Legislative Blog

J.B. Williams, J.D.

Sustaining Our Democracy Act

A Blog about Voting Bills

A Bit of Background

The following backgrounds help summarize the author's views on both the general topic: Federal and more specifically Voting Bills as it relates to that topic.

Brief Summary of Federal

This should be a fairly limited bills area for management the overall structures like highways, military, federal buildings, federal laws, and the like. However it has become the micro manager of all micro managers. They get involved in areas that no federal government should be involved in, and shift more power upward. This has led to each party trying to run over the other party in the eyes of the voters, all the while doing everything possible to maintain their power. They do this by holding onto all of the money, and claiming they know best how it should be spent. But they run debts so badly that no one should be looking to them as an example of anything other than the way to overspend and go further into debt.

Summary of Voting Bills

Sadly, all that I keep seeing is the Federal government attempting to spend money to control voting. If they gave money to states to support Federal election, fine. But it's all about their control.

Blog Summary

117HR7992 Introduced in 6/8/22 at 30 pages long. Passed in House on _________. Passed in Senate __________. Signed into law __________.

Sponsors:

• Marc Veasey, D, Texas, In Congress 2005 to Present
• Carolyn Bourdeaux, D, Georgia, In Congress 2003 to Present
• Terri A. Sewell, D, Alabama, In Congress 2013 to Present
• Colin Z Allred, D, Texas, In Congress 2013 to Present
• Robert C Scott, D, Virginia, In Congress 2015 to Present
• Sara Jacobs, D, California, In Congress 1973 to Present
• and 37 additional Democrats, 0 Republicans

Means of putting one party in charge, initially the Democrats, of how Federal election activities are run. This would set a precedent that future Directors would have difficulty modifying. All to the tune of $2.1 billion annually, and this is the bare minimum cost.

Sustaining Our Democracy Act

Published: 2023-09-20

This bill is related to HR5746, John R. Lewis Act that was introduced 10/27/2021. That Act was passed by both the House and the Senate, but with differences. It reached the point of resolving differences and remained there since 1/13/22.

This bill begins by creating another program, and thereby another entity, that the Federal government via taxpayer dollars will support. (At a very minimum this equates to three-quarter of a million dollars just to support the salaries of a few individuals.) This will dole out money to the states for democracy promotion activities. Of course to receive any funding the state must submit a plan of how it intends to spend the funds, and the federal 'entity' (to be named Director of the Office of Democracy Advancement and Innovation) gets to determine if that is approved or not. And funding granted to a state may be kept from one year to the next. And if a State plan is denied, the state may re-submit a modified plan. However, before the Director can approve it, they must consult with the Election Assistance Commission. And should a State not submit a plan than each entity within the State can be treated as a state and submit a plan. And anyone that was granted funding must submit a report on how the funds were spent. And the Director will make all of this information available to the public via a website. Some information may be redacted but is not required to be.

This makes me think that a State could be denied based upon their state plan, and then each entity within the State could be permitted to submit a plan. And all those meeting the criteria of whichever party is in charge could be granted funds, all while denying the other party any funds. Thereby tilting elections in favor of a particular party over another. This would permit Democrats to get large cities within Republican states more funding in hopes to outweigh non-Democratic run areas. And vice versa. Starting with Democrats since it is their bill with a Democrat holding the White House and whom would be appointing the Director if this were to pass into law. And since the State could be granted funds, but is not required to use them, the State could hold the funds and spend twice as much in a year when they feel their "party" needs additional support.

But what I primarily see is taxpayer money paying for a new Federal agency, plus additional funding for an existing Federal agency due to the addition of more work. And I see states spending large sums of their taxpayer money to develop plans, get them approved and report back on how the funding was spent. And since entities within a State may submit if the State is not, I foresee every state submitted some plan in an attempt to lock up their portion of the $2 Billion for their state. With all the additional work involved, I'd be surprised if $.50 per $1 were spent on actual activities. And I imagine over time that would decrease as more and more bureaucracy enters, and more and more is 'being demanded' of the agency and the funding.

When I say only $.50 per $1 is spent on actual democracy promotion activities, you have to understand that money is fungible. So if your state has money set aside for such things, it could use that money to get Federal taxpayer dollars to do what they were already planning on doing. Assuming they spent as much as they get back (because otherwise it's a bad idea from basic finance), and part of the funds they receive are spent administratively; then less may be spent overall. Because the state may spend the same amount on administration of spending but there is the additional reporting back to the Federal government that creates additional work. And additional regulation always eats up significant additional funds. So in the end, the state may actually spend less money on the activities than they originally planned, but it could appear as if they spent more.

I know they say there will be a website so that the public can see everything. We've heard over and over how things will be transparent, but they never are. In fact, the more they claim and tote transparency, the less transparent they seem to be. They may start by placing data there, but over time it will take longer and longer for information to appear on the website. I imagine that the original state plans will be posted. They may even list the reason why a plan is not approved on the website. Most won't read them all and reporters will only read looking for what supports their own bias. Some states will hold the funds, and potentially later not spend them as they said they would. This change in spending may get reported back in some way or other, but, depending on the political bias of the acting Director, the information will only get reported if it looks bad for the opposing party. For instance, a Democrat appointed Director holds the position. The state of New York reports back that funding was divided differently and it clearly shows that more funds were given to Democrats then Republicans. I suspect that information will seriously lag being posted, though eventually it will be. Unfortunately it will be long after the media is talking about it. While Texas submits a report and it shows that more funding was spent in Republican held areas. It may even state it was done because larger cities had updated voting machines while rural areas did not. (FYI - New Yorks tilted spending may be shown to be reasonable as well.) But the Texas report will get posted on the website quickly so that news can cover how 'fraud' was committed during the election process. This is just an exampled using Democrats since they currently hold the White House.

The following is required for each State plan:

1. Description of the activities to be carried out;
2. Statement on whether the State intends to retain and reserve money for future activities;
3. Statement regarding how the money will be distributed and how it will address geographic and racial disparities;(I searched on geographic data for voting but could only locate regional data. So I'm not certain how they believe geography is affecting data. One article felt that more densely populated areas tended to not vote in as large of numbers due to lack of connectedness or believing it mattered. But I'm not sure if that is where they were going with this or not.)
4. Description of how much money each activity shall receive, including
   • election administration;
   • activities to recruit, train, retain, and protect election workers; (This sounds like a good idea, but retaining election workers could lead to complacency at the least. At the worst it could lead to an election worker or a few election workers running things as they want. I understand the cost of training, though I don't imagine it takes significant time. And I also understand the difficulty in finding new individuals do to the job because I've held positions that were voluntary and unpaid, it makes them significantly more difficult to fill.)
   • activities to increase access to voting by certain communities (interestingly looking at the data, whites and blacks have very close percentages for voting. It mostly appears to be dependent on whether the group sees someone worth voting for. Where as Hispanics and Asians are less likely to vote, and they are significantly lower than blacks and whites.)
5. Description on how funds are to be allocated to political subdivisions; (I don't think political subdivisions should be getting any funding, but if they do it should be equally divided between the number of political parties.)
6. How the fund will be created and administered, including fund management; (I sincerely hope this does not entail where the funds are to be 'parked' before spending. This would come down to some states placing funds in one location that the Federal government does not agree with, or that they prefer they be 'parked' if not used for 1 year in a few particular locations. This goes ESG investing and such.)
7. Description of state-based complaint procedures established;
8. Statement regarding whether the activities are legal in the state or if legal authorization is being sought.

So the federal government will decide where the funds need to be spent and how they must be spent. This sounds more like we are going to give you funding to ensure democracy - give us a pat on the back. But in reality the Federal government is going to direct the spending in a way that will require more spending to get to the end activity than if they just told everyone how they must spend them. But they can claim that is not what they are doing and fool the majority of the voting public from realizing the amount of control that is being placed in the hands of the Director, and in reality in the hands of one political party or the other. In my opinion, they may as well say let's limit any elected individuals term to no more than 2; and let all the appointed individuals just run the country without regard to what the people think or wish. If this act passed we are handing over yet more authority to the federal government, and this authority will have spill over major effects on how states function. This is because while they say for Federal elections only, no state is going to set up things to work one way for a Federal election and another for a State election. This is due in part to the amount of money that would be wasted, and in part due to the optics of doing so.

The following activities are prohibited and Federal funding may not be used for these:

1. activities that intimidate, threaten or coerce voters, poll workers, or election administrators (You know the things that no one should be doing anyway. But putting it in a Federal law will mean the Federal judge, the one in DC, will decide what it means without regard to what states laws are or what others may believe.)
2. restrictions of the distribution of food or nonalcoholic beverages to voters while waiting in line - other than those made on the basis of electoral participation or political preference of the recipient (this is aimed directly at a law passed to stop candidates from purchasing food/drink and passing it out to those waiting in line to vote. I believe this would violate Electioneering laws in states. My understanding is that candidates were purchasing pizzas and placing their campaign flyers on the box covers, and then having it delivered and handed out as from that candidate.)
3. cannot remove election administrators unless there is negligence, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office; (Again this places those decisions squarely in the hands of the Director or the DC Federal District Court judge because they would force reinstatement if they did not agree with the States decisions.)
4. cannot be used to defend against lawsuits alleging voter-suppression practices; (But it opens up the possibility of the Director putting things on the website that make it appear that they might be voter-suppression. That way the media can talk about it and someone can sue over it. I wander if that would have to be filed in the DC District Court too.)
5. cannot be used for claims of voter fraud based upon mere invocation of interests in voter confidence or prevention of fraud;(sort of shocked that the funds cannot be used to prevent voter fraud. That seems like one of the things that voters would approve of and want to ensure because the more voter fraud the less it matters how you vote.)
6. performance of audits:
   • fail to meet best practices established by Election Assistance commission;
   • fail to meet requirements of record retention under the Civil Rights Act;
   • otherwise jeopardize election records, voting equipment, electronic poll books or election management systems
7. removal of voters from voter rolls based upon evidence that is not reliable; (Not sure what they are going to say is unreliable data. But I'm certain that they would start a precedence for what would be acceptable according to the Democrats and then use that as the reason that a Republic could not modify it in the future. Currently my state has laws/regulations requiring following up and removal of individuals from voter rolls. Not all counties are in compliance, which is a shame. However, before removing anyone they send out information to your last known address where you can verify you still reside, so it's not punitive in my opinion. However I have heard others call it removal of individuals without reliable evidence that they moved.)
8. activities preventing individuals seeking to have their right to vote or register to vote restored
9. purchase of voting machines that do not require voter-verifiable paper ballots

State complaint procedures need to be submitted and approved by the Director. And any person aggrieved by an action of the Director must file a petition in the US District Court in DC. So that limits suits to those with money because those without could not afford to travel to the Court in DC. I never understand why so many things are set to require suit in DC when there are Federal courts all across the country. The only reasonable explanations are that less wealthy cannot file and that the DC court is very left leaning. Also the more things you can limit to only being filed in the DC District Court means there will not be conflicting District Court rulings, making it less likely to grab the attention of the Supreme Court for requesting a hearing to resolve the differences.

The Director is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Term shall be for 6 years, and may be re-appointed for an additional term. The Director will continue serving until a replacement is appointed and confirmed. So if this passed in 2023, and the position was filled, the person would serve until 2029. So they would serve only 1 year post Biden, should President Biden be re-elected. If this position were not filled until 2024, then they would serve for the first 2 years for the president after Biden, should President Biden be re-elected in 2020. That would mean that the next President would appoint 1 person that would serve during their terms, even should they serve 2 terms. But the following President could appoint 2 if they served 2 terms. Not really certain why they would be serving a 6 year term rather than a 4 year term as a follow to the Presidential election cycle. A President may remove the Director but must do so in writing and state the reasons for removal at least 30 days prior.

The Director shall be paid as a Level II of the Executive Schedule ($212,100). The Director shall appoint a general counsel who is paid as a Level II of the Executive Schedule ($212,100). If there is a vacancy in the Director position then the General Counsel will serve as Director until a new Director is in place. The Director may appoint and fix the pay of staff as Senior staff, who would be paid as Level IV of the Executive Schedule ($183,500). The Director may have additional staff as they deem necessary but their pay shall not exceed GS-15 of the General Schedule ($117,518 at the minimum). This would be $725,218 with the Director, the General Counsel, a single Senior Staffer, and one additional staff.

The Director shall promulgate rules and regulations that are deemed necessary and appropriate. So yet more rules and regulations that will require more people to review and remain in compliance with. Because it's not like our current system does not require an army of individuals already. While everyone must comply with these, most people have never read them, and understandably so since it would take you a lifetime to read them all.

State election assistance and innovation trust fund

This fund to receive $2 BILLION each year from 2023 through 2032. (I've no clue where these funds are coming since the government clearly has no money, but I'm sure they can just incur more debt to fund this to the tune of BILLIONS annually for 10 years. So without interest that amounts of $20 BILLion in potential additional debt on the books.)

I'm going to go back to my basic system here. First, the Federal government way overspends money. Second, the Federal government over collects money. The Federal government needs the funds to do the following: pay the military, maintain the military bases and the equipment necessary for a standing military fleet, pay federal employees and maintain their buildings (this includes the President, Vice President, Congress, Veterans affairs, Federal Judges and their staff, Federal park and their staff, IRS - though it should be much more limited and smaller). And of course they must maintain Social Security (though I have more thoughts on this but that's for another blog) and the Treasury Departments. And due to our years of overspending, funds to pay on our debts. Beyond that, the Federal government should not be involved. Any funds remaining should be distributed back to the states in the same percentage that it was taken from the State's citizens to begin with. Any funds the state receives 'back' from the federal government would be placed in the states funds and spent according to the state's wishes. States could be penalized for not maintaining interstates by virtue of the trucking industry limiting travel within the state. And this would be true of other areas as well. As it currently stands, a state receives funds for roads (not just interstates which makes it even more heinous) and they must either spend them by a date certain or the funds revert to the Federal government. Perhaps at one time, state allowed funds to revert back but over time, state merely find a way to spend those dollars before the expiration. So a great deal of wasteful spending occurs each year for each area upon with states receive federal dollars.

Plus I believe that the Federal government should be taking less funds from taxpayers annually now. The federal budget is bloated with overspending and covers areas that should never have been in federal purview. Each state should be making spending decisions. For that matter, states should be allocating more to counties (or not taking it from there to begin with) and counties to cities. The closer the decision on how to spend is made the better off the people would be. Just because New York and Florida, or California and Texas, do not agree on how to spend money does not mean the Federal government should jump in and make the decision. Over the years way to many items have been placed in the Federal governments hands, and they should be ripped back by the states/the people of the states.

 

J.B. Williams, J.D.

4,312 federal laws were passed from 1995 through December 2016.
Along with 88,819 federal rules and regulations.