confuse and muddle elections procedures, and erode faith in our elections and systems of governance.”

BY VOTING FOR S. 1, SENATE DEMOCRATS ARE IGNORING THEIR STATES’ ELECTION OFFICIALS WHO OPPOSE THE BILL

• Democrat Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s Secretary of State, declared his opposition to S. 1 saying the bill would render articles of New Hampshire’s state constitution “null and void.”
  • Despite opposition from the leader of her own state’s election process, Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) is a cosponsor of S. 1 and has bragged about this bill that would hurt New Hampshire’s elections.
• Georgia’s Secretary of State rejected the idea that Georgians needed a federal takeover to manage the state’s elections, calling S. 1 a “recipe for disaster.”
  • Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA), a cosponsor of S. 1, is now gaslighting by claiming he has “never been opposed” to voter ID laws, despite condemning voter ID requirements for years. 
• Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s Attorney General, urged Senators to vote against S. 1 because it would “eviscerate the integrity of Arizona elections and undermine voter confidence.”
  • Despite opposition from his state’s attorney general, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) is a cosponsor of S. 1.

S. 1 WOULD MAKE OUR ELECTIONS LESS SECURE 

• S. 1 would eviscerate commonsense state voter ID laws which 36 states have passed. This would allow individuals to vote by simply attesting they are who they claim to be.
• This legislation would force 30 states to adopt automatic voter registration on short notice, even though past attempts to implement automatic voter registration have led to illegal immigrants being registered and massive registration errors. 
  • This would almost certainly lead to “large numbers of ineligible voters” being registered, including non-citizens.
• S. 1 would force states to adopt same-day voter registration, imposing this on 29 states.
  • This, coupled with the bill’s effective elimination of voter ID laws, would make it easier to commit voter fraud and give election workers no time to verify a person’s eligibility. 

S. 1 WOULD USE TAXPAYER DOLLARS TO FUND CAREER POLITICIANS 

• S. 1 would be a windfall for career politicians in D.C. at the expense of American taxpayers.
• Under the bill, the federal government would pay politicians’ campaigns up to a 600 percent match for political donations under $200.
  • For example, a $200 donation to a House candidate would garner a $1,200 match in federal funds for a total contribution of $1,400 – with taxpayers footing the bill.
  • Small dollar political donations topped $2.7 billion in the 2020 cycle, putting taxpayers potentially on the hook for billions more if that same pattern kept up under H.R. 1.
  • The CBO estimates that under S. 1, the federal government would funnel nearly $2.5 billion to politicians’ campaigns in just five years. 

S. 1 WOULD GIVE FELONS THE RIGHT TO VOTE

• S. 1 would force states to let violent felons vote in federal elections as soon as they are out of prison.
  • S. 1 would let released felons vote even if they have not completed all terms of their sentence, like probation or parole – an unconstitutional mandate.

ELECTION OFFICIALS, FIRST AMENDMENT SUPPORTERS, AND ADVOCACY GROUPS HAVE WARNED ABOUT THE DAMAGE S. 1 WOULD DO

• 16 Secretaries of State called S. 1 a “dangerous overreach by the federal government into the administration of elections.” 
• 9 former FEC Commissioners said the bill would transform the bipartisan regulator into a “body subject to, and indeed designed for, partisan control.”
• More than 130 advocacy organization and non-profit leaders have said S. 1 would “dramatically alter the First Amendment protections that Americans have enjoyed since the founding of our country.”
• Americans for Prosperity: S. 1 “protects incumbent politicians from criticism and opposition” while “create[ing] unconstitutional and un-American restrictions on political speech.”
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce: S. 1 would “ultimately silence Americans who choose to petition their government or participate in the political process through the collective action of an association or corporation.”
• The Institute for Free Speech: S. 1 would “subsidize the speech of politicians while suppressing the speech of the people.”
• R Street: S. 1 is a “bad bill that would squash political speech.”
• Even The ACLU said the bill would “chill” free speech when the House passed a prior, nearly identical version of the bill in 2019.

THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS OPPOSE A FEDERAL TAKEOVER OF ELECTIONS

• By a 33 point margin, American voters say S.1 is a bad solution in search of a problem, believing that voting in their area is already “easy” and would rather election reform focus on making sure elections are “fair and free of voter fraud.”
  • 68 percent of voters believe that State legislatures should decide the voting rules and regulations for their state, not the federal government.
• 69 percent of Black voters and 75 percent overall support voter ID laws.
  • 65 percent of Georgia voters support requiring a driver’s license number to verify absentee ballots.
• In Georgia, 55 percent of poll respondents believe that ballot drop boxes should only be allowed “inside early voting sites.”
  • 60 percent of voters in the State of Georgia also endorse an “earlier deadline to request absentee ballots,” with a cutoff of 11 days instead of four days before election day.

DEMOCRATS PRIVATELY ADMIT S.1 IS A BAD BILL

• Behind closed doors, Democrats are “quietly unhappy” with S.1.
  • Democrats in Congress are “quietly splintering” over how to handle S.1.
  • “Many high-level Democrats are not wildly enthusiastic” about S.1 and H.R. 1, with it being described as a “deeply flawed … messaging bill that was written by staffers” not experts.