The deadlock and delay of economic relief for all Americans and emergency supplies for our nurses and doctors was in large part over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desire to mandate how elections are run. Pelosi wanted to force all states to have 15 days of early voting, same-day registration, unlimited ballot harvesting, and universal vote by mail. Fortunately federalism prevailed. As Senator Mike Lee stated:
I agree with @RepThomasMassie. Regardless of what one might think about voting by mail, Congress has no authority to enact a universal vote-by-mail mandate. https://t.co/HToC9kU7z6
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) March 25, 2020
On voting $400 million is to be provided to the Election Assistance Commission to provide grants to the states in response to the coronavirus for the 2020 election cycle. In other words help the states deal with unforeseen issues regarding the COVID-19 and elections. As we tweeted in response to Hillary Clinton’s lawyer Marc Elias, who desired to mandate universal vote by mail and “ballot harvesting:”
Importantly did not include federal mandate for states on how to run elections. States are the best suited to determine how to run their own elections. It also rejected desire of the far-left on issues such as endorsing ballot harvesting, which all but the extreme left reject.
— RNLA (@TheRepLawyer) March 25, 2020
Assuming the bill passes all Americans will owe a debt of gratitude to Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell understands both the Constitutional concerns and the fact that one-size-fits-all election administration does not work for the entire country. As Senator McConnell concluded today:
All the Senate can do is give them the resources to do it.
So that’s exactly what we are going to do today.
As Prof. John Yoo and RNLA Co-Chair Harmeet Dhillon write in a broad op-ed on federalism, generally states have the power:
States, not Washington, D.C., possess the “police power,” which gives them authority to regulate virtually everything within their boundaries.
This especially applies to elections. States have the power to run their elections, not Nancy Pelosi via mandates from Washington, DC. Thanks to Leader McConnell, they will have more ability to do so, unless Pelosi continues to obstruct.