Although federal courts certainly played their part, the main malefactors in the sham that was the 2020 presidential election were “the several States.” Through their court mandates, their gubernatorial malfeasance, and, especially their new election laws, the states created the changes by which an election could be stolen and democracy could be subverted. The changes that determined the outcome of the election were primarily in the key battleground states. But now the feds want to get in on the action and impose the 2020 changes to election law of the battleground states on the entire nation.

It’s often noted that the states created the federal government. But in doing so, the states did not surrender their own sovereignty. The federal government under the new Democrat majority in Congress now seeks to federalize elections and to abolish state election laws. That would end the sovereignty of the states. The states need to resist and even preempt this un-American power grab.

On March 3 in a nearly party-line vote of 220-210, the U.S. House passed H.R. 1, the so-called For the People Act. A more appropriate title for this anti-democratic bill would be the “For the Incumbents Act” or the “For the Political Class Act,” for the People don’t figure in this vile bill at all.

The text of “H.R.1 -- For the People Act of 2021” is quite long and few readers will want to wade through it all. The bill’s ideas are unsophisticated, even backward. And that’s especially the case with regard to voter identification and to voter registration. The word “identification” appears 34 times in the bill. The bill would outlaw any state requirement to present voter ID to vote. To counteract this insane provision, the states need to enact much stricter voter ID laws.

Of course, Stacey Abrams will wail that demanding ID is voter suppression and denies access to the ballot box and is racist. Okay, then the states should use as their voter ID an ID that everyone already has -- the SSN.

Members of state legislatures may think they know better and may want to devise their own voter IDs. But they should resist that impulse, for the full nine-digit SSN has built-in capabilities that no new ID could match. For instance, if all the states required the use of the SSN to vote, it becomes possible to easily find those who have voted in more than one state, and then back out their votes.

The word “registration” appears 369 times in H.R. 1. “Rolls,” as in voter rolls, appears twice, but “registry” and its plural don’t appear at all. If the states were to require the SSN to vote, they’d have no need of separate voter registries that they would have to laboriously maintain. That’s because the government, both state and federal, already has our data. They know where we live, and whether we’re eligible to vote. So it’s wasted effort to register voters. Besides, voter registries in these United States are notoriously inaccurate. Democrats push registration because they don’t want elections to depend on accurate databases.

For years now, I’ve been urging the use of the SSN and existing federal databases in elections. I still believe that the complete computerization of voting is the best way to go but consider this: the mail-in voting that was ramped up for 2020 could be made to work properly if, and only if, a unique national ID, like the SSN, were attached to each mail-in ballot. With the SSN on one’s ballot, there’s no need for separate voter registries, as the ballot could be authenticated against already existing government files.

Because the Supreme Court refused to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania due to a supposed “lack of standing,” the states need to get out in front of H.R. 1 and make sure they have standing that is undeniable. One way to do that is for the states to pass laws, right now, that set up a showdown with the feds. Georgia just did that on March 25 when Governor Kemp signed SB 202 into law. There are some good changes in the law, but it doesn’t require the use of the full SSN, only its last four digits. If I could mandate but one change to election law, it would be to require the inclusion of the full SSN on the ballot. With that change, verification of the vote becomes possible.

The “genius” (for Democrats) of the 2020 changes to election law is that they made verification of vote counts even more unobtainable and unknowable. With the corrupt use of mail-in ballots, election results in America became entirely unchallengeable. We must take the word of the authorities that the vote counts are accurate, and they needn’t demonstrate nor prove what the true vote is.

After Trump delivered the best economy in years and multiple vaccines for the Wuhan virus, if Biden really won the election, then this kid would have to say that we’re a nation of ingrates and deserve whatever we get. I tend to believe that the average American has not sunk that low. It seems much more plausible that the Democrats and their criminal operatives stole the election.

But it is possible that Joe Biden won the 2020 election; that is, that he received more legal votes than did President Trump. It’s possible, but not probable. And if Trump received more legal votes than Biden in the key battleground states, then Biden is an illegitimate president and we’re a nation of theft victims. But there’s no way to prove what the legitimate vote count is.

If H.R. 1 makes it through the Senate and our dried-up husk of a president signs it, the Supreme Court “should” find it unconstitutional. But who knows, they may let it slide, just like they let ObamaCare’s individual mandate slide. So the states need to bolster their “standing.” And they need to have systems in place that are much better than what H.R. 1 institutes.

It was “the several States” that brought America the most radical government in history, and the states need to fix that. Even if H.R. 1 were to fail in the Senate or be found unconstitutional by the Court, the election systems in the states are still scandalous and need to be reengineered with genuine election reforms.

It was battleground states in particular that gave us the frailest dimmest oldest president in our lifetimes. Those states must fix the problems they created by setting up election systems that ensure the integrity of the vote. The states need to anticipate and counter the coming encroachments of the feds by enacting new election laws. (They might also consider impeaching judges, like Pennsylvania’s Max Baer, and secretaries of state, like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger.)

Essentially, H.R. 1 institutionalizes election theft. Some may wonder why such theft needs to be institutionalized. After all, Democrats have been doing a good job of stealing elections without new legislation. Maybe the Dems just want election theft to be easier and surer.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.