Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer's Scheme to Take Over Elections

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have hatched a whole new scheme to federalize elections. How? They gutted a NASA bill that had already been passed by the House and had made its way to the Senate floor, stripping out the language and replacing it with language that federalizes our elections.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett explained how this bill was stripped down to be used for hyper-partisan legislation:

Can you imagine being the supporters of that NASA authority bill right now when it is now being used to take over elections, move state control of elections to the federal government? You and I both know how hard it is to move a bill through the legislative process. Imagine getting a bill through the United States Senate and it sitting in the House, may even have enough votes to pass in the House, they call it up and remove all of the language that you care about and put in a federal takeover of elections. . . . That is how insistent Washington D.C. Democrats are in taking over control of the elections. It doesn’t even remove that 60-vote threshold, it just pushes it a couple of days later, but that’s how desperate they are to move it down the line.

Thann added that the substance of the bill is still the same as H.R.1 that we warned you about:

It is a federal takeover of elections plain and simple. They changed the bill name from S. 1 the For the People Act, now it is numbered S. 2747 the Freedom to Vote Act and they put Joe Manchin’s name on it. They did very little to change the substance of this. The federal government would still be in charge of everything – to voter registration, to voter location, to voter hours, to when those polls have to be open, to ballot box security, redistricting would even be under the purview of the federal government now. I am telling you this is as sweeping as H.R. 1 was, they just changed the name and tried to make it a little bit more palpable. . . . The only thing they did with that sleight of hand was get it to the Senate floor. There will still have to be a vote on whether or not they will change the filibuster to actually get it over the line.

Senator Schumer is pushing to get rid of the filibuster, yet he used to have a very different opinion on the matter. Senator Tom Cotton pointed that out:

Constitutional scholars will tell us that the reason we have these rules in the Senate – unlimited debate, two-thirds to change the rules, the idea that 60 have to close off debate – is embodied in the spirit and rule of the Constitution. . . . This is what the Constitution is all about, and we all know it. . . . The bottom line is very simple. The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called the cooling saucer of democracy into the rubber stamp of dictatorship. . . . Those are powerful words – but they’re not mine. Every word of my speech today was originally spoken by my esteemed colleague, the senior Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. 

What changed? What changed is that Sen. Schumer and the Left fear the fast-approaching midterm elections, and are terrified of losing their power. They want to federalize elections while they still control the House, Senate, and White House.

ACLJ Senior Military Analyst Wes Smith detailed in his new article how this bill takes away the power of the state governments, which is explicitly granted by the Constitution. He explained how Congress is ignoring that:

Article I, Section 4, of the Constitution the Elections Cause says the “Time, Manner, Place” of voting is something the states control. They are totally ignoring that. What this bill would do is disembowel voting in America as we know it. It is a complete takeover of voting even at the local level by your federal government.

Now that this is all up to the Senate, all eyes are on Senator Joe Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Sen. Sinema explained her view:

While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country. The debate over the Senate’s 60-vote threshold shines a light on our broader challenges. There is no need for me to restate my long-standing support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation.

The Senate could begin debates as soon as this evening. We will continue to monitor this legislation and provide you with updates.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi’s effort to federalize elections.

Watch the full broadcast below.