The GOP’s ACE Act Is A Farce And A Fraud
Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | July 13, 2023
After a more than six-hour mark up in the House Administration Committee on Thursday, the Republican-led committee, on a party-line vote, approved H.R. 4563, the ACE Act. The full House is expected to vote on the measure before the August recess.
This so-called American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act is an Alice-in-Wonderland bill that claims to promote confidence in elections but, in fact, will make it harder for Blacks, other minorities, the disabled, the young, and urban residents to vote. These groups are seen by Republican politicians as most likely to vote for Democratic candidates.
The true purpose of the ACE Act is to tilt federal elections to the benefit of Republican candidates.
To put it simply, the ACE Act is a farce and a fraud.
During Thursday’s mark up, Representative Joe Morelle (D-NY), the ranking member on the House Administration Committee, rightly called out the bill as an “anti-voter exercise” that is “catering to the demands of election deniers.”
Morelle said of the ACE Act:
“It will do nothing to increase voter access to the ballot which, in my view, ought to be our primary goal and objective. Nor will it make Americans feel any more confident that Congress is addressing the real threat to the health of our Republic — former President Trump and his supporters who have spent years now undermining the strength of our democratic institutions.
“The bill is unfair, undemocratic, and un-American.”
Unfair. Undemocratic. Un-American. That’s exactly what this legislation is.
Among other things, the Act would restrict private funding of the administration of elections, even as congressional Republicans refuse to provide adequate funding to administer federal elections; repeal President Biden’s Executive Order instructing federal agencies to encourage voter registration; and establish unnecessarily strict and unwieldy voter ID and mail-in voting requirements.
Washington, DC voters are singled out by the legislation. The District would become a guinea pig for the states, with the establishment of a series of repressive restrictions, including dramatic reductions in drop box access for voters and onerous new voter ID and mail-in voting rules.
The ACE Act in the name of “free speech” also adds new protections for unlimited “dark money,” the massive amounts of secret donations that nonprofits spend in campaigns.
Unlimited “dark money” is the most dangerous money in American politics. Since there is no public information about the nexus between the donor giving the money and the officeholder benefiting, there’s no way to hold the donor and beneficiary accountable when money is corruptly exchanged for government decisions.
The Act also gives an even greater role to influence-seeking big money donors contributing through the political parties to benefit federal officeholders.
No one should be surprised by this current effort by House Republicans.
It started in 2021 with a wave of voter suppression and election sabotage laws being passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country. Bolstered by Trump’s “Big Lie,” new laws were enacted to restrict early and absentee voting, reduce the number of voting drop boxes in targeted communities, and establish other regulations that make it much harder for citizens, in particular Democratic-supporting ones, to vote.
The false basis used to justify these new laws stemmed from the fabulist, disinformation claims made by former President Trump that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him. In reality, Trump’s own Homeland Security officials called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”
Overturning these voter suppression and election sabotage efforts is urgently needed.
In the last Congress, the Freedom to Vote Act and John R. Lewis Act would have overridden state voter suppression and election sabotage laws as they apply to federal elections and restored the protections in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The legislation passed the House and came within two votes of passing the Senate.
The Freedom to Vote Act is expected to be reintroduced in the House and Senate soon and the John R. Lewis Act is expected to be reintroduced later this year.
No one should be fooled by the phony ACE Act. It’s a disinformation scam.
The Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Act are the real voting rights bills that will make it easier, not harder, to vote and will provide for fair and secure elections.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears each Thursday in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
