Sen. Chuck Grassley: Democratic effort to federalize elections is ‘dead issue’

A proposal for sweeping election law changes is a dead issue “and it ought to be a dead issue,” Sen. Chuck Grassley said Wednesday, a day after he and other Republicans declined to join Democratic efforts to bring the For the People Act to the Senate floor.

Even if House Democrats would accept the Senate Democrats’ decision to drop provisions dealing with public financing of campaigns and state voter identification laws, Grassley doesn’t think the bill has a future.

Senate Democrats eliminated those provisions in an effort to get 10 GOP votes to bring the bill to the floor.

The Senate version — which would have expanded early voting, made it easier to vote by mail, designated Election Day as a federal holiday, toughened ethics rules and ended partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts — failed to get the 60 votes needed under Senate rules to proceed to debate.

He said the bill was based on Democratic claims the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary Clinton because of Russian interference.

“All those things have been disproved,” Grassley said. However, even after President Donald Trump lost his re-election bid last year “and the election is secured, it’s the same bill. So their reasons have changed from time to time.”

“Nothing's going to change the vote (Tuesday) night,” Grassley told reporters.

He called the 800-page proposal “a simple bill … to give the Democrats greater political power to control the government for a long, long period of time.”

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