For the People Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. LOUDERMILK. Madam Speaker, I rise, not only in opposition to this bill, but in strong opposition, especially to the attempt to nationalize our Federal elections, and the notion that people like Joseph Kirk, of Bartow County, Georgia, the elections superintendent, who has done a phenomenal job administering our elections, is not as qualified as people here in this room as to how to run an election. More importantly, the idea that bureaucrats up here in Washington, D.C., can administer an election in Bartow County better than our elections supervisor can and has is a notion beyond compare.
In fact, this flies in the face of our Founders, especially those at the Constitutional Convention. You see, there were arguments against Article I, Section 4, the Elections Clause, because the fear that was stated was that those in power could use that power to manipulate elections to keep them in power, that one day someone would use this authority to manipulate the elections so they can maintain power. Madam Speaker, I believe we have arrived at that.
Now, Alexander Hamilton, he argued the opposite. He said it is important that institutions of government be able to preserve themselves, but this was a backup. It was a backup that the States had the priority to run their own elections. In fact, he said it should only be used when ``extraordinary circumstances might render that interposition necessary to its safety.''
We are not in that extraordinary circumstance. In fact, the extraordinary circumstance that will be stated over and over again is how we ran the election in 2020 under COVID.
Now, many of the provisions set out in this legislation, including universal mail-in ballots, a ban on voter ID laws, and mandated ballot harvesting, were changes that were made by States illegally in 2020 that caused a lot of the problems that we saw.
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Mr. LOUDERMILK. Madam Speaker, it may be a novel idea, but I stand firmly against Federal overreach in the constitutional responsibilities of State and local governments. Unfortunately, H.R. 1 flies in the face of our Governors, our secretaries of state, our local election officials, and, more importantly, the people of this Nation.
If there is any other reason to be against it is why an 800-page bill went to 11 committees and could only receive 2 hours of a hearing in the smallest committee in this body. The American people want to know what you are hiding when you continue to ramrod legislation through.
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