Election law bill 'not designed to protect Americans’ vote,' say three U.S. representatives

House Resolution 1 is called the For the People Act.

Three Republican congressmen said it’s for the birds, claiming it would mandate unconstitutional federal control over elections best handled by state and local officials.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) and Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), discussed HR 1 with Texas Public Policy Foundation CEO Kevin Roberts during the weekly TPPF forum. It included their views and responses to questions from audience members who attended in person or via streaming services.

HR 1 passed the House on a party-line vote of 234–193 on March 3, with Reps. Roy, Budd and Hice joining other Republicans in opposition.

“It is not designed to protect Americans’ vote — it is designed to put a thumb on the scale in every election in America, so that Democrats can turn a temporary majority into permanent control,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said during the floor debate. “It is an unparalleled political grab.”

It also passed the House in 2019 but was not taken up by the then GOP-controlled Senate. Now, with Democrats in charge of a deadlocked Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris casts tie-breaking votes, HR 1 has moved to that chamber.

On Monday, Roy, Budd and Hice explained why they hope the Senate stops it from becoming law. Republicans have threatened to filibuster the bill, while Democrats are talking about altering or discarding the filibuster rule, which would require 60 votes to bring a bill to a vote.

Rep. Budd said if a vote is held on stifling the filibuster, it might be time to pray for Sen. Joe Manchin — “and for his spine.” 

Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, is seen as a key vote on this issue.

“I don't want to be the oddsmaker on that one, but it really does depend on him,” Budd said. 

Hice said it’s a troubling time for Republicans in Washington, D.C.

“Unfortunately, we all know elections have consequences as we are in the minority. There's very little that we can do to stop it if the Democrats move forward,” he said.  “And so that's why so much pressure now is on Manchin and how horrible it is. Let's face it, what a terrible scenario for us as a nation to be relying upon one Democratic senator to determine the future outcome of national elections and listen, I think it's proper for us to remember that our Founders did not want the election process to be centralized in our federal government.”

Budd said the states must push back hard on this and other issues. Rep. Roy concurred.

“All I'll say is, I still think it's an uphill climb for the Democrats,” he said. “But that is contingent upon every American who's watching this across the country, every Texan making sure every member of the United States Senate understands this is the bottom line. This is it.”

Roberts said HR1 is a “huge threat to the American way of life.”

“We all know from wherever we're sitting, whether it's Texas or North Carolina or Georgia or some other state, that one of the most pressing problems facing the United States is the lack of an election integrity in this country,” he said. “Here in Texas, we're on the brink of our Legislature passing what will be a really good bill — if and only if, Congressman Roy, they make sure they add voter verification for mail-in ballots.”

Roy agreed.

“I know we're here to talk about HR 1, but what we're doing at the state level is so critical for what we're trying to do to stop the legislation in Washington,” he said. “Texas taking action on the heels of what we've seen in Florida and Georgia and Iowa and other states around the country is so critically important.”

Roy said this is a crucial issue for the Texas Legislature.

“Well, I don't think there's anything more important than getting this right. I mean, we've done there's a lot of good things,” he said. “But if we don't get this one right, then I don't think you can have a successful session.

“So, this last week is going to be paramount. I did take some time to go down to the Legislature to testify on behalf of HB 6, as well as to generally meet with colleagues in the state Legislature, because I think it's so critically important because we're going to do everything we can,” Roy said. “And Jody and Ted are throwing our bodies as much as we can in front of the train of HR 1 or anything like it in the House.”

Roy said studies have shown a 1-2% increase in fraud with mail-in ballots.

“In my opinion, there are a lot of things that we've got to look at ensuring that we've got voter I.D. and make sure that we've got integrity in our system,” he said. “But with the massive ramp-up in mail-in ballots using Covid as the excuse, that's at the heart of what we saw in our concerns about the election in the last cycle and going forward.”

He said if HR 1 becomes law, there would be many more mail-in ballots, with states forced to follow federal rules on voter ID.

Rep. Budd said the idea is to make elections easy to vote in, but hard to cheat.

“What HR1 would do would make it easy to vote, but easy to cheat,” he said. “When you take a microcosm here in my state of North Carolina and you look at 2018, voters overwhelmingly supported voter I.D. and then you have a liberal judge in 2019 overthrow the will of the voters ... which was the law for 2020 and created such chaos here in North Carolina, even though it's one of the better states when it comes to voting integrity.

“And then after the election of 2020, you see a higher court overthrow her ruling and then you have essentially the federal judge, a court of appeals and say, you know, you can use voter I.D. and that's the law of the land here in North Carolina. So, it's been back and forth.”

He said if the proposed law passes the Senate and is signed into law by President Biden, all the chaos surrounding the 2020 election will become a regular occurrence. 

Hice said Georgia was “a disaster in the last election cycle” and should have sounded an alarm.

“Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. And what is astounding to me is that everything that went wrong in Georgia would be codified with the passing of HR 1,” he said. “I mean, you name it. Look, just for one little snippet of understanding the horror of HR1, it would require live ballots, not applications for ballots, but live ballots, to be sent to everyone on the voter registration file in every state. Now, those files are horribly inaccurate."

Rep. Budd said he is opposed to same-day registration and a requirement of citizenship to vote.

“And then we need to increase penalties for anyone who gets caught fraudulently voting,” he said. “And when we talk about this mail-in balloting ... an excuse that derives from Covid. Let's remember that we had an absentee system that has worked for decades and decades. And while there's always a little more chance for fraud there, we know the system. We know where the holes are. Let's not introduce something new and let's stick with absentee voting as before.”