Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to hold a vote on the For the People Act (H.R. 1) later this week, a bill that will initiate Washington’s plan to seize full control of national elections from we the people.
H.R. 1 and nationalizing elections — some use the phrase “federalizing elections” — has been brewing for some time now.
An early invocation of the concept took place in the waning days of the Obama administration when he suggested using the Department of Homeland Security to “monitor” voting systems. In August 2016, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson introduced Obama’s idea, and using the catch-all phrase “critical infrastructure,” he provided his justification for allowing the Feds to seize control of our elections.
“We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is political infrastructure like the financial sector, like the power grid. There’s a vital national interest in our process, so I do think we need to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others as critical infrastructure.”
Johnson also expressed his concern at the time that our voting system isn’t centralized, saying that “there’s no one federal election system.”
Congress didn’t address the issue in 2016. But in 2018, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan picked up where Obama and Johnson left off when they reauthorized and “reformed” DHS. Included in their reform legislation was so-called improvement to cybersecurity. In the Senate, that included amendments co-sponsored by then-Senator Kamala Harris and Republican Senator James Lankford that would bolster cybersecurity of voting systems.
In 2018, after winning the most seats in a midterm since Watergate, Democrats used their new majority in the House to pass the first incarnation of the “For the People Act” (H.R. 1), a bill they claimed would “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and for other purposes.” (emphasis mine)
In reality, the For the People Act was the realization of Washington’s plan to seize full control of elections from the people, as we see in this summary of the bill:
Here are key excerpts taken from the summary of the For the People Act:
This bill addresses voter access, election integrity, election security, political spending, and ethics for the three branches of government.
The bill also sets forth provisions related to election security, including sharing intelligence information with state election officials, protecting the security of the voter rolls, supporting states in securing their election systems, developing a national strategy to protect the security and integrity of U.S. democratic institutions, establishing in the legislative branch the National Commission to Protect United States Democratic Institutions, and other provisions to improve the cybersecurity of election systems. (emphasis mine)
The For the People Act will also give Washington control of campaign financing by establishing an “alternative campaign funding system” (code for taxpayer-funded elections), including a new program that involves “federal matching of small contributions for qualified candidates.”
Additional financing rules under FPA will require political organizations that collect and spend money to provide donor information to a new government commission to be created under the legislation — not just donor names, but their personal information as well — thus making political donations subject to the approval/disapproval of Washington.
One of the most notable and obvious proofs that Washington plans to seize full control of national elections can be seen in the provision requiring federal control of redrawing congressional district maps through “independent” commissions, making it mandatory for states to redraw their congressional districts through these commissions instead of through state legislatures.
In addition to geographic diversity, these commissions will also be required to show “racial, ethnic, economic, and gender” diversity before redrawing congressional boundaries.
Our Founding Fathers knew the danger of centralized power, and they too great pains to avoid creating such a system when they drafted the Constitution. In the first incarnation of the Constitution (The Articles of Confederation), we see how how entirely distrustful Americans were of centralized power. It was in that spirit that they wrote a Constitution giving broad powers to the states (the people) while deliberately limiting the power of the federal government.
In today’s America, “states rights” is being redefined as “white supremacy,” turning history into an opportunity to advance the Marxist rhetoric of groups like Black Lives Matter.
The states (the people) are the possessors of all power not explicitly delegated to the United States federal government, which means that nearly everything we see coming out of Washington is outside the Constitution — including the For the People Act.
The states have always had the preeminent role in elections, and that has resulted in decentralized elections — unlike the elections we see in other countries. This has allowed the states to maintain the necessary differences in how their elections are run, and it has worked to keep control of national elections out of the hands of the self-interested tyrants running the show in Washington.
The Senate is scheduled to vote on the For the People Act sometime this week, and if it passes — not likely at this time — the 800-page behemoth will give Washington everything it needs to seize control of national elections, thus denying the people the ability to exercise their First Amendment right to engage in political speech. And even though its chances of passage aren’t that strong at the moment, the threat to liberty lives on as long as such a bill is floating around Capitol Hill.
Republicans want us to believe that they oppose H.R. 1 as another step in the direction of the far-left’s goal to seize complete control over us; they want us to believe that Democrats are out to destroy liberty while Republicans are out to save it; and they want us to believe that Democrats (not Republicans) want to silence and censor us if we dare to take a stand against blatant power grabs like the For the People Act.
However, Republicans are just like their Democrat counterparts, which means they will have no problem if the For the People Act should ever become law because every single change contained in H.R. 1 accomplishes the goals of liberty-killing leftists in both parties.
The For the People Act is Washington’s plan to seize full control of national elections from we the people. If it passes, it will give the federal government permanent and unconstitutional control over our voting system and our God-given rights.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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