Democrat Platform Calls For Weaponizing The DOJ Against Election Laws The Left Doesn’t Like
The Democrat Party platform calls for the Department of Justice to intervene in elections across the country, supposedly in the interest of “voting rights.”
The party released its platform Sunday, ahead of the already-contentious Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It boasts the Department of Justice has “more than doubled” staff to enforce so-called “voting rights laws.” The document also calls for passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, which, as Jonatahan Tobin previously explained in The Federalist, would “allow the federal government to intervene anywhere in the country to overrule local or state authorities” when the left claims election discrimination against minorities.
This proposed change, along with recent Democrat efforts, reveals the party’s intent to exert federal control over state elections.
Federalizing State Elections
When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it enacted a formula requiring some jurisdictions to seek federal approval before changing voting laws, apparently to reduce racial voting restrictions of the Jim Crow era in compliance with the law. Congress continued authorizing the formula through 2006, letting the federal government continue to dictate local voting laws.
For example, South Carolina was required to “preclear” a law requiring photo ID to vote in 2012, and the DOJ denied it. Leftist groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Brennan Center for Justice intervened in South Carolina v. Holder, and a three-judge panel allowed the law to take effect, but “clarified” that the law “does not require a photo ID to vote.”
The Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, however, that the “preclearance” formula established in the 1965 Voting Rights Act was outdated and the federal government could no longer use it to exert control over state voting laws.
“[L]argely because of the Voting Rights Act, voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers,” the ruling reads.
The court ruled the 15th Amendment, which allows all citizens the right to vote, was “not designed to punish for the past,” but to “ensure a better future.”
But the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, would override this ruling. It would impose even stricter requirements for federal approval of changes in election law, as The Federalist previously reported, allowing the DOJ to attack laws for mere allegations that they disadvantage minority voters.
The Constitution’s Article 1, Section 4 contains an Elections Clause that gives states the power to determine “times, places and manner” of elections. It allows Congress — not federal agencies — to “make or alter such regulations.”
Weaponizing The DOJ
The Democrat platform targets what leftists frequently call Georgia’s “voter suppression law” — which requires voter ID to obtain an absentee ballot, places drop boxes inside more secure early voting sites, bans the use of “buses and other readily movable facilities” as regular polling locations, and bans offering potential incentives like water or snacks to voters in line at the polls.
Thirty-six states currently have voter ID laws of some sort. Eighty-one percent of Americans support voter ID requirements, according to a Pew Research study earlier this year.
But President Joe Biden called the Georgia law “Jim Crow 2.0” in a 2022 Atlanta speech.
“It’s not hyperbole; this is a fact,” Biden said. “They’ll just decide what they want and then do it. That’s the kind of power you see in totalitarian states, not in democracies.”
Never mind the Democrat platform’s call to exert federal control over state election laws.
Leftist groups including the ACLU, NAACP, and Southern Poverty Law Center sued Georgia for its election integrity law in 2021. The DOJ weighed in with a complaint that effectively asserted, as previously explained in The Federalist, that Georgia’s elections are the same as in 1965, that Georgia Republican legislators are racist, and that racism within the state makes its laws racist, among other things.
Biden compared Republican election integrity measures to “Jim Crow” in 2021, labeling them the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” He touted the 2020 election — rife with third-party election meddling — as the “the most examined and the fullest expression of the will of the people in the history of this nation.”
Democrat Attorney General Merrick Garland echoed Biden’s comparison of election integrity measures to Jim Crow laws earlier this year, vowing to weaponize the DOJ against states.
“[T]he Justice Department is fighting back,” Garland said. “We are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes, and voter ID requirements.”
The DOJ asked the Supreme Court on Friday to keep Arizona from requiring proof of citizenship in November’s election, The Federalist reported. In Arizona, even if voters don’t prove citizenship in state elections, they are still allowed to vote in federal elections “in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act” of 1993, according to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
Partisan Control
The DOJ is compromised with partisan actors. It has continued to engage in election interference, both working with Big Tech on elections and pushing debunked claims that former President Donald Trump committed election collusion with Russia.
Biden also issued an “Executive Order On Promoting Access To Voting” in 2021, directing federal agencies to work with so-called “nonpartisan third-party” groups to register voters and push get-out-the-vote efforts to likely Democrat voters ahead of November’s election. This order, dubbed “Bidenbucks,” effectively directs federal agencies including the DOJ to interfere in elections.
Ironically, the party accuses Republicans of “disenfranchis[ing]” voters and claims it wants to “bring an end” to “dark money.”
Considering the Democrat platform’s call to federalize state elections, and Democrat politicians’ push to transform elections while targeting Republican election integrity bills, it seems the leftist-legal complex hopes to cement its hold on American elections.
Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is originally from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
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