Monday, March 15, 2021

the horror that is HR 1

Have you read the bill that passed the House of Representatives, HR 1?  Hot on the heels of the pork-filled COVID-19 relief bill, HR 1 purportedly deals with the question of voting rights.  Convinced that having a legitimate electoral system is somehow racist and oppressive, the Democrats crafted an 800-page bill that they then rammed through the House of Representatives.  I admit I haven't leafed through the bill, which would be like reading a very boring novel.  I rely on others to sum the bill up for me, and here (credit:  Instapundit) is a good summation from the right-libertarian point of view:

The House has just passed a bill that would compel states to accept mailed-in votes for 15 days prior to and 10 days after Election Day; set up automatic and online voter registration; prohibit review of the eligibility of voters; compel acceptance of ballots cast in the wrong precincts; bar the removal of the ineligible voters from the rolls; permit ballot harvesting; ban any voter identification laws; consign to unelected officials the redrawing of congressional districts; infringe upon free speech by the imposition of “onerous legal and administrative burdens on candidates, civic groups, unions, and non-profit organizations”; and establish a disturbingly named “Commission to Protect Democratic Institutions” in order to end-run the courts.

And here's the commentary:

The potential for gross abuse with these changes if they are enacted is too obvious to require elaboration. Any opposition to it is labeled “voter suppression.” If this bill is enacted, especially with the provision for a bare majority vote on any issue in the Senate, and the addition of two or four sure Democratic senators from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia admitted as new states, the question of whether and to what extent the United States remains a government of laws and a genuine democracy will not be possible to answer affirmatively with any confidence.

That final sentence wins the prize for Understatement of the Year.

For a bill to become law, it must pass both Houses of Congress.  HR 1 is up for consideration in the Senate now.  While the GOP has recourse to certain procedural hurdles to delay passage of HR 1, it's very likely that HR 1 will pass and become the law of the land, thereby affecting (read:  delegitimizing) all future national-level (and probably state-level) elections.  The left-liberal side of the aisle convinced itself that life under Trump was a nightmare when it so obviously wasn't.  The left has now created an unconstitutional bill that, when it becomes law, will be a bona fide nightmare for all.



1 comment:

John Mac said...

My neck is sore from shaking my head at the insanity taking place back home. But where is the outrage? Do the people really not care?

The other side of the coin is this cancel culture phenomenon where "wrong think" results in the destruction of your life and livelihood. The latest iteration is "cancel adjacent"; you are required to denounce any friend or associate who is being canceled or you will be canceled yourself. Orwell couldn't have made this shit up, it is too far-fetched even for fiction.

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/03/what-would-you-say-to-people-who-may.html