By LOREN LEMAN AND KEN CUCCINELLI
Legislation the U.S. House has passed and the Senate is considering would override Alaska’s election laws, abolish voter I.D. and other commonsense election safeguards, force Alaska to let illegal aliens and non-citizens register to vote, remove penalties for illegal voting, and threaten state officials with criminal liability if they don’t play along.
Companion bills, originally introduced as H.R. 4 and S. 1, would give unelected, federal bureaucrats further “veto” authority over state-passed election laws, enabling them to toss out laws they don’t like, while mandating unsecure and unverifiable absentee voting practices, and severely restricting voter roll maintenance. Both bills are designed to force a politically driven takeover of state elections, and rig the system in partisan favor.
Fortunately, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have rejected S. 1 and should be applauded for their defense of fair, secure, and transparent elections we can trust. However, in the last Congress, Senator Murkowski supported a previous version of H.R. 4. When it was re-introduced in the current Congress and abruptly passed by the House last month, the new version morphed into a grab-bag of much more radical policies.
In fact, it’s so unpopular and obviously partisan that Nancy Pelosi had to force it through the House without committee review, and without garnering a single Republican vote.
This new version of H.R. 4 provides that any state seeking a commonsense voter I.D. law would have to first seek approval from the Biden Administration, and that’s a scary thought. It makes voter I.D. an automatic indicator that a state is racist, thereby subjecting our elections to the dictates of particularly radical Washington bureaucrats.
It would expand the U.S. Attorney General’s authority to unilaterally determine voting violations, making him or her an ultra-powerful, unelected election “czar,” while re- writing the Voting Rights Act so the federal government would have veto power over state election laws through a process known as “pre-clearance”— one of many ways it directly overrides previous Supreme Court rulings.
To overturn a state’s election law, federal employees would not have to show that the law had any actual discriminatory effect or intent. The mere accusation would be enough. Disliking the law for political reasons would also be enough, because the burden of proving otherwise would then be on the state – a very difficult defense.
In place of “objective measures” to determine a pattern of discrimination, (e.g., low minority voter registration or turnout), Democrats substituted a system in which trial lawyers, activist judges and an ultra-powerful attorney general would decide virtually all election discrimination questions. Collusive settlements would be sufficient to subject state election laws to the whims of federal bureaucrats. In the case of Attorney General “objections,” the mere accusation of discriminatory voting patterns is enough to drag states into preclearance.
The Supreme Court held in 2013 that the facts no longer support the narrative of widespread voter discrimination. While that was a problem in parts of our country in 1965, when I was in high school in Ninilchik and still a few years away from voting age, today with Alaska voter registration tied to the PFD application, it’s easier to register and vote than ever before, regardless of what color you are, what party you choose, or where you live.
We should be celebrating these accomplishments, while always looking to improve participation under Alaska’s secure voting system.
As the Senate considers this legislation, we know we can count on Sen. Sullivan. However, Sen. Murkowski will face intense pressure from the left. But if she remains true to her word—rejecting partisan voting bills—she will support the good work we have done in Alaska to have fair and transparent elections and reject this radical, hyper-partisan bill.
Loren Leman is a former lieutenant governor of Alaska, legislator, and long-time voter.
Ken Cuccinelli is a former attorney general of Virginia, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and is now leading the Election Transparency Initiative.
