On the recordAugust 24, 2021
To come to the correct conclusion, a law professor used to say, ``You've got to know the facts.'' And that is what the American people need here: the facts, not emotion. This bill would comprehensively transfer the power to govern elections in this country from the sovereign States to the Federal Government permanently and everywhere. So what is the factual premise for so fundamentally concentrating the power here in Washington and diminishing the States? What has happened to justify making pervasive and permanent what Chief Justice Roberts explained was ``a drastic departure from basic principles of freedom'' when it was necessarily undertaken in the 1960s, temporarily and in limited parts of the country? Well, Democrats offer lurid claims, but the American people are catching on. Like earlier this year, Stacey Abrams claimed that a simple voter ID law would be Jim Crow 2.0, but once the absurdity of that caught up to her, she looked so ridiculous that she tried to deny ever having claimed it. Nothing epitomizes this better than the slur repeated in the Rules Committee yesterday by my law school classmate and colleague, Congresswoman Ross. She quoted three ultraliberal judges in the Fourth Circuit who said that when the North Carolina legislature enacted voter ID and other reforms in 2013, it ``targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.'' Activists and media have quoted that phrase over 7,500 times, according to Google.…