Pence: Dems' Voting Legislation, Like Jan. 6, a 'Power Grab'

Former Vice President Mike Pence (Patrick Semansky/AP)

The Democrats' attempts to change the Senate filibuster rules are a "power grab," just like the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, former Vice President Mike Pence wrote in an opinion piece.

"On Jan. 6, an angry mob ransacked the Capitol, largely to try to get Congress and me, as the president of the Senate, to use federal authority to overturn results of the presidential election that had been certified by all 50 states," Pence wrote in The Washington Post on Friday.

"Despite this steady progress of state-based reforms, now come President [Joe] Biden and Senate Democrats with plans to use the memory of Jan. 6 to attempt another federal power grab over our state elections and drive a wedge further into our divided nation."

In the year since President Donald Trump lost the election to Biden, several states have passed legislation to "restore confidence in the integrity of our elections," said Pence, adding that "Georgia, Arizona, and Texas have led the way with common-sense reforms, such as requiring verifiable identification on absentee ballots and using cameras to record ballot processing."

But now Democrats want to take the states' power away through passing federal legislation an, to do that, they want to end the filibuster.

But ending the filibuster, Pence wrote, would "offend the founders' intention that states conduct elections just as much as what some of our most ardent supporters would have had me do one year ago."

Pence said, on Jan. 6, he upheld the constitutional principle that elections are determined at the state, not the federal, level, and Congress' only role in connection with the Electoral College is to "'open, present, and record' votes submitted and certified by the states. No more, no less."

For Congress to break the filibuster rule, that would be "inconsistent with our nation's history and an affront to our Constitution's structure," the former vice president said.

Democrats, backed by Biden, want to change the filibuster rule so the voting legislation will not need 60 votes to pass. Two Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., however, say they will not agree to change the filibuster rule, meaning the Democrats in the 50-50 Senate will not have enough votes.

Pence also argued, if passed, the Democrats' voting legislation will cause voter fraud to "explode."

"States would be forced to adopt universal mail-in ballots, to provide same-day voter registration, online voter registration, easier voter registration through motor vehicle department offices, and a minimum 15 days of early voting," he wrote. "Duplicate voter registration records would abound, states' voter-ID requirements would be dramatically weakened, and anyone, including undocumented people, who simply signed a sworn written statement claiming to be eligible to vote would be permitted to do so."

Pence concluded by invoking the Jan. 6 anniversary and said he calls on his "former colleagues in the Senate to do as you did before: Uphold the right of states to conduct and certify elections. Reject this latest attempt to give Washington the power to decide how the United States' elections are run. And keep the oath you made before God and the American people to support and defend the Constitution."

Sen. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., argued on Newsmax the congressional debate Jan. 6 was undermined by the storming of the Capitol, because it stopped the constitutional authorityto review the certification of the election – not to "overturn" the election, as Pence claimed in the opinion piece for the Post.

"How did this benefit President Trump in any way?" she told "Greg Kelly Reports" on the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6. "How did a riot, how did a security breach at the Capitol, help him when it stopped Republican members of Congress objecting and being able to go through real evidence of election fraud?

''There was no benefit to President Trump and he had nothing to do with it."