Jason Smith: Democratic radicals are trying to undermine our voting rights

(By Eighth District Congressman Jason Smith)

Since our nation’s founding, American elections have all featured some basic, commonsense rules. Americans – not foreigners, non-citizens, or illegal immigrants – are granted the right to choose our leaders. 

That’s why folks are asked to show identification when they go to the polls. We elect those leaders on Election Day – not Election Weeks or Election Months. That’s why states set clear cutoffs for when ballots must be received.

But a group of radical, Washington Democrats – led by their party’s leader, Joe Biden – are trying to undermine this most basic right. In the 2020 presidential election, millions of Americans felt like they were disenfranchised. 

Whether because of court rulings or partisan officials acting unilaterally, we saw too many states ignore the laws passed by state legislatures and create new rules seemingly on the fly. Whether it was rules on when ballots had to be cast or received by, or rules on signature verification or voter identification, time after time rules created to ensure fair elections were discarded. In most instances, they used the narrative of a permanent pandemic to justify these election process power grabs.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Democrats in New York City passed a new law that allows more than 800,000 non-citizens to vote in city elections – watering down the value of citizenship. 

And facing a recall of three Democrats on the city’s Board of Education, San Francisco Democrats recently voted to allow non-citizens to vote in its Board of Education elections. 

We should be united in ensuring the integrity of our elections, but Washington Democrats want to enshrine these rules nationally – permanently. And you don’t have to look hard for why – it’s all about electing Democrats.

This week, President Biden traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to encourage the Senate to pass a federal takeover of our election system. The bill would permanently block states from identifying voters and would once again use his permanent pandemic narrative to allow Democrat activists to collect ballots from anyone they can convince to give up their ballots. It could force U.S. taxpayers to underwrite political attack ads on officials they support.

But knowing that Republicans in the United States House and Senate are unanimously opposed to these outrageous new federal rules, the president called for Senate Democrats to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass the bill. 

In his speech, he compared opponents of these changes to racists and enemies of the state. Joe Biden’s race-baiting is beneath the dignity of his office – and in the end, at least two members of the president’s own party made clear they do not support him in this effort to further divide our country. So much for the guy that promised unity.

President Biden also might need to explain to America why Senator Joe Biden should not be considered a racist. After all, he routinely supported filibustering legislation while he served for over 30 years in the Senate, and in 2005 he went so far as to publicly defend the filibuster. And Kamala Harris? Also, a racist by President Biden’s own standard. In 2020 alone, while Harris served in the Senate, Senate Democrats used the filibuster 327 times! She even signed a letter in 2017 in support of preserving the filibuster!

Like so much of Washington Democrats’ agenda, this issue boils down to one thing: control. Whether it’s education, childcare, health care, or election laws, in every case the Democrat agenda would hand over the keys to unelected Washington bureaucrats who can put in place uniform, one-size-fits-all rules. I’ve said it before: the best government is government that’s closest to the people, and that’s at the local and state level. I will always stand to protect your vote and the integrity of Missouri’s elections because I know Washington control makes things worse, not better.