In testimony before the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) slammed new election reform proposals being put forth by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her Democratic counterparts in the Senate, promising that his state would sue if Dems manage to get a signature from the president on two companion bills known as H.R. 1 in the House and S. 1 in the Senate, according to the Washington Examiner.
“The 2020 elections involved an effort to convert what had been election day in our country to a months-long process of vote-gathering, ballot-harvesting, last-minute rule and law changes by people not authorized to do so,” Rokita said Wednesday, as the Examiner reported.
“All this resulted in shaken confidence in our electoral system and a profound unease if not outright distrust about the results,” the Indiana AG added, warning Democrats about doing the same with their new federal-level proposals.
“Wholly unnecessary”
Speaking Wednesday, Rokita said in particular that the privisions within S. 1, also known as the “For the People Act,” “are wholly unnecessary,” arguing that “the determinations for how elections are operated should remain with the states, as intended by the framers, for good reason.”
Rokita also asserted that the new law would compound the number of election-related lawsuits that Americans have to contend with following nationwide match-ups.
“Many of the problems of 2020 resulted from the efforts of those without the authority to do so trying to control how the election was run and changing election rules at the last minute,” he charged, according to the Washington Examiner. “This led to an unprecedented number of election lawsuits that have, frankly have overwhelmed the system.”
The attorney general also said the changes would “open our elections up to increased voter fraud and irregularities,” including by eliminating voter and photo ID laws. “Requiring government-issued photo ID at the polls represents a common-sense, simple best practice for election administration and is in place in over 32 states,” Rokita said, as the Examiner reported.
Voting changes in Georgia
Rokita’s testimony comes just days after the state of Georgia enacted sweeping election reforms designed to streamline voting and prevent allegations of improprieties in the wake of the hotly contested 2020 presidential race.
According to NPR, the 96-page bill, signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Thursday, imposes “new limitations on mail-in voting” but “expands most voters’ access to in-person early voting.”
It also mandates that large precincts add more voting machines and staff or “split up the poll,” as NPR reported, and imposes new regulations on absentee ballots, including photo identification rules that, notably, would be undone by the U.S. Senate’s S. 1, if passed.
Democrats, of course, are crying foul on the Georgia measure, which President Joe Biden has likened to “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” according to the Associated Press.
But after the debacle that transpired in the weeks following November’s election, Republicans had to do something. One can only hope Democrats in Congress don’t start undoing all the progress that’s just been made.
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