President Joe Biden has nominated Dale Ho, the current director of American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights project, to become a U.S. district court judge for the Southern District of New York.
Like many liberals, Ho believes the Electoral College and the Senate are “anti-democratic” and “entrench … minority rule in this country.”
Ho explained his position during the 2018 National Civic Leadership Training Summit. He said,
“We had obviously lots of practices that are anti-democratic, that entrench in some ways minority rule in this country, and I’m talking about things like, you know, the Senate, the Electoral College, and the maldistribution of political power that results from those institutions.”
WATCH: Biden federal district judge nominee Dale Ho calls the Senate and the Electoral College "anti-democratic" pic.twitter.com/vfOi3N6Et9
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 15, 2021
Ho discusses “lots of long-standing barriers” to voting and as an example, he cites “felon disenfranchisement … the practice of stripping the right to vote from people because of a criminal conviction.”
In this brief clip, Ho tells us who he is and where he is at politically.
What so many of Biden’s nominees don’t seem to grasp is that the U.S. is not a democracy, but a democratic republic.
Our founders considered and rejected several methods of electing a U.S. president and finally settled upon the Electoral College method. It is not a perfect system, but it’s pretty good.
Other methods of electing a president, including “straight popular vote” or relying on members of Congress to make the decision, were far more problematic. The Electoral College was a “compromise” reached after months of debate.
At any rate, the Electoral College is the law of the land and unless and until Congress votes to amend the Constitution, Ho’s role as a district court judge would be to apply U.S. law, as it is currently written, to the cases that come before him.
Ho was one of several judicial nominees to answer questions at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Dec. 1. The Hill reported that Republican members of the committee were “targeting” Ho over past tweets that were critical of Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), Mike Lee (Utah) and Tom Cotton (Arkansas).
(The tweets are no longer available because Ho’s Twitter account is now locked.)
In the videos below, Republican Sens. Lee, Ted Cruz (Texas), and John Kennedy (Louisiana) question Ho about those tweets and other comments he has made in the past.
Lee said that Ho displayed “open contempt for the Constitution” and reminded him that he was under oath.
Cruz called him an “extreme partisan” and said, “You have engaged in partisan attacks on multiple members of this committee.”
“Mr. Ho, you’re a smart man, I can tell,” Kennedy said. “But I think you’re an angry man. And I really have great concerns about voting for you. We don’t need federal judges who are angry. We need federal judges who are fair and can see both points of view.”
Kennedy asked the nominee, “Did you say Republicanism is ‘an anti-democratic virus?’”
At first Ho did not recall. After Kennedy reminded him that he was under oath, he remembered he might have said something like that.
Ho told lawmakers, “I very much regret the tone that I’ve taken on social media from time to time, particularly if it’s given anyone the impression that I wouldn’t be impartial.”
One might say that.
In 2015, Ho compared voter identification requirements to chemotherapy. He had said, “Obviously, all of us are against voter fraud, right? The question that I think we have to ask ourselves is whether or not the mechanism that we’re using to try to prevent this problem is appropriate to the task. I’m against cancer, but I don’t think everyone in this room should get chemotherapy.”
Although Ho is not quite as radical as Saule Omarova, Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, who was recently forced to withdraw her name from consideration in the face of bipartisan opposition, he is a poor choice for a district court judge.
However, while comments like those mentioned above may have been enough to derail a nominee’s confirmation in the past, the whole Democratic party has shifted to the left in the past several years. It’s not clear if Ho will face any resistance from Democratic senators.
The Biden Administration is full of officials who are at least as radical, or even more so, than Ho. He may very well get the nod.
Dale Ho is one of America's best voting rights lawyers, and he's President Biden's pick to be a federal judge.
Our new ad campaign highlights Ho's career protecting democracy in his own words.
Watch and call your senator and tell them to #ConfirmDaleHo at 202-224-3121: pic.twitter.com/8eHdq8L8Lp
— Demand Justice (@WeDemandJustice) December 6, 2021
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