governance and accountability and long term plans and performance goals to a clearly defined organizational structure additional reports also to improvements needed in the management of travel expenses today we also have the opportunity to discuss of the just released i g investigative report on the preparation of voter fraud and intimidation reports this report was a subject of much interest by the public and the committee i appreciate the time and effort that went into the report that we received and that the initial request for the investigation came from the commissioners them selves while the investigation does not feel that that any political motivation was behind the changes and delayed the report it does was a poorly conceived and managed project the investigation coupled with the inspector general's testimony provides clear evidence of the commission's lack of an effective organization future has received recommendations for change from the and has taken some steps towards developing sound goals objectives plans policies and procedures and that should be acknowledged and i do acknowledge it unfortunately we must now discuss whether those changes are enough and what role the capable of playing particularly in light of it could be a very highly charged two thousand and eight presidential election so i look forward to hearing from our witnesses as well as the commissioners i thank them for being here and look forward to seeing how we can work together to have a better system at this point i would turn to our ranking member mr mccarthy for his opening for your testimony as you know your full statement is made part of our official record we would ask that your testimony consume about five minutes so that the members can have time to pose questions to you and at this time we would  in addition the has provided travel training to its employees so that employees now know how to prepare a job about and i think those things have helped but there's still is a very strong need for written policies and procedures the second review we did was assessment in terms of investigations yesterday today issues investigative report on the voter fraud report in september two thousand and five the u s election assistance commission to consultants who conducted voter fraud in voter intimidation conduct the investigation so i don't know how many hours they put into it the information we can get it ok if you can follow up that be very helpful but i was wondering after that after investigating all the circumstances surrounding the vote fraud and  voter intimidation research project did you find any evidence of partisanship on the you know having gone through all that as well did you find any evidence that the scaf influenced the strong constituency out there this is a very important arena and sane people can email or talk to people is would not be appropriate because i think you have to have a wide base of people that you get ideas from and  related to mr bond because as i understand it he has been nominated for a position on the f e c and there's been a significant amount of controversy around his nomination is that right as my understanding did you and i apologize i did not have more time to reach report but did you interview him and connection preparing your edgy report was interviewed and did you question him about this august twenty ninth two thousand  over time and i don't want to miss well let me try to pick up where mr mccarthy left off the question that might be of some interest to our colleagues in the senate is what is the appropriate level of engagement if you will between someone like mr bond and the process that was going on at the where do you draw that line perspective the inspector general the department  there is needs to be some clarification as to what roles people play in terms of the boards and want in but they need to have have you provided a copy of your report to the united states senate which apparently is his interview do you remember if there were any credibility differences of factual assertions between mr bob and other individuals that were interviewed no i don't i'm not aware of  trouble again but this notion of a political compromise agreement if the going to render dispassionate opinions about how the election process is working i don't know if they can do that but russian political compromises it was saying that that's the task of this institution and that if i understand the boundaries correctly the role is to make recommendations to objectively assemble facts and it's up to us to make the political move to something else here in a minute we'll have the individual members and they can probably answer but you know following up on what the ranking member was pointing out as to whether this is an ordinance amount of deficiencies in refer to him are areas of concern but it seems to me that what you have you have problems with with process mandated studies and reports have not been submitted you have problems with accounting as far as the management of travel expenses which may not be anything serious or that something untoward is happening or delaying release of reports and such but it seems to be that just about at every level there is room for improvement so but first i need to acknowledge something and that is that the commission really didn't get a healthy head start as a result of congress's inaction at its very inception i remember those days when they didn't have a place to meet they didn't have staff and so on so it's not all their fault they were a little behind  and i acknowledge that where do they go for that guidance to improve in all of these areas that obviously you find not necessarily alarming but again of concern because you've said it's a good thing to have oversight but there's only so much that we're going to be able to do what we do is we look at reports and such and we say look you need to improve there and then we just kind of let them go at it but this is a unique unique commission with a very specific mission that is that is different and has never existed before to be quite honest with you so where do they go for their guidance where would you suggest in these areas obviously they need to improve i'll now recognize myself for just a few minutes on the on the report role has the general counsel for the agency played in drafting and revising the investigative report of the vote fraud intimidation in the study of the impact on voter identification none asked for but there's the broader question of organization and advocacy of the agency it sounds like we almost need agency in it in a box that you could put in place that's available in the federal government  the outside individuals and non governmental groups to determine its focus should it have or not i mean there's no really agency that's like them but is that part remainder of my time i will thank you for being here and for your service to the government and to the country and we may have additional questions for you members have up to five legislative days to submit additional questions and we would ask you to respond probably if we are able to forward those to you we'll ask our panel to come forward and while they're coming forward i'd ask without objection to the record two letters one from verified voting foundation dot org and the other voters united on the subject matter of this hearing for the record our timer is not working so i've got my trusty someone working out and maybe it'll be fixed by the time we're through i've got my trusty i phone here and it will go off when the five minutes are up you formally so that the audience both on the webcast and here can know who you are first i'd like to introduce commissioner rosemary rodriguez commissioner rodriguez currently serves as chair of the election assistance commission she was appointed county of denver for five years we also have commissioner hunter carolyn hunter who currently serves as vice chair of the served on the commission since two thousand and seven and prior to her work with the hunter was deputy director of the white house office of public liaison executive office of the u s department of homeland security offices and ship and immigration services and deputy counsel at the republican national committee where she provided guidance on election law in the implementation of the help america vote act next we have commissioner commissioner rossiya hilman commissioner hellman and served on the election assistance commission since two thousand and three where she was first vice chair in two thousand and four and then chair in two thousand and five prior to her appointment with the helm and served as president and chief executive officer of world space foundation as well as a senior coordinator for international women's issues at the u s state department is hel also was a former executive director of the league of women voters of the united states the congressional black caucus foundation and the national coalition on black voter participation and finally we have commissioner done that it davidson commissioner davidson has served on the election assistance commission since two thousand and five where she served here in two thousand and seven prior to her work with the miss davis and served as the arapahoe county clerk and then colorado secretary of state she was president of the national association of secretaries of state and president of the national association of state election directors davidson also serves on the federal election commission advisory panel and the board of directors of the help america vote foundation and we do welcome order good afternoon madam chair and ranking member mccarthy and subcommittee members thank you for inviting us to come back we're very pleased the inspector general's report is available today because we know that many many people in congress and at the e c and in the general public have been waiting for this report for it seems like a very long time we're we're very grateful that it's out since our last hearing in your committee are inspector general assess the e s e and while i cannot say today that the agency is completely ordered reorganized or even organized we are taking strenuous steps to improve operation i appreciate the chair recognizing our efforts in her opening statement we're going to provide the inspector general with monthly updates on our progress and i would volunteer to provide those to this com going around you ok i think you were drafting regulations to govern govern for public meetings grant trade secrets and confidential business administrator information how to request testimony or information  party litigation privacy act procedures standards of conduct and policy of nondiscrimination we expect to publish those in april we are drafting travel policies and procedures we established  electronic boy reading room we are in the process of hiring a chief operating officer to help with our management shortcomings admitted management shortcomings after our employee cap was removed we hired additional staff in critical program areas like the voting system certification division all senior staff receive cost management training we're going to implement the requirements of the office and management of man and budget management controls we are creating an  manual to document our government government and accountability structure and on friday we're going to spend an entire day in planning to improve our operation i assure you however that all these efforts to achieve internal improvements will not interfere with our assistance for election officials our priority message this year to election officials is to prepare for a huge turnout having enough ballots voting machines and poll workers adopt a contingency plan the secretary of state for the state of arizona is here today jan brewer and she assured us right before we came up here that arizona is ready c is delivered tools and information and other testimony will go into that in more depth i'm going to i'm going to keep this very brief and name three questions that i think we need to be prepared for and that i think you will be interested in hava says that voting systems purchased with funds appropriated after two thousand and seven must be fully accessible to what systems are considered accessible to individuals with disabilities what is the role of the e c clearinghouse and congress provided us with one hundred fifteen million dollars in new funds thank you but can states use that money to replace touchscreen equipment as cha assure you that the e c will focus its responsibility on its responsibilities under hava we will fully inform the congress and the public about our activities someone pointed out there were a fairly young organization but  vote act is the adoption of the voluntary voting system guidelines the guidelines present provide a set of specifications and requirements against which voting systems can be tested to determine if they provide all the basic functionality now in the midst of the of adopting the newest version of the vs you're calling that the next iteration of a clearly defined the process for adopting these guidelines technical guidelines and development committee and  provide us with an initial draft we then adopt a final version we are doing that currently under public comment do we have a public comment period that will expire on may fifth of this year we're holding a variety of different roundtables with different advocacy groups election officials voting machine manufacturers and others and we hope to get as many constructive comments from the public as possible in making the very serious and difficult decision on which version of the voluntary voting system guideline to adopt the newest version will likely be a complete rewrite of the two thousand and five guidelines intended to address the next generation of voting system they contain new and expanded material in the areas of reliability and quality usability and accessibility security and testing according to hava as you know adoption of the guidelines at the state level is voluntary however formally adopted making these guidelines mandatory in their jurisdictions we often get asked what value voluntary guidelines provide the answer is simple they provide a level of conformity testing that election officials can rely on if they do still have the flexibility to apply the parts of the guideline that makes sense and or not to use them at all is also operating the federal government's first voting system certification program and let me address two issues that come up frequently stated in the past if congress wishes to take this action we stand ready to assist the second issue like to to mention today is that the help america vote act did not give the authority over voting systems that we have not evaluated right now we have a number we have approximately six systems within our certification program but as as of this date has not certified any voting system so there are no voting systems in use today and they're likely won't be in the two thousand and eight election therefore we don't have any authority over the machines that are not certified by us and that are probably going to be used in this election thank you very much thank you very much commissioner helmet on critical role in ensuring access and after receipt despite its limitations under the help america vote act having said that i also know that congress and the american voter must have confidence in these ability  and openly serve the public good depends on the continued production of high quality and unbiased information it depends on transparency and efficiency and it depends on your continued support i look forward to answering your questions thank you thank you very much we would turn now to commissioner davi why i requested the report and that was my commissioners in the review you will see that i reached across the aisle and discussed my concerns about voter id report with another commissioner i will continue to urge to be transparent in our process across the board and i will support working with all of the commissioners because two thousand and eight is going to be a very busy year ballots having enough poll workers voting equipment to support the turnout is what we have to have because the record numbers will be there secure accurate and accessible elections are complex process comprised of many moving parts and many people some of those people are involved only once a year we hear a lot about whether voting systems can be trusted in fact any bose system whether it's a ballot box system a touchscreen can be compromised if you have to think knowledge of that system and access to that system i've been an election official my entire career and one thing never changes whether voters paper ballots or touchscreen tails manner it is very important that we make sure that our voting equipment is working properly as it is to have and well trained people to control access and planning the management material as we call the quick start have been every election official throughout the nation in the very near future will have material to serve the elderly and the disability and provide the website content and the form in those languages all of the material that produces to help election officials are absolutely free and we distribute them to everyone as a former elected official who thank you very much and i look forward to your questions all thank you very much and thanks to all for your testimony today we will now begin our questioning and i'd like to turn first to had asked the inspector general about the pressures that you may be under from vendors from others and i wonder if you could talk about that briefly and how you all deal with put any kind of pressure on us which i'm grateful to have that policy and i certainly consult people i have not experienced any kind of pressure to devote a certain way or anything but i do seek input i think it's a healthy part of our process to get different opinions there i've only been here a year and i've noticed that you can get sort of isolated in washington d c so it is helpful whenever i go to conference or travel i try to meet have a brown bag lunch and invite local activists to when i visited secretary of state brewer in arizona meeting with that hundred fifty interested arizona and i wanted to talk about the political process so i kind of seek that information and i wonder if any of my colleagues want to chime in i agree with my colleague commissioner rodriguez that it is important to seek input from outside sources and i think we all strive to do that to tell you the truth i've been surprised at how little interest that there has been in the workings of the commission on the part of the public to our meetings are not terribly well attended we don't receive a lot of comment in my opinion so we are sort of forced to take that kind of  input from the public whether it's through conferences and each of us does a number of public speaking engagements around the country to various state and local election officials and other groups so i think it's streaming important that we hear from outside sources as long as we you know we're we're aware of the positions from which they come did you want to come out i have a few other questions so i will just say that there's there's a different kind of pressure you know i personally have never been under any political pressure one way or the other but there's a different kind of pressure we operate in a two year cycle the election day and we have to be ready to assist the public has high expectations and sometimes they go beyond what we're authorized to do plus there's a desperate need probably a legitimate one for quick fixes and you can't do quick fixes of elections so some of that pressure it's a different kind of political pressure but unlike my colleagues i feel it just in reading emails and blogs and letters that people write to me i know that i'm an expectation that the election assistance commission working with partners is going to fix the problem i wonder if one of the issues that you have to deal with of course is how you use some of the surplus pava fund and there's not a question of whether or not those machines that recertified if they can't be used can those dollars be put into other kinds of machines that counties might be taking a look at where you've been trying to i guess work through that that clarification of of how those funds can be used by march nineteenth and they have agreed to provide that and so will very shortly have the opportunity for the commission is that for the state of california up here too which is thank you for coming but in the national voter registration act it requires you to develop a mail voter registration and i know there are five or six states that are before you now using the federal form by refusing to properly instruct them regarding the state citizenship required and i'm wondering the concept of the tenth amendment and states rights if they submitted this to you and you had it before you a long long time inspector general so you know i have an interest in mr von spakovsky because he's a figure of some controversy right now and there's a question as to whether he's the appropriate person to continue to serve or to serve on the  'm looking at page sixteen and i want to waste time a lot of questions about it but i was struck by one e mail exchange between mr gore and at some point mr von spakovsky says the fact that you miss a woman does not want to do this because she is not want to anger friends of the league of women voters is no reason for you to be railroaded into this what voters about the release or not release of the report or what the report would say and as mr de gregorio said in his email there was nothing i did in fact if anything i was trying to shove that report out the door when i found out it had been delayed saying that i guess he could have said liberal do gooders legal women voters out of line in my interpretation well i'm sure he said that because i was formally employed with the league and there are people who would suggest that the positions on the issues are question and i'm asking if the commissioners were troubled by mr reference for example to a political compromise agreement between do any of the commissioners president think that it would be words and i suppose he may not wish he had either but my read of the report is that this exchange is not about the voter intimidation report rather it's about conflicting interpretations of a provisional ballot law in arizona law and guidance that was put out several years ago that in many people's view was incorrect because he was saying you know he was willing to change his opinion from the department of justice is perspective which was in some people's view overly restrictive on when you're better a law requires you to give a provisional ballot so you saying i'm going to change my position on that if you would please consider changing your position on this it was more of a legal situation where  situation i'm trying to get it straight in my mind there has not been a final legal determination on the merits of the case challenging the citizenship requirement is outlined in arizona law pursu district court recently dismissed on summary judgment many of the claims including the one that this arizona law violates that claim was dismissed so that that issue is no longer in the court but there are other i mean the summary judgment only addressed certain that's crowned so there you still have a legal challenge which i'm not sure what the basis maybe i'm sure there's conflict with those of constitutional dimension bottom line is we have pending litigation that could be determined and a judgment rendered in favor of those challenging the legitimacy of the law i think we can agree on that so what would happen if that comes to pass in the next few months after november arizona is insisting on the citizenship provision rejects thousands and thousands of individuals that are going to be disenfranchised for all options up until the time that the court does make a decision so the court makes a decision in december or whatever elections over a presidential election so on how do you on do that that the court could have granted an injunctive relief if they were concerned of such a scenario that you point out in the court dissolve the injunctive relief as secretary of state has said on numerous occasions in public hearings the minute the injunction was issued she immediately stopped him forcing that law and the minute the injunction was lifted she resumed enforcing it of course the law is good and lessen until it's overturned well let me ask you this then you took a time out while there was injunctive relief and must at that you're in that period of time didn't reject any applications or registration forms that didn't comply with the citizenship requirement with that correct that is what i have heard the secretary of state say yes or ok so those individuals came in without that requirement then when injunctive relief was dissolved or whatever we have this other population that is subjected wouldn't  to do to simply make sure every the body then it doesn't make sense to me that you have two basic standards one that came during the injunctive relief and those that will come afterwards i'm just wondering now you could simply say we we start the to be resolved i take it and i'm not sure it's going to be resolved we are going to reconsider it what's the consequence to no action by the commission what is the consequence again to an action that would not form well the law is good law unless and until it's overturned so that that's a clear principle and i think we have the responsibility to accurately reflect accurately reflect the state laws on the federal form united states constitution protects the right of states to set eligibility requirements in the federal form has a perfect place for that in the state instructions portion of the form if the e e o c were to determine or to delay action on this issue in my view were i voters would you not while something is still pending in the law is being challenged what would be the basis in reason for that now i understand you can have lawsuits out there but this is taken care of then you have story decisis you have precedent the issue is did it is long gone it has been decided but it has not been decided so why would you if you're going to err why would you do that on the side of making sure you don't disenfranchise voters because after the fact when you do disenfranchise you cannot do it those people will not be allowed to vote and it is still a very very real possibility that the law would be set aside i'm just saying your law to always think in terms of not disenfranchising individuals specially while you have pending litigation in our what your back thank you the gentleman's time has expired i am going to ask just a few questions if i could in on the subject that has been discussed both by mr mccarthy and judge gonzales and the as i understand the question really posed by yourself chairman rodrigues is that the issue is whether the federal law really preempt the state's opportunity to do what they are serving to do by their proposition which is the very same issue that before the u s supreme court in the indiana case i think and a matter of fact i have offered an amicus brief with senator feinstein suggesting that in fact the federal law does preclude the ability of states to do what indiana tend to do and by extension also the  state of arizona and if i'm hearing you correctly correct me if i'm wrong you know reasonable people can differ i mean and apparently do on the commission and in the country the question that's what's really caused the inability for the commission to reach a conclusion on this is the disagreement on how to view that legal question is that accurate that is madam chair and  to grips with this it's not a surprise it's a difficult question is trying to come to grips with this and it's not easy to reach agreement in every case so i think that what's happened here certainly if i might just say on that point  in court that generally speaking it is prudent to wait until the case is over and the final judgment has been rendered secondly under federal law a form cannot be initially rejected if a voter  subcommittee and in the ac to discuss federal administrative procedure requirements of the commission and they were experts and they had recommendations on the implementation of various procedural regulations has that been helpful have you been able to adopt some of those recommendations that those experts had made we had the training opportunities that were suggested on the administrative procedures  implemented question yes yes the suggestions were helpful we have in fact retained consultants you asked about the use of consultants we need the expertise to help us cut through the bureaucracy of federal government and we are in individuals in we also had a hearing a public hearing and brought in some of those same people to really discuss deeper about what we needed and that was very helpful that's great feedback to have just last question i believe that the a c s created a new chief operating officer and i'm interested in what are going to be the respective roles of the executive director the chief operating officer and the general counsel after this person has been hired the this is accurate or not but i received the impression that the general counsel had been undertaking functions that were unusual for a general counsel broader than a traditional general counsel  position while the feeling of this new position change the alignment of the general counsel's position and will it be a more standard administrative structure after  that i'll take that chair the the chief operating officer will report to the executive director i think the general counsel is very relieved that we're going direction so that she doesn't have to double live i'm going to before my cellphone goes off again and hoping that we will get our regular lighting system replaced before our next hearing we we won't have votes for another few minutes so we do voter and so it's not rejected out of hand to go through an additional step you know obviously cumbersome i would imagine and it's not useful to provide information that's not accurate i think there are other examples of before the commission now where it might be more obvious that voters are disenfranchised and one example is that for the state of colorado is inaccurate and we know that the voter registration deadline in new jersey is inaccurate they've changed from thirty days to twenty one they're not able to register unless they're either not incarcerated or not serving parole so those examples and in a lot of ways are even clearer examples of voters who will not be able to register by virtue of the fact has not properly updated many laws both federal and state all throughout the country and if one were to not enforce a law because it has been challenged in the court that would obviously drastically change the dynamic of our system so in my view even on the day and the others and we could not i am reluctant to do case by case regulation that is as a state request comes in we voted up or down but i'm also sensitive to the fact that unfortunately we have lost three good  not going to we don't personally agree with that you can hold somebody up this whole time and disenfranchise a lot of i think the procedures would have to see if you can to act when someone has to if you can't come together and someone's been there two years there that really would indicate that you have that kind of problem on such a large scale that you would willingly be willing to implement that right now before they fully tried in the judicial system what is evil what is danger and who are you just disenfranchising i mean those are really serious questions and where you do greater harm to the body politic and to the electoral system i would hope that you would look at that now is it fair to arizona that it's been delayed in that it's been challenge and  we could go on and on but i think the reality of the situation is you're going to do a lot greater harm by moving forward before you have some sort of judicial determination i want to go on to another topic  and something i wanted to cover my staff indicators is that mandated studies and reports have not been submitted by reports on registrations by mail or chronic voting pre absentee ballot postage and so on and i'm just as human what we're well congressman gonzales some of the report due dates were required before the commission was established and in a couple of cases the the the scope of the project was such that we did finally get the two thousand and four presidential the two thousand and six general and now the two thousand and eight with many many things to do so it is true that a couple of the studies are behind date but we are we're we're pushing gentleman yield back i'm just wondering i don't you know the answer to this today but about the funds provided for covered jurisdictions to meet their requirements under section two or three of the voting rights act funds sufficient to meet those needs of limited english proficiency voters in that section do we need to address that in terms of our budget here anybody who knows the answer you can get back to me we don't know where we will get back to you we don't have jurisdiction over that and to my knowledge since i've been on the commission jurisdictions have not spoken to us directly about the need for more funds we are assisting in many ways by providing as many materials as we can in different languages so the election officials right away and not have to do there has there been consideration of an study on lay would you assess ability throughout the country in addition to those jurisdictions that are subject to the voting rights act we are working on that and what we're doing is as we're working on it we're producing whatever documents we can we haven't yet determined what the absolutely correct in written languages and so we're interested even in that area of it so that we can at least do some best practices or the quick start at least get that out as quickly as possible well  we have all those bells and whistles mean that we have votes on the floor of the house and i'd like to thank all the commissioners for being here today and for your testimony and answering our questions we may have additional questions that which we will send to you and if we do and ask that you answer them as promptly as you can i just will say i you know i was talking about language accessibility i can still to say this for one more year that i was on the board of supervisors in santa clara county longer than i've been in the house of representatives and one of our obligations was to oversee the registrar of voters and it was it's a it's chaos but it's a wonderful responsibility and one of the things we did when i was in local government was to go beyond what was required of us on language accessibility because especially in california you have these initiatives are so complicated and i'll never forget a very elderly gentleman came and spoke to us and he in english but with a pretty heavy accent and he thanked us for making available to him information for the first time i get to vote the way i want is that of the way my son tells me to so it's very important and  in our response that would be absolutely fine just get to the staff and again thank you so much for being here we look forward to additional progress and