[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO VOTE:
BEST AND WORST PRACTICES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL RIGHTS
AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 1, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-018
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio, Ranking Minority
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Member
Columbia Justin Amash, Michigan
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Harley Rouda, California James Comer, Kentucky
Katie Hill, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Bob Gibbs, Ohio
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Peter Welch, Vermont Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Jackie Speier, California Chip Roy, Texas
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
Mark DeSaulnier, California Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands W. Gregory Steube, Florida
Ro Khanna, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
David Rapallo, Staff Director
Candyce Phoenix, Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Staff
Director
Valerie Shen, Subcommittee Chief Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor
Joshua Zucker, Assistant Clerk
Christopher Hixon, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn Maloney, New York Chip Roy, Texas, Ranking Minority
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Member
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Justin Amash, Michigan
Robin Kelly, Illinois Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Jimmy Gomez, California Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Jody Hice, Georgia
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Michael Cloud, Texas
Columbia Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 1, 2019...................................... 1
Witnesses
Ms. Myrna Perez, Deputy Director, Democracy Program, Brennan
Center for Justice
Oral statement............................................... 6
Ms. Leigh Chapman, Director, Voting Rights Program, The
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Oral statement............................................... 8
Mr. Dale Ho, Director, Voting Rights Project, American Civil
Liberties Union
Oral statement............................................... 10
Ms. Kaylan Phillips, Litigation Counsel, Public Interest Legal
Foundation
Oral statement............................................... 11
The written statements for witnesses are available at: https://
docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
The documents listed below are available at: https://
docs.house.gov.
* ``A Sampling of Election Fraud Cases From Across the Country'',
a study conducted by the Heritage Foundation; submitted by Mr.
Roy
* ``Texas Woman Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for Voting
Illegally in the 2016 Election'', article; submitted by Mr.
Cloud
* ``Robstown Residents Indicated on Multiple Counts of Voter
Fraud'' ; submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Ten Oregon Voters Plead Guilty to Voter Fraud in 2016
Presidential Election''; submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Texas Court Upholds Conviction of Woman Sentenced to 8 Years
in Prison for Voter Fraud;'' submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``James City Man Indicted on Voter Fraud Charges;'' submitted
by Mr. Cloud
* ``Edinburg Mayor, Wife Latest to be Charged with Illegal
Voting;'' submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Elmwood Park Mayor Charged with Voter Fraud Resigns;''
submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Salvadoran National Indicted on Immigration and Voter Fraud
Violations in East Texas;'' submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Campaign Manager Charged with Buying Votes in Donna, Texas,
School Board Election;'' submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Two Campaign Workers Admitted to Buying Votes in Hidalgo
County, Texas, Elections;'' submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Mexican National Who Took Cousin's Identity to Vote Illegally
to be Deported;'' submitted by Mr. Cloud
* ``Presentation to Presidential Advisory Commission on Election
Integrity: A Suggestion and Some Evidence'' by John R. Lott
Jr., CrimePreventionResearchCenter.org; submitted by Mr. Massie
* John R. Lott, ``Commentary: Apply Background Checks for Gun
Purchases to Voting;'' submitted by Mr. Massie
PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO VOTE:
BEST AND WORST PRACTICES
----------
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,
Committee on Oversight and Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:35 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jamie Raskin
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Raskin, Maloney, Clay, Wasserman
Schultz, Kelly, Gomez, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Norton, Roy,
Jordan, Amash, Gosar, Massie, Hice, Cloud, and Miller.
Mr. Raskin. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to
meeting of the hearing--or rather, the hearing of the
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the
Committee on Oversight and Reform.
The title of our hearing today is ``Protecting the Right to
Vote: Best and Worst Practices.'' I welcome our esteemed panel
to today's hearing and salute all of my colleagues.
I am going to make my opening statement, and then I am
going to turn it over to Mr. Roy, and then we will go to the
opening statements of all of our witnesses.
A great Republican President once spoke of government of
the people, by the people, and for the people, and this has
been the tantalizing ideal of America. But of course, it has
not always been like this here.
We began as a slave republic of white male property owners
over the age of 21, and it has only been through waves of
profound social and political struggle that we have opened
America up to change and to inclusion. This is the story of the
Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth
Amendment, which gave us equal protection and due process; the
Fifteenth Amendment, which ended discrimination in voting based
on race; the Seventeenth Amendment, which shifted the mode of
election of U.S. Senators from the state legislatures to the
people; the Nineteenth Amendment, 99 years ago, which gave us
women's suffrage; the Twenty-Third Amendment, which gave people
here in Washington, DC, the right to participate in
Presidential elections; the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which
abolished poll taxes in Federal elections; and the Twenty-Sixth
Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18.
This is also the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Voting in American life has had both an ideal history and a
real history. There is no more celebrated ideal than that of
voting rights for all. But in reality, there have been constant
efforts to lock people out of the franchise and to keep them
from participating. We must not forget the blood, sweat, and
tears that have been shed in the struggle to win the right to
vote for everyone.
I have a hero named Bob Moses who went South at age 26-
years-old in 1960, a philosophy graduate student at Harvard. He
traveled to Mississippi, where he found that less than one
percent of African Americans in that state were registered to
vote. Less than one percent of African Americans were
registered. Nearly all had been disenfranchised by intimidation
and violence, character and literacy tests administered at the
polls, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and so on.
Moses likened the situation when he got there to the Iron
Curtain in Europe, behind which millions of Eastern Europeans
lived under the boot of the Soviet Union. Mississippi and the
Deep South, he said, were behind a cotton curtain where no one
dared challenge the racist sheriffs and bosses who controlled
every aspect of social, economic, and political life.
These sheriffs and bosses, we must remember, were
Democrats, and we must never forget that both parties can and
have participated in disenfranchisement schemes. Yesterday, it
was mostly Democrats. Today, it is mostly Republicans.
Originally, Bob Moses went to Mississippi thinking that he
would participate in sit-ins. He had seen the pictures of the
solemn teenage protesters in newspapers, and he later wrote of
his response that, ``These young people looked the way that I
felt.''
But segregation in public accommodations was not the heart
of the problem he found when he got to Mississippi. The heart
of it was disenfranchisement of the black community. This was
the lock on the door of the whole system of Jim Crow.
And while many imagine that the sit-ins were somehow more
radical than registering people to vote, Moses observed that he
was living in a two-thirds African-American congressional
district where virtually none of the black people could vote.
The most radical solution to the problem of structural racism
in the sense of going to the root of the problem, he said,
would be a campaign to challenge the disenfranchisement of the
black community and to work--to go door-to-door--to register
people to vote.
And that is what he did. It was terrifying and dangerous
work. He was beaten nearly to his death more than once, just
trying to enter the county building to register people to vote.
But in the process of this struggle, Bob Moses and his
friends in SNCC woke up the black community, stirred the
conscience of young people across America, and shook racist
America to the core. They coined a term that would transform
not just Mississippi, but American law and politics forever.
``One person, one vote.''
Today, the gains of the modern Civil Rights Movement, which
many historians call the ``Second Reconstruction,'' are under
severe attack. A 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court in 2013 in
Shelby County v. Holder invalidated the coverage formula of the
Voting Rights Act in Section 4, effectively destroying the
Section 5 preclearance requirement and setting us back decades
in the law of voting rights.
With the Voting Rights Act intact, jurisdictions with a
discriminatory history had to submit proposed changes, like
voter purges, polling place closures, and reduced voter
registration hours, to the Department of Justice or to the
United States District Court for the District of Columbia
before they could go through. Now this check is gone, and
people experiencing suffrage restrictions and obstacles must go
and find a lawyer and go to court and hope that they can
convince a judge to intervene to make a change under Section 2.
So six years after that decision, hundreds of polling
places have been closed across the land. Millions of voters
have been purged from the rolls. Early voting has been cut back
sharply in a number of states, and strict voter ID laws have
gone into effect in many jurisdictions. Virtually all of these
restrictions have been in Republican states.
Proponents of the new voting obstacle course say that they
are just trying to prevent voter fraud. We often hear from the
President about the threat of rampant illegal voting, but study
after study has failed to reveal any significant evidence of
voter fraud at all, at least the kind they are talking about.
One comprehensive study conducted at Loyola Law School
examined more than 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014
and revealed only 31 credible instances of voter fraud, 31 out
of 1 billion, less than 1/100th of 1 percent. The way that you
steal elections in America, everyone knows, is you run
elections in America, and you run them in a way that closes out
substantial parts of the electorate.
Now the good news is that just as there is a strong push to
eliminate voting opportunities and rights in certain states,
there is a powerful recognition across the land that voting is
the essential foundation of democratic power and citizenship
and that we should be securing and expanding the right of the
people to vote however we can.
So, today, we're going to showcase both some of the best
practices in protecting the vote along with the worst practices
canceling out voter rights and opportunities. And on the good
side, we have found automatic voter registration where eligible
voters were added to the rolls unless they choose to top out of
it, which can dramatically increase the number of registered
citizens.
We have also found Election Day registration, which offers
a crucial backstop for voters who may be stripped of their
registration without their knowledge or just still learning
about the process. And we have also found early voting and
absentee voting policies, which offer flexibility to busy
working Americans who could not otherwise make it to the polls,
and we are going to hear about these from expert witnesses.
In the 2016 Presidential election, only 58 percent of
eligible voters cast a ballot. Less than half of eligible
citizens voted in 2018. We can do a lot better as a society by
enlarging the opportunities for voting, rather than restricting
them.
Eventually, I think--and we will talk about this another
time--we will need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the
right of every citizen to vote, a point our Constitution is
very ambiguous on, unlike constitutions around the world, which
have put this front and center. But in the meantime, let us act
however we can at both the state and Federal level to protect
the voting rights of the people.
I thank the witnesses today for being here to help us
through this process. And now I am happy to recognize my
distinguished colleague, Mr. Roy, the ranking member of the
committee.
Mr. Roy. Well, I thank the chairman, and I thank the
witnesses for taking time out of your busy schedules to come
here and address the committee on such an important issue. I am
blessed and fortunate to represent the good people of the 21st
congressional District of Texas in the Hill Country between
Austin and San Antonio, home to President Lyndon Johnson, who
obviously was fairly significant in making sure that we got the
Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. The Civil Rights Act
obviously in 1964, but for the purpose of this hearing, the
1965 Voting Rights Act was critical in ensuring that those who
wish to partake in our republic, have a voice in the republic,
are not left out of the system through clear, invidious
discrimination practices that try to keep people away from the
polls.
That was a seminal moment in our Nation's history, and I am
proud to represent the district in which President Johnson grew
up, went to college, ultimately became President, and engaged
in making sure that we got that passed. Mindfully that he was a
Democrat at a time when he needed to get Republican support in
order to get that across the finish line, now 54-odd years ago.
As relates to this hearing, I would be remiss, however, in
responding to a few points that were just made that I tend to
look at the words of Chief Justice Roberts when he pointed out
in I don't know if it was Shelby or one of the other cases
around the time, and I forget when it was, but that this
divvying us up by race is a sordid business. And it is a sordid
business.
I think that the Chief Justice was correct in the ruling in
Shelby, and I think that it is correct that the Voting Rights
Act preclearance requirement that that case addressed, being
based wrongly on at that time 40-plus-year-old data, 1968
data--in some cases, 1972 data--the Court was right in saying
that that was wrong. And there is not a whole lot of
disagreement in the extent to which that the formula and that
the way the Voting Rights Act was being applied and its
reauthorization in 2006 was based on old data.
And I think that is a very important consideration when you
think about what the Court--why the Court reached the judgment
that it reached. So here we are today talking about the current
state of elections and practices, and I, of course, represent
the state of Texas.
Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives states the
authority to determine the times, place, and manner of holding
elections. Despite this constitutional authority, the majority
wishes to exert more Federal bureaucracy over each state's
authority over local elections. We have seen this H.R. 1. When
we start a Congress, each party usually picks what is their
most important issue they want to address and highlight, and
H.R. 1 was, of course, dealing with our election systems and a
number of other things related to that--campaigning, campaign
finance.
H.R. 1 would take significant amounts of the decisionmaking
of how we apply and how we exercise our voting from the state
and move it to the Federal level. I believe that voting is
integral to each American's connection to his or her community.
Someone from Blanco, Texas, which I am proud to represent,
doesn't get to tell someone from San Francisco who to live or
who to elect as the town dog catcher any more than someone from
Baltimore gets to dictate which local judges should be elected
in San Antonio.
In fact, as my colleague knows, Maryland does not elect
state judges. We do in Texas. There are numerous differences
from state to state, region to region, and we should embrace
those differences as part of our common American experience and
make sure that we are able to embrace those and agree to
disagree, instead of having one size fits all solutions from
Washington that inevitably have us at each other's throats in
differing views about how we should live our lives.
I have often said that ballots in my state are upside down
when I am campaigning because I think state and local officials
should be listed first. They should be at the top, not the
Federal officials who are often coming in and interfering with
the great activities of our local communities in Texas.
This is not the majority's first effort to Federalize
elections. H.R. 1 includes numerous reforms that would apply to
each and every state, and what works in Texas might not work in
another state. states have the constitutional right to
administer elections that best address the voting needs of
their residents and states have enacted reforms that work for
them.
For example, some states have adopted early voting, mail-
only voting, and no excuse absentee voting. In Texas, we vote
early for two weeks. You can vote in numerous locations all
over the city of Austin, all throughout the Hill Country, all
throughout San Antonio. Maybe that is good. Maybe it is not.
Maybe we should have a holiday that day and let people vote all
in one day.
Maybe we should have two weeks early voting, three weeks,
four weeks. I don't know. I tend to believe the early voting
actually causes problems because you end up with different
information, and things change. People are voting at different
times with different factors.
I would prefer people go in on a day with all the same
information and vote. But each state can kind of play with that
and see what works, see how it affects their citizens.
Elections are not one size fits all.
Common sense reforms aimed at solving wide-reaching
election fraud, such as a registered sex offender, an illegal
alien voting in Maryland elections since 1976, or campaign
aides in New York filling out fraudulently absentee ballots are
vital. And I would ask unanimous consent to enter a study from
the Heritage Foundation that found almost 1,200 confirmed cases
of voter fraud into the record.
Mr. Roy. I would like to share a few examples of voter
fraud from my home state in the last year. Our attorney
general, for whom I used to work--I was the first assistant
attorney general in the state of Texas--has done an excellent
job of prosecuting individuals who sought to take advantage of
our electoral system, including an illegal alien who in
September of last year pled guilty to two second-degree
felonies of voter impersonation and ineligible voting. She was
sentenced to 10 years, charged a $10,000 fine, will be deported
after serving 180 days in jail.
In November 2018, the Texas Second Court of Appeals upheld
the 2017 voter fraud conviction of a woman who voted illegally
for more than 10 years by falsely claiming to be a U.S.
citizen. And in January, a woman was indicted for illegally
voting by using the identity of a woman who had been dead for
nine years.
It happens. What percentage is it? As my colleague points
out, you know, one can determine whether it is negligible. But
different communities have different impacts. I can tell you
that the 100,000 people who came across the border, our
Southern border in March alone that were apprehended--I'm not
talking about who was not apprehended--those apprehended have
an impact on Texas. They have an impact on Arizona, New Mexico.
It is not the same as Maryland or Virginia or New York, and
these things matter.
We must all be committed to ensuring that our elections
remain free and fair, and I thank my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle, and I agree that we must not tolerate any
attempt to deprive American citizens of the right to voice
their opinions in Federal and state elections.
I want to thank you all for being here today, and I look
forward to your testimony.
I yield back.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
Now I want to welcome our witnesses, and please rise. I am
about to swear you in.
Myrna Perez, the Deputy Director of the Democracy Program
at the Brennan Center for Justice; Leigh Chapman, the Director
of the Voting Rights Program at the Leadership Conference on
Civil and Human Rights; and Dale Ho, the Director of the Voting
Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union; and Ms.
Phillips, forgive me, I don't have your identification--the
Public Interest Legal Foundation. Ms. Phillips, special welcome
to you.
Do all of you swear or affirm that the testimony you are
about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you God?
[Response.]
Mr. Raskin. Let the record show that all the witnesses
answered in the affirmative. Thank you, and please be seated.
The microphones are sensitive, so please speak directly
into them. And without any objection, your written statement
will be made part of the record.
With that, Ms. Perez, you are now recognized to give an
oral presentation of your testimony for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF MYRNA PEREZ, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DEMOCRACY PROGRAM,
BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE
Ms. Perez. Thank you, Members, for having me and for this
opportunity to testify.
Across our great country, there are justifiable concerns
about voter suppression, but there are also advancements that
make it easier for Americans to participate and vote. In my
short time, I will focus on two major problems--voter roll
purges and outdated voter registration systems.
Fortunately, automatic voter registration, or AVR, is an
encouraging response to both of these problems and is having an
exciting impact in the states. We are delighted that the House
passed AVR and other reforms when it passed H.R. 1.
With respect to purges, I hope that we can all agree that
election administrators should take reasonable measures to
clean and maintain our voter rolls. We can all agree that when
done correctly, voters and election administrators alike
benefit from clean and accurate rolls.
I would like to think that we can all agree that our voter
registration lists should not only be clean and accurate, they
should also be complete. And when purges are done badly, our
rolls are not complete, and that causes confusion and delay at
the polls and disenfranchises legitimate voters because purges
are a special breed in that they happen with little sunlight in
an office with a few strokes of a keyboard. The cost of
mistakes are high.
Accordingly, we believe that purges are an appropriate
topic for further research and investigation from this
committee, and there are two very specific reasons why the
timing is especially ripe for this committee to study purges.
The first is that states and localities continue to rely on
faulty underlying data and faulty processes when purging
voters.
Now I use the word ``continue'' because I have been
studying this for more than a decade, and we keep seeing
similar bad practices appear. Years before my home state of
Texas made the news for a sloppy attempted purge of
noncitizens, a Texas Air Force veteran named James Harris Jr.
was flagged by the state for removal because a James Harris of
Arkansas died in 1996. And to be clear, bad purges can be found
in areas as diverse as Wisconsin, Florida, New York, Arkansas,
Virginia, and Texas. I include numerous examples in my written
testimony.
The second reason why this committee should study purges is
that purge numbers are growing. Between 2014 and 2016, states
removed almost 16 million voters from the rolls. That's almost
4 million more than between 2006 and 2008, and it should be
obvious that that is a rate that outstrips the growth rate of
total registered voters and the growth rate of total
population.
What is especially concerning to the Brennan Center is that
those jurisdictions no longer subject to Federal preclearance
under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act had purge rates that
were significantly higher than jurisdictions that were not
subject to preclearance. The Brennan Center has calculated that
about 2 million fewer voters would have been purged if the
preclearance jurisdictions purged at the same rate as those
states that were not subject to preclearance.
Moving on to outdated voter registration systems, we have
outdated and incomplete methods that are presenting an
unnecessary obstacle to voting participation. One in four
eligible Americans is not registered to vote. If we built
bridges such that one in four of them failed, we'd say that we
need to find a better way to build bridges.
Yet in still too many parts of this country, voter
registration largely relies on an error-prone pen and paper
system. But fortunately, there is a better way. Automatic voter
registration, or AVR, is a policy first proposed by the Brennan
Center more than a decade ago, and it is an appropriate
response to two of these big problems.
AVR makes two modest, but transformative tweaks to the
traditional way we register voters. The first is that the
information is transferred from designated agencies to election
administrators electronically instead of using paper forms. The
second is that we switch from an opt-in system, where a person
has to affirmatively declare that they want to register to
vote, to an opt-out system, where eligible citizens are
registered unless they decline.
I want there to be no mistake--people have the opportunity
to decline. This is not compulsory registration. But we do know
that in the last four years, 15 states and the District of
Columbia have adopted automatic voter registration, and we know
that it works. The Brennan Center recently calculated the
impact of AVR on seven states and Washington, DC, that have
been operating AVR for a while, and we know that registration
substantially increases in AVR states, no matter the size of
the state, its political leanings, or its AVR design.
Among the jurisdictions studied, we found that the number
of registrations increased, ranging from 9 to 94 percent. We
enthusiastically support this committee examining the best and
worst practices, and we enthusiastically support this committee
exercising its authority to ensure that American elections are
not only free and fair, but accessible.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Ms. Perez.
Ms. Chapman?
STATEMENT OF LEIGH CHAPMAN, DIRECTOR, VOTING RIGHTS PROGRAM,
THE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Ms. Chapman. Good afternoon, Chairman Raskin, Ranking
Member Roy, and members of the subcommittee.
I am Leigh Chapman, Voting Rights Program Director at the
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of
more than 200 national organizations working to build an
America as good as its ideals. We have coordinated national
advocacy efforts on behalf of every major civil rights law
since 1957, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and
subsequent reauthorizations.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the best
and worst practices for protecting the right to vote. My
testimony covers polling place closures and in-person early
voting.
It was not long ago, just in 2006, that this body
reauthorized the VRA with sweeping bipartisan majorities.
Congress held 21 hearings, heard from more than 90 witnesses,
and compiled a massive record of more than 15,000 pages of
evidence of ongoing racial discrimination in voting. Despite
this record, in 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, five Justices
gutted the VRA's most powerful provision, the Section 5
preclearance system.
That system had enabled the Justice Department and Federal
courts to prevent places with the most troubling histories of
discrimination from implementing any voting change that would
discriminate against voters because of their race. It was a
system that ensured all voting changes were public and
transparent.
Since then, states and localities across the country have
erected barriers to voting without such safeguards. These
barriers have made it harder for Americans to vote at every
juncture, from registration to casting ballots to having their
votes counted. In almost every instance, these changes have no
remedy because once an election is held, there is no way to
hold it again.
That's why safeguards like preclearance desperately need to
be restored, so polling place closures, cutbacks to early
voting, and the myriad of other potentially discriminatory
tactics can be vetted to ensure that they don't target voters
based on their race.
Polling place closures can result in long lines,
transportation hurdles, and mass confusion about where eligible
voters may cast their ballot. For many people, particularly
voters of color, seniors, rural voters, and voters with
disabilities, these burdens make it harder to vote. This was
seen in Randolph County, Georgia, where there was a proposal to
close seven out of the nine polling places in a county that was
60 percent black. Elections officials should make sure polling
place reductions do not discriminate against voters of color.
The 2016 Presidential election was first conducted after
Shelby, and in advance of it, jurisdictions closed polling
places on a massive scale. In 2016, the Leadership Conference
released a report, ``The Great Poll Closure,'' documenting
polling place reductions in many former Section 5 covered
jurisdiction. In this report, we identified 868 polling places
that were closed between 2012 and 2016 in half of all counties
that were once covered by Section 5.
In the 381 counties we studied, 165 of them reduced polling
places. In Arizona, almost every single county reduced polling
places, leading to 212 fewer voting locations across the state.
In the 134 out of the 254 Texas counties we analyzed, there
were more than 400 polling places closed.
We are currently expanding and updating this report to
include additional jurisdictions and data from the 2018
election. We are finding that polling place reductions have
continued unabated in states like Arizona, Texas, and Georgia.
A best practice for protecting the right to vote that we
support is in-person early voting, which provides increased
access and flexibility for voters, shorter lines on election
day, and makes elections run more smoothly. Early voting
benefits marginalized voters, including working people, senior
citizens, people with disabilities, and voters of color, many
who have less flexibility over work schedules. And yet, despite
the benefits, at least seven states have cut back on early
voting opportunities since 2010.
Voting and the ability to participate in our democracy is a
racial justice issue. Congress must pass the Voting Rights
Advancement Act to ensure our democracy works for everyone.
Without a functional democracy, we cannot make progress on key
civil and human rights issues like education, justice reform,
and economic security.
Thank you, and I welcome any questions.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ho?
STATEMENT OF DALE HO, DIRECTOR, VOTING RIGHTS PROJECT, AMERICAN
CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
Mr. Ho. Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy, and members of
the subcommittee, thank you very much for the opportunity to
testify today.
My name is Dale Ho, and I'm the Director of the ACLU Voting
Rights Project, where my current cases include Department of
Commerce v. New York, in which we are challenging the Trump
administration's effort to put a citizenship question on the
Census, a case that I argued in the Supreme Court last week.
My remarks today will focus on voter registration. Voter
registration rates in the United States are much lower than in
other Western democracies, more than 20 percentage points lower
than in countries like Canada, the UK, and Sweden. Now I don't
believe that Americans care less about politics than Canadians,
Brits, or Swedes, but we do have a pattern of making it
unnecessarily difficult to register to vote in this country.
I'll give you two recent examples.
One is a law that passed in Florida in 2011. New
restrictions on voter registration drives, which required that
people return forms within 48 hours or face fines of $50 per
form, per day late. The League of Women Voters and Rock the
Vote suspended all voter registration activities in the state,
and the NAACP received a stern warning for turning in two forms
approximately 90 minutes late on a Tuesday. They didn't turn
them in that week on Monday because the office was closed due
to Martin Luther King Day, but they still received that
warning.
That law was, thankfully, struck down, thanks to litigation
brought by the Brennan Center, the ACLU, and other
organizations. Unfortunately, several states appear poised to
repeat Florida's mistakes. In Tennessee, the state legislature
recently passed a bill that provides for fines of up to $10,000
for submitting incomplete voter registration forms, and in
Arizona, the house recently passed a bill that would make it a
crime to pay someone or to be paid for working on a voter
registration drive.
Now make no mistake. If these laws are enacted, they will
disproportionately affect voters of color. Recent Census data
show that black and Hispanic voters are approximately 60
percent more likely than white voters to have registered
through a voter registration drive.
Now my second example is a Kansas law, the brainchild of
former Kansas Secretary of state Kris Kobach, which required
voter registration applicants to submit a citizenship document,
like a birth certificate or a passport, when registering to
vote. It went into effect in 2013, and within three years, more
than 30,000 Kansans had been blocked from registering to vote.
It was about 12 percent of applications in that time. It
was as if one out of every voter registration applications that
came in the door were simply tossed in the trash. One of those
applications belonged to a client of ours, a woman named Donna
Bucci, who worked a low-wage job in a correctional facility
cafeteria, who couldn't afford the fee for a birth certificate.
Now Secretary Kobach claimed that the law was necessary to
stop a supposed epidemic of noncitizen registration, but the
evidence that he presented at trial showed a grand total of 39
noncitizens who had registered to vote in Kansas over a 19-year
period, about two per year, many of whom were registered only
because of an error by state employee and not because of any
choice to become registered themselves. The law was ultimately
struck down as unconstitutional last year.
Now there are some good voter registration practices that
we should be talking about today, and I'll just describe one in
particular--Election Day registration, or EDR, which permits
people to register to vote and cast a ballot in a single trip
to the polls or a state office on Election Day.
Twenty states and the District of Columbia have adopted
some form of same-day registration, and they're a diverse mix.
They include states like Idaho, Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire,
Hawaii, North Carolina. Within the last 12 months alone, five
states have adopted Election Day registration, most recently
New Mexico earlier this year.
EDR is regarded by political scientists as the single most
effective reform for increasing voter participation, boosting
turnout by between three to nine percentage points, with
perhaps the most significant gains among historically low
turnout groups like low-income voters and voters of color. In
2018, for example, the two states with the highest youth
turnout rates were Wisconsin and Minnesota, both of which are
EDR states.
Combining registration and voting simplifies a two-step
process. It takes advantage of voter interest when it's at its
highest, and it allows voters to update or correct information
on their registrations on Election Day, ensuring that no one is
disenfranchised by administrative errors, and EDR is more
secure because it's conducted in person. It typically requires
documents to verify a person's residence or identity, and it
often incorporates additional safeguards, which I'd be happy to
talk about.
Now just in closing, we shouldn't accept the cynical
proposition that Americans are more apathetic than our friends
in other democracies. Our Government is more representative,
responsive, and accountable when more, rather than few,
Americans participate.
Thank you. I look forward to the conversation that we're
going to have.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Ho, thank you very much.
Ms. Phillips?
STATEMENT OF KAYLAN PHILLIPS, LITIGATION COUNSEL, PUBLIC
INTEREST LEGAL FOUNDATION
Ms. Phillips. Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy, members
of the subcommittee, thank you so much for having me here
today.
My name is Kaylan Phillips. I am an attorney with the
Public Interest Legal Foundation, which is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan law firm dedicated to election integrity.
It has never been easier to register to vote than it is
today. You are offered the opportunity to register to vote when
you encounter many state agencies, including motor vehicle
offices. If you somehow miss one of these opportunities, there
are many private organizations that run voter registration
drives at community events and even go door-to-door.
In short, the opportunities to register to vote are
plentiful and increasing. On the other hand, not much attention
has been paid to ensuring that our country's voter rolls are
accurate and current. As the Supreme Court recognized just last
year, it's been estimated that 24 million voter registrations
in the United States, which is about one in eight, are either
invalid or significantly inaccurate.
This problem has a ripple effect. It increases the workload
of election officials and also decreases the public's
confidence in our elections. I have studied voter roll list
maintenance practices across the country and have seen these
problems and inefficiencies firsthand. In short, there is no
one solution to this problem.
The Constitution wisely entrusts the states to run their
own elections. However, there are general strategies and
techniques that are universally applicable by decentralized
means. Best practices for election officials include such
common sense institutional measures as writing down their
procedures and adequately training their staff.
Beyond these basics, there are many ways to improve
information sharing among state agencies and between states.
states should be encouraged to implement common sense reforms
that address the individualized problems that they face.
One specific and alarming problem that I have discovered in
my evaluation of our Nation's voter rolls is the failure of the
citizenship check boxes on the voter registration form.
Citizenship is a fundamental element of eligibility to vote in
American elections. Yet the citizenship checks on the Federal
form are merely an honor system.
In my experience, those safeguards are wholly inadequate.
Noncitizens continue to be registered to vote, sometimes by
their own error and sometimes by the error of election
officials. For example, our research has shown that individuals
have been registered to vote even when they leave the
citizenship check box blank or, worse, when they check ``no''
to the question, ``Are you a citizen of the United States?''
Regardless of the circumstances, registering noncitizens
may jeopardize their immigration status. The application for
naturalization asks whether an individual has been registered
to vote or has voted. The foundation's research finds that it
is common for ineligible registrants to first learn of their
voter registration status when they receive a communication
regarding their application for naturalization.
The applicant then has to reach out to local election
officials, to gather their records and submit those to the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services. The stress caused by such
a situation cannot be understated.
One solution to this problem is to equip states to verify
citizenship before an individual is placed on the rolls. There
are tools presently available to the Federal Government that
could be made available to state and local election officials
in order to identify and correct mistakes before they lead to
life-altering circumstances--consequences.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
I now recognize myself for five minutes for questions. I am
going to start with you, Ms. Perez.
Automatic voter registration sounds like it makes great
sense. You know, we would consider it a huge failure if we had
as high a part of the population not going to public school or
not going to school at all as we have not voting.
We want everybody to be part of the voting system, and so
automatic universal voter registration seems to make a lot of
sense. But tell us in more detail how it actually works and
what these states are doing and why you described it as being a
very effective best practice.
Ms. Perez. I think we should first start about what happens
if someone goes to a traditional social service agency, what
that exchange looks like. Somebody will go in. They will get
asked by a clerk, what is your name, your address, your date of
birth, whether or not you're a citizen. And if they're
following the law, which they sometimes aren't, they then ask
you, ``Do you want to register to vote?''
And if you say yes, all too often, they hand you a piece of
paper that requires you to fill out again what your name, your
address, your date of birth, whether or not you're a citizen
is. And that is inefficient because those systems then--those
papers then have to get bundled, mailed, and someone has to
hand enter them.
With automatic voter registration, it becomes a streamlined
process where the information that exists at the government
agency that's relevant for information voter registration
purposes gets sent over. And so that reduces error. So those
that are concerned about inaccurate rolls will see much greater
cleanness and efficiency in these records because you don't
have to have people trying to decipher someone's chicken-
scratch handwriting or trying to hand enter it.
It also changes the presumption. It welcomes people to our
democracy. It sets forth the policy, the norm of registering to
vote. And those two things together change behaviors, and we've
seen some astonishing results in a number of parts of the
country.
Automatic voter registration is a way, a modern way, an
efficient way to make our voter rolls more clean and to get
more people on the rolls. And it's something that has enjoyed
bipartisan support in a number of states and something that I
hope this committee will give serious consideration to.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ho, let me come to you. Another committee--I serve on
the House Committee on Administration--has been very interested
in this problem of voter purges, and we have been to Georgia
and Ohio, a number of other states to look at what this means.
In Ohio recently, we heard testimony about how more than
400,000 people were purged for failing to have voted in the
last election. In some cases, that was a mistake, but even in
the cases where people didn't vote, the argument was made by
the voter rights groups that you have a constitutional right
not to vote just like you have got a right to vote. You can't
punish that by disenfranchising the people.
But the mechanism by which they alerted people to the fact
that they hadn't voted and, therefore, they would be purged
unless they responded was a little postcard, which lots of
testimony suggested was getting lost inside newspapers and
magazines in the mail or misplaced or what have you.
Describe the mechanics of voter disenfranchisement based on
purges and whether you think that is a fair way to keep the
rolls up to date.
Mr. Ho. Sure. Well, we can talk about the Ohio example that
you identified. What Ohio would do was try to identify people
who may have moved to another state based on whether or not you
voted, right? And so if you don't vote in an election, Ohio
would then start to flag you as a potential nonvoter.
Now, you know, we have pretty low turnout rates in this
country compared to other democracies. In most mid-term
elections, half of eligible voters don't vote. So it's a pretty
broad presumption to assume that half of people have moved when
we know that that's not what's happenings.
They'll send you a postcard, and a lot of times it gets
lost, as you noted. It looks like junk mail, I think, to a lot
of people, and so people don't respond to it. And then if you
don't respond to it and you don't vote in subsequent elections,
they knock you off. And I think that does raise a lot of
concerns about whether or not simply the act of not voting
should be taken as evidence that you've moved and are no longer
eligible to vote.
Mr. Raskin. I mean, how does same-day voter registration
help to counteract some of the problems of registering to vote
or voter purges?
Mr. Ho. Well, in the case of overly aggressive voter
purges, same-day registration, I think, is a perfect safety net
for that kind of situation. So someone gets flagged. They get
removed because the state thinks that that person has moved,
but then the person can show up on Election Day and say,
actually, you made a mistake. I'm still here. I'm still
eligible, and you should let me cast a ballot.
Mr. Raskin. And we heard testimony from a lot of frustrated
Americans who said they had no idea they had been removed from
the polls. They had not moved out of state. They showed up at
the polls, and then they were told they couldn't vote, and if
there was no same-day voter registration vehicle, they were
just out of luck.
Mr. Ho. Right.
Mr. Raskin. And who are they going to sue to get their
democracy back, right?
So, all right. With that, I am going to turn to the ranking
member, Mr. Roy. Oh, I am sorry. Mrs. Miller, you were going to
be called on first.
Thank you very much.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of you
for being here today.
I was formerly a county party chair in West Virginia, and I
have spent countless hours with county clerks to ensure that
the elections held in my state were fair. They have my utmost
respect. They work very hard.
I am proud that West Virginia is a leader in fighting voter
fraud. The state is continuously looking to ensure that we have
clean and accurate voter rolls. The West Virginia secretary of
state also utilizes technology to ensure that voters can easily
find their polling place and know who is on their ballot before
the election.
He has also implemented a program where he goes into the
high schools in every county to talk to them about voting and,
you know, registering to vote at 18, and how important it is
for them to do so.
My colleagues across the aisle recently passed a bill that
mandates a one size fits all approach to Federalize our
elections. H.R. 1 is a textbook example of a top-down approach
that will not only be a disaster to implement, but will also
result in more voter fraud.
In California, there have been multiple cases throughout
the years of dead people voting, individuals voting multiple
times, and noncitizens voting in our elections. This is
unacceptable, but instances like this will not only increase if
H.R. 1 is ever enacted into law.
Ms. Phillips, how could data sharing, both within states
and between states, help improve voting practices?
Ms. Phillips. Thank you for the question.
Absolutely, more information is better. Giving--equipping
our election officials to do their job will result in cleaner
rolls, and that is the ultimate goal is the most accurate and
complete rolls that we can possibly get.
Mrs. Miller. Are there roadblocks that prevent states from
sharing that data?
Ms. Phillips. There might be. There might be various
privacy laws or different state laws. But I think that it
should be--states should be encouraged to enact laws that allow
them to share the information with other states.
Mrs. Miller. And would those be state laws?
Ms. Phillips. There could be. Yes.
Mrs. Miller. Okay. How can we encourage those states to
share their data?
Ms. Phillips. I think that should be the focus. Rather than
try to Federalize voter registration, list maintenance, it
should be incumbent upon the states and ensure that the states
understand that this should be a priority.
Mrs. Miller. From my experience working in the elections, I
have heard from county clerks that it is very difficult to
remove deceased individuals from the voter rolls. Can you speak
to how criminals exploit this loophole in our system?
Ms. Phillips. Certainly. It is difficult because there--
because of the lack of data sharing, because of the fact that
we are an increasingly mobile people, and people may pass away
in states other than the states in which they are registered.
So that it's a difficult thing to detect unless election
officials are actively working to seek it out. And that kind of
those having deceased voters on the rolls is just ripe for
voter fraud, certainly, yes.
Mrs. Miller. So if grandma went to live with her daughter
in another state and then passes away, nobody contacts her
original residence to let them know. Correct?
Ms. Phillips. That might be true. Certainly it's not the
first thing on a relative's mind to contact the election
officials. And if the election officials are relying only upon
county death records, then that information will not be passed
to them through that mechanism.
Mrs. Miller. It might even be possible if they then go to
sell grandma's house that somehow one part of the courthouse
might let another part of the courthouse know that the
individual is selling that house because the owner is deceased?
Ms. Phillips. That's--it's not something that you see very
often. There usually is a very clear chain of information
coming from county clerks to the election officials. And so if
that information is not being shared via death records, then
the county--the elections officials need to seek it out
actively.
Mrs. Miller. What is the process to remove a deceased
individual from the voter rolls, and how long does it normally
take?
Ms. Phillips. That's state dependent. So if a death record
is received, in many states then the removal is upon receipt.
But that does vary from state to state based on their law.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you. I pass back my time.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
We go now to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri's
First District, Mr. Clay.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
holding this hearing.
Let me start out by mentioning to Mrs. Miller and Ms.
Phillips that my first congressional election in 2000, I wound
up in court on Election Day because the city of St. Louis Board
of Elections had illegally purged 30,000 voters in our
district. So the point of this is that I think election
authorities should err on the side of caution.
It is already difficult enough to get Americans to
participate in the process. So how dare you wholesale remove
people from rolls? How dare you do that? And it is not all
right.
So let us be for real, Mrs. Miller, about what these states
are doing and election authorities are doing to lessen the
number of voter----
Mr. Cloud. I believe you need to make your remarks to the
chair.
Mr. Clay. No, I am talking to this committee. So don't tell
me who I need to talk to.
Let me start with Mr. Ho. Mr. Ho, the state of Florida just
recently passed a ballot initiative to allow those with felony
convictions to be re-enfranchised. And I understand that the
majority in the Florida state legislature has engaged in some
trickery, some underhandedness to not allow these people and to
erect barriers for those returning citizens to re-register to
vote. Can you or Ms. Perez shed some light on that?
Mr. Ho. Yes, I'd be happy to speak to that, Congressman
Clay. So as you noted last year, Florida voters overwhelmingly
approved a ballot initiative that would restore voting rights
to people upon completion of their felony conviction, subject
to a few limited exceptions. And it was, I think, hailed as a
just major, major leap forward for our democracy.
Maybe the greatest single act of enfranchisement since 18-
year-olds got the right to vote because there were 1.4 million
Floridians who had completed their sentences, were back in
society, but were permanently barred from voting under
Florida's constitution. Florida was one of only four states
that did that. And because it's so big, it, you know, affected
a lot of people.
What is happening now on the floor of the legislature is a
shame. The legislature is considering bills that would require
people not only to have finished their incarceration terms of
their sentences--probation, parole, and whatever--but also
repay legal financial obligations.
Mr. Clay. Oh, that is prior to 1965 Voting Rights Act, like
a poll tax.
Mr. Ho. Fines, fees, and restitution.
Mr. Clay. How racist.
Mr. Ho. Well----
Mr. Clay. How racist.
Mr. Ho [continuing]. it's--I think if they go forward with
it, it would be a huge mistake. It would be contrary to the
will of Florida voters. And you know, it would really, I think,
criminalize essentially poverty and lock people out because
they can't afford to pay fees.
Mr. Clay. Ms. Perez, anything to add?
Ms. Perez. I would also add to my good friend Dale's
comments, it's also counterproductive. If we want people to be
successfully reintegrating into our society, we need to make
them a stakeholder. We are a country that believes in second
chances. We are a country that believes that people can rise to
the challenge. And if we are going to be sending a message that
we want everybody participating in voting, we need to not be
engaging in political shenanigans to try and thwart the will of
the people.
I would note that Amendment 4 received more support on
Election Day than any candidate in the state of Florida did.
And for that reason, I would hope that the state of Florida
enacts Amendment 4 as it was adopted by the people and
eliminates this blot that had been on Florida.
Mr. Clay. And it is the height of hypocrisy from my
colleague on the other side to talk about this is about
election integrity when we all know what it is about. We all
know what it is about.
Ms. Chapman, you mentioned a recent report that your
organization issued on the elimination of polling places. Do
you have any in my state of Missouri that we need to be
concerned about?
Ms. Chapman. We studied jurisdictions that were formerly
covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. We studied a
sampling, about half of those jurisdictions. So, unfortunately,
Missouri is not included in that report, but we're happy to do
some research and get back to you about that.
Mr. Clay. And I thank the panel for their response, and I
yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
And next, we come to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Cloud.
Mr. Cloud. I yield to the ranking member.
Mr. Roy. I appreciate that, Mr. Cloud, my friend from
Texas.
Given that our friend Mrs. Miller from West Virginia is not
here to respond, I assume that my colleague Mr. Clay is not
impugning the character of Mrs. Miller from West Virginia and
implying that, for some reason, she has any motives other than
wanting to ensure that voter integrity and that the rolls in
West Virginia are the best that they could be to ensure the
integrity of our elections in the United States.
Mr. Raskin. And I certainly did not hear that, and I don't
think it was the intent----
Mr. Clay. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. Roy. Yes, I would.
Mr. Clay. I would never impugn Mrs. Miller's integrity, but
I will criticize the tactics of your party in every state
legislature that has seen the coloration of your electorate.
Now that is what I am talking about. That is what the 1965
Voting Rights Act was about, to allow more people of color to
participate in the process.
You and I know what the history was. So let us not act like
it didn't happen and that this is about voter integrity when
you know it is not.
Mr. Roy. Reclaiming my time, what I would suggest is that
by the very nature of even that, it is still impugning the
motives and what my character--or the character of what my
colleague Mrs. Miller was talking about with respect to what
she believes is critical and what I share and what I believe is
critical with respect to the integrity of voter rolls. It has
nothing to do with color. It has nothing to do with----
Mr. Clay. Mr. Roy----
Mr. Roy [continuing]. race. It has everything in the world
to do with assuring that citizens and people that are supposed
to vote are voting.
Mr. Raskin. And then, Mr. Roy, I think the gentleman has
disclaimed any interest in impugning the motives of Mrs.
Miller, and no one is impugning her motives in any way or
impugning any adverse intentions on her part.
Mr. Roy. I will yield back to Mr. Cloud then.
Mr. Raskin. Okay.
Mr. Cloud. Thank you.
So, true story. Someone recently moved into my district and
from another state and dutifully went to the local library to
try to check out a book, but did not have proof of residence,
so immediately went to the DMV to try to get a driver's
license. Still not having proof of residency, this person
walked into the voter registration office and without proving
their residency was able to attain a voter registration card,
to which they took to the DMV to get a driver's license, to
which they took to the library to be able to check out a book.
So I guess just the moral of the story is, is we can be
secure in knowing that our books are well protected in our
Nation. I am not so sure about the vote, especially in Texas at
the moment, where we have, as was mentioned, 100,000 people who
just last month crossed our border.
Texas is not given the resources needed to protect our
border, and yet we are also not necessarily--our efforts to
protect our vote are challenged.
Mr. Ho, do you think that illegal aliens should be allowed
to vote?
Mr. Ho. No, and I'm not aware of any state that does so.
What I think we need to do is take a step back from this notion
that there are hordes of people crossing the Rio Grande so they
can vote for agricultural commissioner or something like that.
I mean----
Mr. Cloud. I wasn't suggesting that. Thank you. You
answered my question.
Should states then be allowed to put in just reasonable
protections to secure that someone who is registering to vote
is a citizen?
Mr. Ho. I think the challenge here is defining what
constitutes reasonable.
Mr. Cloud. Sure.
Mr. Ho. Because there are a lot of things that sound
reasonable, but in practice end up being quite destructive. So
Kansas, for example, passed a law that required people to show
a birth certificate or a passport when you register to vote on
the theory that we need to make people prove that they're
citizens in order to register to vote. And what they ended up
doing was stopping 30,000 Kansans from registering to vote, all
to stop a problem of approximately two noncitizens per year who
were getting registered mostly because of mistakes by DMV
workers.
Mr. Cloud. I think even a broader question is who makes
that estimation, and the question before this committee is, of
course, where the jurisdiction lies, mainly with states or with
the Federal Government?
Without objection, I would like to submit a few articles
for the record. ``Texas Woman Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison
for Voting Illegally in the 2016 Election.'' ``Robstown
Residents Indicated on Multiple Counts of Voter Fraud.'' ``Ten
Oregon Voters Plead Guilty to Voter Fraud in 2016 Presidential
Election.'' ``Texas Court Upholds Conviction of Woman Sentenced
to 8 Years in Prison for Voter Fraud.'' ``James City Man
Indicated on Voter Fraud Charges.'' ``Edinburg Mayor, Wife
Latest to be Charged with Illegal Voting.'' ``Elmwood Park
Mayor Charged with Voter Fraud Resigns.''
``Salvadoran National Indicted on Immigration and Voter
Fraud Violations in East Texas.'' ``Campaign Manager Charged
with Buying Votes in Donna, Texas, School Board Election.''
``Two Campaign Workers Admitted to Buying Votes in Hidalgo
County, Texas, Elections.'' ``Mexican National Who Took
Cousin's Identity to Vote Illegally to be Deported.''
Mr. Raskin. Without objection, they will all be entered.
Mr. Raskin. And now I recognize the vice chair of the
committee, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, you are recognized.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you.
You know, I find it, the documents that were just submitted
to the record, quite interesting from my colleague from Texas
because these are all people and cases of indictment and where
people went to jail. In Fort Worth, Texas, there was a woman,
Crystal Mason, a 43-year-old mother of four, that went and was
sentenced to prison for five years for voting when she was
ineligible.
Ms. Mason was released from prison, and she thought that
she was eligible to vote. She thought that she was eligible to
vote. She had served her debt to society, was released, and
didn't know at the time that she was ineligible. So she cast
her ballot. She was identified in the state of Texas, put up in
handcuffs, and was thrown right back in jail. To make an
example of her, I would imagine, the judge sentenced her to
five years in prison.
All of those cases that were submitted to the congressional
Record are travesties because I will tell you a different side
of this coin. In 2017, the New York City Board of Elections
admitted that it broke the law when it improperly removed
voters from the rolls just ahead of the Presidential primary
elections, including an improper purge of 117,000 voters in
Brooklyn alone.
In the name of inaccuracies and all of this fearmongering
about people who shouldn't be voting, which we know is not the
case, 220,000 voters, people in New York were disenfranchised
and removed of their right to vote. And the Queens Board of
Election allegedly used Ancestry.com as the basis for removing
people from the rolls.
This is what we are talking about, and this is what is
being done in the name of this false campaign of voter fraud,
which we know, study upon study, to not be true. So beyond
that, let us say imagine it is my voting day, and instead of
being 29, I am 79. I can't walk easily down the street. I need
help getting down stairs, and I do not have a computer.
I make it to the bottom of my New York City building where
my voting location has been for close to half a century only to
find out it was moved the night before to a new location 3/
10ths of a mile away. At the time, New York City does not have
early voting, no mail-in ballots, no same-day registration
either. And so, as a result, I cannot vote. I have missed out
on my constitutional right.
Now imagine it is 2018, and I am 29 years old, and I am
running for Congress in my home borough. And I show up to my
own electoral precinct, and I can't vote. I am told that my
vote--my polling location is virtually shut down for several
hours because every polling machine is broken.
Both of these stories are true. Both of these things
happened. The first happened in 2012 when the polling site was
moved with only a few days' notice, making it nearly impossible
for elderly people of color to get to participate in Election
Day. Because what we have found is that these poll site changes
in New York City are disproportionately concentrated in
communities of color.
One hundred forty-nine polling sites were moved throughout
the city, and that is 14 percent of the total polling locations
that were moved.
Ms. Chapman, do you find that moving these voting sites
occurs at higher rates in communities of color?
Ms. Chapman. Yes. Actually, our report, ``The Great Poll
Closure,'' one of the key findings was that polling place
closures primarily happen in communities of color. And now that
we do not have the full protections of the Voting Rights Act,
there is little notice. There is little transparency, and
there's little actual input from the communities that are most
impacted by these changes.
So those are some of our recommendations that we would like
to put forth.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And so have you found that states with a
history, in fact, those that were subjected to the Voting
Rights Act, because they had disproportionately targeted
communities of color and disenfranchising communities of color
in the past, now that that provision has been lifted, are those
states back to targeting communities of color?
Ms. Chapman. Yes, they are. And actually, we're currently
conducting our analysis for--I'm looking at 2018 data. Some of
the states that have done this the most are Arizona, Texas, and
Georgia, all states that were formerly covered by Section 5 of
the Voting Rights Act.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And Ms. Chapman, were there states that
restricted or tried to restrict early voting in the 2018 mid-
term elections? Because we know that these changes, sometimes
the only way that we can reverse the impacts of purges is
through same-day voter registration and, rather, through early
voting. So were there states that restricted or tried to
restrict early voting in the 2018 mid-terms?
Ms. Chapman. Yes. And I think with early voting, it's
really about where the early voting locations are placed. And
for instance, we saw in Florida, there was a decision that
allowed early voting locations to be on college campuses, and
that was not equitably distributed.
Our organization actually worked on the ground in the
Florida, and we were able to advocate for an early voting site
at Florida International University, which is primarily
Hispanic. But we were not able to do that at FAMU in
Tallahassee, which is an HBCU.
So it's really important that these early voting sites can
be accessible to communities of color.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. The gentlelady's time has expired. Thank you.
Mr. Roy?
Mr. Roy. Mr. Hice, please.
Mr. Raskin. We will go to Mr. Hice.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding
this hearing.
I just believe everyone in this room wants voter security,
and in that regard, we may have different views and
perspectives, but we want honest elections. I have heard some
remarks about my home state of Georgia that I believe need to
be set right. The record needs to be set straight. I have just
some basic facts.
Georgia voters of all demographics turned out in record
numbers for the 2018 mid-term elections. It nearly matched the
Presidential election of 2016. Fifty-five percent of the
eligible voter population turned out for the 2018 mid-terms.
That is significantly higher than in the past, compared to 38
percent in 2014, 40 percent in 2010.
And I am proud that the turnout by minorities increased
dramatically compared with 2014. African-American turnout
increased 32.5 percent. Hispanic community, 97 percent. Asian
American community, 98 percent. This does not sound like a
voter suppression campaign in Georgia because a voter
suppression campaign did not occur. We had record numbers of
minority groups voting in Georgia, and I want the record
straight on that.
With that, I would like to begin some questions for each of
you. I don't want a dissertation. I want a yes or no on this
because they are just basic questions.
Ms. Perez, I will begin with you. Do you believe that only
U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote in U.S. elections?
Please put your mic on.
Ms. Perez. Sure. Yes.
Mr. Hice. Ms. Chapman?
Ms. Chapman. Yes. That's the position of the Leadership
Conference.
Mr. Ho. Yes, with a caveat. A number of local jurisdictions
like Tacoma Park in Maryland permit legal permanent residents
to vote in local elections----
Mr. Hice. I am not talking local. I am talking U.S.
election. Should U.S. citizens be the only ones allowed to
vote?
Mr. Ho. Yes.
Ms. Phillips. Yes.
Mr. Hice. All right. Do you believe a person should be
allowed--should be forced to show proof of citizenship to
register to vote?
Ms. Perez. I do not believe someone should show documentary
proof of citizenship. Every time someone registers, they have
to present some kind of citizenship affirmation.
Mr. Hice. Should they prove that they are a citizen when
they register, yes or no?
Ms. Perez. Should they, or do they?
Mr. Hice. Should they? Do you believe a person should show
proof of citizenship to register to vote?
Ms. Perez. I would say that they should, and they do.
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Ms. Chapman. I agree with my colleague, Ms. Myrna Perez----
Mr. Hice. Is that a yes or a no?
Ms. Chapman. Yes.
Mr. Ho. I'm sorry, Congressman Hice. I don't--I'm not sure
I understand what you mean by ``proof.''
Mr. Hice. Well, I mean, should they--when they register to
vote, should they prove that they are a citizen?
Mr. Ho. And what do you mean by----
Mr. Hice. In whatever way. I am not defining--should they
prove? If all of you say only a U.S. citizen should vote, so
should they prove that they are a citizen before they register?
Mr. Ho. With an attestation under oath, as is done in 48
states and the District of Columbia----
Mr. Hice. All right. Yes or no?
Ms. Phillips. Yes, or their citizenship should be affirmed
in some way.
Mr. Hice. Okay. If not required to show proof of
citizenship to register, should they show proof of citizenship
when they cast a ballot?
Ms. Perez. You're asking the counterfactual. So if we lived
in a regime where they didn't have to do it, should they have
to do it somewhere else?
Mr. Hice. Right.
Ms. Perez. I've not pondered it yet.
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Ms. Chapman. Can you repeat the question, please?
Mr. Hice. Should they show proof of citizenship when they
cast a ballot?
Ms. Chapman. The Leadership Conference doesn't have a
position on that.
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Mr. Ho. I mean, everyone does when they register to vote by
signing an attestation under penalty of perjury.
Mr. Hice. All right. So--I am sorry, Ms. Phillips?
Ms. Phillips. Their citizenship should be confirmed before
they're put on the rolls.
Mr. Hice. Okay. That is the point. So all of you agree that
only citizens should vote, and at some point in the process,
that ought to be confirmed. Are we in agreement with that? Only
one is nodding their head.
If U.S. citizens--and all of you said yes--only citizens
should vote in the U.S. elections, but now you are not saying
they should prove at any point that they are a citizen?
Ms. Perez. Sir, I think--if I may respectfully suggest that
the confusion that we are experiencing is that people do have
to demonstrate citizenship when they register to vote, they
have to attest under oath that they are, in fact, a citizen.
And that has proven a successful means of demonstrating
citizenship. I don't think----
Mr. Hice. The issue here is having clean rolls, that we
know that only people who are citizens are voting.
Ms. Perez. We all agree that our rolls should be clean, and
I think we all agree that election administrators should take
reasonable steps to make sure that they're as clean as
possible. The part that you're getting some hesitation, I
believe, is because of the suggestion as to what is appropriate
proof, and what is going to be the damage that is caused by
demanding certain levels of proof?
And some of us are a little bit gun shy because we have
seen requirements of proof being proposed that would have a
catastrophic effect on voter registration----
Mr. Hice. And some of us are gun shy because we haven't.
And I know my time has expired.
But thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
I come now to the gentleman from California's 34th
District, Mr. Gomez.
Mr. Gomez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In 2007-2008, I had the privilege to go campaign in
Democratic primaries throughout the country. Everything from
Iowa to New Hampshire to Pennsylvania, Texas, Puerto Rico--and
yes, Puerto Rico is in the country--all the way to California
and Washington. And I can tell you, and I can tell the American
people, that democracy is not created equal in the United
States of America.
People think it is, and that is what the--that is the what
is wrong. And it is not.
In New Hampshire, I saw a state trooper in a polling booth
sitting right at the registration table. I am sure why you need
a state trooper. I don't know what they are going to steal, but
there was a state trooper.
When we were campaigning in Texas, we were asking for voter
rolls in certain counties in Texas, and we were told that there
is no Democrats registered in this county, out of the whole
county, not one Democrat.
I have seen where polling places just got moved. So what we
have continuously seen is the disenfranchisement of different
populations to this country through different means, right?
Requiring the ID laws is just another means of voter
suppression, another means to disenfranchise individuals, as
all of you know.
We are trying to change that. My colleague from I think
West Virginia always loves to point out California, if it is
California on voter fraud, California on climate change,
California on housing. I am proud to be a Californian. We are
an inclusive state. We bring people together.
Yes, we have problems. But you know what? We say you come
here, you have a place in California. And what we try to do is
we actually tried to pass a law that understands that people,
when it comes to exercising the right to vote, that you
shouldn't--it shouldn't be in the affirmative, right? It is a
right.
So we passed a voter registration law, an automatic voter
reg law in California. I was there when we did it. It actually
just automatically registers people to vote as they sign up for
their driver's license. We have seen a huge spike in the number
of people who are registering to vote, and we have also seen a
huge spike of people turning out to vote.
Each election, we have to see how it kind of continues to
go, but each election you see it happening more and more,
especially amongst the young people. But young people are
turning out, and that is a good thing because then, all of a
sudden, elected officials have to consider more what the young
people want from their politicians.
So, Ms. Perez, how is it that voters who are legally
registered to vote are purged from the rolls? And what is wrong
with the purging process?
Ms. Perez. There are a number of problems, but they
essentially boil down to two issues, bad underlying data or bad
processes. You'll have some instances in which someone will get
a sloppy list. I am reminded of a situation in Arkansas in
which some government officials were trying to compile a list
of people who had been disenfranchised because of a criminal
conviction, but they were overbroad, and they actually got
people who had gotten divorces and parking tickets and were
somehow court involved, but not because of a criminal
conviction.
And that list was passed on, and the election
administrators that didn't have the resources took it as gospel
and removed people.
We have other incidences in which people will be looking at
information, like, for example, the Master Death File that the
Social Security Administration produces, and will have overly
broad what we call computer matches. So they won't be looking
at enough unique identifiers to not be able to confuse Myrna
Perez who lives in Jersey City with Myrna Perez who lives in
San Antonio, Texas.
And unfortunately, with purges, it's because they happen in
an office, you know, behind closed doors, voters do not find
out about it until it's too late. We will also, unfortunately,
see examples, as the Member from New York indicated, where
folks are violating certain guardrails and protections like
disenfranchising people too close to an election.
Mr. Gomez. Before I run out of time, how does automatic
voter registration help voters who have been purged from rolls?
Ms. Perez. What it does is that when someone has been
purged, and they're able to go to the driver's license office,
they're able to get back in quicker. In fact, one thing that
might be surprising to people is that Georgia's automatic voter
registration increased registration by a ton, and we think it's
because there were so many people that were eligible to be
registered because they had been previously purged.
Mr. Gomez. Thank you, Ms. Perez.
I yield back.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
[Presiding] Thank you. Thank you. The gentleman's time has
expired.
The chair now recognizes--the chair now recognizes the
Member from Kentucky's Fourth District, Mr. Massie.
Oh, is he not here? All right. The chair now recognizes the
distinguished ranking member for five minutes for questioning,
Mr. Roy of Texas.
Mr. Roy. I thank my friend from New York for recognizing
me, and I thank you all for your patience today.
Ms. Phillips, question. We have heard a lot about purging.
Can you explain a little bit about--as quickly as you can, so
we can get to some other questions--some of the merits behind
wanting to have clean voter rolls, making sure that we know
that we have got a strong voter system, and what some of the
reasons are for having that?
Ms. Phillips. Sure. Reasonable list maintenance is not only
the law, it's good practice. So it's the foundation for
everything. It eases the burden on the election officials
because there's less inaccurate rolls that they have to
maintain. And then also it can make voting lines shorter. It
can make voting go faster. It just--it is good policy.
Mr. Roy. Do local communities often know best where the
proper place to put a voting location is for the people who
live there, maybe perhaps better than people in Washington,
DC.?
Ms. Phillips. Yes. Absolutely.
Mr. Roy. Are there cases where there are restrictions on
where we can have a voting location? For example, I am aware of
at least one case, and I think it was in North Carolina, where
someone--where it was required that they move a voting location
because there was an ADA restriction at a certain building
because the building was under construction. And then they
ended up moving the building to another location, which didn't
have the proper ADA access. And it was removed or something
from the city.
The point is, they didn't have the ability because of
various voting restrictions in being able to find a place to be
able to go put a place where people could access it. Are there
a lot of different angles and things that occur in local
communities that factor in where you might want to put a voting
location?
Ms. Phillips. Absolutely, yes. And they are closer to the
people, so the local election officials know best.
Mr. Roy. Is it surprising in the slightest bit that a
location that has been under restriction from Washington, DC,
about where polling locations are placed, for whatever reasons,
that that restriction was then lifted, that there would then be
different polling locations and/or reduced or changed polling
location sin that particular jurisdiction, for whatever reason?
Ms. Phillips. No, that's not surprising.
Mr. Roy. And if we know that there are certain
jurisdictions in this country that had to comply with whatever
was being decided from Washington, and they decided to change
polling locations, is it necessary that we know--do we know
what the motives were behind moving the polling locations,
other than wanting to make sure that it was in the best
interests of the people in that state for those that were
deciding it?
Ms. Phillips. No. And certainly, we shouldn't assume that
there were bad motives, if none are presented.
Mr. Roy. Can I ask a quick question on the question
following up my friend from Georgia to each of the three of you
all--Ms. Perez, Ms. Chapman, Mr. Ho? The question was asked
about whether there should be questions--or, first of all,
whether or not you believe that those who are here illegally in
the United States should be able to vote. Each of you, I think,
agreed no. At least in Federal elections in your case, I think,
Mr. Ho, clarifying that.
And then we had asked a question about whether or not you
should have to prove your identity as being a citizen. Each of
you discussed attestations that you are, in fact, a citizen.
And so my question is, do you believe that you should be
required to show voter identification when you register, not
just attest, yes or no? Should you have to be able to show a
passport or any kind of documentation and combined with
something like either a birth certificate or some indication
other than you just attesting that you are a citizen.
I am not saying that is a good policy or bad. I am just
curious, yes or no?
Ms. Perez. No.
Mr. Roy. Okay. Ms. Chapman?
Ms. Chapman. I mean, there's Federal law for first-time
voters that they're required to show some type of form of ID.
Not photo ID, but either a utility bill or a bank statement or
a passport.
Mr. Roy. Mr. Ho?
Mr. Ho. I'd say no, Congressman Roy, but with some
flexibility. There are--well, there's a wide range of
identification requirements. Thirty-three states have some kind
of identification requirements at the polls, but only about
half a dozen have extremely strict ID requirements that require
you to show one of a limited form--one of a limited set of
forms of government-issued ID. And those are the laws that we
really take issue with because they don't provide a sufficient
range of options for voters who either lack those specific IDs
or any ID at all to still be able to participate.
Mr. Roy. So yes or--you say that was no, though?
Mr. Ho. No, but I think there's a lot of variation in ID
laws, and we don't necessarily think that all of them are
pernicious.
Mr. Roy. Ms. Phillips, do you think that showing a form of
photo ID and/or combined with proof of citizenship, birth
certificate, something should be required in addition to just
attesting that you are a citizen?
Ms. Phillips. I think that it's good policy. Certainly what
we have now is not working, and maybe that means that we couple
the opportunity to show proof along with giving state officials
the opportunity to verify citizenship.
Mr. Roy. And by not working, I assume you mean in relation
to proving cases of voter fraud, whether it is 1 or 1,000 or
10,000, whatever the percentage may be. We can talk about the
numbers, have a hearing on the numbers. But I assume that is
what you mean is that it is not working based on that?
You go ahead, and then all my time is up.
Ms. Phillips. That's part of it, but specifically with the
citizenship check. The check box yes and no, yes or no is not
working.
Mr. Roy. Could you--well, could you expand on that, and
then my time is up?
Thank you.
Ms. Phillips. Sure, sure. So right now on the form, there's
a simple check box, and then in the signature box, it also says
``I affirm.'' And what we've found is that there have been
instances where somebody has checked, no, I'm not a citizen,
and they have still been registered to vote. Or they've not
checked anything, and they've still been registered to vote.
Mr. Roy. Thank you.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you. The gentleman's time has
expired.
The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentlelady from
New York, Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, I thank you for recognizing me, and I
really find a lot of the testimony today very alarming. And I
particularly find purging voters from files without any notice
or followup really depriving American citizens of their right
to vote.
My colleague from the great state of New York, Ms. Ocasio-
Cortez, just testified that over 225,000 New Yorkers in the
great borough of Brooklyn were purged in a recent election and
that she tried to vote and was not allowed to vote. And this is
very troubling that people--I would say that many of our
ancestors gave their lives for us to have the right to vote.
And for some technicality that they have moved the voting
place or purged you or not even told you about it, and then
taking your right to vote away from you is really against a
basic American Value. So I really would like to ask Mr. Ho, who
is representing the ACLU, some questions about what we can do
about this.
Now the same-day registration appears to be one
alternative. If you go to vote in your voting place and they
have moved it, and you can't vote, it seems like you should be
able to register to vote and be able to vote that same day. So
I would like to ask you, Mr. Ho, can you speak about the
importance of Election Day registration as a countermeasure to
reports of voter suppression that we are hearing across our
country?
Mr. Ho. Thank you for that question, Congressman Maloney--
Congresswoman Maloney, excuse me.
It's a crucial safety net. If people have been removed from
the rolls erroneously, Election Day registration permits them
to get back on the rolls on Election Day. And you know, to be
clear, there may have been some reason, you know, 20, 30, 40
years ago to have 20, 30 days of a cutoff between the end of
registration and the election. Back then, people were
registering to vote on pen and paper. You know, you had to send
them somewhere and then compile them by hand. Maybe we were
still using IBM punch card machines to tally votes.
But today, in today's online, electronic, on-demand world,
there's really no reason why we can't verify voters'
eligibility in real time, the way that most Americans expect
their transactions to take place these days. And the proof is
in the pudding. The states that have Election Day registration
see turnout that's three to nine percentage points higher than
the states that don't.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, H.R. 1 is part of the first bills that
we passed. It had many reforms in it. One of which was same-day
voting. And it appears that many people could benefit from it.
Can you give me examples of some people who would benefit from
same-day voting?
I have also heard complaints in my office that they have
gone to vote, and for some reason, there is a problem with
their address or address change or some other technicality. And
I don't think anyone should be deprived of the right to vote
because of a technicality. Could you give me some more examples
of people that should be allowed to vote, but there is voter
purging, or they are moving from one place to the other, or all
the machines are broken?
That is outrageous that all the machines are broken. Now if
you can deprive someone of the right to vote, to win an
election, all you have to do is go in and break every machine
in the district and have your voting machine work. I mean, this
is outrageous. I don't think anyone should be deprived of the
right to vote because a machine is broken.
Could you give other examples that we could understand?
Mr. Ho. Sure. In addition to people who have been purged
erroneously, there are people from demographics that move more
frequently, and maybe their address doesn't get updated.
Election Day registration would allow those people who are
undoubtedly eligible to vote. No one disputes that. But do the
simple thing of updating their address on the rolls on Election
Day. You think of the demographics that are more likely to be
affected by this. Low-income voters tend to move more
frequently. Young voters tend to move more frequently.
Mrs. Maloney. How does same-day voting affect voter
turnout?
Mr. Ho. The states that have it see turnout that's much
higher than the states that don't, on average. It's been in
existence in some states for over a few decades, and study
after study has shown that states that have Election Day
registration have significantly higher turnout, particularly
with low-income voters, voters of color----
Mrs. Maloney. Are you aware, Mr. Ho, of any instances of
voter fraud that came out of same-day election voting?
Mr. Ho. I'm not. And I don't think anyone has suggested
ever that, say, Wyoming or Iowa or, you know, Hawaii have more
voter fraud than states that are similar to those states, but
don't have Election Day registration. In fact, Election Day
registration is more secure than traditional registration
because it's done in person. It requires documents to verify a
person's residence and identity, and there are often other
safeguards in place as well to enhance the security of EDR
systems.
Mr. Raskin.
[Presiding] Thank you, Mr. Ho.
The gentlelady's time has expired. I come now to----
Mrs. Maloney. May I submit for further questions? Because
this is--we need to do something about this, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for having this hearing.
Mr. Raskin. You bet. You bet. We will pursue it.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie?
Oh, then Mr. Jordan.
Mr. Jordan. Ohio was before Kentucky.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. All right.
Mr. Jordan. I am kidding. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Jordan, you are recognized for five
minutes.
Mr. Jordan. Let me start with maybe the whole panel. Ms.
Perez, we will start with you. Should 16-year-olds be able to
vote?
Ms. Perez. We've not taken a position on that.
Mr. Jordan. That is why I am asking you.
Ms. Perez. Yes. The Brennan Center has not taken a position
on that.
Mr. Jordan. What do you think?
Ms. Perez. I think it should be studied. I think there's
certainly an excitement among young people and that there are
at a time where we have a number of people who are eligible to
vote, but not participating. It's really exciting to bring
people into the process.
Mr. Jordan. Sixteen-year-olds?
Ms. Perez. Right.
Mr. Jordan. Wow. Okay. Ms. Chapman?
Ms. Chapman. The Leadership Conference has not taken a
position on 16-year-old voting.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. ACLU?
Mr. Ho. We haven't. We have taken a position on
preregistration for 16-and 17-year-olds so that they can fill
out a form at that age, and then they'll automatically----
Mr. Jordan. That is all part of this--that is all part of
the AVR. It would be you just start earlier, right?
Mr. Ho. Well, I think, you know, a lot of people, they
register to vote at the DMV, and a lot of people get their
license when they're 16. But they don't go back for a number of
years until that license has expired. So letting 16--year-olds,
when they get their license, submit a form and then
automatically become registered when they're 18 we think makes
a lot of sense.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. Ms. Phillips?
Ms. Phillips. In my opinion, no.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. What about the--and this may have been
asked earlier--public financing of campaigns?
Ms. Perez. The Brennan Center supports certain public
financing campaigns. We were behind--we were in support of the
measures in H.R. 1.
Mr. Jordan. Ms. Chapman?
Ms. Chapman. The Leadership Conference also supported
measures in H.R. 1 that included those provisions.
Mr. Jordan. And is the ACLU there as well?
Mr. Ho. I don't think we have a position on public
financing.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. Ms. Phillips?
Ms. Phillips. Again, in my opinion, no.
Mr. Jordan. Yes, same here. What about non--let us go to
the one they--Ms. Perez, what about noncitizens voting? Have
you already--maybe you already talked about this when I had to
step out, but----
Ms. Perez. We certainly did cover it. I think our view is a
very strong one that only those folks who are eligible to vote
should be registering and voting, and right now, there are no
laws that allow noncitizens to vote in Federal elections. There
are certainly some states and localities that have made
different decisions.
Mr. Jordan. If you are going to do Election Day
registration, how do you safeguard? Because some states don't
have photo ID, how do you safeguard making sure just citizens
are voting if you are letting people walk in the day of
election and say ``I want to vote.'' What do you do?
Ms. Perez. There is a number of measures. One, you can have
an attestation requirement where people need to understand what
the eligibility rules are and then affirm that. There are
also----
Mr. Jordan. In your vision for Election Day registration,
do you want them to prove, individuals to prove they are a
citizen and resident of that state when they walk in to
register the day, actual day of the vote?
Ms. Perez. Respectfully, sir, they have. The attest to it
is under penalty of perjury. They can be prosecuted if they're
false for it. They have. In a trial, in anything that would be
viewed as proof. You have someone attesting to it under law.
I think where the dispute is over is whether or not they
should provide additional supplementary proof via documentation
that some people don't have, and we would be opposed to that.
Mr. Jordan. So let me just--I am just thinking practically.
In rural Ohio, in Ohio, the way we do it is you come in to
vote, whether you are voting early or whether you are voting
the day of the election, and you have to show a photo ID. You
have to do a signature that match, a signature match. And then
you get your ballot.
You are saying that same kind of thing would happen on
Election Day registration, that that is how it should work?
Ms. Perez. I'm saying that states have chosen different
methods. There are--and I want to make sure that Dale gets this
because this is an area that he is focusing on. But what
happens is that some states will use the same method that they
have for elections. In some instances, they will have
heightened measures on Election Day, a heightened
identification.
What we do know is that early--that Election Day
registration works. It brings people into the elections. The
folks that have it are very excited about it, and there are not
widespread claims of fraud.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. How about this whole opt-in--opt-in
versus----
Ms. Perez. Opt-out.
Mr. Jordan [continuing]. opt-out. So the way it worked now,
the burden--if someone didn't want to be registered to vote,
they would have to--they are going to automatically be opt-in
for every single person. And you would look at this as, I
guess, based on H.R. 1 when they are 16 years of age?
Ms. Perez. Just to clarify, sir, the current system in most
places that you have to affirmatively say please register me to
vote.
Mr. Jordan. Right.
Ms. Perez. The way automatic voter registration presumes it
is that you would flip the presumption and basically say
something----
Mr. Jordan. No, I get that.
Ms. Perez [continuing]. to akin of we would register you to
vote unless you decline. So everybody has the opportunity to
decline. Everybody is aware of the eligibility requirement.
Mr. Jordan. The opportunity to decline prior to?
Ms. Perez. There are different models. There are different
models. In most of the states that have automatic voter
registration, the opportunity to decline, should you choose to,
is at the agency. There are a handful of states that do it
through a postcard mailing later. For example, Oregon does
that. Alaska does that.
But most of the states allow you to opt out at the----
Mr. Jordan. How many states do it now? I am just curious.
Ms. Perez. Fifteen, plus the District of Columbia.
Mr. Jordan. Okay. I am out of time.
Thank you.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
[Presiding] The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from
Washington, DC, Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much.
I really appreciate that Mr. Raskin is holding this hearing
and hold this hearing so early in session because I think that
indicates the importance we attach to the right to vote itself.
Of course, I represent the Nation's capital, which is the
ultimate example of disenfranchisement in our country. The
people I represent are No. 1 per capita in taxes paid to
support the U.S. Government.
I do have the vote in this committee. I chair committees,
but I have no final vote on the House floor. Thanks to the
Democrats after a court decision some years ago, I do have the
right to vote on the House floor in the committee of the whole.
But you can imagine what citizens who pay the highest taxes in
the United States feel about not having the same rights as
their fellow citizens.
My question goes to enforcement. We have learned that the
Civil Rights Division has filed exactly zero lawsuits to
prevent voting discrimination based on Section 2 of the Voting
Rights Act. Mr. Ho, is that your understanding?
Mr. Ho. That is my understanding as well.
Ms. Norton. Do you know of any other administration that
has completely failed to bring such suits, Section 2 suits?
Mr. Ho. I'm not aware of another administration that has
failed to bring a single lawsuit under Section 2 of the Voting
Rights Act.
Ms. Norton. The information I have is that the Obama
Administration brought five suits under Section 2. The Bush
Administration, 15. The Clinton Administration, 16. This is
very irregular. You would think that there was no more voting
discrimination.
Mr. Ho, do you believe that the prevalence of voting--of
voter suppression has worsened since this administration took
power? Is there evidence to that effect?
Mr. Ho. It's hard to say, actually, because we really
started to see a spike in activity, I'd say, prior to the 2012
election. In between the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections,
there was a lot of voter suppression activity.
Ms. Norton. What do you think accounted for that?
Mr. Ho. Well, I do think it's--you know, it's hard not to
look at what happened in the 2008 election. We had the most
diverse electorate in our Nation's history. We elected our
Nation's first African-American President. We had young people
turning out at a higher rate than they had in over a decade.
And for the first time in a generation, we saw a wave of
laws designed to make registration for voting harder, and they
disproportionately hit precisely those demographics that turned
out in record numbers in 2008. So when you're in our line of
work, it's hard to look at that and not think that that's not
anything but a direct reaction to the diversification of this
country and this electorate.
Ms. Norton. Now if you look at the Justice Department's
website, you see that there are only four lawsuits. And
remember, no Section 2 lawsuits to enforce the Voting Rights
Act, but four lawsuits of any kind have been filed to enforce
the voting rights statute.
Now I am looking at their website, does that seem about
right to any of you, or Mr. Ho?
Mr. Ho. I haven't looked it recently, but that's consistent
with my recollection, though.
Ms. Norton. How concerned should we be about that number?
Mr. Ho. Well, I think, you know, since 1965 voters have
relied upon the Department of Justice to vindicate their
rights. The private bar does what we can, but we lack the
resources of the United States Department of Justice, I think,
quote obviously. It's meant a lot more work for us and I think
a lot more unmet needs in this time.
Ms. Norton. Could I ask any of you, is there anything you
think the Congress could do, given what appears to be the
reluctance of the administration to enforce any part of the
Voting Rights Act? Is there anything we should be doing?
Ms. Perez. I would say H.R. 1. I think H.R. 1 contains many
of the best thinking solutions to the problems that have been
vexing elections and administrations for quite a number of
years, and it reflects a movement and a strong statement that
in this country, it doesn't matter if you are rich or poor,
black or white. If you are an eligible American, we want to
bring you into the democracy, and we expect you to have an
equal and fair opportunity to be voting.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I should say the
H.R. 1 also contains H.R. 51, the D.C. voting rights of the
D.C. statehood Act. And I appreciate that every Member of this
subcommittee is a cosponsor of H.R. 51.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin.
[Presiding] Thank you very much, Ms. Norton.
And yes, indeed, I am a proud cosponsor of that, and we
come now to the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie.
Mr. Massie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to give you all or as many of you as I can a chance
to answer this, but could you summarize some of the
requirements, the identification requirements, the things that
seem reasonable at first, but then tend to disenfranchise
voters when they register or try to vote? Could you give me a
brief summary of what some of those things are?
Ms. Perez. I'd be delighted. And of course, it's a very
state-specific inquiry because different----
Mr. Massie. Correct.
Ms. Perez [continuing]. communities in the state will
have----
Mr. Massie. Some of these are proposed maybe, and some of
them are in place already in states.
Ms. Perez. Well, but also the communities are different.
Mr. Massie. Right.
Ms. Perez. And they will have different needs and different
access. But one of the things that make us provide further
study and inquiry is whether or not it's a very limited list of
identification, whether or not it has to be government issued
and who that government can be.
It is whether or not there is an alternative for folks who
are eligible, but are--that don't have that kind of
identification and how accessible is that alternative. And the
other measure is what other measures are in place? Is this a
redundant barrier?
Some of the challenges that we are seeing with these laws
is that at every step in the process, there is a barrier that
is hard for some people to overcome. And when you have these
duplicative----
Mr. Massie. What type of barriers?
Ms. Perez. So let's take a situation in a state that has a
restriction on a voter registration group, right? You have
people that are not eligible to vote. I'm sorry. You have
people that are not voting. A community wants to go in and
register them, but can't because they can get hit with fines if
they don't do everything perfect. Or they have to go through
some training by some petty bureaucrat.
So you have one barrier to getting on the ballot that way.
Mr. Massie. Training, you would be opposed to having some
kind of training?
Ms. Perez. No, but the--I think there's training, but then
there's a requirement for training that is onerous and
inaccessible, like some of the things that are concerning folks
in Tennessee, like some of the things that were underlying some
of the concerns we had in the Florida case that Dale mentioned
earlier.
Mr. Massie. Let me give Dale a chance to answer. I am
sorry, Mr. Ho and Ms. Chapman. Mr. Ho?
Mr. Ho. Sure. So I think an example of a law that might
sound harmless to some people, but when it operates in practice
is quite devastating for voter registration is one that I
mentioned in my opening remarks, a law that Kansas had that
required people to show a birth certificate or a passport when
registering to vote in order to establish that they're United
States citizens.
Don't take it from me. Take it from the United States Court
of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which in a unanimous opinion
in 2016 by Judge Jerome Holmes, who was appointed by President
George W. Bush, found that the law had caused a mass denial of
a fundamental constitutional right. The court's words, not
mine.
Mr. Massie. Mass denial of a fundamental constitutional
right.
Mr. Ho. Correct.
Mr. Massie. Ms. Chapman, could you give me an example?
Ms. Chapman. Sure. I wanted to talk from personal
experience, having been a voting rights advocate on the ground
in the states. I worked in Wisconsin, along with----
Mr. Massie. Can you do it in about 30 seconds?
Ms. Chapman. Sure. I actually met a woman who was 90 years
old. She was born in Mississippi at home to a midwife, and she
did not have the ability to get a voter ID that was required by
the state because she never had a birth certificate. And her
daughter actually had to spend over $2,000 in legal fees in
order for her to obtain those types of documents.
She had been a poll worker her entire life. She never
missed an election.
Mr. Massie. I have got a minute and 20 seconds left. So
thank you very much.
Ms. Chapman. Yes, sure.
Mr. Massie. So would you say that these disproportionately
disenfranchise minorities?
Ms. Chapman. Yes. Disproportionately disenfranchise people
of color.
Mr. Massie. What about you, Ms. Perez?
Ms. Perez. I would say that people that have--yes, because
people that are more on the margins, that have lives that are
more complicated, that are unable to overcome these barriers,
which because of poverty in other systems are likely to fall
more in minority groups.
Mr. Massie. Okay. Let me tell you something and ask you a
question. Everything you have given me is a requirement to
purchase a gun. So all of the requirements that you say
disenfranchise minorities from--give them mass denial of a
fundamental constitutional right are in place in many states,
in some states to purchase a gun or to carry a gun, how would
it not also disenfranchise minorities to have these
requirements to purchase or carry a firearm?
Ms. Perez?
Ms. Perez. I'm sorry. I'm not understanding the question.
Do you mind repeating?
Mr. Massie. All of the requirements that you say to vote
that disenfranchise disproportionately minorities are
requirements in one state or another to purchase or carry a
firearm. How does that not disenfranchise people of their
Second Amendment constitutional right as well? Or wouldn't you
agree with me that it does?
Ms. Perez. I think this is not the kind of setting or time
to be able to discuss this. I mean----
Mr. Massie. All right. I appreciate you helping me to make
my point. I would like to submit two documents to the record,
for the record. I ask unanimous consent.
The first one is ``Presentation to Presidential Advisory
Commission on Election Integrity: A Suggestion and Some
Evidence'' by John R. Lott Jr.,
CrimePreventionResearchCenter.org.
And then another one is a Chicago Tribune article by the
same author, John R. Lott, ``Commentary: Apply Background
Checks for Gun Purchases to Voting.'' In other words, this is a
document about what would happen if we used the NICS background
check, which does check on whether you are an illegal
immigrant, nonimmigrant, visa, or has renounced citizenship,
which has been highly lauded by Democrats as a way to vet
people to exercise their constitutional right.
Mr. Raskin. Yes, indeed.
Mr. Massie. I submit those to the record.
Mr. Raskin. Without any objection, and I look forward to
reading those.
Mr. Raskin. And I take it from the gentleman's questioning
that you agree with the witnesses, at least these three
witnesses that these are unlawfully burdensome restrictions
that are being imposed on the right to vote?
Mr. Massie. I agree that they are the same restriction on
the Second Amendment as they are on the right to vote. Which in
the Second Amendment is a constitutional right which is
enumerated in the Constitution.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. Right. All right. Okay. This will be fun for us
to pursue this question.
We come now to Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz from the 23d
District of Florida.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am not really sure what point that previous exchange was
attempting to prove, but constitutional rights for guns are for
another committee's jurisdiction, not this one.
That having been said, Ms. Chapman, it is good to see you.
I wanted to ask you if you support making Election Day a
Federal holiday. There is legislation that our colleague
Congresswoman Anna Eshoo has introduced called the Election Day
Holiday Act of 2019, and I wanted to see if you support that
legislation, if you believe it would increase voter turnout and
participation?
Ms. Chapman. Yes. So the Leadership Conference supports
making Election Day a Federal holiday. We believe it will
create more opportunities for people to vote, working people,
people who might not be able to take time off, who might have
childcare or transportation hurdles. We definitely support
that, and we support any reform that would expand the
franchise.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Great. Absentee voting is really a
necessary option for so many Americans today, especially
because we want to make sure we can provide that access to as
many people as possible. But you know, representing the state
of Florida, especially for older and disabled voters, as well
as brave service members who are stationed overseas, allow
those Floridians as well.
It can be a gateway to the ballot box, but we also have
work to do to make it a reliable option for voters. Many
jurisdictions require voters to pay postage, for example,
before returning their ballots or, worse, do not clearly
indicate whether postage is required.
Voting should be free, period. When it costs the voter
money to cast or return their ballot, whether it is paying a
fee for ID or paying for postage to mail their ballot, it is
tantamount to a poll tax.
And so I am proud that my county, my home county, Broward
County, covers the cost of all postage for absentee ballot
returns, as well as, obviously, the cost of it being mailed to
the voter. And I think this needs to be a universal practice.
So, Ms. Chapman, do you support requiring localities to
provide absentee ballots with prepaid postage, and are you
aware of how--of the impact that prepaying postage has on
absentee ballot returns and turnout?
Ms. Chapman. Yes. I definitely support the prepaid postage.
I actually worked as an advocate on the ground in the Florida
and saw how, you know, there are a lot of times ballots can be
very extensive because of the amendments on the ballot, and
postage can also be very expense. So I believe that, you know,
elections should be free, fair, and accessible, that we should
not place additional costs on voters.
I don't have statistics on exactly what that looks like
around the country, but I believe to the extent possible that
voters should not have to bear those costs.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Okay. And I will ask you the other
two questions in succession rapidly----
Ms. Chapman. Okay.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz.--so you can just answer them and
take us home for the rest of my time. Signature verification.
In the 2018 election in Florida in particular, I am concerned
that our flawed signature verification system in our state
chipped away at the fundamental right to vote.
We have had numerous articles that described minorities and
young voters suffering discrimination because they had a higher
likelihood of signature rejection. Technological changes,
including the frequency of touchpad signatures, the use of
that, the fact that cursive writing is really no longer taught
in many schools, that makes signatures less reliable for a
quick verification of a person's identity, and we know that
signatures change as people age, become ill, fall out of
practice, or are simply in a rush.
In fact, businesses like Target and Walmart have stopped
using signatures entirely to verify transactions from the four
largest credit card networks. So my first question is because
it is still the main way that they identify voters in Florida,
either Ms. Chapman or Mr. Ho, what do you think about the
signature verification requirement in Florida and other states?
Is it time to abandon that requirement? Is there an improved
verification process that would be better?
And then also deadline for submission of absentee ballots.
There is not a uniform deadline for submission of absentee
ballots. In fact, in Florida, you have to have your ballot,
absentee ballot turned in a full 24 hours before the Election
Day even commences. And so, I mean, we want to make sure, I
think, that we can have every vote counted, and there doesn't
appear to me to be a rush to ensure that the votes are received
on Election Day, but are at least postmarked by Election Day.
So should there be a uniform policy that allows voters to
have their vote by mail ballots count as long as they are
postmarked by Election Day and also drop-off policies that
allow for drop-offs to be done at a polling site? Those are my
questions.
Mr. Ho. I can address the issue of the signature matches
since the ACLU has done some litigation over that. I think, you
know, we haven't taken the position that states should abandon
signature matching altogether, but because of the reasons that
you've identified what we think is critical is that if an
elections worker flags someone for a perceived signature
mismatch--and remember, elections workers, they're not like FBI
trained handwriting analysts or something like that. They're
eyeballing something, and people's signatures do change over
time, and all the issues you identified.
It's just important that voters receive notice and an
opportunity to say, hey, you made a mistake. That's me. That's
my ballot. Don't throw away my vote before--before doing so.
And actually, what we've seen in a number of states is that
no such opportunity or notice is given. Ballots are simply
tossed----
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Yes.
Mr. Ho [continuing]. based on a perceived signature
mismatch. And we think that's a really key problem that needs
to be addressed.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And can Ms. Chapman answer the other
half of my question?
Mr. Raskin. Yes, please. The witness may answer the
question.
Ms. Chapman. Yes. We believe that every voter should have
an opportunity to cast their ballot and have it counted. So
that includes extending opportunities for absentee ballot, for
voters to be able to turn in those absentee ballots.
So I know states that have all mail voting. Like, for
instance, Washington state, they have ample drop-off boxes. I
think that's a best practice that--that we can adopt around the
country so absentee ballots can be turned in closer to Election
Day.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
And we come now to the gentlelady from Massachusetts, Ms.
Pressley.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The right to vote is one of the most fundamental rights we
have as Americans. It is the most--this most basic right to
vote belongs to all Americans. It belongs to the person who
fell ill to the crack cocaine and opioid crisis, who instead of
compassion was sent to prison, only to return home unable to
fully participate in our society.
It belongs to the incarcerated mother who is primary
caretaker of her daughter, who has been arbitrarily stripped of
access to the ballot box and, therefore, has no say in her
child's future.
It belongs to the 18-year-old in prison for marijuana
possession who was held 14 hours--warehoused 14 hours away from
their family and a community that they grew up in, and a broken
system counts that young man's body in the Census where he is
in prison, and yet he does not have the right to vote.
It belongs to the more than 6 million Americans who are
caught in a criminal legal system that is fundamentally unjust,
a system that disproportionately targets the addicted, the
disabled, and the poor.
According to a report by the Center for American Progress
last year, more than half a million people are held in local
jails across the country. These individuals have yet to be
convicted of any crime, but remain in jail because they simply
cannot afford bail.
Ms. Perez, what types of barriers do people face while they
are subject to pretrial detention?
Ms. Perez. There are quite a number of barriers. Some of it
is education, where the election officials do not understand
that someone before they've been convicted and have been
disenfranchised is entitled to an absentee ballot. Some of it
is procedural in that others--that it is difficult for people
to come in and provide them with absentee ballots.
I think it is critically important that we remember that
until a person is convicted, they maintain that right to vote
in every state, and we, therefore, need to have measures that
make sure that that right to vote is protected.
Ms. Pressley. And could these policies be considered a form
of voter suppression?
Ms. Perez. Certainly. As could other measures that
disenfranchise people as soon as they get out of prison. We
live in a society where 34 states currently disenfranchise
members of our community who are living and working because of
some criminal conviction that they have in the past.
Ms. Pressley. Well, before 2001, a prison sentence in
Massachusetts didn't affect whether someone in Massachusetts
could vote. So felony disenfranchisement is a recent phenomenon
in the Commonwealth.
Mr. Ho, what possible justification could there be to
disenfranchise folks who are currently or formerly involved in
the justice system?
Mr. Ho. Well, I think that's a very good question because,
normally, our criminal justice policies are aimed at reducing
crime, right? Deterring, say, criminal activity. Well, I don't
think stripping someone's right to vote does that. Or
rehabilitation, for example, and I don't think stripping
someone's right to vote promotes rehabilitation. In fact, study
after study has apparently shown that former offenders who vote
are less likely to recidivate in the future.
Now it's difficult to know which way the causal arrow runs
there. But if we're really interested in reintegrating people
after offenses, right, there's nothing to fear from their votes
and from giving people a stake in the society that they will
eventually be returning to.
Ms. Pressley. And in that one in 13 black Americans of
voting age, or 2.2 million people, are disenfranchised
nationally and are more than four times as likely to lose their
voting rights than any other group, can you explain, Ms.
Chapman, why disenfranchisement policies so overwhelmingly
affect black Americans?
Ms. Chapman. Yes. So disenfranchisement policies are really
a product of Jim Crow, and they were intentionally put in place
to make it harder for people of color to vote. And I just
wanted to say that, you know, voting is a national symbol of
equality and full citizenship, and no one's right to vote
should ever be taken away. And that's the Leadership Conference
position.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you. I yield the balance of my time to
Mr. Ho, specifically if you could speak to the point that was
made earlier on the Second Amendment.
Mr. Ho. Oh, sure. I'd be happy to do that. So the reason
why the documentary proof of citizenship law that I've been
referring to in Kansas, the birth certificate or passport
requirement. One of the reasons why it was so pernicious is
those things aren't free.
Passports cost, you know, close to $100. A birth
certificate can cost as much as $20 or $40, depending upon the
state that you're from. And you know, we don't believe that
anyone should have to pay a cent in order to vote.
Now to own a gun, it's a slightly different story. You
typically, unless someone is gifting it to you, have to buy a
gun. No one sort of has a fundamental right to have one given
to you. And so I think it's quite inapposite to compare the
documentation requirements that someone might need in order to
purchase a handgun to those that you ought to have to exercise
the most fundamental right that we have, which is to vote.
Mr. Raskin. All right. Well, I want to thank all of the
witnesses for their excellent testimony--Ms. Phillips, Mr. Ho,
Ms. Chapman, Ms. Perez. I want to thank my colleagues, and
undoubtedly, we will have the opportunity to pursue these
issues some more, as we do whatever we can to vindicate the
right to vote.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:31 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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