Mike Pence wrote a shitty blog that he’d love for you to read.
On Wednesday, the former vice president penned a whiny op-ed for right-wing news outlet Daily Signal titled “Election Integrity Is a National Imperative.” In it, he laid out his opposition to the For the People Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that would usher in a new, more equitable era of voting rights in America. The bill includes nationwide automatic and Election Day voter registration and mail-in ballot options for every state. It also requires that independent commissions draw congressional districts, effectively putting an end to racist gerrymandering. Also included: restored voting rights for people who have committed felonies and have served their sentences, voter-ID law restrictions, and federal financing of political candidates reliant on small donations.
This overhaul is long overdue and would make voting in the United States more equitable and less painless. That’s exactly why Republicans like Pence hate it.
From Daily Signal:
Congress will vote this week on HR 1, the so-called For the People Act, a massive 800-page election overhaul bill that would increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, further erode confidence in our elections, and forever dilute the votes of legally qualified eligible voters.
Okay, tell us what you really mean.
HR 1 mandates the most questionable and abuse-prone election rules nationwide, while banning commonsense measures to detect, deter, and prosecute election fraud.
Uh huh…
The bill would force states to adopt universal mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day voter registration, online voter registration, and automatic voter registration for any individual listed in state and federal government databases, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles and welfare offices, ensuring duplicate registrations and that millions of illegal immigrants are quickly registered to vote.
Here we go: He’s worried about undocumented people voting. Of course, the automatic voter registration program would only apply to United States citizens eligible to vote, so this is baseless fearmongering. As of 2021, 18 states and the District of Columbia offer some form of automatic voter registration (AVR). Unless there’s proof of mass voter fraud in those states—many of which already include large populations of undocumented people—this appears to be a nonissue.
But let’s not glaze over his mention of automatic registration via “welfare offices.” He just had to include an anti-Black dog whistle.
Let’s move on to some more baseless handwringing:
States would be required to count every mail-in vote that arrives up to 10 days after Election Day.
The bill requires that the ballot be postmarked on or before Election Day, so this is another nonissue. It’s not as if you can decide to mail in your ballot a week after the election and have it count.
Congressional districts would be redrawn by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. Illegal immigrants and law-abiding American citizens would receive equal representation in Congress. Felons would be able to vote the moment they set foot out of prison.
Sounds good to me.
Under HR 1, donations to many private organizations would be made public, exposing millions of Americans to the radical left’s cancel culture crusade.
There are, in fact, concerns on both the left and right about privacy concerns regarding this stipulation of the bill, but wedging in the “cancel culture” bogeyman here is embarrassing.
To restore public confidence in our elections, our leaders should uphold the Constitution, reject congressional Democrats’ plan to nationalize our elections, and get about the serious work of state-based reform that will protect the integrity of the vote for every American.
In other words, the restore the confidence of white right-wingers, we need to make sure that voting is still an arduous task, from registration to booth, and anything that endangers the racist, classist status quo that we’re currently enjoying to the fullest is a threat to American democracy as we know it.
Cool, great.