You never know what will trigger a Democrat. Tuesday, it was a discussion about cleaning state voter lists during a hearing of the Committee on House Administration, which is conducting oversight on federal elections. Democrats on the committee took the stance that strengthening the rules for voter list maintenance will somehow benefit Republicans. That would only be true if Democrats are exploiting weaknesses caused by inaccurate voter rolls to cheat.
The registered voter list is a crucial element of secure elections. Each state and county must keep an accurate list of registered voters to prevent fraud, such as one person voting in multiple places, noncitizens voting, or ballots cast in the name of people who died or who moved out of the county. Each person gets one vote in only one location.
Assuring only eligible voters get to vote seems a low priority to committee Democrats. Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif. Insisted there is not a problem with how the voter rolls are administered, the problem is the Trump Administration, she claims.
“… Witnesses here today are not here to ensure that our elections run fairly, but rather to make sure that elections favor one party, the Republican Party,” Torres said. “Time and time again, we see this play out from President Trump and my colleagues across the aisle, pushing misinformation when it comes to election results and voter fraud. These actions have one goal, to sow distrust in our election system, to suppress the vote, and to make it harder for Americans to have voices heard. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, and it is already outlawed.”
Not true. Noncitizen voting has become common. The Federalist has written numerous reports about noncitizens voting in U.S. elections. It always starts with voter registration because once registered, it is easy to get a ballot.
Republican members of the committee had plenty of examples of states and counties not taking list maintenance seriously.
Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill. noted that 34 jurisdictions in Illinois simply failed to report any data about list maintenance removals in 2022, and of those counties, 19 failed to report any data about registered voters removed from the voter rolls due to death.
“… Meaning no one died in 19 counties. Do we believe that?” Miller said. “Obviously we’re keeping these people on the voter rolls. In 23 Illinois counties, fewer than 100 registrations were canceled during a two-year period, out of almost 1 million registrations.” Miller added that Illinois has a history “voting irregularity.”
The federal rule defining what states must do to keep voter rolls clean, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), is vague, saying states must make a “reasonable effort to remove ineligible persons from the voter rolls.”
Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, testified that courts have minimized “reasonable effort” to mean states can do next to nothing to their voter list.
“Courts have unfortunately interpreted the language passed by this Congress to find the mere existence of a list maintenance program is what matters, not the program’s effectiveness,” Adams said.
The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., claimed Republicans just want to kick voters off the voter rolls to manipulate elections.
“Voter purges represent a coordinated effort by my friends on the other side of the aisle to manipulate elections to, in effect, make American elections less American,” he said.
Democrats had many complaints but offered no solutions for more effective ways to ensure the voter rolls are clean. Justin Riemer, president and CEO of Restoring Integrity and Trust In Elections (RITE), offered some suggestions for improvement in his testimony.
“Federal law should require, or at least permit, a state to consider a registration application from a voter who registers in a new state as a request for removal to the election official in their old state,” Riemer suggested. “Although some states have attempted to implement this commonsense approach, courts have ruled that the NVRA prohibits it.”
The NVRA has a 90-day pre-federal election blackout period preventing list maintenance activities during those times. For states with three elections (primary, congressional, presidential), that is a cumulative 270 days when they can’t remove voters.
“How can a state effectively maintain accurate voter rolls when federal law prevents it from doing so for significant portions of a federal election cycle, including during periods with the highest registration activity,” Riemer said. “Congress should consider either eliminating or modifying the 90-day blackout period by reducing its length and by applying it only to federal general elections, rather than federal primaries and special elections.”