Rep. Lyin' Bryan Steil, Paul Ryan's former chauffeur and body double, is leading the GOP charge to destroy both Democratic funding sources and voter rights.
Earlier this month, Steil led a committee hearing on the effect of possible foreign monies coming into the country to influence elections of politicians but also to influence election-related referendum questions. Steil worked in tandem with Caitlin Sutherland, a long time Republican operative, is the Executive Director for Americans for Public Trust, a right wing group tied in with Stop the Steal and accusing the left of politicizing the COVID pandemic, also known as the Democratic Hoax. Steil and Sutherland went down a long and winding rabbit hole to infer that dark money from foreign sources could have, possibly, maybe influencing American elections.
Eventually, the Steil/Sutherland dog and pony routine got to the point where they were alleging that ActBlue was being possibly, maybe, you never know, used as a channel for all this said dark money.
isthe
Oddly, they never got around to talk about WinRed and how the Orange Felon was skimming off the top of all the donations coming through there. Nor did they talk about all the conversations between the Trump Syndicate and Mother Russia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Go figure.
But wait! There's more.
Not happy with trying to sabotage the main Democratic funding site, Steil is drooling and rubbing his meat hooks together at the prospect of doing some actual voter suppression:
Steil's ACE Act, which "includes nearly 50 standalone bills sponsored by members of the House Republican Conference," is "the most conservative election integrity bill to be seriously considered in the House in over 20 years," according to his committee.
Dozens of organizations wrote to Steil and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the panel's ranking Democrat, last year that "we believe Congress has an important role to play in safeguarding free and fair elections and ensuring all Americans have the freedom to vote. Rather than furthering this goal, the ACE Act would be a substantial step backwards."
"The act would nationalize harmful and unnecessary restrictions on voting rights and roll back many of Washington, D.C.'s current pro-voter laws," the coalition explained. "Instead of proceeding with this legislation, Congress should take actions that will help voters and promote democracy such as passing legislation that will strengthen protections against discrimination in voting and expand access to the ballot for all communities."
Marc Elias has stated that if the GOP would somehow manage to pass these voter oppression laws, he will take them to court and was confident of winning.
