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. It would ban federal agencies from helping register voters or even encouraging people to participate in elections, as well as reduce transparency by ratcheting back disclosure requirements to allow individuals and corporations to stay anonymous more easily as they pour money into electioneering.
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; compel the District to create books that compile photographs of every registered voter for poll workers to check; ban same-day voter registration; and restrict the use of ballot drop boxes. It would forbid D.C. from mailing absentee ballots unless requested by the voter and prohibit D.C. from implementing ranked-choice voting, even if voters pass a referendum to allow it.
The legislation would also 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.
- D.C. Council reverses itself on school resource officers. Good.
- Virginia makes a mistake by pulling out of an election fraud detection group.
- Vietnam sentences another democracy activist.
- Biden has a new border plan.
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All of this, even though GOP lawmakers rhapsodized about the importance of federalism and local authority when they unveiled the bill in Atlanta on Monday. Congress has constitutional authority to exercise control over D.C., but doing so this aggressively would be an affront to the principle of home rule. D.C.’s 700,000-plus residents lack congressional representation and therefore won’t get any vote on the bill.