HB 402

by Rachel Bartlett, Stevensville

Well, Helen Sabin, you did it again. First of all, regarding HB 402, you tried so hard to make it come out the way you wanted. You RINOs can come up with the most fantastic ideas ever. Skirting around and twisting the truth is your favorite pastime.

Let’s look at the truth for a minute and realize legislators should never introduce a bill that is contrary to the US Constitution and the law of the land. Under no circumstances are non-citizens allowed to vote in our elections. The National Voting Rights and Registration Act of 1965 had more to do with civil rights and the Help America Vote Act of 1993 was supposed to extend a more lenient opportunity to vote by providing a voter with a provisional ballot if for some reason he was not eligible according to record. 

Non-citizens, according to the U.S. Constitution, do not have the privilege of voting in our elections under the Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, The Twenty-Fourth Amendment and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment.

However, Helen, this discussion is all academic and not worthy of discussion because in 2023-24, the House of Representatives passed HR 4460 to amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. The House of Representatives did this to safeguard and protect our country from unscrupulous actors who vote illegally in our elections and have the potential to destroy our country. 

With the millions of illegal aliens that have flooded our nation because of Biden’s open border policy, can you imagine the chaos our election system would be experiencing had HB 402 not failed? 

Why did HB 402 fail? According to arguments against the bill, representatives stated that both parties had trouble with this bill. This bill gives unverified voters a right to vote even before they prove citizenship. At least with a provisional ballot that vote can be made null and void if by the following day citizenship cannot be verified. This bill by Bedey, according to legislators, did not guarantee the vote could be withdrawn if citizenship couldn’t be verified and therefore the vote could be processed. They further pointed out that with the open border situation as such, this bill was really bad legislation and was unconstitutional in the way it was written.  

All things considered, HB 402 could have opened a Pandora’s Box for potential fraud. Bedey and other members of the Solutions Caucus are not conservatives. They are a danger to freedom-loving Americans. They are pretend Republicans. Poor Rusk and Binkley! They remain as puppets on a string.  

So our very much conservative Theresa Manzella was right when she didn’t support Bedey’s out-of-step bill. Remember, Helen: “The truth shall set you free.”