Voting Access: Degrading Our Democracy
Across the country, liberals are legislating, suing, and clawing their way into forcing a fundamental shift of our electoral system. Using the cover of the COVID-19 crisis, liberals are pursuing their wish-list of voting changes, including but not limited to: elimination of signature requirements for mail-in ballots, same-day voter registration, and elimination of the photo ID requirement in some states.
Conservative legislators, jurists, and secretaries of state have pushed back against this blatant power grab and have made clear they intend to defend the integrity of elections. In Kentucky, the conservative-run legislature recently overturned Governor Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 2, which requires residents to produce a photo ID when voting, with some exceptions. The signed bill was delivered to Secretary of State Michael Adams late last week.
Legislation in Virginia
Comparatively, the difference could not be starker in states without strong, principled, conservative legislatures. Virginia’s policy priorities have monumentally shifted since the 2019 election. No other state has seen such a radical and dramatic swing to the left as Virginia did. Larry Sabato, from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, stated that “It’s a gigantic change. There really is no precedent. There is no period like this. Virginia has never had a liberal period.”
This month, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a myriad of radical liberal bills into law. These bills take unprecedented steps to loosen Virginia’s voting regulations, making it easier to cheat the system and degrade our free and fair elections. Below are the bills passed by the liberal legislature and signed by the governor that open the door to the potential for widespread voter fraud:
HB1/SB111 – allow early voting 45 days prior to an election without an excuse.
HB19/SB65 – remove the requirement that voters show a photo ID to vote.
HB235/SB2019 – implement automatic voter registration for individuals using a service provided by the DMV (either at a physical location or online).
HB1678 – extends in-person voting hours from 7:00pm to 8:00pm.
Not only has Governor Northam gone above and beyond to destroy common sense voting access laws, but he also signed a slate of other liberal priorities into law. When a liberal-dominated legislature is paired with a conquesting liberal governor, it is only a matter of time until rights are restricted and freedoms are taken away.
Lawsuits
The next front where liberals are flexing their millions of dollars to influence outcomes in their favor is in the courts. There is a coordinated effort amongst liberal powerbrokers in the country to completely reformulate our electoral structure to benefit themselves. Their approach is multi-pronged and is comprised of legislation, grassroots efforts, and lawsuits.
Marc Elias is the lead attorney for the cohesive liberal effort to sue their way into changing the way elections are held. According to NPR, Elias has already filed more than 20 lawsuits in 14 states challenging voting procedures. Elias expects that the number of lawsuits will double by the end of this year. It should come as no surprise that much of the focus is on swing states such as Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin, and Texas. If they cannot convince voters to back their policies and change the balance of legislatures via elections, they simply change tactics and sue in court to get what they want.
Liberal donors and politicians are seizing the current crisis as a distraction while they forward their ultimate goals of loosening election security and opening the door to delegitimizing any future election results. If we allow them to degrade electoral security via legislation and lawsuits, our very democracy is at risk. Citizens will become disenfranchised and lose their belief in our free and fair elections, and that is something worth fighting for.
