Dan Reinhard

Minot

Look, I am a million miles away from being a constitutional scholar but I do possess enough skills to comprehend the words in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Although the States’ Constitutions may vary slightly, all of them mirror the US Constitution’s framework. Where I find the most salient realization in our form government, is that our US Constitution was not merely written to establish a form of government with powers to protect the people, conversely, it was written to protect the people from an overreaching form of government.

While I have not read the entire 800+ pages of the Freedom to Vote Act monstrosity, as passed by singular party votes in the House of Representatives, I have read many excerpts from it to include those provided by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). I find it to be an obvious overreach by Congress to federalize the national election process. Article I Section 4 of the US Constitution grants the State Legislatures the power to make election laws with Congress granted the power to pass laws regulating that process. The Freedom to Vote Act law proposes much more than regulating the voting process, it is an attempt to commandeer the power away from the states to write their own voting laws. Same day voter registration by signing an affidavit, vote by mail with unsolicited ballots or allowing a third party to carry a ballot to a drop box are nothing short of enabling the gross possibility of fraud.

The 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and the 26th Amendments to the US Constitution as well as ten other Civil Rights Acts protects every American citizen the right to vote. I find the Freedom to Vote Act exceeding the power of Congress and might well be properly categorized as a proposed amendment to the US Constitution rather than the definition of legislative law. Although I cannot foresee the sober-minded US Senators ever passing this law as Chuck Schumer has promised, I believe the US Supreme Court will have many problems in approving it.

“The Constitution explicitly grants Congress a limited set of carefully defined enumerated powers, while reserving most other legislative powers to the states. As a result, Congress may not enact any legislation that exceeds the scope of its limited enumerated powers.”