Democrat U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota is making another attempt at passing Democrats' plans for sweeping election reform that includes federal control and lax policies that would only undermine election security and Americans' trust in the integrity of outcomes.
Klobuchar's new bill dealing with mail-in ballots comes after Democrat majorities in the House and Senate were repeatedly unable to pass legislation that constituted a federal takeover of the election process and barred states from implementing popular election security measures such as requiring photo identification to vote and ensuring absentee ballots are legitimate.
Even as a small piece of legislation, Klobuchar's "Election Mail Act" would similarly be a federal mandate for several policies that run opposite the goal of ensuring secure elections by requiring states to count late mail-in ballots. As it stands now, more than 30 U.S. states and territories require mail-in ballots to be received by election day, dozens of jurisdictions that would have their established election law overturned in the federal takeover if Klobuchar's legislation becomes law.
As Axios describes, Klobuchar's bill "would codify First-Class service standards for all election mail, require the U.S. Postal Service to postmark all ballots and ensure voters and election officials don't have to pay or pre-pay for postage on ballots." Ok, fair enough. But buried in these seemingly innocuous changes is something more.
As a press release on Klobuchar's official senate website explains, the legislation would also "[r]equire states to count absentee ballots that are postmarked by election day and arrive within 7 day[sic] after the election, while permitting states to have deadlines more than 7 days following the election."
That means states would be forced to count ballots that arrive, at minimum, seven days following an election as long as they show a postmark before election day — regardless of a state's existing election law. And, as Axios explains of the latest tactic from the radical left, "in the wake of Congress' repeated failure to enact sweeping election reform this year, this narrower piece of legislation is an effort to do bite-sized pieces of election administration reform."
But, according to Jason Snead — executive director of the Honest Elections Project — Klobuchar's legislation "should immediately raise a red flag for lawmakers." Her Election Mail Act "risks delayed election results, fraud, and extensive litigation if passed—all things that harm public confidence," Snead added. "Accepting late ballots is something most Americans oppose and most states do not do."
As Snead also explained, the bill "is yet another ploy by the left to target election safeguards and institute a federal takeover of elections," something that has long been a goal for Democrats on Capitol Hill.
"States have been doing a phenomenal job improving voter confidence by making it easier to vote and harder to cheat," Snead emphasized, referring to election integrity measures passed and signed into law by leaders in Georgia, Texas, and elsewhere. In those states, election turnout has only increased, even in this midterm election year. That's why, according to Snead, "a mandate to count late ballots would be a massive step in the wrong direction."