Power Grab

by Jason Chaffetz

  There are constitutional limits to legislative power that must not be breached. There are opportunity costs to squandering all available political capital on the war against President Trump. Whether that gamble pays off or whether it doesn’t, the opportunity cost will be high. And it will be working Americans who pay it as we experience more gridlock, more debt, more polarization, more economic disruption, and more incursions on our freedoms.

  The strategy to refuse to engage the president on public policy (in other words, do their jobs) does not build confidence in Democrats’ ability to actually govern.

  Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in 2014 published an op-ed in Politico decrying the fact that Republicans were spending some of their political capital on a lawsuit to fight executive overreach—a lawsuit Democrats are now using to push back against President Trump. Back then, Democrats didn’t approve of limits to executive authority. In the wake of that lawsuit, Wasserman-Schultz described what she saw at the time as a majority party “deeply unserious about the challenges facing the country.”

  The phrase applies to Democrats today, not because they’re going after the president, but because they are more openly obstructionist than Republicans ever dreamed of being with President Obama. They’re not just obstructing the Trump agenda—they’re willing to obstruct their own agenda. Look at how they threw away the chance to resolve the conflict over so-called Dreamers. After years of demanding solutions for people brought to the United States as young children, they blew the chance to extend protections to that group because they determined a government shutdown was more politically beneficial to them than a solution for Dreamers that might be seen as a win for the president.

  Such will be the story of the 116th Congress. Lawmaking will take a backseat to “oversight”—but this new oversight will not look much like the oversight we’re used to. Speaker Pelosi is changing the rules of the game to help her party win what she sees as the most important battle yet—the quest for power. Exhibit A in that quest can be found in the Democrats’ priority legislation for the 116th Congress, a bill referred to as H.R. 1.

  Chapter 6

  Democrats’ First Priority: Protect the Swamp

  The first bill introduced in a new Congress is often a symbolic piece of legislation that indicates what is most important to the incoming majority.

  For the 115th Congress under Speaker Paul Ryan, H.R. 1 was tax reform. This was the policy Republicans had run on and it was ultimately the signature accomplishment of President Trump’s first term. The passage of that bill gave middle-class families a huge tax cut, resulting in more jobs, higher wages, low inflation, low unemployment, and robust consumer spending.

  What was the symbolic introductory legislation of House Democrats? The For the People Act, which had overwhelming support from Pelosi’s 235-member caucus, with 227 signed on as cosponsors. When the bill came to a vote on March 8, 2019, it passed along strict party lines and with the full support of the House Democrat caucus, 235–193. Even the very moderate and endangered swing district Democrat now holding Representative Mia Love’s seat in Utah, Ben McAdams, voted for it.

  To read the promotional materials posted to social media by leftist political groups, the bill was about draining the swamp and ending corporate dominance in elections. At first glance, the issue may not be a priority for most Americans, but everyone wants to drain the swamp, right?

  But digging a little deeper reveals the bill was far more sinister. It was written by the swamp, for the swamp, and the provisions it aims to impose are specifically designed to protect the swamp.

  This bill was no far-left fringe pipe dream. It represented the agenda and priorities that unite the House Democrat caucus. Above all else, this is what Democrats believe America needs most.

  What might be the top priority of American voters? We don’t need to guess—the Pew Research Center routinely surveys the public on this question. Their January 24, 2019, polling identifies the public’s political priorities for the 116th Congress and cross-tabulates those answers by partisan affiliation.

  According to Pew, 70 percent of Americans identify improving the economy as a top priority. The next-highest level of support is for health care, with 69 percent calling it one of the top priorities. Rounding out the top four are improving education at 68 percent and defending the country from future terrorist attacks at 67 percent. If you just look at Democrat voters, preserving Social Security comes out on top, with 65 percent of Democrats identifying it as one of the top priorities, followed by the economy, Medicare, health care, and education.

  H.R. 1 addresses none of these issues. In fact, it doesn’t address any of the issues listed in the top eighteen for which Pew released numbers.

  What is the great priority that Democrats believe must happen before anything else?

  Securing power.

  That’s what becomes clear when you look past the marketing rhetoric and read the actual bill. But let’s explore the provisions of the bill. Readers can decide for themselves what to call it.

  Democrats marketed it as an ethics reform bill. The nearly six-hundred-page bill addressed election reforms, campaign finance rules, redistricting, and judicial ethics reforms, among other things. The New York Times described the bill’s purpose this way:

  Democratic leaders view the voting and ethics measure—named the For the People Act—as the opening salvo in a two-year campaign to either make law or drive a wedge between Mr. Trump and the voters who supported him.

  That’s right. This bill is basically a campaign piece designed to position the party for a new round of smoke and mirrors. It was really not about the priorities “For the People.” Clearly it was about setting the table for the priorities For the Democrats in the 2020 election cycle.

  H.R. 1 imposed more than thirty consequential new federal mandates on state governments, along with dozens of other changes in policies and standards, essentially reversing our election process from a bottom-up approach to a top-down approach guided by the interests of politicians.

  A deeper analysis shows this bill was designed to ensure a permanent hold on power for Democrats. If one were to create a road map for perpetuating mass voter fraud, it would look a lot like this bill. Had H.R. 1 become law, it would have eliminated tools for detecting voter fraud. Blatantly unconstitutional provisions imposed sweeping limits to free speech. In a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, it superseded state laws and state constitutions to award voting rights to felons. It empowered the Justice Department to more easily prosecute political targets and politicized the Federal Election Commission. It created a new avenue for political campaigns and political consultants to fleece taxpayers.

  Like the deceptively named Affordable Care Act, the For the People Act was named to create the illusion that it would do exactly the opposite of what it actually does. This was not an anticorruption bill. It legalized corruption. This is a bill designed For the Democrats, For the Incumbents, For the Consultants, and For the Deep State.

  Fortunately, this bill is dead on arrival in the Republican U.S. Senate. Even if by some miracle it were to pass the Senate, it would certainly be vetoed by President Trump. The bill itself has no path to become law in this Congress, but that didn’t stop Speaker Pelosi from wasting valuable floor time to pass it. Nor is it a reason to write the bill off. The provisions of this legislation are a chilling indication of where Democrats want to take this country. Even though the For the People Act will not become law as long as Donald Trump is president, we need to understand what Democrats will do if they regain power.

  That preserving their power was their highest priority should be a wake-up call to every American. The For the People Act is a manifesto of everything the Democrats need to do to manipulate the electoral process in their favor and insulate themselves from the will of the people.

  Facilitating Voter Fraud

  Whether by design or by accident, the Democrats’ signature legislation removed important safeguards used to
prevent voter fraud (which Democrats claim to be a myth). Whatever their justifications, a professional fraudster could hardly have designed a system more susceptible to abuse than the one dictated by this bill. No one tell the Russians.

  Theoretically, if you were serious about stealing national elections, you would need to figure out how to exploit vulnerabilities in more than three thousand different counties, all of which operate their elections differently. Having one unified electoral system to exploit would almost certainly be easier. President Obama said as much in an October 2016 speech at the White House. “There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized, and the numbers of votes involved,” he said.

  On this point, President Obama was right. Decentralized elections are a deterrent to fraud and corruption. Not if the Democratic Party gets its wish. The For the People Act reverses that protection—abandoning our federalist tradition of locally controlled elections and empowering Congress and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to take charge. Federal bureaucrats and politicians would take over decisions about how to secure election integrity, manage voter lists, and ensure ballot access. What could possibly go wrong?

  Now, instead of being run by someone chosen within the community, elections would be run by 535 members of Congress, only three of whom represent any given voter. They would be regulated by appointed federal bureaucrats at the FEC (newly empowered with openly partisan agendas under this bill). Say good-bye to trying to influence election policy in your county. To effect change, you would need to persuade a majority of the 100 senators and 435 House members to listen to you. But they only meet with people who live in their districts. Good luck with that. How this can be described as “For the People” is a mystery.

  When Congress sets the rules for elections, that body will not be able to resist the urge to set those rules with an eye to the political implications. This should frighten both Democrats and Republicans, as we know both parties would be loath to give up such an advantage once secured.

  Fortunately, H.R. 1 gives us the perfect preview of what elections will look like if we put Congress in charge. The bill is replete with provisions that would secure electoral advantages for Democrats.

  By some strange coincidence, the vast majority of the election provisions in the bill make elections less secure rather than more secure. By another strange coincidence, the very provisions that help Democrats win elections also help fraudsters manipulate them.

  Weakening Election Security

  The list of unfunded federal mandates imposed upon states by this bill is too long to exhaustively catalog here, but we can hit a few of the highlights of those that make our elections less secure.

  No-fault absentee ballots: The Heritage Foundation calls these ballots the “tool of choice for vote thieves” because they are so easy to manipulate. But Democrats have long dismissed these claims, pointing to what they call a dearth of voter fraud convictions.

  Nonetheless, they could hardly ignore what happened in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in 2018. This time election fraud was used by a Republican campaign to narrowly win a tight race against a popular Democrat. Had the parties been reversed, who knows how much coverage the race would have gotten. But with a Democrat losing and the race being rerun, there was no way to avoid shining a spotlight on a key vulnerability.

  North Carolina’s absentee ballot provision actually has more security than the one H.R. 1 will impose nationwide. It requires ballots to be signed by the voter and witnessed by another person attesting that the voter is who they say they are. Campaign operatives in the North Carolina race violated state law by collecting absentee ballots on behalf of voters and turning them in.

  This process, called ballot harvesting, is illegal in North Carolina for very good reason. Campaign operatives or nonprofit political groups could harass voters to turn in ballots, “assist” them in filling them out, and potentially “lose” ballots that don’t support the candidate the ballot harvester is paid to help. In North Carolina, officials estimate as many as a thousand ballots supporting the Democrat candidate may have been destroyed. One witness testified she was paid $150 for every fifty ballots she collected, acknowledging that in many cases she signed as a witness for ballots she had not actually watched the voter fill out.

  The same ballot harvesting process used illegally in North Carolina was recently legalized in California, where it helped Democrats flip seven previously Republican seats in 2018. The process Democrats hate in North Carolina they defend in California, where third-party organizations like Grassroots Campaigns Inc. or labor unions are permitted (one might even say encouraged) to collect ballots directly from voters and turn them in on their behalf without a secure chain of custody. Prior to that change, only close relatives or those living at the same address could turn in another person’s completed ballot.

  The indication that ballot harvesting made the difference can be found in the vote proportions. Studies of absentee voters have consistently shown they tend to reflect the population or lean slightly to the right. But when ballot harvesting was deployed in California, we saw late ballots break heavily for Democrats.

  Take, for example, the race between incumbent Republican David Valadao and Democrat T. J. Cox in California’s rural 21st District. When polls closed, Valadao led Cox by 6,000 votes—or 8 percent. That margin was wide enough for media outlets to call the race for Valadao. But late ballots delivered by the hundreds from third-party groups broke for Cox so strongly that Cox ultimately eked out an 843-vote victory.

  The San Francisco Chronicle reported that elsewhere in the state, Orange County voters were calling the registrar’s office asking if it was legitimate for someone to come to their door and ask if they could take their ballot.

  Who was coming to the door? According to a January 2019 Los Angeles Times story, illegal Dreamers were deeply engaged in the process—not just delivering ballots, but helping voters fill them out. The Times reports on the experience of one Dreamer, Gabriela Cruz, who “found” a voter smoking a cigarette on a tattered old couch behind a group home hours before election day.

  He politely tried to wave her off until she reminded him he had a right that she as an immigrant without citizenship didn’t have. “It could really make a change for us,” said Cruz, 29.

  Half an hour later, she was helping Silva look up candidates as he filled out his ballot by the light of her phone.

  What are the implications of activists with an agenda “helping” voters look up candidates and fill out ballots? How many of those activists are willing to turn in a ballot that doesn’t help their cause? Should we be exposing people’s ballots to that kind of temptation?

  In this case, Democrats got a head start in California, which gave them an advantage. But that won’t always be the case. What happens when the only way to win elections is to have the biggest army of ballot harvesters?

  In an ironic exchange, Democratic representative Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts tweeted during the debate over H.R. 1, writing:

  As GOP stands unified against a bill to strengthen our democracy & increase transparency in our elections, it’s important to remember that the #NC09 seat is vacant because a GOP candidate tried to steal an election.

  In reply, Republican representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas responded:

  You do realize your bill #HR1 would actually make that kind of fraud in #NC09 LEGAL. Right?

  TRUTH: it would legalize vote harvesting across the entire country, use your tax $ to do it, and limit free speech drastically. All in the name of “democracy.”

  Even the ACLU opposes it.

  And there’s an interesting tidbit. The Donald Trump–hating, Democrat-aligned, Grassroots Campaigns Inc.–consulted ACLU was opposing H.R. 1. Given that they were likely funding some of the vote harvesting, that was hard to believe. But according to their letter to members of Congress opposing the bill, there we
re many provisions ACLU strongly supported and long championed—likely no-fault absentee voting is among them. Their reasons for objecting to the bill have more to do with transparency provisions for donors that we’ll talk about later in this chapter.

  Meanwhile, one can’t miss the irony of Representative Kennedy using the vote fraud in North Carolina to whip up support for a bill that, at a minimum, does nothing to prohibit the very practices used to commit that fraud. Of course, Democrats denied that their bill actually imposes ballot harvesting since there is no explicit language doing so—only a failure to prohibit the practice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described the bill’s position on ballot harvesting as “suspiciously silent on the murky ballot harvesting practices that recently threw North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District into chaos.”

  Of course, Republicans gave Democrats an opportunity to make the bill more explicit on the issue of ballot harvesting by offering an amendment prohibiting the practice. Democrats promptly rejected the amendment.

  Restrictions on voter list maintenance: Voter list maintenance is one of the most egregious targets of the bill. Democrats have branded such activities as a form of voter suppression. The bill uses the sinister term “voter caging” to describe basic list maintenance activities required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The process by which election officials periodically mail “non-forwardable” correspondence or even ballots is used to confirm whether a voter remains eligible. If the mail is returned because the voter no longer lives there, election officials can flag that voter registration. If the voter doesn’t cast a vote in the next two elections, that registration becomes inactive. It’s important to understand that the NVRA does not allow voters to be removed from voting rolls until either a voter confirms in writing that he/she has moved or the voter fails to respond to the notice sent to the address on the voter registration and then fails to vote in the next two consecutive elections. This is a process Democrats want destroyed.