Republicans Introduce Their Biggest Attack on Voting Rights Yet
Republicans have proposed an “election reform” bill that would actually impose severe restrictions on voting across the country. The “Make Elections Great Again Act” would require photo identification, require mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, require voters to opt-in to voting by mail, ban ranked-choice voting for federal elections, among many other restrictions. States like Oregon have had universal mail-in ballots for years, and many states allow mail-in ballots to be counted up to a certain date if they are postmarked by Election Day. Ranked-choice voting is used for some statewide elections in Maine and Alaska, and local elections around the country. Representative Bryan Steil, chairman of the House Administration Committee, introduced the bill, claiming it will “improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat.” What he left out in his statement was perhaps one of the bill’s most troubling features. If passed into law, each state would also have to create a single digital voter database to serve as “the official voter registration list for the conduct of all elections for Federal office in the State.”States would also have to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship for anyone registered to vote in federal elections and re-check those voters’ eligibility “as are necessary on an ongoing basis, but in no case less frequently than once every 30 days.”Under the bill, the U.S. attorney general would be able to sue states to force them to comply with the new restrictions, and private citizens would gain the power to sue election officials who register a voter without proof of citizenship. The bill faces a tall order to get through the House and Senate before the midterm elections, and if it does end up signed by President Trump, would more than likely face a flurry of lawsuits from states across the country. It’s very much designed to placate Republican conspiracy theories about voter fraud and Trump’s contention that all the elections he loses are fraudulent.