McConnell in Wall Street Journal: Executive Order Invites Leftwing Election Takeover

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) submitted the following op-ed to The Wall Street Journal, printed in today's edition, on voting and election integrity:

Easier to vote, harder to cheat. That was the pitch the last time Washington passed major updates to the way America votes.

After 2000 saw one of the closest presidential elections in American history, there was a bipartisan appetite to make sure states were equipped to count votes correctly. In 2002, Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) and I developed a plan to give state election authorities more resources and expert help as they navigated new technologies and reformed voting procedures. When we wrote the Help America Vote Act, we took care to reinforce-not undermine-the limits of federal involvement in America's elections.

As a result, HAVA and the Election Assistance Commission it created are still on the books today, and thank goodness for that. Challenges to America's elections aren't slowing down, they're speeding up. The Trump administration is right to focus national attention on election-security issues that enjoy wide support, from voter roll maintenance to voter I.D. requirements.

But the way measures like these are implemented matters. And the administration's executive order on voting and election integrity risks setting them back.

In the near term, Executive Order 14248 will face constitutional scrutiny. That isn't because the citizenship requirement for participation in elections is unclear but because the delegation of authority over election administration is crystal clear. Elections may have national consequences but the power to conduct them rests in state capitols. No public mandate, real or perceived, lets Washington tamper with this authority, not even for a worthy cause like election integrity.

In the longer term, last month's executive order carries grave risks. The Trump administration can, and should, support state-led efforts to authenticate voter rolls, train election officials, upgrade voting technologies, and combat voter fraud. But they ought to be careful. Even a targeted federal mandate to strengthen election integrity today could make it easier for a future Democratic president and Congress to use more sweeping mandates to carry out a complete federal takeover of American elections.

In that case, expanding Washington's role wouldn't be a side effect, it would be the entire point. This isn't speculation. We know exactly what Democrats want to do because they've tried before.

As it was first introduced in 2019, H.R. 1, the "For the People Act" was designed to gut state laws that upheld widely popular voter-I.D. requirements as well as open the door for rampant fraud with mandates for ballot drop boxes and unlimited ballot harvesting. It would hoover up state authority over redistricting, make it harder to clean inaccurate and duplicate voter registrations from the rolls, give the Internal Revenue Service sweeping new authority to consider political ideology in determining the tax-exempt status of advocacy groups, and turn even-split governance at the Federal Election Commission into a partisan majority.

Over the years, Washington Democrats' rationale for their federal takeover evolved. Initially, with President Trump's first election still consuming the Democratic Party's consciousness, H.R. 1 was sold as an urgent cure for a broken system. After subsequent Democratic victories, the plan was portrayed instead as preventive maintenance.

In each iteration, it was a jaw-dropping affront to states' authority to administer elections. We mustn't forget how narrowly America avoided it. Had two Democratic senators not broken ranks with their party, the demise of the Senate's legislative filibuster and the submission of American elections to the whims of unelected bureaucrats would have come as a package deal.

Unfortunately, reasonable Americans can't expect that sort of courage the next time a Democratic president and Congress have a chance to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor. The current administration has better ways to spend its time than laying the groundwork for a leftwing election takeover.

Mr. McConnell, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Kentucky.

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