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April 15, 2021 (American Thinker) – If congressional resolutions had a voice, House Bill 1 (HB1), at 30 pounds a considerably obese tome, would let slip the parts usually kept at bay from the electorate.  The For the People Act of 2021 is the antonymic title for the most openly unconstitutional and unpopular piece of legislation ever to pass muster in the House of Representatives.  It is intended to destroy the process of fair elections in America, turn the watchdog Federal Election Commission into a partisan body, and forestall any state challenges by remanding them to the activist 9th District Court for the District of Columbia.

Passed by the 117th House on March 3, 2021, all 800-plus pages of HB1, redesignated Senate Bill 1 (SB1), made a hard landing in the well of the Senate on St. Patrick’s Day, where it is now being reviewed in hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration.  So long as the Republicans hang tough, it gridlocks and falls upon the sword of the filibuster.

During the Trump presidency, there were five Republican wings within the House and Senate, ranging from those loyal to Trumpism, such as Jordan and Gaetz, to the most Trump-skeptical, Murkowski, Collins, and Romney.  Diverse allegiances and stylistic differences with the chief executive encouraged bickering, internecine rivalries, and splintering on issues that demanded consensus.  Cloistering in blocs and factions kept them from uniting in the interest of their constituents.  

Since the Dems assumed control of the three branches, the Constitution has been repeatedly annotated by presidential executive orders. Paper-thin congressional majorities are breaking the back of the Treasury and indenturing generations through the process of budget reconciliation.  The extremism of the Biden regime now appears to have accomplished that which the Trump presidency could not — unanimity among Republicans and an opportunity to repatriate the working class.

In a refreshing turn of events, Chuck Schumer is now the majority leader suffering dissension within his own ranks.  Obstructing the partisan path to passage of SB1 are two Democrat holdouts, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.  Both senators have vowed that they will not cast their lot behind any motion or process that will erode the filibuster or stonewall debate.

The 2016 election of Trump confirmed a decades-long trend and bared an Achilles Heel for the Democrats.  The Dems have slowly isolated and have eventually dispossessed their blue-collar base, installing a loyal corporatocracy in its place. These boardroom types with Ivy League pedigrees are all in with the Machiavellian maneuvers of the Democrat regime, throwing bags of money at their campaigns, conspiring to influence election outcomes, and imposing woke practices on their employees and customers in the hope of dodging boycotts, disapproving media, and rabid street militias.

Energized Republican voters returned to the ballot box with a vengeance in 2020, including increased support from Black and Hispanic voters. Simple mathematics exposed incidents of massive fraud in swing states, yet legal challenges to the count were brushed aside by the high courts, ignoring the merits and evidence in plain view. For Republicans and their constituents, it was a familiar obstructive pattern. With Democrats holding a two to one advantage in appointed judges in the most influential federal court districts, Trump administration initiatives concerning immigration, health care, sanctuary cities, and the census, were stopped in their tracks in seventy different rulings over four years.

If the cabal succeeded in handing number 45 his hat, it couldn’t conceal a 2020 red wave that nearly overtook the Congress and gave rise to an angered voter base who believed themselves and their vote ill-treated. As the Biden administration continues to spend money willy-nilly with an economically destructive and globalist wish list driven by Sanders’ Marxists, Republican chances are looking better and better to take back the House in 2022.

Democrats have placed their stock in SB1 as the only means to avoid the upcoming rout. Without SB1, the current landscape of American elections could do much harm to their party. Moreover, there is a trend in key states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, New York, and Georgia to come to grips with fraud by patching up the holes in loose voter practices in time for the next general election.

At present, thirty-two states, excluding the territorial possessions, still require photo or non-photo identification. Of the eighteen states that don’t require identification, eight are controlled entirely by Democrat executives and legislatures. Six states split party control of the executive and legislature, and four others have a Republican triumvirate.

For the Democrats, thirty-two voter ID states and ten others under split-party or Republican control leaves far too much to chance, not only in a presidential election cycle, but in the state congressional races more specifically. Asserting federal control over state elections via SB1 hedges the bet that Democrats running against odds-on Republican favorites in red or purple states will be able to mount challenges and gain victories through fraud-prone practices such as mail-in voting, ballot harvesting, and extended voting deadlines that allow collections and counts to continue until Democrat candidates prevail.  Increasing Democrat margins in the states also assures less pushback or secession from Biden executive actions and regulatory controls that diminish constitutional protections.

Democrats rally around the idea that requiring identification invites voter suppression in that otherwise eligible minority voters do not possess drivers licenses, personally-addressed correspondence, or other free and available forms of government identification.  It also presumes that they also don’t drive cars, fly in airplanes, open bank accounts, serve on juries, obtain library cards, book hotels, possess credit cards, or get COVID vaccines.  Such straw arguments also conveniently ignore the historic minority voter turnout in the 2020 presidential election.

The rest of the free world appears to exert more common sense in preserving the integrity of their national elections.

Throughout the COVID epidemic, the French continued to traipse to their city halls to vote, with access to sanitizers, social distancing, and sporting their own stylos for signing a registry that required personal identification.  They saw no logic in shutting down in-person voting while food market patrons down the boulevards of Paris backed up in the chute to the cashier.

Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, and Slovenia require photo IDs.  So do Germany, Hungary, Canada, Israel, and Mexico.  The entirety of the rest of Europe, throw in Iceland, all of Scandinavia, and the former Soviet states, the latter no strangers to past voter oppression and rigged elections, follow suit. George Soros, Hilary Clinton, and virtually every Congressional Democrat apparently believe that the world has it all wrong.

As written by Arthur Conan Doyle and stated by his protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  If you remove outright stupidity as a premise in the creation of SB1, you’re left with a nefarious intent to seize power in perpetuity.  

In SB1, a free America is facing the Rubicon.  For Republicans, this may be their finest hour. In unanimity they will prevail, as they now hold tight the cord upon which dangles a representative democracy.

Reprinted with permission from the American Thinker.