Deregulator: Alive since '85!

Yesterday’s  newsletter  highlighted H.R. 1, a Democratic bill that would nationalize elections (bad), and the GOP response, H.R. 322, a bill that would nationalize elections (also bad). The piece got a record response for this site, with credit due to my friend Wally Olson, a Cato Institute scholar who retweeted the link. Many thanks! Oh, and the bill passed, 220-210, by party-line vote. It’s headed to the Senate and unlikely to go anywhere unless  President Biden can  persuade Democrats to “refine and advance” it enough to peel off at least 10 Republican senators. Not likely. The action instead is in state legislatures, where it should be. The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice is  tracking  more than 250 bills in 43 states (including nine of the former Confederate states, but not yet North Carolina) that would, in the center’s view, restrict voting rights. It also lists more than 700 bills in a separate group of 43 states that would expand voting ac...

Later today, the U.S. House is expected to adopt  H.R. 1 , the “For the People Act,” a 791-page (gulp) parade of horribles left-leaning election activists have pushed for years. Plus, some reasonable changes in election law. It’ll almost certainly pass along party lines. Then it will head to the Senate, where it won’t get the 60 votes it’ll need to bypass a filibuster and become law unless a couple of things happen: 1) Senators strip some of the most odious provisions (I’ll mention a few); or 2) Republicans in state legislatures continue acting so irresponsibly that 10 centrist GOP senators refuse to filibuster the law and it goes through. That’s right. If this mess becomes law, you can blame malpractice from the right. (Spoiler alert: The Republicans’ answer to H.R. 1 is no better.)  The problem with the bill is that it exists and stands a chance of becoming law. It abandons a key building block of the American system: federalism, the idea that decisions should be pushed down...