Civics Lesson 2021

I have tried to avoid political posts since the 2020 election debacle because the rhetoric became so rancorous and irrational. After the announcements by Senators Hirono and Duckworth yesterday, I have to jump in with a lesson in civics. Senators, like all elected federal officials pledge to uphold the Constitution of the United States when they are sworn in. I know that some issues of Constitutional law are debatable, and for that we have a judicial system specifically created for review. Some things are not debatable, having been established and reviewed numerous times. One of these well-supported tenets of our free society is the concept of non-discrimination. The law clearly states, “The laws enforced by EEOC makes [sic] it unlawful for Federal agencies to discriminate against employees and job applicants on the bases of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age.”

Senators Hirono and Duckworth have stated unequivocally that they will not vote to confirm any of President Biden’s appointments unless they meet their race and gender-based qualifications. This eliminates all straight, white males from consideration. It is unclear where a black man or straight white woman would stand. The disputing Senators, both of Asian extraction, are mainly concerned with the lack of Asian representation in the Biden appointments so far. Also unclear is whether a representative of the LGBTQ community would pass muster if he or she was not Asian. Whatever their parameters, the Senators are announcing their intention to violate federal non-discrimination law.

Some might argue that the President’s appointments are not covered by the federal employment laws; they are not “employed;” they are appointed. Besides being disingenuous, this flies in the face of federal law  forbidding discrimination in appointments as well. I can understand why the Senators’ Democrat peers have not pointed out the inconsistency, no, the illegality of this situation. What troubles me more is that not even any Republicans have voiced concern as of this writing two days later.

Chapter two of the civics lesson regards the “For the People Act” (HR-1) passed by the House and now being debated in the Senate. In this case, at least the Republicans are standing for Constitutional principles. Regardless of what one thinks of the provisions of the bill, it is blatantly unconstitutional. The US Constitution leaves election procedures and protections in the hands of the states. HR-1 passes unprecedented election control to the federal government. The 50-50 tie in the Senate power structure means that if the bill comes to vote, the tie-breaking vote would be Kamala Harris, and no one doubts which way she will vote if asked.

To prevent this, the Senate Republicans have promised to filibuster to stall the vote. The filibuster is one of the arcane procedural rules developed by the Senators to prevent a minority from being swept aside. A filibuster used to mean the opposing Senator had to continue to talk to have the stall remain in place. In the early 1970’s, the Senate adopted a rule allowing multiple bills to be debated at the same time. This made it possible to announce a “filibuster” on one bill while allowing the Senate to continue to do its business on other matters; actual speechifying on the floor of the Senate was no longer required.

Also in the 1970’s, the Senate devised a way to end the filibuster by invoking cloture. Cloture ends all debate on a bill and requires voting within 30 hours of being invoked. The difficulty with cloture is that it requires three-fifths of the Senators or 60 votes to pass. In other words, 10 Senators would have to cross the aisle and vote with the opposition. You will see pigs flying over the Capitol before that will happen in the HR-1 debate, so the Democrat leadership is trying to remove the 60-vote rule to end debate. They want to force “For the People” on the people even though according to polls there is not wide support among the people for its enactment. These are the same type of shenanigans that brought us the debacle known as The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

Just as Obamacare was challenged numerous times in the courts, HR-1 will face the same trials if the Democrats are successful in getting it through the Senate. It is unlikely that the bill could survive judicial review due in large part to the fact that President Trump was able to fill numerous seats in the justice system with conservative, strict constructionist jurists. One hopes that the clearly partisan, unconstitutional features of HR-1 will cause it to be struck down in its entirety.

The main tenets of HR-1 are not just unconstitutional; they are unthinkable. The bill prohibits states from requiring identification of voters. It greatly expands mail-in ballots, again with no ID required. It approves third-party “ballot harvesting” which opens the door to all manner of fraud. It seriously limits the ability of certain classes of voters to use absentee ballots, effectively removing deployed military citizens from the voting roles. I don’t want a system where anyone can vote regardless of citizenship or residency. I don’t want a system that will foster opportunities for votes to be manufactured out of thin air with no independent review.

The “For the People Act” should be called “For the Democrats Act” because at the moment, Republicans are solidly against almost all of its provisions. The 2020 presidential election was a preview of what future elections will look like if HR-1 is enacted. Many of the HR-1 provisions were tried in the battleground states where Biden-Harris miraculously garnered large batches of questionable ballots in the late-night hours following the election. The failure of Trump’s legal team to lift the veil on those challenged ballots shows how difficult it will be to ever have a transparent election again. If we lose free and fair elections, we lose everything America stands for. If Senators can defy the law and force unconstitutional procedures on the people, “For the People” becomes a statement of tragic irony.

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