Why Did Biden Go Down to Georgia?

            “The devil went down to Georgia” is a song written and performed by the Charlie Daniels Band. It was released in a 1979 album titled “Million Mile Reflections.” The title of the song went through my mind today as I thought about President Joe Biden going down to Atlanta, Georgia, to push the passage of two bills in the U.S. Senate. The bills are so bad for America that he might as well have been the devil.

The Constitution puts the responsibility for elections on state legislatures, but Democrats want to take the power from the states and give it to the federal government. According to Fred Lucas, the bills are “designed to expand the federal government’s role in state and local election laws.” Why does anyone want the federal government more involved in their lives? 

            Biden and other Democrats claim that the bills are about “voting rights,” but they are not. In his speech in Georgia, Biden made several claims, and Lucas fact checked six of them.

1) ‘Democracy Over Autocracy’?

“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation.” Biden said. “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch.

“I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And so the question is, where will the institution of the United States Senate stand?”

Biden referred to 19 states that enacted new election reforms in 2021 that generally expanded voter ID requirements for mail-in ballots; curbed the controversial practice of ballot harvesting, in which political operatives are allowed to collect and distribute large quantities of ballots; and required states to remove the names of dead people and other ineligible voters from voter registration rolls….

The Georgia law, like other state laws adopted in 2021, extends voter ID requirements to absentee ballots. The law does narrow the time to request an absentee ballot to 11 days before the election, when it was previously the Friday before the election.

The Peach State’s law further expands weekend voting hours and further codifies the use of ballot drop boxes that become common during the 2020 election because of the COVID-19 lockdown….

Democrats have also attacked election law reforms in Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Texas in particular prompted attention when Democratic state legislators fled to Washington to deny the Republican majority in Austin a quorum.

 

2) ‘Changing Senate Rules’

Biden, as a senator from Delaware for more than three decades, staunchly defended the filibuster. In recent weeks, however, Biden has back carving out an exception to it to pass Democrat-backed federal election legislation….

“Because abuse of what was once a rarely used mechanism that is not in the Constitution has injured the body enormously, and its use to protect extreme attacks on the most basic constitutional right is abhorrent,” Biden [wants to change the rules in the Senate].

It’s true that the Senate filibuster is not in the Constitution. However, Biden said in July that doing away with the filibuster would thrust Congress into “chaos.”

And as a senator in a floor speech in May 2005, when Republicans controlled the Senate and were considering eliminating the filibuster, Biden objected:

“At its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it’s about compromise and moderation. The ‘nuclear option’ extinguishes the power of independents and moderates in the Senate. That’s it; they’re done. Moderates are important if you need to get to 60 votes to satisfy cloture. They are much less so if you only need 50 votes….”

Democrats initially pushed HR1, which they dubbed the For the People Act, but which Republicans called “the Corrupt Politicians Act.” The proposal would have eliminated most state voter ID laws, mandated same-day voter registration in all states, and expanded ballot harvesting, among other measures. [Emphasis added.]

The Freedom to Vote Act, which is a scaled down version of HR1, creates national laws for automatic voter registration, universal mail-in voting, new redistricting laws, and campaign finance laws. The companion John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would increase the federal government’s veto power over many state election law changes. (Emphasis added.]

All three measures have passed the House, but have been stalled in the Senate, unable to meet the 60-vote threshold.

 

3) Jan. 6 and ‘End of Democracy’

Biden invoked the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, in which pro-Trump rioters attempted to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes for Biden.

“The battle for the soul of America is not over,” Biden said. “We must stand together so that Jan. 6 does not mark the end of democracy, but the beginning of a renaissance for our democracy.”

A bipartisan group of nine senators, five Republicans and four Democrats, are working on a plan to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887. The law allows members of Congress to make objections to counting electoral votes. It was also going to be the last-ditch effort by the Trump campaign to reverse the 2020 election result….

The Wall Street Journal separately editorialized, “We agree the riot was disgraceful, but then why not rewrite the law that encouraged Donald Trump’s supporters to think Congress could overturn the 2020 election?”

However, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Biden White House have so far said addressing the Electoral Count Act would be insufficient.

 

4) ‘Suppression’ and ‘Subversion’

Biden claimed that ‘history has never been kind to supporters of voter suppression.”

He said the choice is between whether people want to be remembered as Martin Luther King Jr., the late civil rights leader, or the late segregationist Democratic Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

He also said it’s a choice between being remembered as President Abraham Lincoln or being remembered as Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

“This is a moment to decide,” Biden said.…

Democratic politicians have warned of voter suppression since the Supreme Court rules in favor of Indiana’s voter ID law in 2008. They made similar warnings after subsequent high court rulings that allowed states to purge and update voter rolls in 2018 and a major 2013 decision that certain states are no longer required to obtain federal approval for state election law changes.

Republican-led states enacted numerous election law reforms that have focused on voter ID requirements and on cleaning up voter rolls.

Biden asserted that the right to vote is under attack.

In the past two decades, voter participation has increased for the most part, reaching a record turnout in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 2000, 59.5% of eligible voters turned out. That increased to 63.8% four years later, and remained about the same – 63.6% -- in 2008. There was a slight drop to 61.8% in 2012 and to 61.4% in 2016. During the pandemic, when mail-in voting was prominent, voter participation shot up to 66.8%. Over that time span, voter registration rates rose from 69.5% in 2000 to 72.7% in 2020.

It’s unknown at this point whether the 2021 election reforms passed in any of the 19 states will have any effect on voter turnout….

A poll from August by Honest Elections Project Action showed 81% supported voter ID laws, and that included 77% of African American voters. Some 67% of Democrats support voter ID laws. The Washington, D.C.-based Honest Elections Project Action is a conservative group that backs those laws.

Meanwhile, The Heritage Foundation’s Voter Fraud Database shows there have been 1,340 proven cases of voter fraud since 1982, with 1,152 ending in a criminal conviction….

 

5) Absentee and Mail-In Voting

Some state election reform bills would not allow mass mail-in voting as occurred under the special circumstances of the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020….

However, there are significant differences between traditional absentee voting and the mass mail-in voting that occurred in 2020 across the United States.

The biggest difference is that voters are required to apply for an absentee ballot, whereas mail-in ballots or applications are automatically mailed out. Both are prone to fraud.

 

6) Voting Rights Act and Republicans

Biden also conflated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that no one in Congress has opposed, at least not publicly, with the two bills that he wants to see pass the Senate.

He noted that Republican Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all supported renewing the Voting Rights Act when they were president….

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is still in place.

            Why did Biden go down to Georgia, and why are Democrats seeking to move control of elections to the federal level? I cannot say, but I can surmise that it is the same reason that they have opened the borders and brought unvetted Afghanistan residents to our nation. From the actions and policies of the Biden administration over the past year, I suppose that they are doing all of it as a means to overrun the American system and make it possible to turn our “democracy” into a socialist state.