By Rep. Mike Johnson
Rep. Mike Johnson: Thank you very much and I’m sorry if I was a moment late.
I was actually in the room next door. Ironically enough, we have the constitution subcommittee of the house Judiciary Committee in the midst of a hearing – I’m the top, Republican ranking member there. So, I just had to give our opening statement and the subject of that hearing is the need to enhance the Voting Rights Act here in the US, preliminary injunctions, election, observers. But as I just point it out to my colleagues here, we have a big political battle going on in the United States right now as you all know, between our party and the Democrats, our colleagues here on this committee and throughout the Congress have an ulterior motive, I believe. And I just wanted it.
In my opening statement, just a moment ago, they are trying to Federalize all of our elections in the United States. And that’s a gross violation of our traditions and the text of the Constitution itself. Because we give the 50 individual states here the responsibility to administer our elections and that has always been the way it’s been done in this country.
In fact, it’s right in the text of the Constitution itself, it’s in Article 2 near the top of our constitutional text, the first section in the second Clause there. That gives our 50 state legislatures the ability to entrust them with the integrity of our election system. We give them the exclusive authority to direct the manner of appointing presidential electors, for example, for the Electoral College. That’s how we choose our commander-in-chief here and that’s a really important provision of the Constitution. The Supreme Court in the United States has said very clearly that this power is quote “Placed absolutely wholly with the legislators and it can neither be taken away, nor abdicated” that was in a supreme court case back in 1892 McPherson versus blacker. Every State’s legislature thus has a long-established set of detailed rules and procedures to determine their electors.
However, as we all know, in the months preceding the 2020 presidential election here those rules and procedures were changed in some of the states, not by the legislators as we just established, the Constitution requires. But by a variety of other officials, including Governors and secretaries of State Elections officials, judges, sometimes activists in the various states and these included, but are not limited to the following irregularities in the state of Pennsylvania for example. And the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unilaterally extended the deadline to receive absentee and mail-in ballots to three days after the election day. And the Pennsylvania Secretary of State dismissed Signature authentication procedures for absentee and mail-in ballots.
The secretary of state there also allowed certain counties, majority democrat-leaning, by the way, to notify voters of errors in their ballots. To allow them to request a replacement or to vote provisionally. In the state of Arizona, The Federal District Court in agreement with the Secretary of State there made last-minute extensions to the voter registration deadline all the way to October 15th, just three weeks before the election date and again, the state legislature had no say in that whatsoever. It was done by these other officials.
In the state of Minnesota, the state Court consent decree allowed for the counting of ballots received the week after election day if they were postmarked by election day; a legislature and nothing to say about it. In Michigan the Detroit election officials mailed out unsolicited absentee ballot applications, no state law provided for that. In Maryland, two District judges in Maryland, relaxed the signature requirements for candidates to get on the ballot. In Virginia, a district judge Nullified the witness requirement for absentee ballots in both the primary and general elections. There are many, many examples I could cite.
The point is that all of those were clearly on their face Unconstitutional irregularities and it led to chaos in the election outcome. We all saw the results of that.
Now, back in December, on December 10th I drafted an amicus brief. I used to be a constitutional law attorney before I got to Congress and am accustomed to litigating cases like this in the courts. And so we filed a friend-of-the-court an amicus brief, and the United States Supreme Court and the famous Texas case where Texas, tried to intervene to stop some of this. It was the only vehicle before the court, before the actual election was certified in the Electoral count done in January. And so on behalf of 126 members of Congress, who signed on to that, we filed a brief of the court December 10th and said, please address the central issue, no matter what you do with the Texas litigation and the lawsuit they filed, at least we asked the nine Justices of the Supreme Court at least look at this issue.
Was the clear language of Article 2 of our constitution violated or not? And as I’ve just illustrated to you, the answer is very, very clear. Unfortunately for us, as you all know, the court denied review of that issue, they determined that the state of Texas did not have standing, in other words that the lawsuit could not remain in Supreme Court and they kicked it out. And so that is what led to the ultimate chaos that we saw. So because of all that and because of the mess that we had, because of the irregularities some of my colleagues here, some of the Democrats and liberals in the United States Congress are trying to codify and make permanent many of these changes.
They love the outcome and how this went down in some of these states. And so they want to make that, you know, the permanent situation that we are arguing that should not happen. So we have many states as you know that are engaging in reform efforts. And several great ideas have been suggested, many of them have been created or put into legislation. At last count, there were well over three hundred pieces of legislation pending in the various State legislatures. Many of whom are in session as we speak. And those include mandating voter identification, prohibiting the sending of unrequested ballots, also known as universal mail-in voting, keeping up-to-date voter rolls, and removing those who no longer live in the state there or have not voted in several recent elections. There’s some bills that have been passed and being debated to prohibit ballot harvesting, which is a terrible practice or the collection of ballots by Third parties to return to precincts. There’s Bills to require the counting of ballots to be completed on or shortly after election day which is, of course, a common-sense measure. Amending Early voting days to, to be those most beneficial to voters, Monitoring Dropboxes that are not located inside Election Precincts. In some of our states, they have drop boxes in public parks, and they are unmanned.
What could go wrong, we asked. Reducing wait times at voting precincts by creating more of them. Restricting who can approach voters who are in line to vote. And mandating allowing campaign representatives to observe the vote-counting process. Again, these are common-sense measures.
If you polled average everyday American citizens and said, does this make sense? Would this help us secure our elections? Most all of them would of course say yes it would. But they politicize this and that’s the very unfortunate situation we find ourselves in today. Now, many of these states have already passed these laws,
Some of them have been signed into law. Most recently in the state of Iowa, The election reform package was signed into law on March 8th and Georgia, as everyone knew March 25th, much maligned by the mainstream media in America. They passed a great package of reforms and in Florida, Governor DeSantis signed it into law on May 6th. There are many other states at various stages of considering these things and we are certainly hopeful that will happen.
I will close with this and I know that there will be questions and more discussion but our extraordinary Republic – I’m going to give you the same closing remark that I just gave just a few moments ago in the committee next door because I believe this is what the American people need to hear. And I hope that the people of South Korea are similarly encouraged because I believe, and my colleagues here believe – I’m the vice chairman of the house Republican conference, and I can speak on behalf of all my colleagues on this side.
That we believe that our extraordinary republic here has endured now for almost two and a half centuries. July 4th will be our 240th birthday as a nation. But a republic as, you know, is a very fragile thing, but we can endure – We have to remember that we endure and have endured for almost two and a half Centuries here in large part, on the understanding that our elections will be free and fair and secure. And that security is essential. The Ballot Box is deemed to be a sacrosanct, almost a sacred exercise that the voting that we have here. And our Constitution, and these institutions will endure, but they will only endure if leaders like us and leaders like you, are willing to support and defend them. And that has never been more important than it is right now at this moment. So I am really grateful to CPAC and to all of you for your interest in this issue. For your endeavors, and your, in your hard fought efforts there to hold the freedom that you have. We’ll all defend it together. We’re in it with you. We see ourselves in that way and we want to be a resource to you in any way that we can.
I’m really honored to be participating with you today.
James Michael Johnson is a U.S. Congressman who represents the Fourth District of Louisiana, representing almost 760,000 residents of 15 parishes in the northwest and western regions of the Pelican State, and was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016.
Rep. Johnson currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference, and also serves as the Assistant Whip for the 117th Congress. He was also the past chairman of the Republican Study Committee. As a former attorney with two decades of experience in Constitutional Law, Rep. Johnson serves on the House Judiciary Committee, as well as the House Armed Services Committee.
Rep. Johnson spent nearly 20 years successfully litigating high profile constitutional law cases in district and appellate courts nationwide and is widely recognized as a leading defender of the right to life, religious liberty, free speech, the Second Amendment, and free market principles. In his law practice, he drafted landmark legislation for many states and municipalities and provided legal counsel to members of Congress, governors, state legislatures, city councils, school boards, law enforcement agencies, ministries, and non-profit organizations around the country. He has also served in the Louisiana State Legislature from2015 to 2017, where he solidified his reputation as a principled conservative. As a legislator, both in the state capital and now in the nation’s capital, he has received top awards from business and industry, limited government, and pro-life and pro-family groups. Rep. Johnson has been awarded the American Conservative Union’s (ACU) Award of Excellence for two consecutive years in 2019 and 2020.
Rep. Johnson has sponsored bills such as H.R. 3049 “No Communist Countries Participating in Lobbying Act”, H.R. 2873 “Protecting Against Child Exploitation Act of 2019” among others, and co-sponsored bills such as H.R. 2646 “Taiwan International Solidarity Act” and H.R. 1214 “Countering Chinese Propaganda Act” among others.
In December 2020, Rep. Johnson was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives who signed an amicus brief in support of ‘Texas v. Pennsylvania’, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election.
