If Congress passes and President Joe Biden signs into law a set of election reforms known as HR1, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton says he thinks Tennessee should sue the federal government.

“I think it’s an attempt to force the states to comply with what the federal government wants,” the Crossville Republican said on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast.

“I think this bill represents a huge liability as far as fraud and I want to make sure that if people can legally vote that they can go vote,” he said. “But I don’t want to introduce fraud into the vote process.”

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HR1, also known as the “For the People Act of 2021”, is backed by the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress.

Here is the complete text of the proposal.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis voted for it March 3, when it passed the House on a 220-210 vote.

“Congress is keeping its promise to restore integrity to our elections and assuring those with the right to vote fair access to the polls,” Cohen said after his vote.

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Republican U.S. Rep. David Kustoff of Germantown voted against the bill.

“This partisan legislation would ultimately allow the federal government to dictate how states run their elections,” he said after the vote. “It would also send public dollars to fund political campaigns and weaken the security of our elections, making it harder to protect against voter fraud.”

The state’s two Republican U.S. Senators – Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty – have said they are opposed to the bill.

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Sexton specifically opposes the bill’s provisions allowing for same day and automatic voter registration and the elimination of the requirement for a photo ID to vote, which is used in Tennessee among other states.

It would also allow states to send mail-in ballots to voters without a request for such a ballot and set conditions for verifying the use of the ballots. States would be allowed to keep in place requirements for requesting such a ballot.

Senate Republicans are threatening to filibuster the bill.

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“You saw the issues in the (2020) election, whether you think there was fraud or not, in all the states where they did what this bill wants to do.”

Despite 60 lawsuits contesting election results in various states, alleging fraud and recounts in several of those states by Democratic and Republican election officials, there were no findings of fraud in any of those cases.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, in the last two months of President Donald Trump’s administration, also said there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections.

“I don’t think they really investigated enough,” Sexton said of the numerous court cases. “If you look at states in the northeast, you had judges who rewrote the election laws that the legislatures passed.

“That’s not their role. They are supposed to interpret it,” he said. “They rewrote it and allowed people to do things that are outside the law.”

Sexton said rulings by Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle in the 2020 elections expanding access to mail-in absentee ballots for COVID-related reasons prompted the Tennessee General Assembly to consider a bill this year to start ouster proceedings against her.

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The bill ultimately failed to get out of committee earlier this month in Nashville.

“You had her rewriting the actual application that the Secretary of State was trying to do based on the court order that she was doing,” Sexton said. “I think there’s a feeling out there that during this process that the judicial side in some of these instances were making law.”

Lyle ordered the state to change the absentee ballot application to add concerns about being exposed to the COVID-19 virus as grounds for requesting an absentee ballot in the August state and federal primaries in Tennessee.

The Tennessee Supreme Court later narrowed the scope of the changes to allow absentee ballots for those with underlying medical conditions that made them more vulnerable to the virus and caregivers of those with the specific medical conditions.

The narrower scope was agreed to by the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office during arguments before the Supreme Court.

Lyle ordered the state to make the wording of the narrower requirement clearer on the absentee ballot applications for the November ballot, saying it wasn’t clear that the wording applied to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sexton also said in the podcast interview that Tennessee doesn’t need the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that is a COVID-19 relief and stimulus package.

“I don’t think any of the states need the American Rescue Plan,” he said. “I don’t think it’s really COVID-driven. I think what this is is nothing more than a bailout to states who have their pension plans where they are upside down – states who have raised taxes because they have massive debt and they are in their budgets not being very fiscal and conservative about it.”

Some Republicans in the General Assembly have talked about rejecting the estimated $6.1 billion Tennessee is expected to get from the act.

That includes funding to replace tax revenue lost by local governments in the pandemic.

“If they want to send us some money, we’ll take a look at it. But right now our economy in Tennessee is doing very well,” Sexton said. “I’m sure many people appreciate the federals sending money, but you also have to be careful that you don’t spend it on recurring expenses where you compound your budget problems a few years from now.”