U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

36–640 PDF WASHINGTON : 2019

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. 116–18 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov 

http://www.house.oversight.gov 

http://www.docs.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Chairman 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, Illinois 

JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland 

HARLEY ROUDA, California 

KATIE HILL, California 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

MARK DESAULNIER, California 

BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan 

STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands 

RO KHANNA, California 

JIMMY GOMEZ, California 

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York 

AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts 

RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Ranking Minority Member 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

JODY B. HICE, Georgia 

GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin 

JAMES COMER, Kentucky 

MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina 

CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana 

CHIP ROY, Texas 

CAROL D. MILLER, West Virginia 

MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee 

KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota 

W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida 

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 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

ROBIN KELLY, Illinois 

JIMMY GOMEZ, California 

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

CHIP ROY, Texas, Ranking Minority Member 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

JODY HICE, Georgia 

MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas 

CAROL D. MILLER, West Virginia 
(III) 

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 
Page

IV 

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 
(1) 

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 TwentyFourth 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. 
2 

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-yearsold 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 
3 

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 
4 

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 
5 

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 
6 

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. 
7 

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 
8 

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. 
9 

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. 
10 

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 
11 

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 
12 

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 
13 

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 
14 

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 elec-
15 

tions 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. 
16 

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 
17 

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-yearolds 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. 
18 

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. 
19 

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, 
20 

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 no-
21 

tice. 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 sameday 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 
22 

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? 
23 

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. 
24 

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 
25 

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. 
26 

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 
27 

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. 
28 

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 signifi-
29 

cantly 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? 
30 

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. 
31 

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. 
32 

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 AfricanAmerican 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 
33 

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. 
34 

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 
35 

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 
36 

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 
37 

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. 
38 

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 
39 

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.] 

Æ