CORRECTED: Republican National Committee Co-Chair Tommy Hicks is scheduled to speak Saturday at the Vermont Republican Party quarterly meeting 10 am Saturday at Capitol Plaza in Montpelier

by Tommy Hicks

Democrats across America are trying to tear down our country’s constitutional foundations brick by brick. Nowhere is this more evident than in the assault the far-left has launched on election integrity nationwide.

Ever since they began using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to make wholesale changes to election laws, Democrats have tried to push their power grab agenda further and further when it comes to stripping basic ballot security safeguards. We’re seeing that same scenario play out here in the Green Mountain State, where Democrats’ efforts to erode election integrity are especially brazen.

Last month, Democrats in the Vermont Legislature doubled down on their radical plan to allow non-citizens to cast ballots in Montpelier and Winooski. They did so knowing such a move will disenfranchise Vermonters who are citizens. It will also create a separate, unequal class of residents who can vote in Vermont elections at the local, but not federal, level.

A few years ago, allowing non-citizens to vote would have been considered unthinkable, even in a state that has time and again sent Bernie Sanders to Congress. The fact that every single Democrat in the State House signed on to override Governor Phil Scott’s veto of this extreme law signals just how far left the Democrat Party has shifted in the past few years.

Non-citizens voting in certain Vermont elections might be a win for the radical left, but it’s a loss for Vermonters who simply want and deserve consistency in the election process and confidence in the outcomes.  

Unfortunately, Vermont isn’t an isolated example of how Democrats are actively creating chaos in our elections.

In Democrat-dominated New York City, it took two weeks for election officials to determine a winner in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary. After Democrats spent the better part of a year calling legitimate concerns from Republicans about shoddy voting practices “threats to democracy,” even the top three Democratic candidates in that race have voiced criticism about how the election was run.

And let’s not forget Democrats’ signature assault on election integrity: their failed attempt at a federal takeover of our elections with H.R. 1.

This bad legislation, which included doing away with commonsense voter ID laws that the vast majority of Americans support, is so far outside the mainstream that it was a bridge too far even for some Democrat Senators to support.

Democrat attacks on election integrity, whether here in Vermont or elsewhere, ultimately comes down to one thing: consolidating political power.  Democrats realize Americans are rejecting their radical agenda across the board. Democrats know they can’t run and win on their extreme policies in next year’s midterms.

That’s why they want to change the rules of the game with partisan power grabs like H.R. 1 so they can impose their extreme policies on Americans. Republicans aren’t going to let them get away with it.

In the face of lies and attacks from Democrats, Republicans here in Vermont and nationwide will continue to defend election integrity. We will continue to fight for transparency and security at every stage of the voting process so we can protect your right to a secure ballot and restore confidence in our democratic system of government.

Thomas O. Hicks, Jr. (“Tommy”) was elected to serve as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee in January 2019.