While the Leahy bill creates a complicated legal trap to ensure that left-wing lawfare groups like the ACLU can thrust every state into needing to get pre-clearance for all election laws from Clarke’s Justice Department Division, Manchin cuts to the chase by saying he favors that every state be thrown under federal control from the outset.

So, the question is, who is Kristin Clarke?

As the head of the Civil Rights Division, she surely must be an even-handed arbiter who will seek to protect individual voting rights while respecting the right of the people to determine their own voting laws. Surely, she recognizes that the ability of people of all races to vote has gotten dramatically better than 1965.

Judge for yourself.

While in Columbia Law School, Clarke forwarded a racist screed to a professor for inclusion in a program she was planning that states, “The Klan is now the police, with blue uniforms replacing sheets and hoods.”

The forwarded diatribe went on to declare, “That’s why Revolutionaries understand that the fundamental question of revolution is the seizure of state power, and once in power the people can use this instrument as a weapon to put the major industries, banks, transportation, communication under democratic public control and repress the present ruling class so that People’s Democracy and eventually socialism can emerge, and since there are still classes and class struggle under socialism, wield this weapon, the state, to ensure the evolution of a Classless society, which is called communism.”

Clarke did not write this, but here is the note from her to her professor which accompanied it, “Manning, here is the piece for magazine and Panel 3 – Race and the Death Penalty Mumia, Lynch Law and Imperialism.”

A clear endorsement of the inclusion of the document in a panel she was putting together for her professor.

Hardly a comfort that the person now entrusted with the state power was not appalled at the notion of using that power as a weapon against her perceived enemies.

If Democrats are successful in federalizing our elections, either through S1 or Sen. Leahy’s John Lewis Act,Clarke would oversee all state and local elections.

While there are many other instances where Clarke demonstrated her unsuitability to serve in this position of authority, President Joe Biden picked her and the Senate confirmed her, so she now holds the reins of power.  A cudgel over our nation’s electoral system due to the on-going authorization of the Voting Rights Act, even with the 2013 Supreme Court intervention to stop unwarranted application and expansion of the law.

The Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice has enormous power granted under existing law on a wide range of topics. Now that Clarke heads it, these powers must be curtailed before they are abused, and it is unthinkable to expand her authority over every aspect of state and local election laws, from voter identification and absentee ballot rules to the placement of individual polling places.

With Clarke in the lead, it would be a tragic mistake to hand massive discretionary power over our nation’s elections to the federal government division she runs.  It is time to put a stake through the heart of the Democrats federal election law takeover dreams by just saying no to both S1 and the Leahy bill.

Rick Manning is President of Americans for Limited Government.