Hillary Clinton has made “voting rights” the centerpiece of her presidential campaign.Christian Adams reports:
In Houston, Hillary made election process rules a focus of her campaign. By process, I mean who votes, when they vote, and how they vote. While Republicans tend to focus on issues, Democrats realize that if they dominate the process of the election, the power to control the issues will follow. Process brings power.Hillary’s Houston speech proposed a radical agenda of a month of early voting, mandatory automatic voter registration, and an election free of verifying the identity of the voters.Her pals in the leftist media were giddy. The new radical Left wants elections to resemble the mobs affairs of the 1800’s before election integrity reforms, such as voluntary voter registration, were enacted for the 20th Century.
It’s a terrible agenda, but one that is a proper subject for debate. The problem, as Adams reports, is that Clinton hopes to preempt debate by presenting her agenda as a civil rights imperative:
She followed the Left’s orthodoxy and dressed her election process proposals up in the costume of civil rights.To Hillary and the new Left, having a month-long election day is all about race. Giving bureaucrats in Washington D.C. the power to reject state election laws is all about race. Being allowed to vote in a precinct where you don’t live is about race. Denying prisoners a ballot is about race. So is verifying American citizenship, showing photo identification, or even bothering to register to vote.Race, race and race.
Presenting issues of voting procedure in racial terms — apparently on the theory that racial minorities aren’t as conscientious as whites when it comes to exercising their civic duty — has several advantages. The most obvious is that it panders to the civil rights establishment.
The other advantage, says Adams, is that it freezes Republicans:
[O]nce the Democrats turn election process rules into racial issues, they know they can get Republicans to shut up and capitulate, no matter how phony the civil rights branding. . . .Once they are accused of racism, Hillary knows Republicans often flee the field.
How does Hillary know this? Because it has happened before, as when in 2006 some Republicans, including President George W. Bush, supported reauthorizing federal oversight of elections in sixteen states.
Fortunately, at least one potential GOP contender isn’t fleeing the field this time. Gov. Chris Christie responded to Clinton with the kind of tough-minded observation that once made him a favorite of conservatives: “My sense is that she just wants an opportunity to commit greater acts of voter fraud around the country.”
Spot on. As Adams explains:
Month-long elections give Democrats the ability to get the unmotivated to the polls. More importantly, it allows the Democrats to conduct a prolonged election free from the watchful eyes of election observers in cities where nearly everyone is a Democrat.Six weeks of early voting is unmanageable in places like Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities notorious for election crimes.
Adams concludes:
The answer to left wing demagoguery isn’t appeasement. The answer to Hillary’s leftward lurch isn’t to bloat early voting, abolish voluntary voter registration and eliminate safeguards to the integrity of American elections.The answer is to call it what it is – the next grand design of a radical fringe, a fringe comfortable with racial demagoguery and election crimes as a tool to preserve power.
From Adams’ lips to the GOP presidential field’s ears.
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