The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed H.R. 1, otherwise known as the “For the People Act,” which Republicans warn will compromise election integrity and ultimately lead to the federalization of U.S. elections.
The Democrat-led House passed the legislation on party lines, 220 to 210. A summary of the bill notes that it “expands voter registration (e.g., automatic and same-day registration) and voting access (e.g., vote-by-mail and early voting)” and imposes limits on removing voters from voter rolls.
Republicans have warned that the Democrat legislation would vastly reduce the power of the states to control and operate elections at the local level.
“If this bill passes, it puts in all these terrible provisions,” Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said during a January appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
“It’s a federal micromanagement of the election process, and everything that folks on the left want to reduce the integrity [and] the security of the election process is in there,” he continued.
“If you’re a state like Alabama or Texas that has a voter ID law, you might as well forget it, because this federal law would override all state voter ID laws so they’re now unenforceable,” von Spakovsky added.
Speaking to Breitbart News on Tuesday, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) warned that the “Socialist Democrat Election Fraud Enhancement Act” would do “great damage” to the nation’s election system by taking power away from the states.
“The socialists seek to mandate no-fault absentee ballots, which are the tool of choice for vote thieves. They seek to eliminate the photo identification requirement and, by the way, when the federal government does it, that eliminates all state laws to the contrary,” Brooks said.