The Daily Signal - HR 1 Would Allow Federal Micromanagement of State Elections, Ohio Secretary of State Says

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

The bill known as HR 1, or the For the People Act, should be called “the Federal Takeover of Elections Act,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose says.  LaRose, who oversees Ohio's elections, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain why HR 1, a bill the political left touts as positive election reform, is an unconstitutional power grab at the expense of the states.  We also cover these stories: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says the House could unseat Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., asks Pelosi to allow the Capitol to revert to standard operations pre-COVID-19.  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “can no longer serve as governor,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the daily signal podcast for Friday, March 12th. I'm Rachel Del Judas. And I'm Virginia Allen. The left is describing HR1, or the For the People Act, as legislation that advances voting rights and campaign finance reform. But conservatives saying no, it is really just a federal power grab for D.C. to dictate how states run their elections. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose joins the show today to explain why H.R.1

would be so harmful to states across the nation and could cause mass election confusion. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. The Democrat-led House of Representatives has passed legislation by a 227-203 vote that tightens background checks on guns. The legislation prohibits a, the firearm transfer between private parties unless a licensed gun dealer, manufacturer, or importer first takes possession of the firearm to conduct a background check. Even though the legislation was controversial among conservatives, three Republican congressmen, Fred Upton of Michigan,

Chris Smith of New Jersey, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-sponsored it. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says the House could potentially unseat Iowa Republican Representative Marionette Miller Meeks. Miller Meeks won her seat by a mere six votes after a district recount. Her Democrat opponent, Rita Hart, is contesting the election, saying that 22 ballots were wrongfully discarded for heirs, and if those ballots were to be counted, then she would win the election by nine votes. The Democratic-led House Administration Committee voted Wednesday to ultimately review Hart's petition to examine the election outcome. Pelosi said the House administration committee is following the law as they review the Iowa election results.

A House vote to unseat Republican Miller Meeks is a hypothetical, Pelosi said. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to have the capital revert back to its standard operations pre-COVID-19. In a letter to Pelosi, where he asked her if in-person work and meetings could return to full-time and if proxy voting will end, McCarthy said, Nearly a year ago today, you made the decision to close the capital to visitors and begin implementing new protocols to govern access and movement of the members and staff of the capital complex. But since that time, we have learned more about the virus and have made monumental strides in our scientific and technological endeavors. Today, we have multiple vaccines with significant efficacy rates. COVID-19 cases and deaths are falling nationally. and experts predict a return to normalcy may be closer than we think.

Six women have reportedly now accused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual assault or harassment. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had this to say of the latest allegation during a press conference on Wednesday per Fox News. It's deeply troubling the specific allegation. The governor called an employee of his someone who, who he had power over, called them to a private place, and then sexually assaulted her is absolutely unacceptable. It is disgusting to me. And he can no longer serve as governor.

De Blasio added that Cuomo's handling of the nursing homes in the state during the pandemic is also deeply troubling. And we know one thing that there was a purposeful cover-up, and that alone is unacceptable and disqualifying, de Blasio said. The mayor is one of more than 80 members of the New York State Senate and Assembly who have called for Cuomo to either step down or be impeached. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose as we discuss the partisan HR1 election bill. Never has it been more important for us to fight for America. Each day we see the penalties of progressive policies across our nation.

Our elections are under assault. Our economic freedom is on the decline. and our culture is turning its back on the founding principles that have made us the freest, most prosperous nation in history. That's why the Heritage Foundation developed a plan to take on the left and take back our country. The Citizens Guide to Fight for America provides a series of heritage recommended action items delivered on a regular basis to your inbox. Make an impact in your community and in our country.

Sign up for the Citizens Guide at heritage.org. slash citizens guide and join in the fight for America today. I am joined by Ohio Secretary of State, Frank LaRose. Secretary LaRose, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much, Virginia. So today we are breaking down the debate over HR1, also known as for the People Act. And the left describes this bill as legislation

that advances voting rights and campaign finance reform. But conservatives say, no, wait a second. This is actually just a federal power grab for D.C. to dictate how states run their elections. So let's begin by talking a little bit about what H.R.1 is. Could you just explain the bill a little further and how it would impact our elections if it was passed? You know, you're right to mention that they're calling it the For the People Act. We should always be leery when they give it some sort of innocuous sounding name like that. Really, what it should be called is the federal takeover.

of Elections Act because it's really what they're trying to do. They're really trying to micromanage how states run elections. And to be clear, there are some things contained in it that are fine ideas, but what's not a good idea is for the federal government to mandate how states should run their elections. Now, here's the net result, because as I said, there are some okay ideas in it, but there are also a lot of bad things. Like, for example, legalizing ballot harvesting, which is obviously dangerous for a variety of reasons. There are some things in here that leave me scratching my head. Like, why does it recommend D.C.

Statehood? What does that have to do with elections administration? Why does this bill, you know, make the Federal Elections Commission a partisan body when it has always been a bipartisan body? Effectively, they make it a partisan body for the first time ever. So all of these things are problematic, but again, the big picture is this is not a proper role for the federal government to be involving itself in. And specifically, how would the bill affect Ohio if H.R.1 was passed?

Well, here's one specific effect it would have. It would take things that we already have that work well, and it would change the way they run. I'll give you an example. I'm personally a fan of online voter registration. If it's done correctly, I sponsored the bill when I served in the state legislature. We have online voter registration in Ohio, but it is a secure, system that we set up thoughtfully that works for Ohio and that requires identification that matches the voters' name with their record in the Department of Public Safety Drivers License

Database to make sure that it is a valid address to make sure that they are a United States citizen, for example. So all of those safeguards that we've built into our online voter registration would get sort of wiped away by this one-size-fits-all version of how this. bills sponsor believes we should do online voter registration. It would be a much less secure system than what we have already. So that's just one example of some of the problems contained in this bill. It is a one-size-fits-all solution imposed with the heavy hand of the federal government that forgets the fact that states have a long history of running elections and every state is different.

You were recently cited in a Wall Street journal piece about HR1. And one of the points that you raised is that Ohio has just had one of its most successful elections to date. And so then really the question becomes if states like Ohio are doing just fine managing their elections at that state and local level, why does the federal government need to be involved? What is the left's answer to that question? Well, the left's answer is what I would call crisis opportunism. Really what they're doing is they're taking a laundry list of things that they've wanted to do for many years, and they're cloaking it in, you know, COVID and the 2020 election. They're saying, well, we need to make all these changes because of 2020.

I would argue that that's not the right way to do things. And, you know, and this goes back to our founding. I mean, for over 240 years, we've held true to the principle that states front elections, even in the Federalist papers, Hamilton wrote it in Federalist 59, that only under extraordinary circumstances should the federal government have anything to do with how elections are conducted. And by the way, there have been those extraordinary circumstances. And so, you know, the left will argue back and say, well, then if you don't think the federal

government should be involved in elections, you must be against the voting rights act. Well, no, not necessarily, because there's a big difference there. The Voting Rights Act is about protecting fundamental rights. and there was a clear need for it at the time. This is not about protecting fundamental rights. This gets down into the really nitty-gritty details of how states conduct this work. It dictates what forms of identification can or can't be used. It dictates how states do their redistricting process, which has been a state prerogative since the founding.

It dictates, again, legalizing things like ballot harvesting, which is not about protecting a fundamental right. It's about really using the pandemic and the challenging 2020 election as an excuse to try to ram through a bunch of leftist priorities. And that's what it comes down to. And so HR1, if it were to pass, it would mandate that every state would allow for early voting, for absentee voting. Ohio, as you talked about, Ohio has instituted things like early voting and voting by mail absentee voting long ago. that it took you all, as you wrote in your Wall Street Journal article that you were cited in, it took about 20 years for Ohio to really get good at doing those things. So what would be the result if all of a sudden every state had to offer mail-in voting,

had to offer early voting, regardless of their previous experience with that kind of voting? Quite simply, the result would be chaos, confusion, loss of voter confidence. You're right to say that Ohio does a good job of burning elections, as I have said, we've gotten good at it over the years. We've been in the national spotlight for many years, but it didn't happen overnight. And as you also pointed out, we just had our most successful election in our history. In the midst of a very challenging circumstance last year, you can quantify this. We had 6 million people cast a ballot, 74% of registered voters.

We had a record number of poll workers with 56,000. We had 59% of the ballots were cast before the polls ever opened on election day through Ohio's month-long early voting and absentee voting prices. But there are also the right safeguards involved. Now, here's the way that change should happen. If states want to modify the way they run elections, it should happen at the state capital. And that's, by the way, that's the idea of 50 states' laboratories of democracy, all finding better ways to serve the voters and citizens of their state. Just last week, I offered testimony in the Pennsylvania state legislature because they wanted to look to their neighbors to the West, and I was happy to help show them how Ohio has gotten good at some of these things. And now they can make some changes in their law as well.

That's the right way for states to get better at running elections. What is not the right way is a massive, heavy-handed federal takeover. And again, that's what HR-1 represents, and that's why we're working so hard to try to kill it in the United States Senate. So as you point out, I think, you know, there is a lot of agreement of, okay, yes, you know, maybe there are some changes that need to be made to election processes across different states. But the answer is not necessarily having the federal government be involved in that. But for states that say, okay, we want to improve, we want to make changes, does Ohio have, you know, what are those processes that Ohio has that you think other states should. imitate? You know, there are a number of things. We have, again, for years, offered early voting where people can come vote in person. We have a whole month of early voting, and so we make it

very convenient. We have evening hours and weekend hours. We're one of only a few states in the nation that offers Sunday afternoon early voting, so we truly make it easy to participate in early voting. We also offer absentee voting, absentee voting where you can vote from the comfort of home by mail. But you know what's key to our process? Two things. We require you to identify yourself would you request a ballot. You have to use a form of ID to request an advocacy ballot, and you have to prove your identity again when you return the ballot and we verify signatures to make sure that the voter who submitted the ballot is the correct voter. We also maintain accurate voter list, and this is something that, again, the left likes to criticize me for. But because we have that

balance where it's truly easy to vote in Ohio, but we also have the right safeguards in place. Ohioans trust the results of our elections. Another thing, and I specifically mentioned this to our friends in PA, two things actually. One is bipartisan oversight of elections. It takes a Republican and a Democrat to do anything at a county board of elections in Ohio, and it's the old Reagan principle of trust to verify, right? Like we trust one and a number work well together, but the Republicans and the Democrats keep an eye on each other, and that's the nature.

of elections. Voters want to know the results quickly. And when they don't know the results quickly, they start to worry or wonder or even kind of invent things in their own minds about what may be going wrong. In Ohio, we process our absente ballots as soon as they arrive. We verify that signature. We check the identity. We get ready to count it. We don't count any ballots until the polls close on election night, but we've done all the administrative work ahead of time as soon as that ballot arrives so that at 730 on election night, we can start counting ballots. And that's why I was able to report Ohio's unofficial election night result by about 1130 on election night. In other states, they're not even done to cut the envelopes open until

election day. And that has led to problems. And so that's another thing where states like Pennsylvania should take a look at the way Ohio doesn't. Now, the way, you know, HR1 is being presented many, and the content of HR1, many GOP members are saying, you know, this bill is really unconstitutional at the end of the day. What are your thoughts on that argument? Is H.R.1 unconstitutional? I certainly believe that to be true. And certainly if it were to pass the U.S. Senate and be signed into law, I think that it would be challenged in court, and I think that it would be found unconstitutional. My hope is that we can short circuit that by defeating this in the U.S. Senate. And here's where, again, I feel that it's unconstitutional. The federal government,

has a role in protecting and defending fundamental rights to vote. But that's not what we're talking about with HR1. HR1 is not like the Voting Rights Act, for example. HR1 is micromanaging the finite details of how states do this, and that is a state power. That is a state prerogative how we run our elections. And for the federal government to usurp that power or to grab that power away from the states,

I believe is clearly unfurrected. clearly unconstitutional. So where do you think stand right now? The bill has passed in the House. Obviously, things are changing quickly, but as we talk on Thursday morning, what appears to be next for HR1? Well, it passed the House, and it passed on a completely party-line vote, which is another problem with this, really when election changes are made. I get that Republicans and Democrats disagree on things, and I understand that some things are going to pass on a party-line vote. election law changes should not. I've always made that a priority in Ohio when I've done election law bills. It's not always possible, but I've always worked hard to try to make it a bipartisan

piece of legislation because Republicans and Democrats should agree on the rules and then go compete in the free market of ideas. And this is part of the problem with HR1 is that it is a strictly partisan endeavor. It comes over to the U.S. Senate next. It's important also to note that there's a reason why it's called HR1, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer. They gave it that number to signal that it is a priority for them. And so we're going to have a fight

on our hands in the U.S. Senate, but I'm hopeful and I've already been talking with members of the U.S. Senate about this. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to defeat it in the upper chamber. I think that the Republicans will realize that this is bad for their state. And I think that there are a good, smart Democrats

in the U.S. Senate that will realize as well that this is not something that people in their state are going to appreciate because, again, a federal takeover of the way states run elections is something that would change the way we've done this for 240 years and would upset that balance that has existed for that time. Secretary of the Rose, before we let you go, just want to give you the opportunity. Any final thoughts on H.R. 1? I would encourage your listeners to read up on it, to understand it, to not get pulled into

the emotional arguments about this. because, again, some of our friends on the left, they'll say, well, this makes it easier for people to vote. This makes the redistricting process better, and they'll try to go point by point and say, well, this is good. And yes, you can find a few things in it that sound really good. But what's not good, again, is having the federal government dictate this to the state. If you believe those are good public policies, call your state legislator, call your state senator or your state representative and encourage them to work at the state capital to get those kind of things. That's just, it's not something this should happen at the federal level.

Secretary, thank you so much for your time today. We truly appreciate it. Thanks, Virginia. Take care. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio.

If you haven't done so already, please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening. and we'll be back with you all on Monday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.