Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Kentucky, for yielding. The bill we are debating here today, the so-called Protecting Our Democracy Act, is another attempt by the outgoing majority to relitigate many of the…
Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Kentucky, for yielding. The bill we are debating here today, the so-called Protecting Our Democracy Act, is another attempt by the outgoing majority to relitigate many of the Democrats' sham investigations. Many of the bill's provisions are unnecessary and recycled attempts to take away individual States' sovereignty. If we were really here to talk about protecting our democracy, then we would focus on the importance of voter rolls list maintenance to ensure only eligible citizens are able to vote in Federal elections.
Congress passed the bipartisan National Voter Registration Act in 1993. That is almost 30 years ago. This law requires States to conduct regular list maintenance to ensure their voter rolls are kept up to date. This simple, commonsense requirement is incredibly important for voter confidence in our entire election process and its outcomes.
However, the Biden DOJ refuses to enforce it. Instead, Progressives focus on defunding the police and embracing lawlessness, keeping our economy and Capitol shut down while ignoring the science, labeling concerned parents as extremist threats, and weaponizing the DOJ to go after them, and pursuing reckless, unnecessary spending that is driving the inflation every single American feels in their pocketbook.
If Democrats were really focused on protecting our democracy, the Biden Justice Department would investigate States like California where the number of registered voters far exceeds the number of adults in the State. Senator Alex Padilla, a newly appointed Senator from the State of California, knew about the problem and refused to address it when he was Secretary of State in California during the last election cycle.
Republicans care about election integrity because our constitutional republic means nothing if our citizens don't have faith in our elections.
When everyday Americans hear more and more reports of individuals on active voter rolls who have moved to another State, died, or are noncitizens, it frustrates them because it calls into question whether their valid vote actually counts. One eligible person, one whole non- diluted vote.
It is so frustrating because the fix is so simple, but Democrats refuse time and time again to address this problem. It is common sense and has been Federal law for decades that only eligible Americans should be on our voter rolls.
Republicans want every eligible voter who wants to vote to exercise that right. Democrats dilute your vote, but Republicans restore it.
I am here today to talk about protecting our democracy, and I think the only way to do that is to make sure Americans know our elections have integrity.
So today, I am calling on the radical Biden Justice Department to do the right thing and enforce Federal law across the board. Stop investigating parents that want to be involved in their children's education. Stop supporting efforts to defund our men and women in blue resulting in the lawlessness that we see ravaging our great country.
Focus on what really matters. Protect our democracy, protect our vote, and ensure States like California conduct voter roll list maintenance so that voters know only eligible American citizens are able to vote.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a report from the Department of Justice IG detailing the DOJ's official policy not to enforce Federal voter list maintenance requirements.
[From the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General,
March 2013]
A Review of the Operations of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights
Division
V. Enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA)
In this section we review the Voting Section's history of
enforcing the National Voter Registration Act, the so-called
motor-voter law. Enacted in 1993, the NVRA has. two primary
purposes: to increase the number of eligible citizens who
register to vote in federal elections and to protect the
integrity of the electoral process. 42 U.S.C. 1973gg(b).
Critics have alleged that CRT leadership during the prior
administration favored enforcement of the list-maintenance
(electoral integrity) provisions because those provisions
purportedly are more strongly supported by Republicans and
remove more potential Democratic voters from the rolls.
Conversely, critics of the current CRT leadership allege that
it has neglected the electoral integrity provisions of the
NVRA in favor of enforcing the voter access provisions,
because these provisions purportedly are supported by
Democratic constituencies and lead to the registration of
more voters who are likely to support Democrats. Without
opining on the underlying political assumptions, we examine
both of these allegations in this section.
A. Data Regarding Enforcement Trends in NVRA Cases
Figure 3. 7 below displays the number of NVRA enforcement
actions initiated by the Voting Section on an annual basis
since January 1995, when the statute became effective in most
states. Figure 3. 7 is broken down by actions that enforced
the statute's list-maintenance provision (Section 8(a)(4)),
actions
that enforced the voter registration provisions (Sections 5,
6, 7, and the improper purging paragraphs of Section 8), and
actions that brought both types of claims.
The most noteworthy trend in the Department's enforcement
of the NVRA relates to the statute's voter list-maintenance
provision, Section 8(a)(4). In the 17 years since the statute
became effective, the Department has asserted list-
maintenance claims on 7 occasions, 6 of which occurred in a
3-year span between 2004 and 2007. According to Hans von
Spakovsky, CRT leadership initiated an effort to enforce
Section 8's list-maintenance provision in late 2004. Von
Spakovsky told the OIG that he recommended to Division
leadership exploring those cases because he believed that the
Department had never conducted a systematic review of states'
list-maintenance compliance in the 10 years since the NVRA
became effective. This effort ultimately resulted in the
filing of a complaint alleging list-maintenance claims in
2005 and 2006. According to witnesses involved in the four
other matters involving list-maintenance claims brought
between 2004 and 2007, those claims arose when the Section
obtained evidence suggesting a failure to comply with the
list-maintenance provision during the course of ongoing
investigations into other voting-related matters.
B. Enforcement of the NVRA during 2001-2008
We received allegations that the only NVRA cases that
Division leadership wanted to pursue during this period were
Section 8(a)(4) list-maintenance claims, at the expense of
cases to protect or increase voter registration under other
provisions of the NVRA. Critics further alleged that the
Division's leadership was particularly focused on bringing
such list-purging cases in political swing states and large
Democratic jurisdictions. The Division's leadership denied
any such focus and identified several cases approved by
Division leadership to controvert the suggestion that NVRA
enforcement decisions were driven by a partisan agenda. We
examined the entire range of NVRA cases pursued during
January 2001 to January 2009 in order to address this issue.
From January 2001 through January 2009, the Department was
involved in 12 NVRA enforcement matters, summarized in Table
3.2.
As reflected in Table 3.2, the Voting Section began filing
list-maintenance cases in 2004. As noted above, von Spakovsky
confirmed that Division leadership initiated an effort in
2004 to enforce Section 8's list-maintenance provision on a
systemic basis. Von Spakovsky told the OIG that he
recommended exploring those cases because he believed the
Department had never conducted a systematic review of states'
list-maintenance compliance in the 10 years since the NVRA's
enactment.
Division leadership directed the Voting Section to conduct
the research effort, to review the census data and voter
registration data for all 50 states to determine which states
had more people registered to vote than the voting-age
population, as reflected in the census data. Based on the
results of this research, the Section sent letters to 12
states, stating that the Section's review of relevant data
indicated that the state may not be complying with Section
8's list-maintenance provision and requesting information on
their efforts to remove ineligible voters from their
registration lists.
Von Spakovsky told the OIG that some of the targeted states
responded to the Department's letter, explained why there was
a discrepancy in the data, and established that they were
complying with the NVRA's list-maintenance requirements. He
also stated that a number of states failed to show that they
were in compliance with Section 8(a)(4) and that the Section
proceeded toward enforcement actions against those non-
compliant states.
Division leadership approved the filing of two complaints
as a result of this enforcement initiative. In November 2005,
the Section filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri
alleging both improper purging and failure-to-purge
violations. In June 2006, the Section filed a complaint
against Indiana alleging that the state failed to conduct
list purging as required by Section 8(a)(4). The Indiana case
was resolved by a settlement agreement, but the Missouri case
continued until early 2009, when the Division voluntarily
dismissed the case.
In 2006 and 2007, Division leadership approved three
additional complaints containing Section 8(a)(4) list-
maintenance claims, against the States of Maine and New
Jersey and the City of Philadelphia. According to the Voting
Section attorney supervising those efforts, these complaints
did not arise out of the enforcement initiative described
above. Instead, the complaints were brought as a result of
investigations under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that
uncovered evidence of both HAVA and NVRA violations. The
Section ultimately settled the lawsuits with Maine, New
Jersey, and Philadelphia. In each settlement agreement, the
jurisdiction agreed to implement specific steps to satisfy
its list-maintenance obligations.
In August 2007, Voting Section Chief John Tanner initiated
a program to enforce Section 7 of the NVRA, requiring states
to provide voter registration opportunities in public
assistance and disability offices. Section attorneys reviewed
federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) data to identify
states that were not meeting Section 7's requirements and
discovered 18 states that reported registering 0 voters in
offices providing public assistance over the previous 2-year
period. Following further investigation, the Section entered
into settlement agreements with Arizona and Illinois to
resolve Section 7 violations.
In 2007 and 2008, Voting Section teams reviewed EAC data
and census information to identify states that might not be
in compliance with the NVRA'sSection 8(a)(4) list-maintenance
requirements. The teams identified states in which a
significant percentage of the counties or electoral
jurisdictions had more registered voters than voting-age
population. The teams recommended to Division leadership that
the Voting Section initiate investigations into the states
that failed to meet the relevant criterion. The states that
were the subject of these recommendations included some
states that historically have consistently favored one party
in presidential elections as well as political ``swing
states.'' The 2007 recommendation was approved and the
Section later issued requests for information to the relevant
states. Ultimately, however, no further enforcement action
was taken arising out of this effort. The investigations that
were proposed in late November 2008 were never approved by
either the outgoing or the incoming administrations.
C. Enforcement of the NVRA during 2009-2012
1. Division Leadership Declines To Act on Voting Section
Proposal for Section 8 Investigation
In February 2009, shortly after the new administration took
office, the Voting Section submitted a memorandum to Division
leadership requesting approval to initiate investigations
into the list-maintenance procedures of a State (``State
E''). According to the State E memorandum, voter-registration
data indicated that roughly 22 percent of State E's counties
had more registered voters than either the voting-age
population or the citizen voting-age population. The
memorandum stated that the Section had been alerted to State
E's potential list-maintenance failures in connection with an
unrelated Section 5 investigation. We were told that the
Section never received a response from Division leadership to
the proposal memorandum.
2. Drafting of NVRA Guidance
In the spring of 2009, a few months after the inauguration
of the new administration, the Department commenced an effort
to draft public guidance concerning the requirements of NVRA
Section 7. Samuel Hirsch, who joined the Department in March
2009 as a Deputy Associate Attorney General and led the NVRA
guidance effort, described the project as rewriting the NVRA
in plain terms and posting it on the CRT website to assist
those running state governmental offices in complying with
the NVRA's requirements. Hirsch told the OIG the original
scope of the NVRA guidance project was limited to Section 7
because the administration believed that Section 7 had been
somewhat ignored by state government officials. According to
Hirsch, there was a sense in the administration that NVRA
Section 8 and other provisions were working fairly well,
but that Section 7 ``was slipping through the cracks.''
DAAG Julie Fernandes and AAG Thomas Perez became involved
in the NVRA guidance project after they joined the Department
in July and October 2009, respectively. According to
Fernandes, she expressed concern to Hirsch that the project
was limited to Section 7 and proposed broadening the guidance
to include other NVRA provisions, such as Sections 5 and 8.
Perez also told the OIG that in early 2010 he instructed that
the guidance include a discussion of all NVRA provisions,
including the list-maintenance provisions. Hirsch told the
OIG that he did not oppose expanding the guidance to include
Section 8, but stated that he may have been opposed to
holding up the release of the Section 7 guidance while
preparing the Section 8 segment. The Division ultimately
posted guidance concerning NVRA Sections 5, 6, 7, and 8 on
its website in June 2010.
3. Comments by DAAG Julie Fernandes Regarding NVRA
Enforcement at a November 2009 Section Meeting
DAAG Julie Fernandes told the OIG that she urged Voting
Section Chief Christopher Coates to hold section-wide
meetings shortly after she joined the Department in July
2009. As a result, the Voting Section held several brown-bag
lunches. In addition to the September meeting at which
Section 2 enforcement was discussed as outlined above,
another session devoted to NVRA matters was held on November
10, 2009.
At some point during the November meeting, the discussion
turned to the enforcement of the NVRA's voter list-
maintenance provision in Section 8. Witnesses who recalled
Fernandes's statements uniformly remembered that she said
something to the effect that she was more interested in
pursuing cases under NVRA Section 7 than Section 8 because
Section 8 does not expand voter access. Witnesses'
recollections of the context of Fernandes's statements, her
precise wording, and the meaning of her comments, however,
varied widely.
Thirteen witnesses told the OIG that Fernandes stated that
she ``did not care about'' or ``was not interested'' in
pursuing Section 8 cases, or similar formulations. For
instance, Chris Herren, who was later promoted by current
Division leadership to Section Chief, told the OIG that
Fernandes made a controversial and ``very provocative''
statement at this brown bag lunch. In particular, Herren
stated that Fernandes stated
something to the effect of ``[Section 8] does nothing to help
voters. We have no interest in that.'' Herren told the OIG
that he winced when he heard Fernandes's response because he
believed it would raise a controversy. Two other Section
attorneys took handwritten notes at the meeting, both of
which quoted Fernandes saying that she did not ``care'' about
Section 8.
Ten attorneys who attended the meeting told the OIG that
they interpreted Fernandes's comments to be a clear directive
that Division leadership would not approve Section 8 list-
maintenance cases in the future. One Section attorney told
the OIG that he understood Fernandes's statements to mean
that proposing a Section 8 case would be futile and that he
believed proposing Section 8 could be detrimental for the
attorneys.
Seven Voting Section attorneys told the OIG, however, that
they did not believe Fernandes said that the Division would
not enforce Section 8 of the NVRA. Among these were three
Deputy Chiefs who told the OIG that they believed Fernandes
meant that Section 7 cases would be prioritized over Section
8 matters, but that they did not construe her statement to
mean that Section 8 cases would not be approved. Those
attorneys who were generally identified as being more
conservative tended to recall that Fernandes took the more
extreme position, while those generally identified as being
more liberal tended to recall her statements as being more
limited.
Fernandes told the OIG that she did not recall exactly what
she said at the November brown bag lunch regarding
enforcement of Section 8 of the NVRA. She said that she and
the Section staff discussed the NVRA and what their approach,
goals, and strategy should be. She said that she talked about
how Division leadership is interested in creating equal
opportunity for minority voters. Fernandes further told the
OIG that she talked about wanting the Section to focus on
voter access, which would involve NVRA Sections 5, 7, and 8,
all of which are in the vein of ensuring that jurisdictions
have a fair and accessible process for all voters. She stated
that she recalled being asked about Section 8 and that her
response included something to the effect that Division
leadership's focus is on the provisions of the NVRA
pertaining to voter access.
With respect to the comments attributed to her that she did
not care about enforcing Section 8, Fernandes told the OIG
that she did not think she said the words ``don't care''
about enforcing Section 8 because that is not her position.
Fernandes denied saying that she or Division leadership had
no interest in pursuing Section 8 cases. Fernandes said that
she believed her comment about not caring was in the context
of how to determine what jurisdictions they should target for
enforcement, given that she believed there is widespread
noncompliance with the NVRA.
Fernandes noted that the list-maintenance provision of
Section 8 requires jurisdictions to employ reasonable, non-
discriminatory measures to ensure that people who are
eligible can vote and those who are ineligible cannot.
Therefore, Fernandes stated, she does not care whether a
jurisdiction's voter list is big, but rather whether it has a
list-maintenance program that does not work. She explained
that the fact that a jurisdiction's voter list is too big
means that the Section may want to inquire about the
jurisdiction's list-maintenance program, but that alone would
not justify bringing a lawsuit.
Roughly one year later, in September 2010, allegations
concerning Fernandes's comments at the brown bag lunch
regarding NVRA enforcement surfaced in news media. Fernandes
and other Division leadership personnel assisted other
Department officials in preparing talking points to address
the allegations and Fernandes stated in one of the relevant
e-mails: ``If we are o.k. with having priorities, we should
say that we have a priority on the enforcement of the NVRA,
with a focus on the parts of the statute that require states
to provide voter registration opportunities in a variety of
settings.''
4. Approval of List-Maintenance Investigations
In September 2009, the Section submitted a memorandum to
DAAG Fernandes requesting authority to initiate formal
investigations into the list-maintenance procedures of eight
states. The recommendation was based on the Section's review
of an EAC report that contained voting-related data from each
of the 50 states covering the period from November 2006 to
November 2008. A Deputy Section Chief supervised a team of
Section attorneys that reviewed the EAC report for anomalous
entries, particularly states that reported that throughout
the 2-year period they did not remove any voters from their
rolls due to death or that they had not issued any voter-
removal notices related to citizens who were believed to have
moved out of the state. The team identified eight states that
met one of those criteria, four of which reported removing
zero ineligible voters from their rolls over the 2-year
period for any reason, including death, change of address,
disqualifying criminal conviction, or mental incapacity.
The team presented the relevant data in its memorandum to
DAAG Fernandes and stated that the information suggested that
the eight states in question were not fulfilling their list-
maintenance obligations under Section 8. As a result, the
team recommended initiating formal investigations of the
states in question and directing inquiries to relevant state
officials.
Fernandes told the OIG that, after receiving the proposal
for the Section 8 investigations, she told Section Chief
Coates that he needed to ``hold off' because she was not
ready to decide whether this was the proper approach for NVRA
enforcement. Fernandes told the OIG that she believed the
Section's NVRA work when she became DAAG in July 2009 was
disorganized and that its process for evaluating NVRA matters
was ``random, unstrategic, [and] not very well thought-out.''
She said that Division leadership and Voting Section
management were therefore engaged in a process of identifying
what their NVRA enforcement strategy should be by reviewing
where the Section had focused its enforcement efforts in the
past, determining which areas had been neglected, and
developing an analytical model to bring NVRA cases.
According to Fernandes, she and Division leadership
believed that the NVRA enforcement efforts from January 2001
through January 2009 had focused on Section 8's list-
maintenance cases, largely to the exclusion of the voter-
registration provisions in Section 7, which she believed had
been underenforced and neglected. While we found no evidence
that she examined any data to support this belief, it was
consistent with what we found to be the prevailing belief
about the prior administration's efforts in this area.
Fernandes stated further that she believed the way to
``rectify this imbalance was to determine what Section 7
efforts were in process, whether they were being performed
correctly, and whether the Section should expand its Section
7 enforcement further. Fernandes stated that her supervisors
were pressuring her to move forward on Section 7 enforcement
and that she received a clear message that they viewed
enforcing Section 7 as a higher priority than Section 8. She
told the OIG that she believed she had to ``scratch the
Section 7 itch before turning to Section 8 matters and that
her supervisors would have criticized her if she had approved
Section 8 efforts first. She also noted that there was
significant criticism of the Department from civil rights
groups that their Section 7 enforcement efforts had been
inadequate, saying they had gotten--and continued to get--
``beat up all the time by [their] lefty friends not doing
enough on Section 7.''
This is a report from the DOJ's IG. It takes this many pages to tell the American voter that they are not going to enforce Federal law in ensuring that States actually provide and exercise the required voter list maintenance. This is an affront to election integrity in our great country, and it needs to end today.
Let's protect our democracy, and let's work together to make that happen.
Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Kentucky for yielding.
Madam Speaker, our most basic duty of the Federal Government should be protecting the right for our citizens to vote, but we are not doing everything we can to protect that. A disturbing trend across the country is that more and more States and localities are allowing noncitizens to vote. Furthermore, many States are conducting elections that rely on wildly outdated voter lists, many of which include these noncitizens.
In some States, such as California, the voter rolls are so outdated that they have more registered voters than people who reside in the State. This creates a potential for our citizens' votes to be diluted. LA County had over 1.5 million ineligible people on their voter rolls. A suit filed by a nonpartisan watch dog alleged that LA County had 112 percent of its adult citizens registered to vote.
Under pressure, California and LA County finally agreed to clean up their voter rolls in 2019. Unfortunately, when then-California Secretary of State Alex Padilla appeared before my committee in 2020, he could not confirm that many of those ineligible people had actually been removed from California's unmaintained voter rolls. I do not have a lot of faith that California is doing everything it can to protect the integrity of our elections.
And then there is New York City, which just decided to allow nearly a million noncitizens to vote in city elections. New York can make its own bad decisions, but it is our job to ensure that we protect Federal elections. Common sense will tell you that combining noncitizens and eligible American voters on the same voter rolls is ripe for abuse.
I will also use a final example from my home State of Illinois. In Illinois, noncitizens cannot vote, and if they do, they face major legal consequences and could be deported. But in 2016, Illinois' automatic voter registration program mistakenly registered to vote more than 500 noncitizens who had done the right thing by checking the box stating that they are not citizens on their driver's license application. However, several of these noncitizens voted in the 2018 and 2019 elections.
This does nothing to bolster voter confidence in our elections; in fact, it does the opposite.
Not only does this undermine the integrity of our elections, the mistake by Illinois could have had dire consequences for these individuals, and it could be prevented if States were being forced to maintain accurate voter rolls. Whether intentional or not, we know this is happening. It is undermining the integrity of our elections.
This amendment would simply ensure those who are noncitizens who do not have the right to vote in Federal elections are removed from States' voter rolls. As someone who has attended many citizenship ceremonies as a Member of Congress, it is unthinkable that we have States undermining what it means to be a citizen of this great country.
My office has helped many immigrants go through the legal process to become American citizens, and there is nothing better than seeing them raise their right hand and swear to support and defend our Constitution; to swear to bear arms in defense of this Nation; to swear allegiance to this great country.
Madam Speaker, there is nothing better than to think that their vote, something they worked hard to get, the right to vote on something that they worked hard to get the right to do is being undermined. That is unthinkable.
Let's pass this amendment to ensure only citizens are voting in our elections and prevent States from putting noncitizens at risk of intentionally or unintentionally breaking the law and illegally voting in our elections.
We will offer this solution as a motion to recommit. If we adopt the motion to recommit, we will instruct the Committee on Oversight and Reform to consider an amendment to ensure States remove noncitizens from their voter rolls as part of a regular comprehensive list maintenance program.
Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.
Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.
Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.