(BREITBART: By Tony Lee)
- President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order Thursday
establishing a Presidential Commission to deal with "election
administration" that critics say is an attempt to nationalize the
country's elections for partisan advantage.
The Executive Order
states the Commission "shall identify best practices and otherwise make
recommendations to promote the efficient administration of elections in
order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast
their ballots without undue delay."
The Commission will focus on
polling places, how better to train and recruit poll workers, managing
voter rolls and poll books, voting machines, ballot simplicity, English
proficiency, and absentee ballots. The states--not the federal
government--traditionally have responsibility over such matters.
Obama
will appoint no more than nine members to the Commission and appointees
will be drawn from among individuals with "knowledge about or
experience in the administration of State or local elections, as well as
representatives of successful customer service-oriented businesses, and
any other individuals with knowledge or experience determined by the
President to be of value to the Commission."
Election law expert
and former Department of Justice official J. Christian Adams labeled
such a Commission a "solution in search of a problem."
The
President has previously cited the supposed long lines from last
November's election as the main reason for voting reforms. Adams
responded that many of these stories are of people who waited hours in
line during early voting, not on Election Day. Had they voted on
Election Day, they would have had minimal wait times in nearly every
precinct throughout the country.
The Obama administration claims
it wants to make it easier for military members to vote, but the White
House has been accused of violating federal law, as Adams noted, by not
establishing voter-assistance offices on military bases. Congress
appropriated the Pentagon $75 million to do so.
On his radio show
on Thursday, Mark Levin said Obama was using "falsehoods" about long
lines to "nationalize" elections in a power grab that will "further
weaken our voting system" at the state level.
Levin said he may
be okay with nationalizing elections to prevent voter fraud by
instituting Voter ID laws but reiterated that the federal government has
no control over voting.
The talk radio host attacked progressive
news outlets for claiming Obama had to create this commission because
of long lines in 2012's election based on anecdotal evidence. Levin
noted there have been studies to the contrary.
Adams cited one
such study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that found the
average wait to vote last November on Election Day was 13 minutes,
compared to 20 minutes in early voting locations.
Levin tied the debate on election laws to the discussions of federal power when states weighed ratifying the U.S. Constitution.
"Some
of the anti-federalists who opposed the Constitution were very, very
concerned that the federal government would interfere with state
election laws. And they felt if the federal government did that, the
federal, central government would have control over the election process
and use it to its benefit," he said.
