By Congressman Markwayne Mullin
Democrats in Washington will do just about anything to keep themselves in power, including federalizing our election system.
H.R. 4, which the House passed this week, is an unprecedented power grab. It gives Biden’s Department of Justice and federal courts the authority to insert themselves in state and local election laws. They will stop at nothing to take power away from the states and place it directly into the hands of bureaucrats in Washington.
They will try to tell you that this bill is necessary to increase access to voting and eliminate voter ‘suppression,’ a term Democrats now use to intimidate anyone who opposes their ballot power grabs. Even if we ignore the label, that’s a flat out lie. More Americans voted in the 2020 election than ever before, despite a global pandemic. They can’t have their cake and eat it too.
We have seen this act before. Earlier this year, I opposed H.R. 1, the “For the People Act,” for the same reasons. Like the first failed attempt, this new bill is unconstitutional. Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives states the power to set their own election laws. Even our founding fathers feared this overreach.
States are fully capable of running their own elections and Oklahoma sets the standard. Oklahoma is one of 36 states that require an ID to vote, and more than 81 percent of Americans support this. All Americans use identification to go about our daily lives. Renting an apartment, boarding a plane, buying a lottery ticket—to a name a few—and none of these are discriminatory. What makes voter ID any different?
Voting is one of our most fundamental rights as American citizens and fair and honest elections are a pillar of our democracy. It should be easy to vote and hard to cheat. The Democrats’ power grab is not the way to do it.
