[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
VOTING RIGHTS AND ELECTION ADMINISTRATION IN FLORIDA
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 6, 2019
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Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
https://www.gpoinfo.gov/committee/house-administration
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
38-118 WASHINGTON : 2019
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C O N T E N T S
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MAY 6, 2019
Page
Voting Rights and Election Administration in Florida............. 1
OPENING STATEMENTS
Chairwoman Marcia L. Fudge....................................... 1
Prepared statement of Chairwoman Fudge....................... 4
Hon. Barry Loudermilk............................................ 6
Prepared statement of Hon. Loudermilk........................ 8
WITNESSES
Anjenys Gonzalez-Eilert, Executive Director, Common Cause Florida 15
Prepared statement of Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert.................... 17
Andrew Gillum, Chair, Forward Florida............................ 28
Prepared statement of Mr. Gillum............................. 30
Nancy Batista, Florida State Director, Mi Familia Vota........... 34
Prepared statement of Ms. Batista............................ 36
Marleine Bastien, Founder and Executive Director, FANM Ayisyen
Nan Miymi, Inc................................................. 40
Prepared statement of Ms. Bastien............................ 42
Juan Cartagena, President and Senior Counsel, LatinoJustice
PRLDEF......................................................... 73
Prepared statement of Mr. Cartagena.......................... 76
Karen Wilkerson, League of Women Voters of Florida............... 82
Prepared statement of Ms. Wilkerson.......................... 84
Judith Browne Dianis, Executive Director; Advancement Project.... 86
Prepared statement of Ms. Dianis............................. 88
Logan Churchwell, Communication and Research Director, Public
Interest Legal Foundation...................................... 94
Prepared statement of Mr. Churchwell......................... 96
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Southern Poverty Law Center, submission.......................... 129
New Florida Majority-Education Fund, submission.................. 133
Laura Guren Rodriguez, Co-Chair State Policy Advocate, National
Council of Jewish Women, submission............................ 139
Advancement Project, Democracy Rising: The End of Florida's
History of Felony Disenfranchisement and Launch of a New Age of
Empowerment, Submission........................................ 141
VOTING RIGHTS AND ELECTION ADMINISTRATION IN FLORIDA
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MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Elections,
Committee on House Administration,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., at
115 South Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Hon. Marcia
L. Fudge (Chair of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Fudge, Butterfield, Aguilar, and
Loudermilk.
Also Present: Representatives Hastings, Deutch, Wasserman
Schultz, and Wilson.
Staff Present: Peter Whippy, Communications Director;
Mannal Haddad, Press Secretary; Eddie Flaherty, Chief Clerk;
Sean Jones, Legislative Clerk; Khalil Abboud, Deputy Staff
Director; Sarah Nasta, Counsel--Elections; David Tucker,
Parliamentarian; Vivian Piereschi, Ms. Wasserman Schultz's
District Director; Wendi Lipsich, Mr. Deutch's District
Director; Joyce Postell, Ms. Wilson's District Director;
Patricia Williams, Mr. Hastings' District Director; Courtney
Parella, Minority Communications Director; Jesse Roberts,
Minority Counsel; Cole Felder, Minority General Counsel; and
Joy Yunji-Lee, Minority Counsel.
Chairwoman Fudge. The Subcommittee on Elections of the
Committee on House Administration will come to order.
I would like to thank all the Members of the Subcommittee
and my colleagues from the House who are here today as well as
our witnesses and those in the audience for being with us this
morning.
I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative
days to revise and extend their remarks and that any written
statements be made part of the record.
Hearing no objection, so ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that Members be invited to sit on
the dais for the Subcommittee hearing. They are, in order: Mr.
Deutch, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. Hastings, Ms. Wilson.
Hearing no objection, so ordered.
I especially want to thank my good friend and distinguished
colleague, Mr. Hastings, for welcoming us so warmly to his
district as we continue the important work we do as a
Subcommittee.
We are here to examine the state of voting rights and
election administration in Florida. As this Subcommittee
continues to travel the country, I can think of no better place
than here in Florida, a State that is no stranger to having its
elections become the focus of national attention.
The right to vote is fundamental to a strong, thriving
democracy, and yet, in our travels around the country and here
in Florida, we see repeated attempts to suppress the vote.
Florida has one of the most repressive disenfranchisement
policies in the country and has made it extremely difficult for
those convicted of a felony to have the voting rights restored.
Between 2010 and 2016, the number of disenfranchised Floridians
grew from 150,000 to approximately 1.68 million.
On November 6, 2018, a resounding 65 percent of Florida
voters cast their ballots in support of Amendment 4, a
constitutional amendment that would restore voting rights to
the over 1 million Floridians who have been disenfranchised. It
was a watershed moment for civil rights and for the dignity and
worth of all Floridians. Sadly, shortly thereafter, Republicans
in Florida began to undermine its implementation.
The bill passed last week by the Florida State legislature
would require people with felony convictions to pay all
restitution, fines, and fees resulting from their sentences or
get these fees excused by a judge before becoming eligible to
vote.
This bill is wholly unnecessary, as Amendment 4 was self-
executing and did not require implementing legislation. This
measure is nothing but a poll tax that would effectively
disenfranchise those that who unable to pay if signed into law.
They do nothing to ensure election integrity and are merely
a pretext to suppress the vote. Further, they blatantly ignore
the will of the Florida voters that approved the measure in a
retroactive act of voter suppression. It is an act of defiance
by this legislature.
Florida has also been a host of other voting rights and
election administration issues in recent years. I very well
remember hanging chads.
Just last year, the Florida Secretary of State and the
supervisors of elections in 32 counties were sued for violating
the Voting Rights Act requirements which would provide
bilingual voting machines and assistance for Spanish-speaking
voters.
In both 2016 and 2018, October hurricanes made it difficult
for voters to register before the deadline or receive their
vote-by-mail ballots. The legislature did nothing to help.
Florida has seen repeated attempts at voter purging, and
the purge rate has been steadily been increasing over the
years. From November 2008 to November 2010, the median purge
rate was 0.2 percent. It rose to 3.6 percent from 2012 to 2014
and jumped to more than 7 percent between December 2016 and
September 2018.
Florida has always sought to restrict early voting. In
2014, the Florida Department of State issued an opinion banning
colleges and universities from housing early voting locations.
That opinion was overturned by a district court judge in 2018.
However, several counties ignored the district court and
refused to provide such rights on campuses.
Today, we will hear from experts, activists, and litigators
who have worked for years to ensure that every Floridian can
exercise his or right to vote. Their testimony will help as
Congress seeks to understand what needs to be done to safeguard
every American's right to freely access the ballot.
The first panel will consist of four witnesses:
The first will be Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert, Executive Director,
Common Cause Florida. At Common Cause, she is responsible for
leading democracy reform efforts statewide.
Welcome.
Ms. Bastien, Executive Director, Family Action Network
Movement, an organization whose mission is to empower Haitian
women and their families socially, economically, politically,
and facilitate their adjustment to south Florida.
Ms. Batista, Florida Field Director, Mi Familia Vota, an
organization which works to unite Latino immigrant and allied
communities to promote social and economic justice through
citizenship workshops, voter registration, and voter
participation.
Mr. Andrew Gillum, Chair, Forward Florida. Andrew Gillum
served as Mayor of Tallahassee from 2014 through 2018 and was a
candidate for Governor of Florida in 2018. Mr. Gillum is a
lifelong Floridian who has worked to ensure access to voting
for all Florida citizens.
You will each be recognized. We will start with Ms.
Gonzalez-Eilert. You will have five minutes. You will see in
front of you lights. When the green light comes on, you begin.
When the yellow light comes on, you have one minute left. When
the red light comes on, please try to wrap up.
You are recognized, Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert. Thank you.
Oh, I am sorry. Excuse me. You know, I am so used to the
Ranking Member sitting next to me. My colleague from Georgia
would like to make an opening statement.
Mr. Loudermilk, thank you so much for being here.
[The statement of Chairwoman Fudge follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you for
recognizing me here.
I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I appreciate
you in holding these hearings across the country. And I didn't
realize how welcome we were when I found out yesterday they had
an air show in our honor just to be here.
Thank you for the time. And I appreciate all the officials
here in Broward County for opening this facility.
The Committee on House Administration has an extremely
important task to conduct oversight of Federal elections.
Throughout the Committee's existence, Republicans and Democrats
have worked across the aisle to create significant election
policy that widely impacted this Nation.
The Subcommittee on Elections was created for the primary
purpose to be an extension of House Administration, to enhance
the Committee's oversight capabilities of Federal elections and
how these elections are administered.
While I am a member of the full Committee but not
technically the Subcommittee, I appreciate you, Madam
Chairwoman for having me here to represent the minority voice
in today's Subcommittee proceedings.
Chairwoman Fudge has been dutifully leading our
Subcommittee this Congress to investigate voting rights issues
in order to create a new formula that will reauthorize Section
4 of the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965 for the purpose of
removing racial-based restrictions on voting, has historically
been a bipartisan effort, though most may not realize that.
This legislation was most recently reauthorized under a
Republican President and a Republican Congress.
In 2013, the Supreme Court determined Section 4 of the
Voting Rights Act to be unconstitutional in Shelby v. Holder.
Chief Justice Roberts said that the Voting Rights Act of 1965
employed extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary
problem. While the Court did not decide whether there is still
an extraordinary problem, the Supreme Court did hold that what
makes sense at one time has lost its relevance. They noted
that, nearly 50 years later, things had changed dramatically.
The Voting Rights Act primarily remains under the
jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee. Our Committee,
however, has an obligation to review election administration
and recognize issues if any should elevate from State to
Federal level, which is why I am here today.
After reviewing the written witness testimony and speaking
with State and local election administrators, evidence shows us
that the previous Supervisor in Broward County made inexcusable
mistakes, from ballot design, lack of transparency, missed
deadlines, and even within the ballot-counting process, all of
which jeopardized the system's integrity.
These errors, while egregious, have not been determined as
an intentional voter discrimination or suppression. Also, the
State has already taken steps to counter these problems for the
upcoming election cycle and are proactively working within
their jurisdiction to make improvements.
If there is clear evidence of intentional widespread voter
discrimination, Congress should take steps to remedy that in a
bipartisan manner. However, the Subcommittee has yet to find
concrete evidence of this within the field hearings.
It is essential that Congress make well-informed decisions
by hearing from all the proper stakeholders and reviewing the
facts and evidence.
The facts we know up to this point are simple: Voter
turnout in the 2018 midterm election was the highest it has
been in 50 years. Despite the unacceptable mistakes in the
execution of the election here in Broward County, voter turnout
was up by more than 11 percent from the previous midterm in
2014.
We also know that the State of Florida is already taking
steps to remedy the mistakes seen in the 2018 election, as well
as creating new laws that are tailored to the unique needs of
their State's citizens. Congress must understand our role in
assisting States, not overpowering their rights or taking over
their election systems.
Today, I am here to listen and to learn more from these
proceedings in Broward County to discover what the Federal
Government's role should be here. And I look forward to hearing
from all our witnesses who have graciously agreed to testify.
Again, thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you all for
having me here. And I yield back the balance of my time.
[The statement of Mr. Loudermilk follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
I do want to do something a little out of order, and I can
because I am the chair and I have the microphone. I would like
to recognize my good friend, Mr. Hastings, for a few opening
remarks.
Mr. Hastings.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you so very much, Madam Chairwoman.
Thanks, Pete. It didn't take you long to learn about
Florida microphones.
I want Dale Holness and the other County Commissioners to
know that I always wanted to sit on the dais here at the
county. And for those who know that I have been ill over a
protracted period of time, perhaps my next job will be to run
for the county commission. In the meantime, know that I am
staying in Congress.
Let me thank you, Chairwoman Fudge, and explain to the
audience here that Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House,
actively sought Chairwoman Marcia Fudge to take on this immense
responsibility. I am grateful to Marcia and my colleague from
Georgia and my dear, dear friend, G.K. Butterfield, and Pete
Aguilar for coming here to be with Rep. Ted Deutch and Debbie
and Frederica and myself in listening to an extraordinary panel
just on the credentials of the individuals that are here.
I have prepared remarks, Madam Chairwoman, but, in the
interest of time, I am going to pass on those.
I just want to say that, when the Supreme Court struck down
the Voting Rights Act, they struck down the promise that all
eligible Americans should have the right to vote and gave free
rein to States to enact discriminatory voting laws. And every
day that Congress fails to act, voters are in danger. We must
have a full restoration of the Voting Rights Act in this
country, and hearings like this are critically important in
accomplishing that goal.
I told a good friend of mine this morning--we were at
breakfast, and I told him that I had a dream last night, and I
was speaking, and what I said was that the forces of
obstruction and oppression of minorities in this country have
deep pockets, and they have been and are continuing to do
everything they can to cause people not to vote.
But let me send a message to them. Certainly, African-
Americans have suffered oppression for an extraordinary period
of time. We are used to it. And we are unrelenting in making
sure that every person in this State, as well as this Nation,
has an opportunity to vote. And rather than obstruct, we should
be about the business of instructing people how important
voting is to their lives and to all of ours.
Madam Chairwoman, I can't thank you enough, and my
colleagues, for the extraordinary efforts that you all have put
forward, traveling around the country to develop the record.
And, with your permission, I would ask unanimous consent that
my prepared remarks be put into the record.
Chairwoman Fudge. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Hastings follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you so much, Mr. Hastings.
Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF ANJENYS GONZALEZ-EILERT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
COMMON CAUSE FLORIDA; ANDREW GILLUM, CHAIR, FORWARD FLORIDA;
NANCY BATISTA, FLORIDA STATE DIRECTOR, MI FAMILIA VOTA; AND
MARLEINE BASTIEN, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FANM AYISYEN
NAN MIYMI, INC.
STATEMENT OF ANJENYS GONZALEZ-EILERT
Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert. Good morning. Thank you, Chairwoman
Fudge and Members of the Subcommittee on Elections, for
inviting Common Cause Florida to participate in this hearing
today.
My name is Anjenys Gonzalez-Eilert, and I am the Executive
Director of Common Cause Florida. We are a national,
nonpartisan watchdog organization with 1.2 million supporters
and 30 State chapters.
Madam Chairwoman, I find my testimony will echo a lot of
your opening comments. Although there are many voting-related
topics to cover in Florida, I will focus my observations on
election protection and election administration.
Election protection helps ensure eligible voters are able
to participates in our democracy. Along with our partners, we
have collected data that can be used to create meaningful
reform, ensuring that our elections are free, fair, and
accessible, as they are meant to be.
Issues that we find in Florida, for example, are lack of
standardized training. As outlined in the conduct of elections
reports submitted by the supervisors of elections to the
Division of Elections, 70 percent of the issues reported were
due to human error in our past election.
Our Polling Place Procedures Manual has not been revised
since 2014. Things such as language access and how to move a
voter in polling electronic poll books has not been included.
There is a need for standardized training by the Secretary
of State and supervisors and canvas board members. This need is
addressed in the new election bill being proposed, S.B. 7066,
which speaks to the responsibility of the Secretary of State as
it refers to signature matching as follows: Provide formal
signature matching training to supervisors of elections and
county canvassing board members.
The cure process for vote-by-mail and provisional ballots.
In 2014, a signature cure process was created. The cure process
currently requires that a voter submit a completed affidavit
and a copy of their identification.
Currently, provisional ballots are issued when voters'
eligibility cannot be verified. We feel the issuance of
provisional ballots can be minimized with more stringent poll
worker training, as they often issued erroneously.
Language access has long been a problem in the State of
Florida. The only option currently available to people when
they go to the Division of Elections website is to use Google
Translate. As we know, that can cause some errors. It would be
of great benefit to have these pages properly translated.
In 2018, the Florida legislature approved legislation that
would allow the Secretary of State as of January 1 of this year
to join ERIC to improve the accuracy of our voter rolls and
access to registration. However, in this current budget, there
is no specific line item that proposes money for ERIC.
In recent years, Florida has been struck by several
hurricanes during election season. More needs to be done to
prepare for continuity of operations, as we know that this is
likely to happen again, moving back to standardized processes.
There are various things that would be helpful at the
Federal level, and I would like to advocate for them now. All
of these can be found in H.R. 1: automatic voter registration,
same-day voter registration, and election security.
The Election Security Act is a strong response because it
would promote post-election risk-limiting audits, voter
verifiable paper ballots, and increased funding for States to
improve their voting machines.
As certain States and localities, including here in
Florida, continue to try to suppress the votes of some
communities and rig the rules to make voting more difficult for
some people, Congress must step up to ensure that voting
remains a right for all eligible Americans.
You can be on the correct side of history and support
reforms that strengthen our democracy, or you can be on the
side of the status quo and turn a blind eye to voter
suppression tactics such as poll taxes, switching or
eliminating polling places, and using signature mismatches to
disenfranchise eligible Americans.
For nearly 50 years, Common Cause has fought to ensure that
the voices of all Americans can be heard in government, and we
will continue fighting until all eligible Americans can have
their voices heard at the ballot box.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Gillum, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ANDREW GILLUM
Mr. Gillum. Thank you so much, Chairwoman Fudge, and to the
distinguished Members of this Subcommittee. Special
appreciation to the Florida delegation who represent us so as
well in Washington, D.C.
I consider it an honor to be able to provide a few comments
to this extremely important Subcommittee as you all do the work
that is part the basic principle which serves as the foundation
for our democracy: voting.
I want to start by applauding the 116th Congress for
passing H.R. 1, a historic piece of legislation. And in 2018,
we saw a record number of Floridians use their voices at the
ballot box. In a non-Presidential year, we had 8.2 million
people cast ballots, more than 2 million more people than were
expected to participate in that election.
Turnout among voters in our State was 57 percent African-
American; 48 percent of Hispanics voted; 67 percent of white
voters voted. Those are increases of 143 percent, 161 percent,
and 134 percent respectively. Historic turnout indeed.
Florida voters also voted to pass Amendment 4, which the
Chairwoman referenced in her opening comments, restoring the
right to vote to formally incarcerated citizens and making
Florida a forgiving State. We were unambiguous as voters,
seeing as that amendment gained more votes than the sitting
Governor, more votes than me, and, again, won with a historic
64 percent of the voters casting ballots saying that we were
going to be a State that didn't judge people forever by their
worst day.
That now historic change is under assault and has been
under assault these last several weeks in the Florida
legislature. I will pass on further comments there.
We should all be proud of these victories. But in 2018, the
elections in Florida also saw some inequities that still exist
in our electoral system. Out of the 8.3 million votes cast,
83,000 were deemed invalid. In a State where elections are
often decided by 1 percent--in Senator Nelson's case, around
10,000 votes; in my case, around 33,000 votes. And the
Chairwoman has already mentioned how close our Presidential
elections can be. That means that 1 percent of the vote can be
consequential to the outcome of any election, statewide or
Federal.
Last year, over 2.6 million people voted by mail in the
State of Florida. Researchers have found the statewide average
of rejected vote-by-mail ballots in 2018 was at 1.2 percent--
again, in a 1 percent State, 1.2 percent rejected--a rate that
was even higher than the Presidential elections of 2012 or
2016. The rejection rate is higher in Broward County, with 2.8
percent of vote-by-mail ballots being rejected; even higher
among voters between the ages of 18 and 21.
Judge Walker, when deciding on one of the contests during
the recount period here in the State of Florida in 2018, said:
The precise issue in this case is whether Florida's law that
allows county elections officials to reject vote-by-mail and
provisional ballots for mismatched signatures, which, with no
standard, an illusionary process to cure, and no process to
challenge the rejection, passes constitutional muster. Walker
goes on to say: The answer is simply it does not.
To add to this troubling data, the ACLU of Florida and the
University of Florida analyzed the 2014 and 2016 elections and
produced a report which found that younger and ethnic minority
voters were much more likely to have their vote-by-mail ballots
rejected and less likely to have their vote-by-mail ballots
cured when they were flagged for a signature mismatch.
Ladies and gentlemen, one of the sets of things that I
think we want to get to today are a set of recommendations on
how we make this process work better. A few recommendations
from my perspective would be:
One, allow same-day voter registration.
Two, repeal Florida's onerous voter registration laws.
Three, standardize and fund early voting across the State
of Florida.
Four, universal paid postage--universal paid postage for
all absentee ballots.
Allow ballots postmarked by election day to be counted.
Increase funding for the supervisor of elections offices.
Mandate electronic poll books to make sure that voter
registration is portable across the State.
Fix the signature mismatch law. No untrained person should
be able to invalidate a ballot simply because the ``W'' in your
signature this year looks different than the one from the year
before.
And, finally, a real recount system that triggers an
evaluation of an actual paper receipt rather than feeding the
same ballot through the same machines that produced the same
count in the first place. We have paper ballots in the State of
Florida, and we should count them.
Ladies and gentlemen, because my time draws near, I want to
conclude by saying, last year, I was honored to be the
Democratic Party's nominee for Governor of this great State.
This is not partisan for me. I believe all votes should be
counted--Republican, Democrat, independent, no party
affiliate--with one caveat and, actually one interest in mind,
and that is the goal being that the person who is ultimately
sworn into office is the one who actually got the most votes.
Finally, in deciding on an elections challenge during the
2018 recount, Judge Walker concluded: This is a case about the
precious and fundamental right to vote, the right preservative
of all other rights. And it is about the right of every voter
to have his or her vote counted, plain and simple.
Again, thank you for the opportunity. I will submit the
rest of my comments, hopefully, for the record. Thank you,
Madam Chairwoman.
[The statement of Mr. Gillum follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
Ms. Batista, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF NANCY BATISTA
Ms. Batista. Thank you, Chairwoman Fudge, and to the
Members of the Subcommittee here today. My name is Nancy
Batista. I am the Florida State Director of Mi Familia Vota
Education Fund, a 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization and also Mi
Familia Vota, a 501(c)(4), nonprofit organization, nonpartisan
organization.
Our mission is to build Latino political power. We do this
by creating voters through the citizenship workshops that we
provide. We also register people to vote. Last year, we
registered 29,745 people to vote. We knocked on 101,000 doors,
called 734 people, and sent 152,535 text messages to get out
the vote. We also did a campaign to get out the vote for the
primary election and for the general election.
We work in low-propensity, high-density Latino areas.
During the voter registration process, we were making sure that
people would sign up to receive a vote-by-mail ballot. During
the primary election, we had four teams of five people each
that were knocking on doors and making sure to get out the
vote, GOTV.
Everything seemed to be going well until I was made aware
of something that had happened not too long after the primary
election was over. A person very close to me received a letter
stating that their mailed-in ballot had been voided out due to
a signature mismatch although they had not changed their
signature since high school. That person was me.
The time for early voting came for the general election. I
was prepared and I went to my early-voting site. While I was
there, a couple of things happened.
The first thing was that I walked in to surrender my ballot
because I wanted to make sure that my vote would count. As I
tried to surrender my mail-in ballot, the person in the front
told me that this was not protocol and that she could not do
this. I told her to please contact her supervisor and that I
was aware of my rights and that I knew that I could this. I
waited for her to make contact with her supervisor.
While I waited for her to get clearance, I saw something
else happen. I heard how another person working there told an
older lady that the person next to her could not be next to her
while voting. The person responded back that he was her son and
that he was assisting her because she did not understand. The
lady continued to say that he could not be there with her. Then
the son asked for the material in Spanish, and said she that
they did not have it at this time.
The person told the lady: You don't have this information
in Spanish, and you won't let me assist my mom, who doesn't
understand English. Do you have someone that can assist her?
The lady said no. I jumped in, and I told her that I would be
calling voter protection services about this incident to let
them know about both incidents.
The other person came back with another person next to her.
She told me that I could surrender my mail-in ballot and that
they would be giving me a provisional ballot. I turned around
and I no longer saw the mother and son.
I got to my office; I called the lawyer from Latino Justice
and told her of what I had just witnessed and experienced. I
also called voter protection services and let them know about
the incidents and told them that this was an early-voting site
in Polk County that did not have any Spanish material and that
no one could assist there that was bilingual as well.
We hosted a party at the polls in order to motivate our
communities to go out and vote. While we were there, we had a
couple of people that approached us, upset because of issues
that they had encountered.
We had another person that mentioned that their voting site
was in a gated community and that there was a passcode to get
in and that she was not able to get in. My colleague told her
that it was best for her to go to the supervisor of elections
for her to cast her vote that way.
Election day arrived, and we were at the office. A couple
people walked in, confused, asking for the office information
regarding their polling site. Our office is nearby a library.
The library was an early-voting site, but it was not a voting
site for election day. We assisted those people by looking up
their information and providing them with information on where
their voting site was.
I am here to uplift the voices of those people that have
been suppressed. I know because of my work I was able to cast
my vote, but what about that mother and son? What about their
vote? Did their vote not count? So I just want to make sure
that our voices are heard.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Batista follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Ms. Bastien.
STATEMENT OF MARLEINE BASTIEN
Ms. Bastien. Good morning, Chairwoman Fudge, and thank you
for inviting us today. And I would like to thank the Members of
the Subcommittee on Elections for this important forum this
morning.
I am honored to be here. I am Marleine Bastien, Executive
Director of Family Action Network Movement, which is a
501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and FANM in Action, which is a
501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. FANM provides wraparound
services for low- to moderate-income families, which includes,
of course, civic voter and voter education. Our services are
free and accessible to all, but our core constituency remains
Haitian-Americans, many of whom never voted before they arrived
in the U.S.
On October 29, 2007, under the reign of General Henri
Namphy, the morning of an election that was supposed to bring
an end to a repressive era turned into a bloodbath when 60
armed soldiers and others in civilian clothes went into the
school where people were supposed to vote, they opened fire,
and many went into the school and started to attack voters with
machetes.
You would wonder why I am bringing this up in this forum.
No one has gone to that length in the U.S. However, the
incidents like this one that I just mentioned are designed to
terrorize and appear fear--to terrorize and appear fear--and
then curtail the voting process and the voting rights of our
citizens.
Incidents that occurred during the 2000 Presidential
elections brought back memories to many Haitian-Americans who
were voting for the first time. Many Haitians who grew up under
the dictatorships of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier suffered
from collective trauma resulting in post-traumatic stress
syndrome. Some of the events of 2000 Presidential elections
brought some disturbing memories to the mind of our voters. The
elderly had the hardest time. And I remember that our managers
at FANM started to receive distressing phone calls. I witnessed
groups of white men screaming and intimidating voters, calling
them names. Our office was inundated with phone calls from
people who were turned away, harassed, and who could not vote.
And it is for these reasons FANM joined as a member of the
Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition. The Haitian-American
Grassroots Coalition was a plaintiff in the lawsuit that eased
up some of the voting processes in Florida. Thousands of
Haitians were not allowed to vote [inaudible] Were allowed to
vote because of our work.
Now, during the November elections of 2018, FANM, with the
support of New Florida Majority, ran a canvassing program
combined with a communication strategy targeting close to 6,000
voters. We visited areas in the ZIP Codes where mainly
immigrants live: 33127, 33137, 33138, and 33150. We hired
canvassers who went door to door, and then we developed a GOTV
program to educate members and then make sure that they
understood that no one should be able to turn them away from
their basic and sacred right to vote.
So, in the past elections, during this canvassing, we
witnessed the following issues: voters who were turned out
because of their names. Many Haitians have compound names,
Jean-Robert or Jean-Claude. If on their card they have ``J.R.''
And yet on their driver's licenses they have their full names,
they are prevented from voting.
The design and the length of the ballot was also a
deterrent. Many could not complete the voting process because
the ballot was so long. Many went to the wrong polling place.
While we were in some of the voting places close to 7:00 p.m.,
some people were still trying to locate their voting spaces.
No provisional ballot office in some of the precincts; no
assistance for people who would not read or speak English or
Spanish; last-minute changes of the polling sites; long lines,
which also was a deterrent from what we observed last November;
and then defective voting machines.
In my experience, to support community voter education
initiatives, I think bilingual resources are often lacking and
that they should be provided. In the 2018 midterm election,
polling sites in Haitian-concentrated areas were lacking
Haitian translators or even Spanish-speaking translators, and
this is unacceptable. The number of people with Haitian
ancestry has and continues to grow in Florida. According to the
Census Bureau, Haitian-Americans' population has grown more
than 300,000 in south Florida.
To conclude, permit me to express my thanks for the honor
to address this Subcommittee. We share the prayer that Congress
shall act to fix these issues now and before the 2020 election
for every voice to be heard.
The election process so far excludes millions of Haitians,
Hispanics, and people of Caribbean descent, many of whom live
in underserved neighborhoods. Our question today is, why are
these people targeted? Why are immigrants targeted? Why are
these communities targeted?
The Subcommittee must raise these issues to the highest
level of House and Senate leadership and pass laws that will
protect and promote our sacred right to vote and maintain our
sacred right to vote. As the biggest democracy in the world, we
must do better in creating conditions for citizens to exercise
their right to vote. It is an important first step toward an
equitable society, a viable and strong democracy. Elections
should be free, elections should be fair, and elections should
be open and accessible to all.
We are seeing that the ugly head of suppression is rising
again in Florida. Our hardworking citizens, our hardworking
voters want participation. They want it, and our democracy
demands it.
Thank you so much.
[The statement of Ms. Bastien follows:]
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Chairwoman Fudge. Mr. Butterfield, you are recognized for a
statement and your questioning.
Mr. Butterfield. Let me thank you very much, Chairwoman
Fudge, for your friendship. Thank you for your leadership on
this Subcommittee and, most importantly, thank you for your
vision in planning seven field hearings across the country.
We started in Brownsville, Texas, several weeks ago, and on
to Atlanta, and then up to North Dakota, a State that I had
never traveled to before, but we went to North Dakota, and then
down to North Carolina, and then over to your home of
Cleveland. Now we are in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, and
next week down to Birmingham.
So thank you so very much for your willingness to take us
on the road and to have these hearings.
I have sat at each one of these hearings, and I will say it
today just for emphasis: This is a Congressional hearing. We
are collecting evidence that will be presented to the Congress
of the United States of America. This is not a political visit,
my dear friend, Alcee Hastings, to Broward County, even though
you and I----
Mr. Hastings. [Inaudible.]
Mr. Butterfield. But this is indeed a very serious hearing
where we are collecting evidence and to be in Congressman
Hastings' district is really a joy, because we are all friends
of Alcee Hastings and hold him in the highest esteem.
We are searching for evidence that will support or refute
claims of voter suppression for minority citizens not just in
Florida but across the country. We all know that the Voting
Rights Act was passed in 1965, just days after I graduated from
high school, passed in 1965.
It had many meaningful provisions in the Act. The three
most notable provisions were the elimination of the literacy
test; the creation of Section 2, which gave minority plaintiffs
the right to bring lawsuits--it wasn't restricted to any
particular State or county or jurisdiction. It is nationwide in
its scope. And Section 2 allows minority plaintiffs to sue in
Federal court if they feel that their vote is being diluted.
But the another part was Section 5, which gave the
Department of Justice the authority to review and pre-clear
voting changes in many States across the country and many
counties within States. For example, in my State, only 40
counties were covered. In the State of Georgia, for example,
the entire State was covered. And so Section 5 has been a very
powerful tool.
There is a great difference between Section 2 and Section
5. Section 2 is very expensive litigation--very expensive
litigation. When I litigated Section 2 claims back in the
1980s, it was around a million dollars to litigate one of those
claims. I suspect that in 2019 and going forward, it is multi
millions of dollars involved in bringing a Section 2 claim.
But Section 5 is very inexpensive. It is practically of no
cost whatsoever. It simply gives to the jurisdiction that is
affected the responsibility of getting the Justice Department
to take a look at the proposed change, including redistricting
maps, to see if those changes will dilute in any way minority
voting rights.
And Section 5 has worked quite well down through the years
and has been the catalyst that has caused many positive changes
in voting that African-Americans and other minority groups have
benefited from.
But on June 25, 2013, we received a devastating surprise.
The U.S. Supreme Court told us that, while Section 5 continues
to be a constitutional provision of the law, that the formula
that is used to give life to Section 5 needed updating. It
needed a contemporary formula, not one based in 1964 or 2006,
but we needed a contemporary formula for Section 5.
And so that is, in part, what these hearings are all about.
Yes, we are gathering evidence to try to lay the basis, the
legislative basis, for updating the formula in Section 4, but
we are also looking for other means of guaranteeing the right
to vote for all of our citizens.
Ms. Nancy Batista, let me, in the time remaining that I
have, ask you very quickly: You mentioned that there were no
ballots or materials for Spanish-speaking voters. What county
were you referencing?
Ms. Batista. It was in Polk County.
Mr. Butterfield. Okay. And I understand that ballots were
not available, bilingual ballots, on that day, but the
literature in advance of the election, was there any literature
that was bilingual or for Spanish-speaking voters leading up to
the election?
Ms. Batista. There was provided--they said that, that day,
they didn't have any. It just happened to be the day that I
went there. And when I asked--well, not me--the person that was
there asked for that material, they said that they didn't have
it. And then they didn't have anyone that would assist them
being bilingual.
Mr. Butterfield. Sure.
I am going to ask you the obvious, but, again, this is for
the Congressional Record, so I want to make sure it is in the
record. Does it disenfranchise Spanish-speaking voters if
ballots and the literature surrounding the election are not in
Spanish?
Ms. Batista. Yes, it does. A lot of the people that came
here post-Hurricane Maria do not understand the language, the
English language, and cannot read it. They attended school. And
that is part of the lawsuit that is being done, for those
ballots to be provided in their native language so that they
can understand.
Those amendments are very confusing, especially when you
try to translate them. What mean ``yes'' might mean ``no.'' And
so trying to even interpret that or translate that to someone
is very confusing.
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you. Thank you.
Let me ask my final question to you, Mr. Gillum.
And thanks to all of the witnesses for your testimony
today.
But, yesterday afternoon, I took a few minutes to look at
your constitutional Amendment No. 4 that the voters passed
overwhelmingly by a two-to-one margin last year and read it in
its entirety, and I have some concerns about what your State
legislature is now attempting to do, and that is, to require
individuals who have previous convictions of felonies to pay
restitution and court fines and fees before being allowed to
exercise the franchise.
As a former judge, let me just give this to--and I will be
done, Madam Chairwoman. As a former judge, I would sentence
individuals to an active sentence in prison for offenses that
they committed. Ancillary to that decision, I would also tack
on a provision that the defendant shall also be responsible for
the fines, the costs, and any restitution that may have
accrued. Essentially, that would be just for the record. It
would be for the record and maybe later converted to a judgment
or to a lien.
But let's just take a 16-year-old offender in the 1980s who
broke into an abandoned house and was charged with the felony
of breaking and entering and larceny. And he stole an eight-
track tape in the 1980s that, at that time, was worth $400. And
that young offender received a 3-year active sentence. He has
served the active sentence, he has been released from parole,
he is now a law-abiding citizen in the community. But, still,
that $400 restitution and the court costs have now been
accruing interest, I presume, over the last 30 years, and now
it is thousands of dollars. And, apparently, the State
legislature is telling that young man--but now he is a middle-
aged man--that, before he can vote, he has to pay all of these
thousands of dollars before being allowed to vote.
In my world, that is a poll tax. I don't----
Mr. Gillum. That is right.
Mr. Butterfield [continuing]. Know any other way of saying
it.
So, Mr. Gillum, my question to you is: Was there any notice
on the part of the lawmakers regarding this constitutional
amendment, that, if passed, that these prior felons--I hate to
call them felons--those with prior felony convictions would be
required to pay money? Was there any notice to the public that
this was included in this?
Audience Member. No.
Audience Member. No.
Mr. Gillum. I think the audience has answered, Congressman,
and I will answer it into the record.
The scenario that you pointed out is a very live and real
one for far too many people here in the State of Florida.
I don't know about in your home State, Congressman, whether
or not the process is identical to Florida, but to get on the
Florida--to get on the ballot for a constitutional amendment,
the language must be approved through the Florida Supreme
Court. The Florida Supreme Court very judiciously looks at the
wording very specifically, takes out, adds to it, sends it
back. Ultimately what results is the clearest reading possible
so that any voter could understand the intent and the intention
when they go into the ballot box to vote.
It was very, very clear that court fees and fines were not
in the constitutional language when voters, again, 64 percent
of us, went out and approved the constitutional amendment to
automatically restore rights to a class of returning citizens.
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you.
Mr. Gillum. And now through this legislative process, as
you have already pointed out, we have loaded it up, and I agree
with your summary, which is, it equates very much so to a poll
tax----
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you.
Mr. Gillum [continuing]. Which we got rid of over 100 years
ago.
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Fudge. And just for the benefit of the other
members on the panel, you will not have 10 minutes. He had them
because he is a member of the Subcommittee and I did not call
on him for an opening statement, so I gave him a little extra
time so don't try it, the rest of you.
Mr. Butterfield. What if I spent all Sunday afternoon
writing this?
Chairwoman Fudge. And I want to remind our witnesses that
their entire written statements will be a part of the record
and that you have 5 days in which to revise it or provide us
extra material or any additional material.
Mr. Loudermilk, you are now recognized, sir.
Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And I appreciate all the witnesses' being here and your
testimonies.
Look it is clear that our Nation unfortunately does have a
history of voter suppression and discrimination and that is why
we have legislation such as the Voting Rights Act. Clearly, we
have history, modern history, of voter irregularities,
especially here in Broward County, so I think is it very
appropriate, Madam Chairwoman, that you chose Broward as one of
the seven sites for a hearing.
So one of the things that is our responsibility, as my
colleague Mr. Butterfield stated, is to gather facts to
determine, is there still voter suppression and discrimination
occurring? And is it Congress' role to fix those problems, or
are they as a result of human error, as I think Ms. Eilert
stated, that 70 percent of the issues that she had encountered
were because of human error?
Here in Broward County, as most everyone in the Nation
knows and as Mr. Gillum had stated, it seems to be the
epicenter of some national elections, as well as very close
elections. Even in this election cycle, across the Nation, we
had many, many elections that were within 1 percent, 2 percent.
Some of those were determined days or weeks after the ballots
closed.
So one of the things that we want to do is gather evidence.
Are they because of human error, incompetence? Or are they
because of actual voter discrimination?
Just here in Broward County, we have had Miriam Oliphant's
poor handling of the 2000 Presidential election, missing
ballots from the 2004 election, and then, more recently, the
uncounted ballots that were mysteriously discovered a week
after the election under, most recently, Supervisor Brenda
Snipes' watch.
And so, Ms. Eilert, if you don't mind, I will ask you, do
you--because you had referenced the 70 percent of human error.
Do you consider these issues here in Broward County to be
inefficient or incompetent work by the county election
supervisors, or do you think they are active voter suppression
and discrimination?
Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert. Congressman, this would be solely my
opinion. So, I mean, we can testify to the fact that there were
a lot of things that were human error, that there were mistakes
made. However, I could not in good conscience tell you whether
or not some of this was intentional or not.
Mr. Loudermilk. Now, has your organization worked to
resolve any issues like we saw here in Broward County?
Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert. I am sorry?
Mr. Loudermilk. Has your organization worked to resolve
issues like we saw in Broward County or across the State at the
State level?
Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert. Absolutely. We work year-round with
the supervisors of elections throughout the State of Florida,
and we have a very collaborative relationship with them. It is
not an oppositional relationship. We ask them what are some of
the issues that they find and see and how we can help them. We
make recommendations, both at the supervisor level, and we try
and meet with the Secretary of State, given that our Secretary
of State is also the chief election officer for the State of
Florida. So, yes, we currently provide recommendations for
them.
Mr. Loudermilk. All right. And thank you for your work.
And, as I said, part of our task is to determine how much
of the problems that exist do need to be corrected at the State
level versus Washington, D.C., which takes a long time to get
anything done and, quite often, is not very responsive and
tries to do a one-size-fits-all, which a lot of areas in our
Nation are diverse.
Mr. Gillum, appreciate your testimony and the work that you
have been doing. A simple question: Do you believe that non-
citizens should have the right to vote, non-U.S. citizens?
Mr. Gillum. I think the individuals who have the right
ought to comport with what the Constitution permits.
Mr. Loudermilk. So do you believe that someone who is not a
citizen of the United States should have a right to vote? I am
not----
Mr. Gillum. The Constitution of the United States affords
citizenship and the rights----
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay.
Mr. Gillum [continuing]. Of citizenship, which include the
right to vote, right?
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay.
Mr. Gillum. And so that right is one that is maintained for
U.S. citizens.
Mr. Loudermilk. So, with that, there is a lot of
controversy over voter roll purging, which, actually, Federal
law requires to be done. How do you propose that we actually
effectively ensure those who are eligible voters are the ones
that are voting?
Mr. Gillum. Well, I mean, the unfortunate thing is that, in
my State, here in the State of Florida, we actually approach
the question very differently. It seems we almost look directly
at how we disenfranchise as many people as we possibly can.
And I will give you an example. Because human error,
obviously, is a part of the equation, but there are also
structural forms. And when I say ``structural,'' I mean built
into the law.
So, take, for instance, on college campuses, the fact that
we had to go to court in order to allow for precincts to exist
on college campuses, affording young people the ability to
vote.
Take, for instance, in certain communities, that folks
might be waiting an hour and a half to go and vote when, in
other communities, where they are voting multiple times higher,
can go in and in 15 minutes be in and out. It is a particular
burden to folks who work 9:00 to 5:00 or may work an hourly
job, who can't afford the opportunity to take time away or off.
I would also say, from a structural standpoint, the fact
that in the State of Florida ballots that are received after
7:00 p.m. on election day cannot be counted even though they
may be postmarked prior to election day--a structural issue
that came to bear particularly here in South Florida, where we
had a sort of maniac bomber who decided to send bomb threats to
officials across the country, slowing down the delivery of mail
systems here in south Florida, some of the heaviest Democratic
county areas, and those ballots could not be counted.
And in 67 counties where there is a disparity between what
the law looks like in each of those 67 counties because of the
way in which the elections are administered, a cure process in
Miami-Dade or in Broward County may look very different than
Osceola or Leon or Duval County, Florida, for example.
Signature matching being another structural problem. The
fact that you couldn't go before any judge or a court of law
and challenge someone's signature without several experts being
on record to say whether or not it was right or it was wrong.
Yet, in counties all throughout the State of Florida, an
individual with no formal training can, again, look at a
signature and determine whether or not it is identical to the
one that was filed on record 10 years before and invalidate
someone's constitutional right to vote as a consequence
thereof.
I just wanted to use those as structural examples to
systems that exist, that are in place, that have the impact of
keeping people's constitutional right to vote----
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. I appreciate that.
Mr. Loudermilk. I appreciate that. If I could just clarify
one thing, Madam Chairwoman, since my time expired a while
back. I just want to clarify, because I only have five minutes
versus the 35 minutes because of the other members here.
But to clarify your answer, Mr. Gillum, you are not opposed
to legal purging of the voter database to remove those who are
not eligible to vote?
Mr. Gillum. I would say I don't trust the purging process
in this State as it relates to----
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Aguilar.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I appreciate
your leadership with this Subcommittee. I am honored to be on
the Subcommittee with you and Mr. Butterfield, and on the full
Committee, and I appreciate the hospitality of the Florida
delegation, and especially our host, Mr. Hastings.
I wanted to get right into questions. Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert
and Ms. Batista, language assistance clearly were two topics
that you mentioned in your testimony, especially in the wake of
Hurricane Maria. During the 2018 elections, there were signs
that Florida was not going to assist Puerto Ricans displaced by
Hurricane Maria with voting, and a Federal judge, in fact, said
that in 32 Florida counties, in Rivera v. Detzner, must provide
sample Spanish language ballots to help more than 30,000 Puerto
Ricans who were displaced by the hurricane.
According to the National Association of Latino Elected
Officials, between 2012 and 2017, the number of eligible voters
in Florida increased nearly 10 percent while the number of
Spanish-speaking limited English proficient voters increased by
24 percent. So Florida's compliance with applicable
requirements is clearly a work in progress.
What more can the State do to help the counties evolve and
grow throughout that process? What is being done and what
should be done from the State to the local communities to
administer this fairly?
Ms. Gonzalez-Eilert. Representative, to give you a little
bit of background just to show, demonstrate, that in fact
language access continues to be an issue, it was only in August
2014 that the very first voter registration and voting guide
was put together and released in Spanish. Clearly, this is very
long overdue. After 2016, it was released on a regular basis.
However, at the Division of Elections at the State level,
we still have a website that is in English. And even though a
couple of weeks prior to an election, there is a little one
page that says this is in Spanish, you can go here; when you
click on that Spanish link, it takes you to an English page, so
you are not going anywhere. If the only option for folks at
that point is to push Google Translate--I don't know if you
have ever used Google Translate for another language. Sometimes
it is gobbledygook, so it is not going to give you exactly what
you want.
What we would like to see, our recommendation, is that
those pages be translated, all the pages be translated in
Spanish and be made available with a URL that folks can look
for in Spanish, and we believe that would make a huge
difference.
Mr. Aguilar. Ms. Batista.
Ms. Batista. I agree with everything that she said.
Particularly, we were part of the process to doing the
translation for the voter guide last year. We worked closely
with the League of Women Voters, and we translated it into
Spanish. However, that took resources from our organization,
and it is information that we need to provide to our
communities.
Like she mentioned, the wording in those amendments are
legal wording. So a lot of when you do a Google Translate, the
word will not translate accordingly or it will not make sense.
And so when you read something in Spanish, usually it is the
opposite of what you say in English. And so it is very
difficult, it is very different, and even for me, I am
bilingual, it is difficult to translate something in English
into Spanish just knowing that I have to try and, like, go
around it.
And so that information needs to be provided to our
communities in Spanish in a way that they are able to
understand it, not only in Spanish, but in Creole and other
languages that are necessary for our communities.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you so much.
Mr. Gillum, I am not going to use my time to describe what
an 8-track tape is, as Mr. Butterfield mentioned. I am 40 days
your senior, and I am sure Mr. Deutch would have made that joke
about me if you weren't here giving testimony.
I wanted to talk briefly about voter intimidation. There
were concerns in 2018 of aggressive and legally unsupported
attempts to enforce voter ID requirements at polls and other
election hearings, and I noticed that there was also a story of
an elections official in Sopchoppy, a city in Wakulla County,
of an individual who had failed to remain neutral, who the
Department of Law Enforcement was investigating because of her
questioning of residences with no reasonable basis. So there
are stories like this all over that have been experienced.
What is the State doing and what should the State be doing
to ensure that poll workers understand the mandates and are
administering them fairly?
Mr. Gillum. I appreciate the question, Congressman. I have
never obviously held the position of Supervisor of Elections or
worked in one of those offices, but I could say pretty
universally, and I think they have said this for themselves,
their offices are under-supported from a resourcing standpoint.
Our election system, largely in this country, particularly here
in this State, and especially in parts of this State that are
financially under-resourced, largely volunteer staffed. The
training can be very disparate between one of the 67 counties
to another.
It is one of the areas under which we tried to get the
legislature to really concentrate, and that is by trying to
create an equal or an equitable system of access across the
State of Florida. It shouldn't matter that if you are in
Wakulla County, you get this kind of access and treatment.
And I think in some cases, this leads to some of the
disproportionate disqualifying of ballots based off a
signature, because in some counties, the supervisor--they are
small enough, the supervisor may know someone, maybe they are a
more trusting area, and therefore, you can come in.
Whether the signature matches or not is not a barrier to
your ability to have your vote cast and counted, whereas in a
county as a populous as the tri-county area, Miami-Dade, Palm
Beach, Osceola, Orlando, Hillsborough County, where that kind
of connectivity is not as likely, meaning the supervisor of
elections and the people who are working in those offices don't
necessarily know the person coming in, and therefore, you get
treated differently.
That is not how democracy is supposed to work. That is not
how our system is supposed to work. So I would be a strong,
strong advocate for, and I think the Supervisors would agree,
to adequately resourcing the Supervisors of elections' offices
and making universal the kind of training that takes place in
each one of the 67 counties so that the outcomes with regard to
how well trained a volunteer may be is not dependent upon how
wealthy a county might be, but rather, made more universal and
resourced more universally from the State standpoint.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the
testimony of everyone.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Hastings.
Mr. Hastings. Madam Chairwoman, thank you very much. And I
am going to pass on asking questions or making any other
statement. You gave me an opportunity, and I want to make sure
that all us have ample time.
I am concerned, and my colleague, Mr. Deutch, and I have
been working for the last 2 months on the signature mismatch.
And I want to make sure that you all understand that we heard
Judge Walker's decision about how illusory our cure was, and so
we are addressing it, and the great hope is that we will be
able to undertake it.
But in the interest of time, I will just yield my time.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hastings. Plus I don't want it to be political.
Chairwoman Fudge. Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Before my time begins, Madam Chairwoman, if I can just
enter--ask unanimous consent to enter two items into the
record.
One would be the Florida Division of Elections web page
that is headed ``Language Assistance for Voting,'' where it
specifically says: Additionally, the following 13 Florida
counties are specifically subject to Spanish language
requirements, including providing oral and written assistance
in election-related materials such as instructions, forms,
ballots, and notices.
And it lists the 13 counties, which does include Polk and
this one and the other two South Florida counties as well, and
about 10 others.
Chairwoman Fudge. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information follows:]
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Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And the second document is one that
describes specifically, respectfully to my colleague, Mr.
Loudermilk, the specific evidence that discredits your
indication that 3,000 votes suddenly mysteriously showed up in
Broward County. That is not accurate, and I would like to enter
into the record that those were absentee ballots that had not
yet been canvassed and recorded, and they were legitimate
ballots that simply came in on time but were unable to be
counted by election night. So we did not have mysterious
ballots that suddenly showed up out of the clear blue sky after
Election Day.
Chairwoman Fudge. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. I appreciate the
indulgence and----
Mr. Hastings. Madam Chairwoman, I ask unanimous consent to
restore the gentlelady's time to 5 minutes.
Chairwoman Fudge. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I appreciate the indulgence. Thank
you so much.
And to the panel, it is wonderful to be able to welcome you
here, and to welcome our colleagues to Broward County for this
critical issue of making sure that we can ensure the franchise
is validated for every single person who is eligible to vote.
Mayor Gillum, if I can just ask you a couple of specific
questions. Given that our legislative session ended on Friday,
and unfortunately, they made what I believe is an illegal
decision to proscribe or interpret the voters' intentions when
they passed Amendment 4, I have joined many others around the
country in calling their decision what it is, to require all
fines and fees and restitution and parole and any provision of
their sentence to be completed before they can have their
franchise restored a poll tax. It is, plain and simple, a
requirement for payment in order to be able to exercise your
right to vote.
Do you agree with that assessment? And what impact will
that have on restoring the voting rights of Floridians who have
been granted that right by the voters? I want to ask my
questions at once so you can answer them.
Also, do you agree that sowing fear and confusion among
voters is part of the motivation behind the legislature's
attempt to thwart the clear will of Florida voters on Amendment
4? And will this decision by the legislature exacerbate the
disproportionate disenfranchisement of black Floridians? I say
black because it is not just African Americans that are
affected, because we have 20--more than 20 percent of black
Americans in Florida are disenfranchised. It is unacceptable,
and so that is my series of questions initially.
Mr. Gillum. Yeah. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. Thank
you for your service as well. Yes is the first answer on
whether or not I agree with the assessment that this is a poll
tax.
Yes, I also believe that the intention here is to sow
confusion. I also--and I don't--we can provide this as part of
the 5 days that we may have available, but the Brennan Center
for Justice produced a report that showed that when fines,
fees, and restitution is added as criteria for reengagement and
the ability to vote, that only 3 percent of returning citizens
actually are able to satisfy that. If that statistic is
translated into, in the case here in Florida, you are talking
about 97 percent of people not being able to regain their
ability to vote and participate in the election. That is almost
nullification of what 64 percent of the people who went out and
voted, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, non-party
affiliates, because the truth is, all of us have somebody who
has made a mistake in our family, someone that we know, and I
think that led to, again, the overwhelming turnout of
individuals in the State to participate.
And you are absolutely right as it relates to the disparate
impact that it will have on communities of color, particularly
for black citizens who are represented at twice their
population and the criminal justice system here in the State of
Florida. I think one of the things that probably sent a little
bit of a scare, possibly, to the Florida legislature is on
January 8, when we began the process of re-registering voters,
that we saw that people of color went out in droves to regain
their right to vote. I read story after story where black men
were coming out of the Supervisors of Elections' offices
saying, for the first time in my life, I feel whole. For the
first time in my life, I feel seen. That kind of efficacy and
belief that you now belong is something that really can't be
described.
So this is not just about the vote. This is also about the
ability to have agency over yourself and your community to
participate in the process. What they have done at the Florida
legislature sends an extremely chilling effect to people's
ability to participate in the process, which I believe is not
only antithetical to what was approved in November but also to
the Constitution of the United States of America.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you very much.
Madam Chairwoman, before my time expires, I just want to
ask Ms. Batista. Have we seen evidence in the State of Florida
of individuals who have been improperly purged from the voter
rolls? And what laws or best practices could be put in place to
ensure that registered voters who vote sporadically or chose
not to vote at all don't lose their registration status?
Ms. Batista. I am sorry. Can you repeat that one more time?
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Sure. Have we seen evidence in the
State of Florida of individuals who have been improperly purged
from the voter rolls? And what laws or best practices do you
think could be put in place to ensure that registered voters
who vote sporadically or choose not to vote at all don't lose
their registration status?
Ms. Batista. I don't know the answer to that question, to
be honest with you. However, I could say that I know where
there have been people that are residents that have received
voter registrations in order to confuse them, and I believe
that people should always have the right to go to vote and not
be disenfranchised, so whereas they have to be registered to
vote if they don't want go to vote within the last two
elections. So they should definitely be given that chance to go
vote and make their voice heard.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Deutch.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And thanks to the
Members of the Subcommittee for joining the locals down here in
Broward County and the city of Fort Lauderdale.
Nearly 16 months ago, I visited the Politics Club at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The students were bright.
They were engaged. They were eager to talk about ways that they
can improve their community and the country. It was
unbelievably impressive. And that was a month before February
14, 2018 when 14 of their fellow students and 3 staff members
were killed in a mass shooting.
I will never forget what those students spoke out about at
that Politics Club and what happened since. They wanted to see
change. They came down here to the courthouse steps at March
For Our Lives, at townhall meetings. They registered voters.
They did Get Out the Vote rallies in high schools here and
around the country, on college campuses as well. Many of them
were desperate to vote for the first time in their lives, just
9 months after this horrific tragedy at their school.
That is why this headline that was in The Washington Post
recently was so disconcerting: Young Parkland voters' ballots
were rejected at much higher rate than State average in
November, research finds.
Ronni Isenberg was at college when she saw the news of the
shooting that killed one of her friends at MSD. That fall,
after she learned that her mail-in ballot was rejected, she
said: We wanted to make a change and vote for a change. I
should have had the right to vote, and my vote should have been
counted.
According to research that has been done by the University
of Florida, 15 percent of mail-in ballots submitted by Parkland
residents between 18 and 21 were never counted in the midterms.
Compare that to 5.4 percent rejection rate statewide for that
same age group and a 1.2 percent statewide rejection rate for
all ages. It is clear that the mail system, the vote-by-mail
system needs some additional guardrails.
Congressman Hastings, as he pointed out, and I are working
on legislation to require two forms of notification to voters
and 10 days at least to cure, and that would be something that
would help. The State passed legislation that would help, but
unfortunately, they couldn't help themselves in Tallahassee.
They took legislation--they took an amendment that was
overwhelmingly supported. Amendment 4 was the largest expansion
of voting rights in this country, 1.4 million people since the
end of poll taxes and literacy tests, and then the Florida
legislature decided to take this legislation that was meant to
help people cast their vote and put a poll tax on top of it. It
is not within the text of the amendment. If is a far cry from
the spirit of the amendment.
And, Madam Chairwoman, what we would ask that you take back
with you is the understanding that this is not just Florida
politics. This is not just frustration. This is a rejection of
the democratic will of the people of this State. That is what
Congress needs to understand.
So I would just--I would ask first--I would ask first,
Mayor Gillum, if I may--and thanks to all our witnesses for
being here. Thanks for your excellent testimony.
Mayor Gillum, if you could tell us if you are aware of any
efforts that the State has made to investigate these
disparities, the number of young people whose votes weren't
counted. And then if you could also tell us what your
organization is doing to continue to retain the excitement and
the enthusiasm that so many young people have heading in,
despite the fact that they just experienced this in the last
election, heading into the next election.
Mr. Gillum. Thank you, Congressman, and thank you for your
leadership, obviously, in this area. As you already pointed
out, 15 percent--it is estimated 15 percent of 18- to 21-year-
olds in the Parkland area specifically did not have their votes
counted in the 2018 election, far above the State average and
the State rates. Broward County by itself had a rejection rate
of, as I think I provided in my testimony, 2.8 percent of vote-
by-mail ballots, again, above the State average of 1.2. And the
State average is above that of the two previous Presidential
elections, just looking at 2018 as an example.
Unfortunately, Congressman, the State legislature has not
gone in the right direction here. In fact, we have gone in the
opposite direction. The fact that we had to bring litigation in
order for students to be able to vote on college campuses I
think is testament enough to the fact that the legislature,
those in power, are not interested in introducing an element of
young people, certainly not easily, into the elections and the
democratic process.
As it relates to the work that we are engaging here in
Forward Florida, we are undertaking an effort to bring a
million new voters and reengage a million new voters in the
system here in the State of Florida. Today, 4 million people in
Florida are eligible but unregistered to vote. Four million. We
believe that we can do better. We have seen precipitous
decline, quite frankly, in areas that are really, really
important to see increase when it comes to registration.
So as much as Florida is getting more diverse, it isn't
necessarily being represented, one, in who is voting, and two,
in who is registering to vote. So it is our intention to go
about all 67 counties. Again, red areas, blue areas, purple
areas, no color areas, to engage as many people in the process
of registering as we possibly can.
The problem becomes--there are many of them--but if folks
don't believe that their votes will be counted, that if they go
about the process of getting registered and then we have
situations like we saw in this in election and we have seen in
previous elections, where folks don't have confidence that even
if they wait the 45 minutes, if they wait the hour and a half
to go and vote, that they walk out of there not believing that
their vote is going to be counted. It is a real--it has a real
chilling effect, particularly when you are working with
communities who find themselves at the margins of society. They
may as well continue to go to work and not participate in the
process if they conclude that their vote won't count anyway.
So not only are we fighting the laws that are on the books,
we are also fighting the impacts of those laws that show up
every election cycle where folks, again, don't have faith in
the process and don't have faith that their votes will count.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Ms. Wilson.
Ms. Wilson. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and welcome to our
part of the State, Miami-Dade County. I am so pleased to have
our panel here.
I just have a couple of clarifications. I just want to give
you a little update on the voting rights history in the State
of Florida. There was a time in the State of Florida when I
served in the legislature that people's--felons' rights were
restored, and the rights were restored under Governor Charlie
Crist after the Legislative Black Caucus filed a lawsuit under
former Governor Jeb Bush, won the lawsuit, and we began to
restore the rights to felons.
They were being restored up until the point that Rick Scott
was elected as Governor. When he was elected as governor, he
decided that in order for a felon to have his rights restored,
it must be a majority of the cabinet, his cabinet, voting for
it, and of course, we know that the entire cabinet was
Republican. So everyone who tried to have their rights
restored, they were denied. So consequently, we have this
constitutional amendment.
So when a lawsuit is filed against this constitutional
amendment, which I am sure that many organizations will file,
including the NAACP and some of our activists here who
represent different organizations, they can use as evidence
when we were restoring rights to felons, we did not require
that all of the fees be paid.
So that is not the history of Florida. The history of
Florida was when you complete your sentence and you leave
prison your rights would automatically be restored. So not only
is that a poll tax, but that is illegal, and that is against
all the rules and laws and the history of the State of Florida.
And it is not--I don't want anyone to think that this is
just a Black issue, because when I was in the State
legislature, I had a group come from a small town in Florida,
and they wanted their rights restored. And we were helping them
get their rights restored, because they only had 15 people in
the city who could serve on a jury, because everyone had a
criminal record in the whole town, and it was a total White
town. So just keep that in mind.
And it also has been brought up about the prison, people
voting from prison. And we know that the Census already
disenfranchises cities or all of us with the Census being taken
in prisons and causes the prison towns to get all of this
money. But just keep in mind, and this is for the record, if
you are in jail, if you are in jail and you have not been
sentenced or you have not seen a judge to sentence you, you
have the right to vote.
So it is the job of the public defender to make sure that
everyone who is being held in jail votes just like everyone
else, because they are still citizens. Some of them are
registered voters, and there are organizations that should be
doing active voter registration in jail while people are
awaiting their sentences.
And also, in the State of Florida, in many of our counties,
our children--and I have a bill that I filed in Congress to do
this for everyone, give everyone the opportunity to do this--
our 11th graders in their American history classes are
registered to vote by the Department of Elections. I see Ms.
Snipes here, and I think they do it in Broward and Dade. I
started it when I was on the school board of Dade County. And
automatically when they turn 18, they are issued a voter
registration card. So that is something.
And I also wanted to bring up ballot design, because I feel
so terrible about what happened to Senator Bill Nelson right
here in my district in Florida, which takes up West Park and
parts of Hollywood. Because of the ballot design, and Senator
Nelson was at the bottom by himself with Rick Scott, and I was
not on the ballot because I did not have an opponent. So many
of the constituents of that district did not vote in that race.
They went all the way up, and thank God they found you, Mr.
Gillum, and voted for you. It came all the way down. But there
were enough votes to cost him the election.
So the ballot design that we must put in place is so
important, Madam Chairwoman, and I just wanted that to be in
the record. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
I am just going to really ask one question of Ms. Bastien,
and then we are going to move to the next panel.
How many Haitians are in Florida, do you know?
Ms. Bastien. So the estimate is over 1 million in Florida,
but half a million are registered to vote.
Chairwoman Fudge. And what percentage, do you know, of the
half million, what percentage, actually vote?
Ms. Bastien. I don't have that information, unfortunately.
But one thing that I can tell you is that, historically, there
has been a lot of efforts to suppress the Haitian vote because
most of us are immigrants.
And during the 2000 elections, for example, a lot of the
big suits that I had mentioned earlier, forgive my French, came
to present where a lot of Haitian Americans voted, so they have
been targeted because they know many of them are recent
immigrants, and they are afraid and they are scared. Just like
some of the narratives today are preventing some folks to vote,
because even though people are U.S. citizens, if they hear
information from the administration that indicates that they
may be targeted or that they are not supposed to vote, even
though they are U.S. citizens, this is a way really to suppress
the vote.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
I am going to yield a minute to Ms. Wilson to ask a
question, and then we will have closing statements.
Ms. Wilson. Yes. I just want to reiterate what Ms. Bastien
has said. We have never had an election in Miami-Dade County
that our office did not get a call about someone suppressing
the vote of the precincts that are in majority Haitian
districts, and we have always had to send people out. We have
always had to call for help. We have always had to do that.
And I just want to say to Marleine--and we have been trying
to do this, but there is a pride issue in this--is in the State
of Florida, another thing Jeb Bush did was he took away all
requirements for absentee battles, so an absentee ballot is
just like a piece of toilet paper. You could get an absentee
ballot, you don't need an excuse.
So we have been trying to say to everyone who was
disenfranchised or everyone who has to work or everyone who
finds it hard to vote, because these amendments in Florida are
getting longer and longer, and it takes--I mean, it takes time
to go through all of these and know how and what to vote for,
that we encourage people to get an absentee ballot.
And the ballots in Dade County are in three languages. You
have to read English, Creole, and then Spanish. So that makes
the ballot three times as long as any other ballot in any part
of this State.
So we are going to work with Marleine to get that done, to
get them all absentee ballots, so they can sit down, study the
ballot, know how to vote, take it into a polling place, take
someone--I mean, send the ballot off so we won't have to--you
know what I am saying.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Fudge. Yes. Thank you.
We do have a second panel, so we really need to wrap this
up.
Mr. Loudermilk, if you have a few closing remarks, and then
we will be ready to bring our next panel up.
Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Again, thank you for hosting these events. I thank everyone
on the panel. Some great information in here.
Let me also address something. I appreciate the correction
and information from my dear colleague, Ms. Wasserman Schultz,
on the information, because part of what we are trying to do
here is to parse out fact from perception. And if the
information that she has provided is true, and I have no doubt
to think that it isn't, and my apologies to her and Mrs. Snipes
for the information there. As we all know, you can't always
rely on press reporting on things, even if it is from The New
York Times. So my apologies there.
But still, we are dealing in a time where we have to figure
out what is human error versus discrimination. And more
importantly, of all the issues that were brought up here, I
think Mr. Gillum made the point very well that what makes sense
in one county may not make sense in another area, and that is
why I have caution and pause for having Washington, D.C.
bureaucracy so involved in an election process, because one
size does not fit all.
And I am encouraged from being here from a lot of your
testimonies. I know a lot of you have been working, as Ms.
Batista has in the community to increase Latino vote. In fact,
in this year, the midterms election this year--or last year in
midterms elections, the Latino vote doubled from the previous
midterm nationwide, and that is as an effort of many of you
being out in the community. And voter registration has gone up.
The African American vote has increased by 10.8 percent, and so
it is--the engagement in the community is working.
I am also encouraged by some of the information that Mr.
Gillum brought up, and my understanding is that a lot of those
issues are being addressed in the latest bill that recently
passed, a bipartisan bill that passed in the Florida
legislature. And so, hopefully, a lot of those issues would be
resolved, as well as the confusing ballots.
My understanding in that bill also included requirements
for ballot design that would avoid the confusing ballots like
we saw here in Broward County in 2018, as well as one of the
issues that got my attention was the access to assistance in
Spanish ballots. And from what I understand, the current
governor has ensured that there will be assistance in Spanish
ballots in all 67 counties by the next election.
So from what I have gathered here, Madam Chairwoman, I
think a lot of the work is being handled at the State level,
which I think is the best, is the most responsive, and I
appreciate the chance for us to hear from the community.
And thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
And I would just say just a few things as I have listened.
I know that my colleagues want to justify that everything is
okay because more people voted. Because we overcome roadblocks
doesn't mean that it was right to put the roadblock there in
the first place. If we call ourselves a democracy, we need to
act like it. We need to ensure that every single person has a
right to vote and that their vote is counted.
As a Member of Congress, I was sworn to uphold the
Constitution of the United States. The Constitution does not
say if you miss a vote, we are not going to let you vote
anymore. The Constitution does not say if you miss two votes,
we are not going to let you vote anymore. It says that you have
a right, an unfettered, unabridged right to vote in this
country if you are a citizen.
Also, I am a lawyer. I took an oath to uphold the
Constitution of my State, the laws of the State and the laws of
the United States, and what I know is that laws are not always
just. Laws are sometimes made by very flawed people who are
doing things in their own self-interest, just as this
legislature in this State has done as it relates to Amendment
4.
I understand that purging may be the law of the land. It
doesn't make it right. Separate but equal was the law of the
land. It wasn't right, but Brown v. Board of Education changed
it. People walked across the bridge for the right to vote. The
law was not on their side, but the law was not just.
And so I think that what we have to understand is that even
though States have a right to do certain things, I mean, we do,
as a Federal body, have oversight on Federal elections. But I
would also suggest that the history of this country as it
relates to State rights has not been very good to poor people
or to people of color or to people who are sick or to people
who do not have the mental capacity to survive.
And so with that, I would say that we are going to do
whatever we can together, Democrats and Republicans, to be sure
that as people who love their country, we make sure that every
other person that loves their country has the right to
determine how this country is run.
So I thank my colleagues for being here. And we are going
to start our next panel.
I thank you all so very, very much. It is a pleasure to
have had you here. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Chairwoman Fudge. On our second panel, we will hear from
Mr. Juan Cartagena, President and General Counsel,
LatinoJustice PRLDEF. Mr. Cartagena is a constitutional and
civil rights attorney who is the President and General Counsel
of one of the Nation's leading civil rights public interest
legal organizations that represents Latinas and Latinos
throughout the country and works to increase their entry into
the legal profession.
Karen Wilkerson, the League of Women Voters of Florida.
League of Women Voters of Florida has been fighting to make
democracy work for all Floridians since 1939.
My good friend, Ms. Judith Browne Dianis, Executive
Director, Advancement Project. Ms. Dianis has an extensive
background in civil rights litigation and has protected the
rights of people of color in the midst of some of the greatest
civil rights crisis of our modern times, including in Florida
after the 2000 election.
And Mr. Logan Churchwell, Communications and Research
Director, Public Interest Law Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public
interest law firm.
Mr. Cartagena, you are recognized for 5 minutes, sir.
STATEMENTS OF JUAN CARTAGENA, PRESIDENT AND SENIOR COUNSEL,
LATINOJUSTICE PRLDEF; KAREN WILKERSON, LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS
OF FLORIDA; JUDITH BROWNE DIANIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
ADVANCEMENT PROJECT; AND LOGAN CHURCHWELL, COMMUNICATION AND
RESEARCH DIRECTOR, PUBLIC INTEREST LEGAL FOUNDATION
STATEMENT OF JUAN CARTAGENA
Mr. Cartagena. Thank you so much.
And on behalf of Latino Justice PRLDEF, I want to thank
Chairwoman Fudge and all the Members of the Subcommittee, all
the other Members of Congress who are at this hearing. Thank
you so much for this invitation to allow me to share some
observations on this topic of election administration in
Florida.
So Latino Justice PRLDEF, PRLDEF is an acronym for our
former name, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Over 46 years of life since 1972, plus working on behalf of
Latinos and Latinas throughout the country, we are a public
interest law organization, and as a result, as you can imagine,
given the demographic change of Florida over the last 20 years,
Florida has been a base of our operations as well.
I have personally litigated cases here in Florida's Federal
courts on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, of the National
Voter Registration Act, and I currently supervise the Rivera
case that was referred to before that currently is pending
against 32 counties in Florida for alleged violations of what
is called Section 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act.
My office has been doing cases in this State for over 10
years, and we for over 5 years have had a physical presence in
Orlando, Florida, in an office, our southeast regional office.
Florida occupies a unique place at this point in our
history in the country with respect to election administration,
a lot of it to do with the amazing energy and the zeal that
voters have in the State who participate. But we also know that
it is a change in demographic environment. Florida is now the
third largest State in the country. It just edged out New York
State, where my headquarters is located, in the last couple of
years. Not only is it the third largest State, it is now
estimated to be about 21.3 million residents in the State of
Florida. They have the second largest rate of growth behind
Texas, added 322,000 residents in just the last year alone,
between 2016 and 2017.
But Florida's Latino population is also changing
dramatically, and that is a very specific area of concern for
my office at Latino Justice, as you can imagine. Based on the--
there are about 5.4 million residents in the State of Florida,
of that 21 million that I mentioned before, that are Latino.
Census data now demonstrates that the Puerto Rican population
is well over a million people in the State, and grew about 30
percent alone since 2010. That is significant given the Puerto
Rican evacuation of Puerto Rico both before Hurricane Maria,
because of the fiscal crisis, but exacerbated by Hurricane
Maria post.
Cubans are still the plurality among all the Latinos in the
State. They are about 28--no. Excuse me. Yes, 28 percent of the
population, and Puerto Ricans are now 21 percent of the
population in Florida. It is a change in the demographic scene.
I say all that--and of course, data showing that the white
population is plateauing, if not declining. The median age of
white folks in Florida is increasing by far. In fact, Florida
has the largest percentage of senior citizens of any State in
the country, well over 20 percent.
So we are looking at demographic changes that make it a
particular hot battleground State. That is on top of what we
all know are very, very close elections in Florida, right? That
was referred to in part by the previous panel.
My first conclusion for you is that from the perspective of
both Latino and African American voters in Florida, the ability
to exercise our Constitutional rights to the franchise has
been, will be, tested repeatedly in the State, where seemingly
every result is contested in an environment of rapid economic--
excuse me, rapid demographic growth.
I want to end my time with just two points. The first one
is language assistance. You heard quite a bit of that in the
first panel. We are the lawyers among other lawyers, Demos and
others, SEIU and others, who are actually challenging the 32
counties for lack of assistance with respect to Puerto Rican
voters.
Now, this overlapping Federal law that requires assistance,
this section 203, which has numerical thresholds that deal with
people of various language backgrounds, and it applies, as was
mentioned before, I believe, by Representative Wasserman
Schultz, that applies to about seven to eight counties already.
Section 4(e) is a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
That is how long it has been on the books, and it prohibits
conditioning the right to vote to any Puerto Rican educated in
Puerto Rico who does not understand English. Simple as that. It
applies nationwide, and it applies to every Puerto Rican living
in the United States.
As a result, one of the first things I want to share with
you is a quick quote from the judge, Judge Walker, in that case
in which he said, quote, it is remarkable--this is, by the way,
in 2018. ``It is remarkable that it takes a coalition of voting
rights organizations and individuals to sue in Federal court to
seek minimal compliance with the plain language of a venerable
53-year-old law.''
I first ask the Subcommittee and all Members of Congress to
recognize that these are laws, and the will of Congress is
being thwarted in so many ways that this hearing is so
important to make sure that we get to the bottom of why these
things happen.
But Rivera v. Detzner, now called Rivera v. Lee because of
the change in the Secretary of State's office, is simply asking
for one very important thing: full access in Spanish. There is
a current motion pending that asks for the following things:
That all election materials, including paper ballots, voting
machine ballots, sample ballots, absentee ballots and
envelopes, voting guides, voting instructions, polling place
signage, election-related websites, and registration materials
are provided in Spanish as well as English. In addition, the
court is being asked to provide all assistance for voter
registration, absentee ballot, and voting at early voting sites
and polling places for election post August 1.
It is true, and I refer to the fact that it was referred to
earlier today, that there is a change now afoot to try to force
every county to have Spanish ballots in each of the 67
counties. That is a proposed rulemaking that was just announced
recently in April of this year. We are concerned whether the
specificity is part of that, and we are very concerned about
whether that specificity is there.
I will end with voter purging, but I would be more than
happy to talk about this in the question and answer. We will
also partner with the Advancement Project in challenging the
purge of alleged noncitizens here in Florida. It was done in
violation of the National Voter Registration Act, and we think
that is also another example of how election officials are
looking to suppress the vote of both Black and Latino voters in
the State.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Cartagena follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you so much.
Ms. Wilkerson.
STATEMENT OF KAREN WILKERSON
Ms. Wilkerson. I am Karen Wilkerson, and I am speaking on
behalf of the League of Women Voters of Florida. The League
believes that voting is a fundamental right protected by our
U.S. Constitution, and any attempt to suppress votes is an
invasion of our democracy.
Several years ago, Florida produced the purge list, that
included the names of rightfully entitled voters. This was a
shameful act that should never happen again. Nothing can
justify these types of actions. In Florida, the League has been
certified as a third party to register voters, and we take this
responsibility seriously and make sure that we train our
workers well.
Being able to vote by mail is an important of our State
because of our rural communities and the number of older
citizens living in Florida. Only a few counties pay the return
postage on these ballots. The number of voters requesting to
vote by mail is increasing every year. We seem to have very
long ballots with lots of proposals to amend the State
constitution and approve local taxes, et cetera. Therefore,
voters don't want to make these decisions after waiting in long
lines with only a few minutes in the voting booth. Often these
issues are complicated, so the use of the mail-in ballot
ensures that people can have time to read the proposals and do
homework in order to educate themselves before casting their
votes.
To assist voters, the League prints and makes available
digitally a publication called Voter's Guide, which provides
voting information, pros and cons on proposals, answers from
candidates on the hot topics. I should add that we do publish
this in Spanish and are exploring whether we can do it in
Creole. We hope we will make partnerships with some of the
school districts that have the translators.
We also hold candidate forums throughout the State so that
voters can get to know the candidates. We hold forums on
judicial candidates as well.
Our organization is nonpartisan. We never endorse a
candidate or a political party. It would certainly help if the
municipalities, the county, and the State governments assisted
in the funding of these types of voter education publications.
We also cover the State with presentations from our speakers'
bureau, which presents the pros and cons of all the proposals
that are up for consideration.
Right now, the signature of mail-in ballots is a check for
validation. I think it is time to select a more efficient
method, perhaps the UPS code or the last part of your Social
Security number. There has to be a better system than what we
are using now.
We strongly believe that voting machines must have a paper
trail. We support the use of early voting sites and extended
hours at election locations. In Palm Beach County and many
other counties in Florida, the supervisor of elections has
located voting machines in elderly living facilities and
homeowners' associations of our large developments. We commend
these moves.
Confusion occurs when early voting sites are not available
for voting on election day. Long lines are particularly
troublesome in Florida. You know our primaries are in the
hurricane season. We are apt to have hot temperatures, rain, et
cetera. We have a lot of people waiting outside the polling
locations. I do remember one Presidential election where I
waited 4 hours. Some community groups try to assist by bringing
folding chairs for the elderly and infirm and offer water to
those bearing the hot temperatures.
Perhaps it is time to explore other types of venues for
voting. Enclosed shopping centers are air-conditioned, they
have adequate parking, and they are open for long hours. No
doubt we will be considering digital voting in the future, and
I would hope a committee like this would take that into
account.
Florida has just passed legislation to ensure that the
format of ballots will more easily be instituted by the voters.
We have had instances where the instructions interfered with
the candidate selection process. Hopefully that has been cured.
I personally find it strange to understand why the voting
machine industry has such an impact on us. It would make more
sense for the election officials to decide what functions are
needed and then to have the industry to design those machines
that are needed.
Perhaps the most visible trouble spot in voting is the
electoral college. The myth that this system was designed to
protect small population States is certainly contradicted by
the Federalist Papers that clearly read this design was to make
sure that the elite controlled the polls. The League of Women
Voters of the United States supports the present campaign to
move to a national popular vote for President. It is important
that the person selected to be President of our great Nation is
elected by a majority of the voters.
Let's face it. If a foreign country used our present
system, we would condemn it, and we would send the Jimmy Carter
or the Ronald Reagan Foundations over there to straighten
things out.
Please help us in making sure that your vote and my vote is
counted to select the person to serve in the most important
office in our country. The national popular vote is a reform
that is being adopted by the States. We have now approximately
190 electoral votes that will go for that, and we only need the
magic number of 270.
You have received some written comments from Susan Booker,
who is a Supervisor of Elections in one of our State's largest
counties. I hope you will look at her comments.
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this
hearing, and I thank you very much for coming to Florida.
[The statement of Ms. Wilkerson follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Ms. Browne Dianis.
STATEMENT OF JUDITH BROWNE DIANIS
Ms. Browne Dianis. Thank you, Chairwoman Fudge and Members,
for having me here today. My name is Judith Browne Dianis, and
I am executive director of the national office of The
Advancement Project. We have been proud to work on behalf of
and beside groups on the ground here in Florida, including New
Florida Majority, Dream Defenders, NAACP, Florida Rights
Restoration Coalition, and SEIU, among others.
My work here in Florida dates back to the 2000 election.
Congressman Loudermilk, I can tell you that I have been here
for that long doing voting rights work, and I can tell you that
this is not about mistakes and accidents, but instead, that
there are structures that have been put in place in the State
of Florida to make it harder to vote for people of color.
I can also tell you--that this is not about Washington
bureaucracy reaching its hand down to Florida, but instead, it
is about civil rights laws that come from the U.S.
Constitution, namely, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments,
among others.
For the last 20 years, I have seen what has happened in
Florida. While other people were looking at hanging chads, my
team was investigating and gathering evidence of voting
irregularities that made it disproportionately more difficult
for voters of color to exercise the right to vote. After the
dust cleared in the Bush v. Gore case, we filed a lawsuit, and
we have filed half a dozen others in the ensuing years
advocating with election officials and lobbying lawmakers.
Ever since that chaos in 2000, Florida has continued to be
the battleground for access to the polls and with regard to
matching and purging, we have seen again that the State gets it
wrong. In 2006 and 2007, Florida's law disenfranchised tens of
thousands of otherwise eligible voters disproportionately;
Latino, Haitian Americans, and African Americans. During this
period, 65 percent of the unmatched rejected applications were
Latino or African American, even though Latino communities
comprised only 15 percent of the applicant pool, and African-
Americans, 13 percent.
That happened again in 2012. Florida employed, again,
another yet flawed data matching process when it used faulty
and outdated motor vehicle and immigration databases as a proxy
to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls in advance of the
2012 elections, a move that instead wrongly targeted thousands
of eligible citizens and voters.
In 2012, we joined forces with Latino Justice and other
partners to stop Florida's mass purge. Our research found 87
percent of the people on Florida's purge list were people of
color, and more than 50 percent were Latino. Again, these were
not mistakes, but as Congressman Butterfield knows, like in
North Carolina, these were practices and policies put in place,
surgically crafted to hurt voters of color.
After the 2000 Presidential election, the other thing we
saw was expansions in early voting and court injunctions
allowing increased opportunities for voter registration,
improved access to the ballot box. Voters, particularly voters
of color, used early voting in high numbers in the 2008
election. By then, those measures came under--attack. In 2011,
Florida lawmakers passed HB 1355 that cut early voting and
eliminating the final Sunday before Election Day, placing
onerous restrictions on third-party voter registration also.
Social scientists concluded that the law's restriction had
caused a precipitous drop in voter registration. The law's cuts
to early voting led to long lines and massive wait times on
Election Day.
You may remember the story of a woman, Desiline Victor, 102
years old, a story that we lifted up. This Haitian American
woman stood in line for 3 hours to vote. It was due to the cuts
in early vote. The polling place in North Miami at North Miami
Library is now named after her.
Florida also employed other flawed data matching, including
using the SAVE database. Keep in mind, this all happened before
the Shelby County case. More recently, Florida has opened
access to voting, when 64 percent of voters approved Amendment
4 due to the work of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition,
Desmond Meade, and others in the country. We are proud to be a
founding member of that.
Florida was among four States that permanently denied civil
rights to every citizen with a felony conviction. Ten percent
of Florida's voting age population was excluded from voting,
and one in five African Americans in the State was denied the
right to vote. In advance of the 2018 election, we released
Democracy Disappeared. We have republished it as Democracy
Rising, which shows the impact on Black communities of this
disenfranchisement.
Unfortunately, the State moved very quickly after the
voters approved this amendment by deciding to roll it back.
These newfound rights are under attack when Florida lawmakers
just days ago voted to undo the will of the voters. Section 5
would have stopped this action in its tracks.
One of the things that we know about Section 5 is that it
is important to have these protections in place, because as we
learned in Florida, it is too late after the vote is taken and
counted to protect the civil rights of people of color.
Lastly, Florida is now moving to aggressively purge voters.
An estimated 7 percent of voters have been purged in the past 2
years, and the problem is that the Federal Government is not
watching, that the fox is not watching its brother the fox
watches the hen house. And so now we see these attacks
continuing to happen. We know that Congress must act to make
sure that voting rights are protected for the people of Florida
and elsewhere in our country. And I thank you and call on
Congress to act quickly.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Dianis follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Churchwell, you are recognized, sir.
STATEMENT OF LOGAN CHURCHWELL
Mr. Churchwell. Chairwoman Fudge, Members of the
Subcommittee, thank you very much for this invitation to
participate in today's hearing. My name is Logan Churchwell. I
am the Communications director for the Public Interest Legal
Foundation, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to election
integrity.
I would first like to thank this body for holding
discussions about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 around the
Nation. The current protections of the VRA are a success story
that has done a tremendous job in eliminating racial
discrimination in voting. Section 2 has proven to be an
effective tool to combat barriers to the ballot box and protect
the ability to elect representatives of choice. Because of the
VRA, it has never been easier to register and vote than it is
in America in 2019.
Contrary to assertions without evidence by some, the VRA
was not gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. Activists and
political candidates campaigning on reinstating the law are
fearmongering, fundraising, or both. 2019 is not 1965. The
heavy hand of Federal micromanagement in State election law was
justified in 1965. It is not in 2019.
The VRA was originally designed to operate on two tracks.
First, the law empowers the Justice Department to provide
parties to challenge States' procedures on the basis they were
enacted with a racially discriminatory intent or had racial
discriminatory effects.
Second, the preclearance provisions in 1965 were an
extraordinary exercise of Federal power that required approval
of any election change in jurisdictions with deep histories of
racially discriminatory behavior. Preclearance obligations
were, in part, Constitutional because they had an expiration
date. Congress continued to expand the power beyond its
Constitutional shelf life, however.
Unfortunately, preclearance power became a power that was
abused. From South Carolina voter ID to Georgia redistricting,
Justice Department lawyers exercised powers they did not
possess by blocking States' laws that were neither
discriminatory in purpose or effect.
Section 5 in 2006 also flipped evidentiary burdens on
subject jurisdictions to prove they were not discriminatory
with each procedural reform. This concept of guilty until
proven innocent is inherently un-American, and the Supreme
Court took note of it in Shelby County v. Holder.
Whether the old preclearance regime can fully be credited
for the actual progress made in creating a more just voting
system, history will show that the program had a proper time
and place, and that time has passed. I contend to this body and
the general public that trying to resuscitate 20th century
style preclearance will prove an inefficient use of Federal
resources and will always be at least one step behind emerging
population and demographic trends.
Targeted affirmative enforcement of the VRA is the way of
the future. Perhaps the American people need a reminder of the
tools available under the law. Section 2 can be used to
confront almost any discriminatory hurdle in its wake, from
classic poll taxes to vote diluting maps and even tribal
lineage tests on voter participation. This section can help any
affected eligible voter anywhere.
Section 11(b) addresses efforts to intimidate or coerce
voters. Some elements of the law can protect those that are in
need of bilingual ballots in election administration, and
finally, preclearance is still possibly where it is needed.
For those arguing that affirmative enforcement of the VRA
is too slow, they need to take a closer look at the case record
provided by the DOJ. The lull in actions became apparent during
the Obama administration but well before Shelby County. The DOJ
sat largely dormant for 8 years, barely enforcing Section 2. It
is reasonable for any fair-minded person to infer that if the
Department did not bring very many cases under the Voting
Rights Act, that not many cases of racial discrimination must
have existed.
Worse, based upon several reviews of the DOJ, the voting
section hardly seems--as we know it today, the voting section
hardly seems the proper place to vest so much extraordinary
power. Section 5 lends itself to abuses of power, and the unit
in charge of enforcement has exhibited rank ideological bias in
the recent years.
It is crucial that the Trump administration set a tone for
what litigation-based enforcement of the Voting Rights Act will
look like. But without some cultural shifts within the DOJ,
enforcement will remain stagnant. If preclearance is returned,
it will certainly again become abusive.
We offer a simple, yet potentially substantial conversation
starter for how the Trump DOJ can modernize enforcement of the
VRA, and it probably won't even require an act of Congress.
Decades of preclearance no doubt served to physically
cloister Federal attorneys and staff, sometimes thousands of
miles from the civil rights fires they were entrusted to douse.
The administration should seriously consider breaking up and
physically scattering the Federal voting rights monitors on a
permanent basis so they can better embed within their
communities. Physical presence can carry a whole new outlook on
civil law enforcement that improves both monitoring and
responses to emerging threats.
We are doing our Nation a disservice if we let nostalgic
laments for the old preclearance system cloud our ability to
innovate civil rights strategies going forward. Know this: If
too many voices claim the Voting Rights Act is gutted, bad
actors will always find a way to take advantage.
I thank you for this invitation to testify and submit the
remainder of my remarks for the record.
[The statement of Mr. Churchwell follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
Mr. Butterfield, you are recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
Mr. Churchwell, let me just address one or two questions to
you, and perhaps I may have a little time left when I can get
to the other witnesses. But in any event, I thank all you for
your testimony today.
You seemed to suggest that we should continue with full
enforcement of Section 2 but not have the benefit of Section 5
as we know it. Is that correct?
Mr. Churchwell. Yes, it is, Congressman.
Mr. Butterfield. Tell me, if you know, the expense
associated with Section 2 litigation. Is it not a very, very
expensive thing to litigate a Section 2 claim in Federal court?
Mr. Churchwell. Congressman, any litigation can become
expensive, but the greater question we need to ask here is
let's take a look at the expenses over the lifetime of
preclearance and look at the record held by the Justice
Department.
Mr. Butterfield. I am talking about plaintiffs' litigation
expense, private plaintiffs.
Mr. Churchwell. Every year that passes, you see a new
organization coming up trying to stand for voting rights. We
have seen quite a growth in that area. That sector is growing
quite immensely. The question that we need to answer here,
though, is from the Federal perspective, was it more efficient
with the data that we have today----
Mr. Butterfield. You are talking about the efficient use of
Federal resources. I am talking about the efficient use of
private resources. Would you stipulate that a Section 2 voting
rights claim in today's dollars costs more than a million
dollars to fully litigate through the trial division? Would you
stipulate to that?
Mr. Churchwell. Sure.
Mr. Butterfield. It is very expensive and if a jurisdiction
were to move a polling site away from a minority community,
move it into an unfriendly community, making it more difficult
and more challenging for minority citizens to vote at that
polling site, that is a change that would be covered by Section
5. It would have to be approved before it happened. But without
Section 5, the only remedy you are suggesting for that
community would be to file a million dollar Section 2 lawsuit.
Don't you think we need some type of oversight from the
Federal Government to make sure that local jurisdictions do not
engage in very subtle acts of voter suppression?
Mr. Churchwell. Well, Congressman, I think we would find
multiple levels of agreement if we were to consider all of the
data. Particularly, you raise the issue of polling place
relocations. The DOJ record for the lifetime of preclearance
for every jurisdiction that was under Section 4 at one point or
another, polling place relocations were the largest category of
submissions to the Justice Department for approval. And more
that 99.6 percent of all those submissions before Justice were
approved.
If you look at it from purely an enforcement question of
are we dedicating our resources in the hottest places
necessary, most of the preclearance issues that were ever
considered were polling place issues----
Mr. Butterfield. Annexations----
Mr. Churchwell [continuing]. And they were approved.
Mr. Butterfield. Annexations are included in preclearance.
Mr. Churchwell. Category 2.
Mr. Butterfield. And that is a big deal in my State. I
don't know about Florida, but I can tell you, DOJ prevented
many annexations that would have otherwise submerged African-
American communities.
Mr. Churchwell. And that annexation issue, also tracking
less than 1 percent of all objections. We are talking about a
large volume of submissions before Justice Department that, if
you look at the record, it looks like DOJ was rubber-stamping
99 percent of all of these submissions to them. The question I
would ask all of you----
Mr. Butterfield. But, sir, I have had 30 years or more of
involvement with the voting section of the Department of
Justice, and those men and women who comprise the voting
section were world-class litigators. The Legal Defense Fund and
the other civil rights groups have been world-class litigators.
And it has not been a waste of resources.
Have there been Section 2 claims in Florida since the
Shelby County decision? Since June of 2013, any Section 2
cases?
Mr. Churchwell. Not from the Obama or the Trump department.
Mr. Butterfield. No, private plaintiffs, private
plaintiffs. Have there been any private plaintiffs who have
sued under Section 2 since Shelby County?
Mr. Churchwell. I believe we have heard testimony to that
effect, yes.
Mr. Butterfield. And are you personally aware of any?
Mr. Churchwell. Yes, over the minority language issues.
Mr. Butterfield. Have any of those Section 2 claims been
successful?
Mr. Churchwell. It is my understanding the litigation is
ongoing.
Mr. Butterfield. And do you know the millions of dollars
that are being expended every day to try to get those cases
resolved?
Mr. Churchwell. My question is why didn't the Obama Justice
Department----
Mr. Butterfield. No, my question is to you, Mr. Churchwell,
and not you to this panel.
I yield back, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Fudge. Mr. Loudermilk, you are recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Loudermilk. Well, thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I
appreciate that.
We have heard a lot of testimony on a lot of different
issues, and, clearly, there has been voter irregularities here
in Florida, as there is across the Nation, because we are human
and we do err. The question is, structurally or in the lack of
oversight, are these intentional? Are they for human error, as
we have already had someone on the previous panel suggest that
70 percent of what they have seen is because of human error?
More importantly, of those that are questionable that they
could be intentional, what is the best way of addressing those
issues? And as we had also heard, that even here in Florida,
communities are different.
And so, as I said earlier, I am encouraged that there are
actually--the State is taking action to correct some of these
on a bipartisan basis.
Something else that has resonated with me is the people of
Florida have voted to restore rights to felons who have served
their sentence. And the only reason I bring this up is this is
very important, because this Presidential administration and
Republicans in Congress have led the effort on judicial reform.
We have to decide, as a people, who are we afraid of versus who
we are mad at.
We are going and taking those that we were just mad at for
one reason or another, and we are allowing them--we are
reducing their sentences, we are putting them back into
society, and we have to decide. It is something that the
communities, each community, each State is deciding, as Florida
has taken it up, of what rights do we restore. Do we restore
all their Constitutional rights once they have served their
sentence? And I think that is something that I applaud the
State of Florida for doing.
However, a lot of what we are talking about are things that
appear to be mostly at the State level that States are
rectifying. We are a democratic republic, and the will of the
people under the Constitution is served.
However, the purpose of these hearings are dealing with the
Voting Rights Act. And so I appreciate, Mr. Churchwell, you
focusing in on that issue. And I have a couple questions for
you.
Since the Supreme Court 2013 holding in Shelby County, what
have the enforcement trends of the Voting Rights Sections 2 and
3 been like, and what do those trends tell us?
Mr. Churchwell. Well, there has been a drop-off, and, like
I mentioned in my prior testimony, that drop-off began before
Shelby. And the issue that we would raise here is that we began
relying a bit too much on preclearance despite the outdated
coverage map. And the data from the Justice Department proves
that, and it proves it well before 2013.
Because let's get some context here. A lot of people hear
about preclearance and they realize that the Justice Department
had essentially an administrative veto over so many State and
local jurisdictions. And you think, well, there must have been
a very good reason for that. And in the 1960s there was, and
the Nation acted out of an abundance of caution to that effect.
But when you look at the data itself, it appears, based on
the enforcement, that too much was being reviewed by the
Federal Government; resources were being redirected. And
instead of the Justice Department being able to chase down that
bad city council district map or any other kind of
qualification for voter registration, they were instead more
likely sweating the relocation of the polling place from the
Methodist church to the Baptist church next-door.
Because let me just give you some numbers. In the lifetime
of preclearance, 129,000 times DOJ was asked to review a
polling place change. They objected to only 83 of those for the
entire lifetime.
Congressman, you mentioned annexation before. 113,500
annexation schemes; only 1 percent of those were objected to.
Precinct boundary changes was the third-largest category:
73,000 precinct changes reviewed over the lifetime of
preclearance; 0.08 percent of those were objected to.
So the more important question here is, was preclearance
focusing on the correct amount of issues to review? And was the
map up to date over the years? And whenever you are showing 99
percent approval rates, we have to essentially recheck our nets
and figure out if we are focusing our Federal efforts in the
appropriate areas.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. I appreciate that.
As we probably don't have time to get into the other
questions and I know that we want to stay on track here, I will
submit the remaining questions for the record, and I yield back
my time.
[The information follows:]
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
Mr. Aguilar.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
I, too, like my colleagues, applaud the residents of
Florida for voting overwhelmingly in favor of restoring voting
rights to individuals so they are not judged, as the mayor said
in the previous panel, by their worst day.
The question for Florida policymakers that is of interest
to this panel is: Why undo that mandate that the voters have
given, which they did on Friday?
You know, we agree, as my colleague mentioned, that there
are irregularities at times, but based on the testimony and
based on what we are hearing, those irregularities are looking
a lot like systemic voter suppression efforts.
My question for Mr. Cartagena and Ms. Browne Dianis is, you
know, specific to the purge rate here in Florida. According to
the Brennan Center for Justice, the rate of voter purges 10
years ago was 0.2 percent. Between December of 2016 and
September 2018, a similar 2-year window, that voter purge rate
was 7 percent.
Can you describe the litigation that has taken place over
the past few years? And can you tell us why the purge rate has
increased so significantly over the past decade?
Mr. Cartagena. Thank you, Representative Aguilar.
I am going to yield more of the details to my colleague,
Judith Browne Dianis, on the details of the actual purge. Both
of our organizations litigated Arcia v. Detzner, which is one
of the challenges to the use of the alleged noncitizen purge
that occurred in violation of the National Voter Registration
Act. That went up to the 11th Circuit, and we won before the
11th Circuit.
Effectively, at that time, which is the purge before the
2012 election, the State of Florida sought to systemically
purge people for alleged nonvoting based on old databases that
were not in effect, that could not even prove at the time of
actual purge that people were not naturalized citizens. In
fact, many of them were.
But with respect to the issues of the 7 percent purge today
versus 2 percent before, or less than 2 percent before, I will
yield to Ms. Browne Dianis.
Ms. Browne Dianis. Thank you.
What we are seeing happening across the country and in
Florida is a push to move more people off the rolls. This push
is--you know, as we talk about the Justice Department Civil
Rights Division Voting Rights Section, their work has shifted
to suing States over purging, wanting to get them to purge.
They are working hand-in-hand with their friends in the
conservative legal community, including the Public Interest
Legal Foundation, the American Civil Rights Union, and Judicial
Watch, making sure that States, instead of increasing access to
the ballot, making sure that they are taking people off the
rolls.
So, here in Florida, what we are seeing is that same kind
of move, making sure they are being sued by organizations like
Mr. Churchwell's to make sure that they are taking people off
the rolls.
Our problem with that--and, yes, to Congressman
Loudermilk's point--is that the National Voter Registration Act
has provisions in it for list maintenance. The problem is that
the State of Florida has shown time and time again that they
cannot be trusted to do it in a way that does not
disproportionately impact people of color.
We believe that that is intentional in the way that it is
being done, using flawed databases, inaccurate information,
going after so-called noncitizens, like they did in the case
that we did with Latino Justice, finding that, actually, there
were people that are citizens, there were veterans that were on
that list, and that they didn't care about the fact that they
were going to sweep up other people in what was an unlawful
purge.
Mr. Aguilar. Mr. Cartagena----
Mr. Churchwell. Chairwoman Fudge, may I respond to that
very briefly?
Chairwoman Fudge. You may not.
Mr. Aguilar. This is my time, Mr. Churchwell. Apologies.
Mr. Cartagena, can you talk specifically about the barriers
that Puerto Ricans face with respect to language assistance and
voting here in Florida?
Mr. Cartagena. No question. Thank you very much for that
question.
So, effectively, you are looking at a population that, on
the island of Puerto Rico, is roughly about 65 percent Spanish
dominance. Everything happens in Spanish in Puerto Rico; all
government proceedings happen in Spanish in Puerto Rico. A
very, very active elective in Puerto Rico. Turnout in Puerto
Rico elections is upwards of 80 percent--things that are almost
unheard of within the 50 States of the United States.
That is due to a lot of factors, including the fact that in
Puerto Rico elections are held only--consolidated all the
elections on one cycle, and it is a national holiday. It is a
holiday where people vote and take it seriously.
To take it seriously in the United States, the same
population that moves to the United States expects and only
asks that Federal law be complied with. Federal law, as I
mentioned before, since 1965, clearly states--and this is
Section 4(e)--that the right to vote for Puerto Ricans educated
there cannot be conditioned on knowledge of the English
language.
So the first barriers are, you looking at a population that
is coming both to Florida and to other States throughout the
South, the deep South, as a way to evacuate from very, very
onerous conditions on the island of Puerto Rico, and they are
finding themselves, when they are finally able to exercise a
decision about what is happening locally--do they want to say
``yes'' to that local official who helped them with housing? Do
they want to say ``no'' or use their vote against a local
official who didn't help them with enrolling their children
into public schools? That is the kind of simple civic
engagement that many people in this country cherish. They find
themselves unable to effectively and fully file an effective
vote because of mostly issues around language assistance.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Mr. Cartagena. Sure.
Mr. Aguilar. My time has expired, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Hastings.
Mr. Hastings. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
Ms. Wilkerson, what I am about to say is just self-serving.
I was the second male member of the League of Women Voters here
in Broward County.
Ms. Wilkerson. [Inaudible.]
Mr. Hastings. Right. That is great. Nowadays. But in those
days, Don and I were the only two. It was kind of interesting.
Ms. Dianis, I can't say enough about thanking you for the
extraordinary work that the Advancement Project does and has
been doing. And it is good to learn about Mr. Cartagena's work
as well.
Mr. Churchwell, you mentioned that there are emerging
threats. And in your written testimony, you raised that several
times. Can you tell me, what exactly are these emerging
threats?
Mr. Churchwell. I would be happy to share a most recent
one. There is a case called Davis v. Guam, Guam being in the
Ninth Circuit. In essence, a retired military officer living on
Guam wished to register to vote in time for a plebiscite
election to determine what was Guam's status going to be with
the United States going forward. He was told: No, you cannot
register to vote because of your Tribal lineage. You have none.
You do not have Chamorro blood. You cannot participate in this
election.
It is examples like that--and I will grant you that there
are not many of these. But here we are today where we need to
remind ourselves that the Voting Rights Act was meant to
protect everyone. And even the United States, even in the Ninth
Circuit, a case like that can be generated and find for Mr.
Davis at the Ninth Circuit.
Mr. Hastings. Let me ask you, do you consider it
discriminatory--and you have said that in Section 2 almost any
discriminatory hurdle can be overcome.
How would Section 2 help a young man that has been in
prison for 6 years, and he gets out of jail and he becomes, as
my colleagues have said, a good citizen, and he wants to
register to vote now, and his fines are $10,000. And we don't
even know an assessment of the court costs, because there was
no record of the court costs.
How does Section 2 help him overcome that? And is that a
discriminatory hurdle?
Mr. Churchwell. It is a question that looks like it is
going to be asked very soon within the Federal district courts.
We have heard discussions about that at this panel and in the
news media. So that question will be answered.
But let me add to that to say, look, the Florida
legislature had three jobs to do. It could not just say,
``Okay, the amendment passed. Supervisor of Elections, you all
figure it out from there.'' Because you would have had
supervisors acting differently in different counties.
Mr. Hastings. Uh-huh.
Mr. Churchwell. They had three jobs to do. First was answer
the question of what does it take to become square with the
House. Now we have the Senate and the House reporting out a
bill. Some people like it, some people don't, but that process
is ongoing.
Job number two was to determine what were we talking about
in the amendment language when we talked about violent and
sexual crimes.
And job number three was, to the Supervisors of Elections,
what do they do in the actual paperwork, the handling of a
voter registrant that might have a felony record behind him but
wants to register to vote now.
Mr. Hastings. Do you think the Florida legislature's
actions last week have overcome all of those three matters?
Mr. Churchwell. There is definitely a question hanging on
that. However----
Mr. Hastings. You got that right.
Mr. Churchwell [continuing]. Two out of three jobs----
Mr. Hastings. Let me reclaim my time.
Listen, I am 82 years old, and I am a native Floridian, and
I am here to tell you, I have lived in a preclearance
situation. If it had not been for Section 5, G.K. Butterfield
and Marcia Fudge and I would not be sitting here in the United
States Congress. Let's just start with that.
Third, please know that discrimination continues. You are
looking at a person that filed the original school
desegregation case in this county where we are right now. And
just----
Mr. Churchwell. Thank you for your service.
Mr. Hastings. And just to listen to the kinds of things
that are coming out from my Florida legislature is extremely
disturbing because they are, in fact, discriminatory.
We have self-executing constitutional amendments in this
State, three of them, and there is nothing that suggests that
this could not have been the case.
The voters spoke, and the legislature spoke against the
voters. And you tell them I said so.
I yield back my time.
Chairwoman Fudge. Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
I would like to ask unanimous consent to enter into the
record an article that specifically describes the horrendous
voter suppression, point by point, over the last number of
years, particularly beginning with the term of former Governor
Rick Scott.
Chairwoman Fudge. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you.
I would also like to just address Mr. Churchwell, not with
a question but a statement.
The Florida legislature had one job, not three, and the one
job was for Florida to follow the amendment for plain language
and not read between the lines, overinterpret it, and simply
allow what the amendment required, which was self-execution, to
ensure that voters' will was implemented and allow people who
were former felons who had completed their sentences to
register to vote.
Mr. Hastings. Hear, hear.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Period. One job, not three.
That having been said, Ms. Browne Dianis, I want to switch
to a different subject that we haven't really touched on.
Florida is one of more than 40 States that requires citizens to
register well in advance of election day, before many voters
become truly engaged.
And research shows that allowing same-day registration
would increase turnout, especially among younger residents--and
as the parent of twin almost-20-year-olds, that is important to
me--and that same-day registration can be executed, implemented
without favoring one party over another.
So what would Florida election officials need to do to
offer this basic, beneficial voting option?
Ms. Browne Dianis. Thank you, Congresswoman.
This is a simple thing. There are other States that do it.
And, actually, one of the things that is also important about
Florida is that, especially, like, in a place like south
Florida, where you have people who are moving across county
lines, et cetera, this kind of ease of being able to carry your
registration across county lines, being able to register again
is very important. Transient populations tend to be low-income
families, people of color, and college students who would
benefit from same-day registration.
In order do it, the State would have to infuse some money
into supervisors of elections. That is one of our problems that
continues happen after HAVA, is that supervisors of elections
aren't given enough money to run efficient elections. And so
that is what would have to happen. And I am sure that the
supervisors of elections here in the State could execute that
quickly and without any problems.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you very much.
And, Ms. Wilkerson, first of all, thank you so much for the
work that the League of Women Voters has done over decades and
decades in this State. Because you have been among the most
successful and unsung civil rights organizations that has filed
successful lawsuit after successful lawsuit to ensure that the
franchise was maximized.
And with that having been said, that includes our
constitutional amendments that allowed for fair districts and
that eliminated political gerrymandering.
So, with that integral role, you know, we are at a point
where now we have gone in Florida from in 2012,
preredistricting, with Florida being a 50/50 State, we had a
congressional delegation with 25 Members of Congress, 19
Republicans and 6 Democrats; post-fairer-districts, today, with
the State Supreme Court having to intervene and impose a map
that was compliant with the voters' intent and the
constitutional amendments, we have 14 Republicans and 13
Democrats in our congressional delegation, which is far more
aligned with the voters repeatedly expressing their will
election after election.
What is the League's position on the current cases in the
Supreme Court of the United States that are asking the Court to
rule that political gerrymandering is a violation of the United
States Constitution?
And, as an organization, are you prioritizing nationally
the elimination of gerrymandering and fight at the State level
and at the Federal level to ensure that districts are fairly
drawn and do not favor incumbents or political parties, as we
do not here?
Ms. Wilkerson. Yes, we are organized all over the United
States, and I am very concerned about gerrymandering. Right
here in Florida, we are concerned about the census not being
adequately funded, because that will decide how many extra
people we have in Congress or not. And as particularly swing
States, it is very important. It took us several years to get
our maps adopted by the Supreme Court because of the
gerrymandering pattern that Florida had, and I suspect we will
be back in court again after the census.
I think all of these negative and suppression methods that
our people are using are really why people don't go to the
polls. They don't think that their vote makes a difference
anymore, particularly when we look at the younger generation.
It is really sad, you know? The schools don't all even mandate
civics education anymore; they don't know how government works.
And I know, when we go and register voters and we say, you
know, is there a good place for us to go where we can get some
more voters registered, we go there and we will get a dismal
turnout. We will go to another church, like an after-church or
something, and, ``We are here to register to vote,'' ``Well, it
isn't going to make any difference because I haven't voted the
last couple of years because nobody seems to care about my
concerns.'' And I think that is a fundamental thing that we
should all be very worried about.
We have had to improve our original democracy with a lot of
compromises in that first democracy that we had. And if we stop
or negate the things like the civil rights things, having
marched in Montgomery myself, I think it is disgraceful. To
think that we don't--if the maps no longer applied, you just
simply draw new maps. That law should have been extended and
protected every voter.
It is a disgrace that we are not looking at the democratic
things. Politics has become such a game, rather than, are we--
this Amendment 4 in Florida is the perfect example. Bills were
introduced in many sessions; nothing happened. Finally, Charlie
Crist, when he was Governor, did by executive order kind of
funnel out the people who would get their rights restored
immediately, and then they would look at the more complicated
cases.
But the clemency board that you had to go to, and you had
to go to Tallahassee to be heard----
Chairwoman Fudge. Ms. Wilkerson, we need you to wrap up,
please.
Ms. Wilkerson. Okay.
They only met four times a year for 3 hours. The backlog
meant you had a 28-year wait right now to get to the clemency
board.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair, for your indulgence.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
Mr. Deutch.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here.
Ms. Dianis, I am just a little confused from a lot of the
things I have heard today, so maybe you could just help cut
right through that confusion.
Did Amendment 4 need any additional action by the Florida
legislature?
Ms. Browne Dianis. No. It was a self-executing amendment.
Mr. Deutch. And do you believe that the new fee requirement
is discriminatory?
Ms. Browne Dianis. Yes.
Mr. Deutch. And why?
Ms. Browne Dianis. Because it will disproportionately
impact black and brown would-be voters.
Mr. Deutch. And do we know the impact of the fee payment
requirement on people with prior convictions? How many people
are there in that situation, and what is the typical amount
owed?
Ms. Browne Dianis. Well, we actually don't know all the
numbers yet. I can tell you, when I was canvassing, I met many
people who could not vote and who had restitution. I met one
black man who had restitution of $250,000. And he said to me, I
will never be able to vote if they don't allow us to vote
without restitution. So, to us, this is nothing more than a
poll tax.
Mr. Deutch. Ms. Dianis, do you think fees throughout the
justice system help to criminalize poverty?
Ms. Browne Dianis. Yes. This has been----
Mr. Deutch. Why?
Ms. Browne Dianis [continuing]. Shown across the country,
that what we see is that people can never get out of the system
if they can't pay.
And there have been lawsuits brought across the country--in
Missouri, we are involved in one--where there are challenges to
the fact that we are creating debtors' prisons. And that has
happened in the State of Florida, and it has not yet been
challenged, but look for that to happen.
Mr. Deutch. I appreciate that.
Mr. Cartagena----
Ms. Browne Dianis. That is a threat, a real one.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you.
Mr. Cartagena, I want to follow up on an issue that Mr.
Loudermilk raised earlier. That is this specter of noncitizen
voting.
On May 11, 2017, President Trump established a Presidential
Advisory Commission on Voting Integrity, which was ostensibly
to find and root out voter fraud. Did the President's
commission ever find widespread systematic voter fraud?
Mr. Cartagena. No. Quite the contrary. Nothing was found,
and the President disbanded the commission very, very silently
compared to the way it was, you know, publicly addressed when
it was first created.
Both my organization, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the
Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, and others sued the
establishment of the commission, but the President himself just
took it off the table.
Mr. Deutch. And then, if you go back to 2012, in Florida,
before the 2012 elections, there were headlines that warned of
200,000 noncitizens who were registered to vote. That was the
impetus behind then-Governor Scott's effort to purge the voter
rolls.
Do you recall what happened in that case?
Mr. Cartagena. Sure. The headline said 200,000. The actual
list was 2,700. And when we scoured that list, we, again, with
the Advancement Project and others here in Florida, we learned
of many people who were naturalized citizens post the first
check of the database.
The databases that were used were SAVE database--this is
the one from Department of Homeland Security--and also the
Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles here in
Florida, their local database.
The problem was very, very simple. The databases may have
discovered something that may have happened 10 to 12 years
earlier. At that point, Juan Cartagena wasn't a naturalized
citizen, so he said, yes, I either can't get a license or I
cannot serve on a jury. They used 12-year-old databases to
determine in 2012 who can actually vote.
Mr. Deutch. And so, in fact, 0.0425 percent was the
percentage that was affected.
It was that same time that Congressman Hastings and I
learned of a World War II veteran who was told that he would
not be able to vote because he was caught up in that voter
purge.
Just in my remaining time--let me just make one more
observation about that. Mr. Cartagena, we heard earlier that
there are ways that we can try to address this. I sent probably
half a dozen letters to Governor Scott encouraging him to
participate in these multi-State databases like ERIC, which we
heard in this legislative session, again, no funding to do
that. Is that right?
Mr. Cartagena. There are ways to try to address it, but one
of the most important things we have to recognize is that
naturalization proceedings happen every day in this country.
Thousands of people, you know, pledge their allegiance to the
United States and become citizens. But by the time that data
enters any kind of database, there is a lag time. And to assume
that we have an accurate database on who becomes naturalized in
this country is fallacy.
Mr. Deutch. And in my final seconds, Ms. Wilkerson, when I
think about the basic question, do our elections work, do they
produce a government that is of, by, and for the people, is the
will of the people driving Washington, I frequently come back
to the same issue, and that issue is money in politics and the
need to overturn Citizens United to diminish the influence of
money in politics.
Thank you for the work that you have done in advocating for
that position. What is so problematic about all of this money
that floods into our campaigns?
Ms. Wilkerson. Well, I am sympathetic that the campaign
costs have so increased. That is part of the problem. And until
you get some limits on what people can spend, you will still
get this enormous infusion of money, whether it comes in with
the first hand or the second hand behind them. But campaigns
have just gotten so expensive, we have to look at another
structure.
And we also have to make sure that qualified people are
proud to run an election and to run as a campaign. And, very
often, those are not the people who can have the multimillion-
dollar donors.
Mr. Deutch. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Ms. Wilson.
Ms. Wilson. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Judith, I have worked with you through the years with the
Haitian community, and we have seen in Florida the length of
the ballots. Because every time we vote, there are tons of
amendments added to the ballot. And our ballots in Dade County
and maybe in Broward or some other counties are in three
languages, which means it is triple the length.
This is intimidating for educated people, people with
Ph.Ds. The people who are new citizens and people who are in
challenged communities, like the community that I represent--
has it ever been brought to your organization that we should
move towards voting online or an increase in absentee balloting
since we have this easy way to absentee ballot?
Also, we have a constituent in the audience who approached
me about the absentee ballots and the matching of signatures.
And when are the signatures considered out of date, old, or do
they notify you that the signature--it is time for you to come
in and sign again, for these people who have been absentee
balloting for a long time?
But every election we have, the Republicans out-absentee-
ballot us by thousands, and it is just--it is unnecessary. So
what kind of suggestion do you have for the people who don't
take advantage of that?
Ms. Browne Dianis. Yes. Thank you, Congresswoman Wilson.
So, a few things that I think can be done.
One is, part of the problem in Florida with the long
ballots--and the reason it takes so long is that, in those
particular polling places where we see those long lines, we
don't have enough machines, we don't have enough poll workers.
If you start to look at the way that those machines and
poll workers are distributed, it is discriminatory. We brought
a lawsuit around that in 2008 in Virginia and found this in
other places, where the machines are not distributed equally--
--
Ms. Wilson. Do you think it would be wise for these people
not to even go to the machines----
Ms. Browne Dianis. Well, I think----
Ms. Wilson [continuing]. Just vote from home?
Ms. Browne Dianis. Yes.
Ms. Wilson. And we had a little slogan when I ran for
Congress. That is when they were trying to put in the ID law.
And it was, ``No ID? Vote absentee.'' And 90 percent of the
people who voted for me voted absentee----
Ms. Browne Dianis. Right. Well, I would----
Ms. Wilson [continuing]. And I won.
Ms. Browne Dianis. Yeap. I would say a few things. One is
more machines. Two is extending early voting opportunities.
Three is increasing absentee ballots.
And the reason I say the other two is because there are a
lot of people who still don't trust the absentee balloting
process. So being able to have all three of those things will
help alleviate the long lines that people see in those
particular precincts.
Ms. Wilson. And to all of you, something we need to just
make note of is the elephant in the room is Russia. And what
kind of impact do any of you think that Russia had on this
election?
We had one, we know--it has been rumored--I don't know if
it was rumor or a fact--that in a county in Florida the
Russians were able to crack into their election system. It has
been rumored that that county is Broward. No one has proven
that yet, but the Governor has set up a meeting with the FBI to
determine which county it was, how far they got, and what kind
of impact that made on the State.
I am not sure if he wants to really find out the answer,
because it might impact what his results were because he won by
such a slim margin.
But tell us what you feel about Russia.
Mr. Cartagena. Let me start.
It deserves an entire congressional inquiry as well. The
fact that there have been clear representations by members of
this administration that the Russian meddling is actively
involved now for the 2020 election is such a red flag, such a
dangerous red flag, that I would urge you all to just undertake
a complete investigation of that now, what is going on with
respect to the 2020 elections.
I cannot believe that any Federal Government, and this
Administration especially, would just minimize the threat, as
if it didn't happen before and as if it may not happen again,
when every indicator seems to be that there is meddling going
on now in advance of the 2020 election.
Ms. Wilson. For the record.
I yield back. Thank you.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you so much.
Mr. Churchwell, you wanted to respond to Mr. Aguilar. I
will give you a moment to do that, sir.
Mr. Churchwell. Sure.
Rewind the tape here back to the argument that Public
Interest Legal Foundation and other groups were essentially
signal-calling to the Trump DOJ to purge voter rolls around the
country.
Number one, anyone who uses the word ``purge'' probably
hasn't spent much time with a voter registrar, because that is
a very easy way to get slapped, mentioning that word in front
of them. They do not like that word.
But beyond that, the most recent DOJ action as it relates
to list maintenance was resolved in Connecticut. And the
settlement there required that the State of Connecticut's Vital
Statistics Bureau, the keeper of the death records, the death
notices, that information be transmitted to voter registrars,
so when the State knew for a fact that someone died and they
could match that identity to a voter registration record, they
could handle it accordingly.
That is the most recent case that has been resolved by the
Justice Department. Similar issues have come and gone in
Kentucky.
What we are talking about here is meat-and-potatoes issues,
making sure that when someone dies the voter registrar knows it
because we have a government record to prove it, or if someone
moves, that same information is transmitted. We still cannot
take that for granted today.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you very much.
I would ask each of you, if there is one thing that you
want us to take away today, of all the things that you have
said, would you please tell me what that is?
We will start with Ms. Dianis and we will go straight down.
Ms. Browne Dianis. The one thing I would want you to take
away is that just because we see voter turnout going up for
black and brown voters does not mean that discriminatory voting
practices and policies are not in place.
In fact, if it makes it harder for certain people to vote,
that, in and of itself, is a violation of the Voting Rights
Act. So we should not get caught in the idea that turnout means
that we have overcome.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Ms. Wilkerson.
Ms. Wilkerson. The fundamental right to vote is so precious
to our country. It is how we preserve a democracy, by letting
everyone have their say and select their choice of candidates
and issues. We need to preserve that. It should be a priority
of Congress.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Cartagena.
Mr. Cartagena. Everything that Congress has said in the
area of voting demonstrates that voting is a right. The problem
is, of course, that in many States in this country it is
treated as a privilege that you earn, and they have to re-earn
it and re-earn it again. The will of Congress is being thwarted
every time that happens. I thank you for having this hearing
and urge you to have many more.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
Mr. Loudermilk, any closing thoughts?
Mr. Loudermilk. I just want to thank you, Madam Chairwoman,
for inviting me to be part of this hearing, and all the other
of my colleagues that are here.
And I appreciate all the panelists taking their time to
bring their ideas and their passion to the table for this
important issue.
Chairwoman Fudge. Thank you.
And I want to thank our witnesses; to thank the Members who
have spent their morning with us today to ask questions that
are extremely important to this process; thank Broward County
Governmental Center for hosting us this morning; to the people
of Florida who have joined us today; certainly our staff; those
who are live-streaming.
If you didn't know, this has been live-streamed. I probably
should have said that earlier. I probably should have said
something, because even the ones in the audience, sometimes it
is on you, sometimes it is on us.
I want to thank you all.
I just want to end with these closing thoughts. You know,
as I listen to these hearings, hearing after hearing. I keep
saying to myself: The more things change, the more they stay
the same.
If citizenship is really the measure, then I wonder
whether, in fact, we should have ever taken the rights of
prisoners away. They are still citizens, whether they are
convicted or in prison or not. So if citizenship is the
measure, they should never have lost their right to vote. So I
applaud the people of Florida for making sure that they give it
back.
But I also want to make clear that Chief Justice Roberts
did not deny that discrimination exists. It was quite the
opposite. He says, I know it does. However, I cannot continue
to say to certain of these 14 States that you are going to be
punished because the data that we are using is old.
What they said was, we want contemporaneous data so that we
can be sure that we are being fair. Maybe it is not just States
that are already in preclearance. Maybe it is Ohio, where I
live, which clearly should be in preclearance. Maybe it is
Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. But what he said was: You give us
new data so that Congress can come up with a new formula.
What we are doing across this country is deciding how we
create the record that satisfies the decision in Shelby and
gives the data appropriately to the Congress of the United
States. That was what the decision was. It wasn't to say we
don't need preclearance anymore. It was just to say that we
can't continue to use data that is 25 years old.
And what I do know is that, if Section 5 had been in place
in Brownsville, Texas, where we started, people who have a
difficulty with the language would not be forced to vote in
police stations, places where they were intimidated. Or in
North Dakota, on an Indian reservation, they wouldn't be forced
to vote in chicken coops. Or they would not, with their high
poverty rates, be forced to go out and buy a driver's license
and they don't drive, because that driver's license may have
been a carton of milk or eggs for their family, because some of
those particular reservations have unemployment rates of almost
60 percent.
What have we done to the citizens of this Nation, people
that we have made a promise to? Well, we have made it more
difficult for them to do the very thing that this country
stands for, which is to be a part of our democracy.
And so I can't imagine--I just have this one question for
you, Mr. Churchwell. You seem like a very nice young man. Did
you live through the 1960s?
Mr. Churchwell. No, ma'am.
Chairwoman Fudge. The 1970s?
Mr. Churchwell. No, ma'am.
Chairwoman Fudge. Okay. I did. And what I know--no, no, I
mean, it is serious, because I don't think that he can
understand the passion with which we believe that this country
needs to live up to its promise.
You know, I lived at a time when people that looked like me
could not vote. I lived through it. And I know it is difficult
for you in your wildest imagination to believe that this
country has done something wrong, but it has.
And what makes us a great country is our ability to repair
our faults, and that is what we are doing today.
I thank you all, and I say that this Subcommittee stands
adjourned without objection.
[Whereupon, at 12:59 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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