Voting is Infrastructure, Apparently

The push for the federal takeover of elections continues. The left criticizes their own while pushing to include voting legislation in an infrastructure bill.

Summary

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said over the weekend that some of the measures in those two bills could be included in the infrastructure legislation Senate Democrats are attempting to use the budget reconciliation process to pass without the threat of filibuster.

• On Saturday, President Joe Biden called for Congress to pass federal “voting rights legislation”, The For The People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, both of which drastically increase federal involvement in election administration. 
• Biden’s call came just a few days after Congresswoman Joyce Beatty was arrested at the Capitol leading a protest in support of passage of the bills. 
• More Democratic Texas lawmakers have tested positive for COVID on their vacation protest to Washington, DC in an attempt to stop their state’s election reform bill. 
• In Arizona, the Attorney General, a Republican, is urging the Democrat Secretary of State to refer instances of possible voter fraud to his office for investigation and prosecution, the first time this has not been done in over a decade.

• After Georgia, and now Texas, Michigan is apparently the next front line in “legislation that restricts the right to vote” according to Vox, including the use of “signature matching” for voter identification verification.* 
• Left-wing TV host Joy Reid criticized Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for commemorating the life of the late Congressman John Lewis, saying Sinema’s defense of the filibuster is allowing “the work of his life: voting rights” to be stalled in the Senate. 
• CBS News highlighted the role of black churches have played in “getting the African American community to the polls” in criticizing a provision in the Texas legislation that was removed from the bill.

• Fox News reported on the COVID-19 super spreader event that is Texas Democrats’ trip to Washington, DC in protest of voter ID requirements after a total of five lawmakers have tested positive for coronavirus. 
• Breitbart reported on Republican Congressman Byron Donalds’ remarks at a TPUSA summit criticizing Democrats’ characterization of voter ID requirements as racist. Donalds, who is Black, said he has had an ID since he was 13 years old. 
• According to The Daily Wife, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is entertaining the idea of giving Democrats a taste of their own medicine by organizing a boycott among Republican senators if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brings up the $3.5 trillion reconciliation “infrastructure” bill.

Author’s Take

*Criticizing what Vox now calls “subjective” signature matching processes is grossly hypocritical when removing the now-subjective process in favor of the use of a driver’s license number or last 4 of a social security number was considered a racist attack on voting rights in the Georgia bill. It’s another example of how media across the spectrum wants to have their facts both ways. Whatever their opponents are proposing it must be bad, even if they defended it previously.

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© Dallas Gerber, 2021