Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee recently introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to strengthen the Electoral College process to ensure election integrity and prevent a recurrence of fraud in the 2020 U.S. election. Hagerty wrote an article on FoxNews.com on Tuesday (March 2), explaining his reasons for introducing the bill.
The following is a translation of Hagerty’s article.
Americans must be given confidence that presidential election rules are established through the transparent and democratic process required by the U.S. Constitution to ensure public accountability and preserve federalism. That is why I am introducing the bill to strengthen the Electoral College process to ensure that taxpayer federal funds cannot be used to support presidential elections in offending states that do not comply with state election laws and thus violate the Constitution.
Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that elected, accountable state legislatures must make the rules for presidential elections in their states, not by activist judges, elected officials, commissions or through litigation decisions.
Yet, in several key battleground states in the 2020 presidential election, radicals have changed election rules midway through the election, despite the absence of a constitutional mandate to do so. Look at the blueprint developed by U.S. House Democrats last spring under the guise of plague relief, which extensively changed state election laws through the House of Representatives. The legislation sought to nationalize the election process, repeal measures that guarantee the honesty of elections, and eliminate the constitutionally mandated role of state legislatures in the election process.
This Democratic legislation would prohibit voter identification requirements and signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots, require states to allow ballot harvesting; could pay ballot harvesters to harvest ballots from an unlimited number of individuals; require a count of ballots received no more than 10 days after the general election; and require mail-in ballots to be automatically mailed to all registered voters, some of whom may no longer live in that state. And Democrats introduced a similar bill – H.R. 1 – in the House this year.
Sound a little familiar? When this bill, designed to upend our electoral system, wasn’t being considered in the U.S. Senate, the Democrats’ focus shifted to the states ahead of the 2020 election.
In some states, activists used the plague pandemic as an excuse to file lawsuits and cajole election officials, and with the help of activist judges and partisan-biased officials, unconstitutionally rewrote and weakened state laws that guaranteed the integrity of elections during the election. They often do this by throwing out state legislatures, which is in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution.
This leads to more insecure voting methods and overwhelms voting systems, invites wrongdoing, and prevents adequate oversight of the new process. It has led to reasons for Americans to question the integrity of our elections and to be unable to accept the results.
Let me be clear: My intent is not to put Congress in charge of state elections. That would be the opposite of what I think. The Constitution rightly delegates that power to state legislatures. But we must protect the Electoral College system, which will not function properly if the constitutional process that sets the rules for elections is broken, as it was in the 2020 election.
In advance of the 2020 presidential election, Congress appropriated $400 million through the CARES Act and $425 million through regular appropriations for election security grants to assist states in conducting secure elections. My bill would stop taxpayer money from going to states that do not have unconstitutional election processes established through state legislative processes, because taxpayers in one state should not be forced to subsidize election shenanigans in other states.
I have also co-sponsored a bill with South Carolina U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R) to create a bipartisan commission of nine Republicans and nine Democrats to review procedural changes for the 2020 presidential election and provide recommendations to state legislatures to best achieve safe, honest federal with the authority granted by Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution elections.
While some say we should move forward, if we ignore this and treat the 2020 election as if it were a normal election, then the American electorate is at risk of being disenfranchised. If we don’t act, then nothing will change and this could happen again.
Inaction will open the door to radical H.R. 1 bills like the federal seizure of state voting rights and force states to adopt insecure elections that are highly vulnerable to fraud.
Instead, I will fight for the rule of law and hope others will join to defend election integrity. We must protect the sanctity of future elections and the Electoral College system so that states like Tennessee will always have a voice that matters when it comes to electing a president.
We must ensure that every American’s vote is protected and that every American has confidence in the outcome of our elections.
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