Protecting Election Integrity

The backbone of our American republic is the guarantee of free and fair elections. Regardless of whether the candidate you supported won or lost last November, we should all be concerned when states deviate from election laws through judicial activism and executive overreach. After the Florida recount debacle in 2000, Congress came together to form a bipartisan consensus so states could fairly and accurately count every legally cast ballot. Unfortunately, this standard of bipartisan election reform was not considered in the House this week. I voted against H.R. 1, the so-called "For the People Act", which would overrule the voting practices of every state, including Nebraska, in a way our Constitution's framers never intended.

I am proud of how well Nebraska handled the difficulty of voting amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. I sponsored legislation to enact voter ID in Nebraska when I was a member of the Unicameral, and I appreciate continued efforts to improve Nebraska's state election laws. Each state should find its own way to ensure every legal voter is who they say they are, including providing ready access to secure means of identification for all voters.

Empowering individual states, like Nebraska, to determine their own methods for collecting ballots is critical. H.R. 1 does not empower states, instead it sets strict federal parameters they must follow. The bill undermines election integrity by mandating the direct mailing of ballots to everyone who is registered, banning voter ID requirements, requiring mandatory voter registration using motor vehicle rolls, and prohibiting most state efforts to clean up those voter rolls. This would effectively require states to automatically mail a ballot directly to anyone who has had a driver's license with no process in place to ensure that the voter currently lives at a specific address or to ensure that ballot isn't misused by another person.

This legislation not only drastically changes the integrity of elections, but it also threatens our First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly. It institutes disclosure requirements for nonprofit organizations that would require names of donors to be released once they hit a certain threshold. The bill would also empower the IRS to review the political positions of nonprofits. During the Obama administration the IRS illegally withheld the approval of nonprofit status applications for organizations based on their political views – our goal should be preventing that from happening again, not making it legal going forward.

I support fair, transparent, and legal elections across Nebraska and the nation. Rather than forcing a partisan, federal power-grab, I support the establishment of a bipartisan commission to examine concerns brought on by the 2020 election proceedings and permanently empowering state legislatures to be the ones setting election rules. We should not be taking power away from states, but instead reinstating their role as the source of election law.