House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — who shepherded legislation to effectively federalize U.S. elections during the presidency of Joe Biden — claimed that President Donald Trump wants to “nationalize” the midterms.
Trump said during a Monday appearance on “The Dan Bongino Show” that federal Republicans need to take control over elections in blue states to stop illegal immigrants from voting. Jeffries, in a Wednesday post to X, claimed Trump wanted to “steal” the midterm elections and that “We will never let that happen.”
In 2021, Jeffries co-sponsored the For the People Act, a reintroduced House bill that significantly increased federal government involvement in state election procedure, of to the official Congress website. Both critics and supporters of the bill claimed that if passed, it would ultimately lead to the nationalization of U.S. elections.
The bill sought to expand voting registration measures, such as same-day and automatic voting registration, and voting access, such as vote-by-mail and early voting, according to the web accessible version posted to Congress’ official website. It would have also required states to create independent redistricting commissions.
Former Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland introduced the For The People Act, in 2019. The bill passed the then-Democratic-controlled House but was blocked by the Republican Senate majority. Sarbanes reintroduced the legislation in 2021 and where the Senate again blocked it.
Jeffries had praised the House’s passage of the bill in March 2021, calling it “once-in-a-generation democracy reform.”
“Today’s vote represents a monumental step toward defending our democracy and making sure that every single American regardless of race, regardless of gender, regardless of ZIP code, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity and regardless of religion has an equal opportunity to participate in our democracy,” the New York Democrat wrote at the time, via a press release.
In a 2023 paper published by Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum, Javon Davis of Boston College Law School argued in defense of the bill because it would “nationalize” America’s election process.
“The For the People Act of 2021 (‘H.R. 1’), took a holistic approach to overhaul the Nation’s election system,” Davis wrote at the time. “Proposed as a remedy to the rampant voter suppression tactics seen throughout the country, H.R. 1 aimed to reform and nationalize election processes and procedures.”
Marcum and Bydlak argued the bill harms the flexibility of state elections by instituting “numerous new mandates, including universal rules for internet and same-day voter registration, early voting, voting by mail and voter registration of minors.”
The authors also stated that the For The People Act would direct legal issues concerning election law to the US District Court of the District of Columbia. They further claimed the bill would take away a plaintiff’s opportunity to make a case in their home district court and force them to travel to the Washington D.C. district court to make an appeal.
A group of Republican lawmakers wanted to attach the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE), an election integrity bill, to the Senate-passed deal to end the recently-concluded four-day government shutdown. Trump however told the lawmakers to pass the deal without additions in order to quickly reopen the government.
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