An expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said that the Democrat-led election reform bill would eviscerate ballot security measures, amounts to a federal takeover of elections, and is a “threat to American democracy.”
Hans von Spakovsky, senior fellow and manager of the election law reform initiative at the Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times in an interview that H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act of 2021, essentially “voids all of the safety protocols and security measures and states have been put in place to protect the integrity of the election process.”
The bill passed the Democrat-controlled House on March 3 on a largely party-line vote of 220-210, with all Republicans voting against it as well as Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.).
“H.R. 1 would usurp the role of the states, wipe out basic safety protocols, and mandate a set of rules that would severely damage the integrity of elections,” he argued.
The controversial election reform package, which spans nearly 800 pages, seeks to impose requirements on voting procedures across the entire country. Its provisions include transferring authority over how elections are administered from states to the federal government, mandating automatic voter registration in all 50 states, and legalizing nationwide vote-by-mail without the need to provide photo ID to obtain an absentee ballot.
“Many states have passed voter ID laws so that someone has to authenticate their identity when they show up to vote,” von Spakovsky told The Epoch Times. “This law would eviscerate state voter ID laws—they basically would not be able to enforce them,” he said.
Democrats have framed the bill as a crucial step against voter suppression.
A previous version of H.R. 1 passed the Democrat-controlled House 234-193 at the beginning of the 116th Congress in 2019 but ultimately did not get taken up in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Von Spakovsky called the voter suppression argument “a ridiculous claim.”
“There’s no voter suppression going on. In fact, we have seen turnout in U.S. elections consistently go up in the last few elections that we’ve had, while the states have been doing things like putting in voter ID laws.”
“It takes all the problems we saw in last year’s election and now cements them into federal law, and actually makes things worse,” von Spakovsky said.
Other provisions of the bill that are of concern to von Spakovsky include making it more difficult for states to remove ineligible voters from registries or confirming the eligibility and qualifications of voters. He said the bill would make it impossible for states to enforce a witness signature requirement for absentee ballots, a measure some states have in place to authenticate whether it was actually the voter who filled out the ballot.
“They would no longer be able to enforce that,” he said.
The reform measure would also override state laws that prevent third parties from picking up absentee ballots and delivering them to polling stations.
“That’s a very unwise policy, because what the federal law is saying is that states have to allow everyone—from candidates and campaign staffers to party activists and political operatives—to be able to go to people’s homes and pick up their absentee ballots, which means you’re putting ballots in the hands of those who have a stake in the outcome of the election,” von Spakovsky said.
“The problem with this bill is it’s basically a federal takeover of the administration of elections, which have been run by our states since our founding,” he added.
President Joe Biden has said he would sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk, which may be a tall order since the proposed legislation would need 60 votes to overcome the Senate filibuster, meaning at least 10 Republicans would have to buy in.
Von Spakovsky said he believes the only way Democrats will succeed in passing the measure is if they blow up the filibuster, a longstanding rule meant to prevent partisan domination of the upper chamber.
“Republicans, I think, have made a promise that they’re going to stick together and they’re going to filibuster the bill,” he said. “So I think they can stop it unless Chuck Schumer violates the rules that govern the Senate to end the filibuster, which I think is one of the only ways they could do that,” he added, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has teased ending the filibuster as a move that could be considered but has not endorsed it.
Democrats have so far been reluctant to reach for the so-called “nuclear option” of scuttling the Senate filibuster, a rule that means most legislation has to meet a 60-vote supermajority threshold. But momentum may be building for that to change.