[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
VOTING IN AMERICA: THE POTENTIAL FOR POLLING PLACE QUALITY AND
RESTRICTIONS ON OPPORTUNITIES TO VOTE TO INTERFERE WITH FREE
AND FAIR ACCESS TO THE BALLOT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
JUNE 11, 2021
----------
Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration
BOOK 1 OF 2
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
http://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-administration
VOTING IN AMERICA: THE POTENTIAL FOR POLLING PLACE QUALITY AND
RESTRICTIONS ON OPPORTUNITIES TO VOTE TO INTERFERE WITH FREE AND FAIR
ACCESS TO THE BALLOT
BOOK 1 OF 2
VOTING IN AMERICA: THE POTENTIAL FOR POLLING PLACE QUALITY AND
RESTRICTIONS ON OPPORTUNITIES TO VOTE TO INTERFERE WITH FREE AND FAIR
ACCESS TO THE BALLOT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE
ADMINISTRATION
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 11, 2021
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration
BOOK 1 OF 2
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
http://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-administration
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45-527 WASHINGTON : 2021
COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION
ZOE LOFGREN, California, Chairperson
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois,
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina Ranking Member
PETE AGUILAR, California BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin
TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ, New Mexico
C O N T E N T S
----------
JUNE 11, 2021
BOOK 1
Page
Voting in America: The Potential For Polling Place Quality And
Restrictions On Opportunities To Vote To Interfere With Free
And Fair Access To The Ballot.................................. 1
OPENING STATEMENTS
Chairman G. K. Butterfield....................................... 1
Prepared statement of Chairman Butterfield................... 4
Hon. Bryan Steil, Ranking Member................................. 5
Prepared statement of Ranking Member Steil................... 12
WITNESSES
Panel 1
Stephen Pettigrew, Director of Data Sciences, University of
Pennsylvania................................................... 16
Prepared statement of Mr. Pettigrew.......................... 19
Jesselyn McCurdy, Interim Executive VP for Government Affairs,
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights................ 27
Prepared statement of Ms. McCurdy............................ 29
Kevin Morris, Quantitative Researcher, Democracy Brennan Center
for Justice.................................................... 36
Prepared statement of Mr. Kevin Morris....................... 38
Mimi Marziani, President, Texas Civil Rights Project............. 48
Prepared statement of Ms. Marziani........................... 50
Donald Palmer, Chair, U.S. Election Assistance Commission........ 64
Prepared statement of Mr. Palmer............................. 66
Panel 2
Michael C. Herron, Professor, Dartmouth University............... 81
Prepared statement of Mr. Herron............................. 84
Gilda Daniels, Director of Litigation Advancement Project........ 98
Prepared statement of Ms. Daniels............................ 100
Danielle Lang, Director, Voting Rights, Campaign Legal Center.... 122
Prepared statement of Ms. Lang............................... 124
Isabel Longoria, Elections Administrator, Harris County, Texas... 166
Prepared statement of Ms. Longoria........................... 168
Ashlee N. Titus, Board Member and Corporate Secretary, Lawyers
Democracy Fund................................................. 191
Prepared statement of Ms. Titus.............................. 193
QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD
Stephen Pettigrew, Director of Data Sciences, University of
Pennsylvania, answers to submitted questions................... 218
Jesselyn McCurdy, Interim Executive VP for Government Affairs,
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, answers to
submitted questions............................................ 222
Kevin Morris, Quantitative Researcher, Democracy Brennan Center
for Justice, answers to submitted questions.................... 228
Mimi Marziani, President, Texas Civil Rights Project, answers to
submitted questions............................................ 231
Donald Palmer, Chair, U.S. Election Assistance Commission,
answers to submitted questions................................. 237
Michael C. Herron, Professor, Dartmouth University, answers to
submitted questions............................................ 239
Gilda Daniels, Director of Litigation Advancement Project,
answers to submitted questions................................. 242
Danielle Lang, Director, Voting Rights, Campaign Legal Center,
answers to submitted questions................................. 244
Isabel Longoria, Elections Administrator, Harris County, Texas,
answers to submitted questions................................. 250
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Appendix A....................................................... 259
Kevin Morris Testimony....................................... 260
Waiting to Vote.......................................... 260
Appendix B....................................................... 295
Kevin Morris Testimony....................................... 296
Did Consolidating Polling Places in Milwaukee Depress
Turnout................................................ 296
Voting in a Pandemic: COVID-19 and Primary Turnout in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin................................... 300
Appendix C....................................................... 317
Kevin Morris Testimony....................................... 318
Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote............ 318
Florida, Georgia, North Carolina Still Purging Voters at
High Rates............................................. 352
Purge Rates Remain High, Analysis Finds.................. 356
Appendix D....................................................... 363
Mimi Marziani Testimony, May 3, 2019......................... 364
Appendix E....................................................... 375
Mimi Marziani Testimony, May 13, 2020........................ 376
Appendix F....................................................... 391
Mimi Marziani Testimony, September 9, 2020................... 392
Additional Material.............................................. 413
Democracy Diverted: Polling Place Closures and the Right to
Vote, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, 2019....... 414
We Vote, We Count: The Need for Congressional Action to
Secure the Right to Vote for All Citizens, The Advancement
Project, 2019.............................................. 496
Are All Precincts Created Equal: The Prevalence of Low-
Quality Precincts in Low-Income and Minority Communities,
Matt A. Bareto et al., 2008................................ 581
Waiting in Line to Vote, Charles Stewart III and Stephen
Ansolabehere, 2013.........................................
Race, Party, and the Consequences of Restricting Early Voting
in Florida in the 2012 General Election, Michael C. Herron
and Daniel A. Smith, 2014..................................
Waiting to Vote, Charles Stewart III and Stephen
Ansolabehere, 2015......................................... 596
Race, Shelby County, and the Voter Information Verification
Act in North Carolina, Michael D. Herron and Daniel A.
Smith, 2016................................................ 603
Precinct Resources and Voter Wait Times, Michael C. Herron
and Daniel A. Smith, 2016.................................. 646
The Racial Gap in Wait Times: Why Minority Precincts Are
Underserved by Local Election Officials, Stephen Pettigrew,
2017....................................................... 661
Assessing the Efficacy of Early Voting Access on Indian
Reservations: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Nevada,
Jean Schroedel et al., 2019................................ 682
How Polling Place Changes Reduce Turnout: Evidence from
Administrative Data in North Carolina, Jesse Yoder, 2019... 714
Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from
Smartphone Data, M. Keith Chen et al., 2020................ 768
The Downstream Consequences of Long Waits: How Lines at the
Precinct Depress Future Turnout, Stephen Pettigrew, 2020... 830
Voting by Mail in a VENMO World: Assessing Rejected Absentee
Ballots in Georgia, Enrijeta Shino et al., 2020............ 872
BOOK 2
2014 EAC Election Administration and Voting Survey Comprehensive
Report, submission............................................. 901
2016 Survey of the Performance of American Elections Final
Report, Charles Stewart III, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, submission......................................... 1209
September 22, 2021 Letter to PA Sec. Boockvar and Mr. Jonathan
Marks re election security and administration issues,
submission..................................................... 1683
September 22, 2020 Letter to NY State Board of Elections Chair
Kosinski and CO Chair Douglas Kellner re election security and
administration issues, submission.............................. 1686
Notice of Complaint--HAVA/CARES Act Funds, Letter to Hon. Alex
Padilla, CA Secretary of State, U.S. Election Assistance
Commission, submission......................................... 1690
September 22, 2020 Ranking Member Davis Letter to NJ Secretary of
State Tahesha Way, submission.................................. 1693
SKDK OLS-DGS Approved, SKD Knickerbocker LLC, submission......... 1696
February 19, 2021 Letter to IG Layfield re $35 million GOTV
contract from CA Secretary of State to SKD Knickerbocker,
submission..................................................... 1752
March 18, 2021 Letter to Commissioner Palmer re EAC management of
$825 million grants during 2020 election, submission........... 1755
August 14, 2020 Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, Letter
to Ranking Member Davis, submission............................ 1758
May 2021, 28% of Florida ZuckBucks Lingered After the 2020
Election--Tainting Midterms, Public Interest Legal Foundation,
submission..................................................... 1760
2018 Election Administration Policy Survey, U.S. Election
Assistance Commission, submission.............................. 1763
October 15, 2020 CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla Letter to
Mona Harrington re complaint alleging improper use of federal
funds for GOTV activities, submission.......................... 1775
October 1, 2020 Letter to NC State Board of Elections Members re
proposed settlement with NC Alliance for Retired Americans,
submission..................................................... 1783
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to Philadelphia
County Supervisor of Elections Garrett Dietz re June 2nd
primary election issues, submission............................ 1789
July 22, 2020 NYC Board of Elections Ranking Member Rodney Davis
Letter to Anne Taylor re June 23rd primary, submission......... 1792
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to Multnomah
County Director of Elections Tim Scott re May 19th primary,
submission..................................................... 1795
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to Los Angeles
County Registrar Dean C. Logan re March 3rd primary election,
submission..................................................... 1797
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to Harris County
Clerk Chris Hollins re March 3rd primary, submission........... 1801
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to Fulton County
Chairperson Mary Carole Cooney re June 9th primary election,
submission..................................................... 1803
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to DC Board of
Elections Chair Michael Bennett re DC June 2nd primary,
submission..................................................... 1806
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to City of
Chicago Board of Election Commissioners Chair Marisel A.
Hernandez re March 17th primary, submission.................... 1809
July 22, 2020 Ranking Member Rodney Davis Letter to Champaign
County Clerk Aaron Ammons re March 17th primary election,
submission..................................................... 1812
2016 Election Day Voter Experience Survey Highlights, U.S. Vote
Foundation, submission......................................... 1815
VOTING IN AMERICA: THE POTENTIAL FOR POLLING PLACE QUALITY AND
RESTRICTIONS ON OPPORTUNITIES TO VOTE TO INTERFERE WITH FREE AND FAIR
ACCESS TO THE BALLOT
----------
FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2021
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Elections,
Committee on House Administration,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:00 a.m., via
Webex, Hon. G. K. Butterfield [Chair of the Subcommittee]
presiding.
Present: Representatives Butterfield, Aguilar, Leger
Fernandez, and Steil.
Also Present: Representatives Scanlon and Davis.
Staff Present: Jamie Fleet, Democratic Staff Director;
Khalil Abboud, Deputy Democratic Staff Director; Brandon
Jacobs, Legislative Clerk; David Tucker, Senior Counsel and
Parliamentarian; Dan Taylor, General Counsel; Sean Wright,
Senior Elections Counsel; Sarah Nasta, Elections Counsel; Peter
Whippy, Communications Director; Natalie Young, Press
Secretary; Tim Monahan, Minority Staff Director; Caleb Hays,
Minority General Counsel & Deputy Staff Director; Nick Crocker,
Minority Deputy Staff Director; Gineen Bresso, Minority Special
Counsel; Rachel Collins, Minority Counsel; and Mike Cunnington,
Minority Policy Advisor.
Chairman Butterfield. The Subcommittee on Elections of the
Committee on House Administration will now come to order.
It is good to see all of my colleagues this morning. Thank
you so very much for joining us. It appears that we have about
six members on the call today and just thank all of you for
taking the time to log on, and we will try to get through this
as quickly as we can.
On the Democratic side, we have, in addition to the chair,
we have Mr. Aguilar, Ms. Leger Fernandez, Ms. Scanlon, and, of
course, myself. On the Republican side, we have Mr. Davis--I
understand that he may be traveling, but he should be with us--
Mr. Davis and Mr. Steil.
So thank all of you for joining.
As we begin, I want to very briefly note that we are
holding this hearing in compliance with the regulations for
remote committee proceedings pursuant to House Resolution 8.
Generally we ask our members, our subcommittee members, and
witnesses to keep their microphones muted when not speaking.
And, of course, the purpose for this is to limit the background
noise. Members will need to unmute themselves when seeking
recognition or when recognized for their five minutes.
Witnesses will also need to unmute themselves when recognized
for their five minutes or when answering a question. Members
and witnesses, please, please, keep your cameras on at all
times even if you need to step away for just a moment. Please
do not leave the meeting or turn your camera off. And there are
good reasons for that, so please remember that, if you will.
I would also like to remind members that the regulations
governing remote proceedings require that we cannot participate
in more than one committee proceeding at the same time. Now, I
know it is tempting from time to time, but that is the rule.
You cannot participate in more than one committee proceeding at
the same time.
And so, at this time, I am going to ask unanimous consent
that the chair be authorized to declare a recess of the
subcommittee at any point and that all members will have five
legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks
and have any written statements be made part of the record.
If there are no objections, I will so order it.
Today's hearing is the fourth--it doesn't seem like it has
been four, but this is actually the fourth in a series of
hearings that this Subcommittee is conducting examining the
state of voting in America.
Today we will discuss changes in election administration
and voting laws that reduce or consolidate or relocate polling
locations that impact the ability of voters to access the
ballot. We will talk about long wait times at the polls and
restrictions on opportunities to vote, all of which--all of
which--can disproportionately burden minority voters. We all
saw the stories of lines so long, so long voters--let me start
that one over. We all saw the stories of lines so long that
voters brought chairs to wait for the opportunity to vote, or
we saw volunteers providing food and water to people who have
to wait in line for hours on end.
That is terrible. No voter should have to wait hours to
vote. I hope we can all have bipartisan agreement on that.
Others still may be forced to travel long distances to
reach their polling location. Many do not have the time in
their day to do either.
And so we have seen the stories of Republican legislatures
all across the country who are doubling down on their strategy
of making voting inconvenient. Some say they are interested in
making it easier to vote and harder to cheat, but what they
don't tell us--and what they don't tell you--is they only want
you to vote where and when it is convenient for them.
There is no proof that these laws are necessary and no
analysis to ensure that they are not discriminatory.
Unfortunately, the evidence reveals plainly the very opposite.
They are discriminatory and intended to keep voters from the
ballot box.
I want to have a debate about that, but that is my opinion.
Expanded opportunities to vote, such as early mail-in or
curbside voting and access to drop boxes increase equal access
to the ballot and can decrease these waiting times. We should
provide more of these opportunities. Recent elections prove
that if voters are given options for when and how to cast their
ballot, participation in the electoral process will actually
increase.
When we increase the opportunities available to voters, it
increases participation in our democracy. Our democracy only
serves the people when every voter has the ability to freely
and fairly participate.
The Constitution, that great document that we all serve,
the Constitution is unambiguously clear: Congress has a clear
role in protecting this right to vote and ensuring equal,
equitable access to the franchise.
And so, my friends, I look forward to hearing and learning
from today's witnesses and working with my colleagues on both
sides of the aisle to ensure we do just that.
Thank you for listening.
I will now recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Steil, for his
opening statement.
[The statement of Chairman Butterfield follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Steil. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I start out nearly all of our hearings reminding folks that
we saw historic turnouts in 2018 and 2020 elections. More
people voted in the 2018 midterms than at any midterm election,
and more people voted in 2020 than ever before. I say this
because for years the rhetoric, which is getting louder, has
been that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote. In fact,
it has been suggested at each hearing this Subcommittee has
held. It is Democrats' justification, I think, for H.R. 1, and
the assertion is just not true.
Today's hearing focuses on the effects of poll location
closures. And, unfortunately, in 2020, we did see polling
location closures. However, it may surprise many of my
colleagues that these closures were done in Democratic areas
where the elections are administered largely by, wait for it,
Democrats. These closures occurred to push mail-in voting
without commonsense safeguards.
Let's review eight cities or counties where elections were
administered by Democrats or Democratic appointees. In my home
State of Wisconsin, the city of Milwaukee reduced polling
locations from 180 to just 5 in the 2020 primary election.
In Fulton County, Georgia, which includes the city of
Atlanta, and is home to 11 percent of the State's population,
they only opened five polling locations during their primary
election.
Harris County, Texas, home to one of the fastest growing
cities in the country, Houston, voters reported waiting up to 6
hours to vote in the primary election due to poll closures.
L.A. County closed more than 3,500 voting locations in its
primary, reducing the county's poll locations to just 978 for a
county whose population is nearly double the entire State of
Wisconsin.
In New York City, not only were polling places reduced for
the primary election, but some didn't open on time and
locations were changed just hours before voters showed up to
vote.
Washington, D.C., went from 143 locations to just 20 for
its primary.
Chicago had reports of multiple polling location closures.
Philadelphia County reduced polling locations by 77 percent
for their June 2 primary.
And, admittedly, the list goes on.
And so I have to ask my colleagues and the mainstream media
who is listening today, where was the outrage from Democrats?
Where was the oversight hearings then?
I think Democrats on this Committee failed to hold hearings
or conduct proper oversight. Republicans, however, sent
letters, oversight letters to each jurisdiction expressing
concern and requesting answers. And I would ask unanimous
consent to insert those letters and their responses into the
record.
Chairman Butterfield. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Steil. So, further, instead of improving voter
confidence and addressing these issues, H.R. 1 really would do
the opposite. We will hear from today's witnesses about how
H.R. 1 would nationalize all elections and centralize their
administration in Washington, D.C., under Democratic control,
who has a history of closing polling locations and removing key
safeguards like voter ID or list maintenance that protect our
elections and help ensure that voters are confident in the
process and the results.
Last Congress, Republicans introduced legislation to help
States ensure polling locations could remain open. The
Emergency Assistance for Safe Elections Act, the EASE Act,
would have provided additional funding to help States and
localities to help poll workers disinfect equipment, for voting
machines, purchase personal protective equipment for poll
workers, and other items.
The EASE Act would have also addressed an issue election
administrators across the country struggle with, which is
recruiting enough poll workers. The typical poll worker is 65
years or older, which is admittedly the designated at-risk
population for COVID. Even outside the pandemic, recruiting
poll workers has been increasingly difficult for election
administrators. The EASE Act would have provided funding to
help States clean their voter registration rolls, which impact
voter wait times. The more outdated the voter rolls, the longer
it takes poll workers to find a voter in the system.
There are, I think, really commonsense solutions that don't
involve a Federal Government takeover of our election system.
And, unfortunately, we were not able to review the bill in this
Committee, and Speaker Pelosi never brought the bill to the
floor for a vote. I believe there are election administration
solutions Democrats and Republicans can work on together, and I
am hopeful that my colleagues on the Committee will take me up
on addressing some of them.
I look forward to today's hearing, Mr. Chairman. And, with
that, I yield back.
[The statement of Mr. Steil follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you very much, Mr. Steil. Thank
you, thank you, thank you.
I noticed that the Ranking Member of the Full Committee is
on the screen, my good friend, my neighbor; Congressman Rodney
Davis from the great State of Illinois.
Rodney, can you share a few words with us this morning?
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It will be great to see you again next week. I can't wait
until we get a chance to get back in the hearing room to do
these hearings and bring these witnesses out in person. So I
heard some upcoming guidance from the Office of Attending
Physician today. I will promise you, sir, I will sit way at the
other end of the dais if it makes you and Mr. Aguilar feel more
comfortable. But I would love to be able be there and share
some of those great sweet potato chips that you guys have in
your office.
Sir, Mr. Chair, if I could real quick ask unanimous consent
to enter into the record a copy of our House Administration
Minority Ballot Harvesting Report, a copy of the Election
Assistance Commission data turnout in elections, and also the
correspondence that we have gathered between the State of
California and SKDKnickerbocker and the Election Assistance
Commission on the misuse of taxpayer dollars.
Chairman Butterfield. Without objection.
Mr. Davis. Thanks, sir, very much.
Hey, listen, I am really excited to listen to the witnesses
here today. I certainly hope, Mr. Chair, coming forward as we
move these Subcommittee hearings into the future that we might
have a chance to invite some of the election administrators
that we are going to talk about today. I would like to find out
why certain areas of Georgia and Wisconsin had so many poll
closures. I want to know what their justifications are, what
they were. Now is our time to go back and find out these
answers as to why so many polling locations in majority
Democrat areas were shut down before the election. I want to
know what was the problem. Was it a COVID-related issue? Was it
something that is related to long term to a lack of election
judges? What do we need to do as a committee to show some
leadership here? And I certainly am glad we are going to hear
from a lot of educational and research experts today, but I do
believe in the future if we could sit down and come up with a
good two-panel hearing of this Subcommittee for election
administrators nationwide so that we can ask, especially those
in the areas of Georgia and Wisconsin, where we saw disastrous
results from polling location closures, I would love this
Subcommittee to be able to take that on.
And, with that, Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my
time.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
And thank you, Mr. Davis.
And let me just assure you, Rodney, that we are just as
eager as you are to return to in-person hearings, but we are
just concerned. We are concerned that not all staff and not all
of our Members have been vaccinated. But I clearly understand
your concerns, and we have talked about it in our Democratic
Caucus. And please know that we will return to in-person
hearings just as soon as we can do it safely.
In just a moment, I will introduce our witnesses, but
before I do so, as a reminder to our witnesses, each of you
will be recognized for 5 minutes. There is a timer there on
your screen. Please be sure that you can see the timer and are
mindful of this 5-minute time limit. Your entire witness
statements will be made part of the record, and the record will
remain open for at least 5 days for additional materials to be
submitted.
And so I welcome, I welcome each of our witnesses today.
Joining us on our first panel are Mr. Stephen Pettigrew of
the University of Pennsylvania; Ms. Jesselyn McCurdy of the
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Mr. Kevin
Morris of the Brennan Center for Justice; Ms. Mimi Marziani of
the Texas Civil Rights Project; and Mr. Donald Palmer, who is
the chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Let me first talk about Dr. Pettigrew. Dr. Pettigrew is the
director of the data sciences of the University of
Pennsylvania's program on opinion research and election studies
and the deputy executive director of the Fox Leadership
Program. Prior to joining Penn, Dr. Pettigrew received his
Ph.D. in political science and a master's in statistics from
Harvard University and worked at the MIT election data and
science lab.
Very impressive resume. Thank you for joining us.
Ms. Jesselyn McCurdy is the interim executive vice
president for government affairs at the Leadership Conference
on Civil and Human Rights. Prior to joining the Leadership
Conference, Ms. McCurdy served as deputy political director at
the National Political Advocacy Department of the ACLU and as
counsel for our House Judiciary Committee.
Thank you for your work over the years.
Kevin Morris is a quantitative researcher with the Brennan
Center for Justice's Democracy Program focusing on voting
rights and elections. His research focuses on the impact of
laws and policies on access to the polls. Now, Mr. Morris has a
bachelor's in economics from Boston College and a master's in
urban planning from NYU's Wagner School with an emphasis on
quantitative methods and evaluation.
Mimi Marziani is the president of the Texas Civil Rights
Project, where she has served since 2016. She also teaches
election law and policy at the University of Texas School of
Law. Before moving to Texas, our witness spent several years as
counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for
Justice, where she litigated election law cases in Federal
courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
Finally, Donald Palmer. Mr. Palmer is a commissioner with
the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and the Commission's
current chair. Commissioner Palmer was confirmed by the Senate
on 2 January of 2019. Prior to serving as Commissioner, he
served as secretary of the Virginia State Board of Election, as
Florida's director of elections, as a trial attorney with the
Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice. He served
two decades in the United States Navy.
And thank you, sir, for your incredible service to our
country.
At this time, I am going to recognize each one of our
witnesses for 5 minutes.
We will start with Dr. Pettigrew.
Dr. Pettigrew, you are now recognized, sir, for five
minutes.
STATEMENTS OF STEPHEN PETTIGREW, DIRECTOR OF DATA AND SCIENCE,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA; JESSELYN McCURDY, INTERIM EXECUTIVE
VP FOR GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL AND
HUMAN RIGHTS; KEVIN MORRIS, QUANTITATIVE RESEARCHER, DEMOCRACY,
BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE; MIMI MARZIANI, PRESIDENT, TEXAS
CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT; AND DONALD PALMER, CHAIR, U.S. ELECTION
ASSISTANCE COMMISSION
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN PETTIGREW
Mr. Pettigrew. Thank you, Chairman Butterfield, Ranking
Member Steil, and members of the Committee. Thanks for the
opportunity to testify here today.
I am Dr. Stephen Pettigrew from the University of
Pennsylvania. I am here to talk about my research on the
problem of long lines at polling places and the
disproportionate impact that they have on voters of color.
Managing the length of lines at polling places is one of
the most crucial tasks that State and local election officials
must handle. In 2013, the bipartisan Presidential Commission on
Election Administration recommended that no voter should have
to wait more than half an hour to vote.
In the November 2020 election, however, approximately 16
million voters waited in line longer than this 30-minute
benchmark. About 5 million waited longer than an hour. As the
problem of long lines has grown in recent decades, so too has
the political science literature on the topic.
In my testimony today, I would like to highlight three key
findings from that research. The first finding is that non-
White voters tend to face considerably longer waits to cast
their ballots than White voters. This racial difference is the
consistent finding in research about long lines no matter what
data or research methodology is used.
In my own research, I find that, all other things equal,
non-White voters are three times as likely as White voters to
wait more than 60 minutes and six times as likely to wait
more--I am sorry--three times as likely to wait longer than 30
minutes and six times longer than 60 minutes to vote.
Even in 2020 when average wait times were longer than any
election with since at least 2008, this racial gap persisted.
Roughly 17 percent of White voters waited more than 30 minutes
compared to 23 percent of Black voters, and one out of every 20
Black voters waited longer than an hour compared to one out of
every 44 White voters.
One possibility that could explain this gap is that non-
White voters are more likely to live in urban areas and White
voters in rural areas. If the logistics of elections are just
harder in cities, then that could account for the racial gap in
wait times. My research finds that, although this is a piece of
the story, the urban world divide accounts for less than half
of the racial gap in wait times, and this leads me to the
second conclusion from the political science literature, which
is that the gap in wait times by race is largely driven by
fewer resources, like poll workers or voting machines being
allocated to predominantly non-White polling places.
Policies like precinct closures, shortening voting hours,
and voter ID laws can add significant impacts on wait times
especially for non-White voters. In some ways, lines at polling
places are similar to lines at the grocery store or traffic on
the highway. If there is too few cashiers or lanes, then
shoppers or vehicles get backed up. And, similarly, if a
precinct has too few poll workers and not enough voting
machines, then lines will develop.
My research and that of other political scientists finds
that the ratio of voters to poll workers or voters to machines
tends to be more favorable in mostly White precincts.
In addition to adding more resources to polling places,
policymakers and election officials can influence line length
in other ways. Opening new polling places that are well staffed
and well resourced can decrease line length, while closing
precincts without making dramatic changes to the unclosed ones
can cause significantly longer waits. Increasing the hours of
operation at polling places or the number of days of early
voting can help mitigate long lines, while cutting hours has
the opposite effect, causing voters to show up in larger
clusters creating the potential for bottlenecks.
And, lastly, increasing access to vote by mail is another
effective way to shorten lines by decreasing the number of
voters showing up to vote in person.
The third key finding from research about long lines is
that they can have negative consequences on the voter and the
electoral system as a whole. Lines can be a big vote burden on
those who have less flexibility in their schedule because of a
tight work schedule or because they have to pick up their kids
at school.
In my research, I found that voters who experience a long
wait are significantly less likely to turn out in subsequent
elections, and given that 16 million voters experienced a long
wait in 2020, my research shows that hundreds of thousands
could be turned off from voting in future years. Even more than
that, researchers have found that voters who experience a long
line are less confident in the integrity of the electoral
system as a whole. They are less likely to believe that their
ballot will be kept secret or that their votes will be properly
counted.
Standing in a long line to vote is perhaps one of the most
common ways that voter satisfaction has eroded. It is clear
from decades of research that non-White voters are
significantly more likely to bear the cost of long line than
White voters. This fact is even more troubling when you
consider that long lines decrease future turnout and erode
voter confidence.
Going forward it is essential that when State and local
election officials make changes to election procedures, they
don't put their thumb on the electoral scale by widening the
race gap in wait times.
I want to thank the committee for their time and for
holding hearings on this important topic of improving the
health of our democracy, and I look forward to any questions
that you have.
Thanks.
[The statement of Mr. Pettigrew follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Dr. Pettigrew.
At this time, the chair will recognize Ms. McCurdy for five
minutes.
STATEMENT OF JESSELYN McCURDY
Ms. McCurdy. Chairman Butterfield, Ranking Members Steil
and Davis, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today.
And thank you, Chairman Butterfield, for your leadership in
calling this hearing.
It is a critically important discussion as we watch an
ongoing coordinated and calculated attack on the foundation of
our democracy, the freedom and right to vote. Last year, across
race, income, and ZIP Code, and in the face of a once-in-a-
century global pandemic, Americans turned out to vote in
historic numbers. It was an awe-inspiring moment and a
declaration of the great possibility of our Nation to live up
to the highest ideals.
Yet, in response, some politicians are trying to take us
backwards by creating barriers for Black, Brown, and
indigenous, and new Americans who want to exercise this
fundamental right.
The path was paved by these politicians by the U.S. Supreme
Court in 2013 when five Justices eviscerated section 5 of the
Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County v. Holder decision.
Section 5, known as the heart of the Voting Rights Act, enabled
the Federal Government to block proposed discriminatory voting
restrictions in places with pervasive histories of
discrimination. It also ensured that changes to voting rules
were public, transparent, and evaluated to protect voters
against discrimination based on race and language. It is
imperative that Congress restore preclearance given the crisis
our democracy is facing now.
While these discriminatory barriers take many form, I will
focus on just one today, the removal of the varied locations
where ballots are cast and counted. Polling place closures and
consolidations are a pernicious and incredibly effective tactic
for disenfranchising voters, particularly voters of color,
older voters, rural voters, and voters with disabilities--and
since the Shelby decision, jurisdictions closing polls at
alarming speeds.
The Leadership Conference Education Fund documented the
trend in our report ``Democracy Diverted'' when analyzing
polling place closures in 757 counties once covered under
section 5.
Chairman Butterfield, I would like to enter this report
into today's hearing record.
Chairman Butterfield. All right. Unless there is objection,
the report is received.
Ms. McCurdy. Shockingly, we found 1,688 polling places were
closed between 2012 and 2018. Overall, Texas alone closed 750
polling places. Arizona closed 320, and Georgia closed 214.
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina combined
closed over 300 polls. Many of these closures are happening in
communities of color rather than in majority White
neighborhoods, and in many instances officials provided no
notice to voters that their voting precincts were closed or
relocated. Not surprisingly, Georgia closed a higher percentage
of polling places than any other State in 2018. In an extreme
example, local policymakers left seven counties in the State
with just one polling place to serve thousands of people over
hundreds of square miles. This is patently unacceptable and
particularly when viewed against America's persistent history
of denying the right to vote to Black Americans.
Before the Shelby County decision, section 5 enabled the
Federal Government to analyze voting changes like polling place
reductions to ensure they did not discriminate against voters
of color. This critical protection no longer exists, and the
consequence on voters' ability wait to cast a ballot are
devastating. No one should be deterred from casting their
ballot because of location, ability to take off work, access to
transportation, or responsibilities at home.
Disturbingly, the attacks on our freedom to vote have only
worsened following the 2020 election. According to the Brennan
Center for Justice, since January, at least 14 States have
enacted 22 laws that restrict the vote and put up barriers to
the ballot box. Overall, State lawmakers have introduced at
least 389 antivoter bills just this year. Voters of color will
bear the brunt of these new restrictions and the most
significant assault on voting rights since the Jim Crow era,
and we know that if fully functioning voting rights had been in
place in the Federal election, it could have prevented many if
not all of these attempts to silence the voices of voters as
well as any antivoter bill that has proliferated over the last
decade.
The Leadership Conference urges Congress to pass the John
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This historic bill will
reverse the damage done by the Supreme Court in Shelby County
and update the Voting Rights Act to reflect modern-day patterns
of voting discrimination.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today.
[The statement of Ms. McCurdy follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. And thank you, Ms. McCurdy.
At this time, the Chair will recognize Mr. Morris for five
minutes.
STATEMENT OF KEVIN MORRIS
Mr. Morris. Chairman Butterfield, Ranking Member Steil, and
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify before you today in support of the John Lewis Voting
Rights Advancement Act.
In the 8 years since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Shelby
County v. Holder and suspended the 1965 Voting Rights Act's
preclearance condition, voters of color have had to fight
harder than White voters to exercise the rights central to the
American project, namely, their right to participate without
undue burden in their own self-government at the ballot box.
Election day experiences are a major source of disparities
in our electoral system. Racial and ethnic minorities routinely
face longer waits than White voters. The distribution of
electoral resources, polling place consolidation, and voter
list maintenance all put voters of color at a disadvantage on
election day. Federal oversight is needed.
Over the past decade, scholars and activists have
documented that racial and ethnic minorities wait longer to
cast their ballots on election day. My research at the Brennan
Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, demonstrates that
voters wait longer in places where there are fewer resources
available. However, this cannot explain the full racial wait
gap. In 2018, voters of color did not live in counties with
fewer electoral resources. This complicates our understanding
of the allocation of resources, and it means we need to focus
on the equitable experiences on election day, that is, ending
the racial wait gap not only on an equal distribution of
resources. In other words, as much attention needs to be paid
to the quality of resources as to their quantity.
Furthermore, while voters of color in 2018 may have lived
in better resourced regions, their population growth is
concentrated in counties with fewer resources. Put differently,
resource allocation patterns are on track to exacerbate, not
mitigate, the racial wait gap in coming years.
Nowhere do polling place resources matters more than in the
number of poll sites available. A large body of empirical work
has demonstrated the disenfranchising impact of polling place
glitches.
This was thrown into sharp relief in 2020 by the COVID-19
pandemic when the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, shuttered
nearly all of their polling places for the Presidential
primary. Just five out of more than 180 remained open. This
last-minute decision to close the polling places came against
the backdrop of a surge in vote-by-mail usage. However, as my
research demonstrates, the accessibility of vote by mail was
not enough to offset large declines and turnout in the city.
Rather, turnout declined by an estimated 8 percentage points or
nearly a third. This negative effect was even larger for Black
voters.
Increases in voter purges in formerly covered jurisdictions
have also led to a deterioration in polling place quality. The
Shelby County decision led to a dramatic increase in voter
purge rates in jurisdictions formerly covered under section 5
of the VRA. Wrongful purges can and do disenfranchise some
voters, but the consequences extend even to voters whose
registrations were not canceled.
My research shows that increased purge rates were
associated with higher provisional ballot rates in formerly
covered jurisdictions. Voters spend longer filling out
provisional ballots than they do ordinary ones, which can cause
slowdowns for entire polling places and not just the voters who
were wrongfully purged. Given that formerly covered
jurisdictions were covered precisely because of their histories
of racial discrimination, the ripple effects of increased
provisional ballots are occurring where voters were once but
are no longer protected by section 5 of the VRA.
It might seem that decisions about election day resources
should be left up to the States and that Federal intervention
is unnecessary. Unfortunately, that is not the case. As my
research documents, mandatory minimum resource requirements set
by individual States are routinely ignored.
To take just one example among many, in 2018, 31 out of
South Carolina's 46 counties, that is two-thirds of South
Carolina's counties, had more voters per machine than allowed
under State law. State regulation is not a sufficient bulwark
against the underresourcing of polling places in the States.
Federal oversight, such as that promised by the VRAA and the
For the People Act, is needed.
Restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act to its full power is
more important today than at any point in the past 8 years. So
far in 2021, 48 States have introduced laws making it more
difficult to vote. These have become law in 14 States so far,
and the legislative session is not yet over. Those introduced
and passed in States like Georgia, Florida, and Texas would
make early and mail voting less accessible, pushing more voters
into polling places on election day, further straining
resources and leading to longer lines.
In short, the preclearance condition of the VRA worked. It
protected voters of color from discriminatory voting laws in
parts of the country with discriminatory histories, and it can
do so once again. Voters of color today face steeper costs in
today's elections, costs paid in lost time and lost wages due
to unfairly resourced polling places.
I urge Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Morris follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Mr. Morris.
And, at this time, the chair recognizes Ms. Marziani. And I
hope I am pronouncing that correctly. If not, please excuse me.
You are now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF MIMI MARZIANI
Ms. Marziani. Thank you and good morning.
Chairman Butterfield. Good morning.
Ms. Marziani. Thank you, Representative Butterfield.
And to Ranking Member Steil and to the other members, I am
Mimi Marziani. I am the president of the Texas Civil Rights
Act, and I am very honored to be with you today.
So I am here from Austin with a pretty urgent message.
Since the Supreme Court's Shelby County decision, there have
been a slew of voting law changes in Texas that have made it
more difficult for Black and Latinex Texans to vote. Texas
then, sadly, is a prime example of why Congress must act now to
update and reinstate preclearance.
I have provided numerous examples of the racially
discriminatory voting law changes that have occurred in Texas
to this Committee previously in January 2019, to the Committee
of the Judiciary in May 2019, to the Select Subcommittee on the
Coronavirus in September 2020. And in the testimony submitted
today, I attached those prior testimonies that also focused on
a particularly troubling trend which you have heard from my
fellow panelists. And that is that, in Texas, we have seen far
more polling places closed than in any other State.
These closures have disparately impacted communities of
color. Plus Representative Steil is right, these closures have
occurred under Republican and Democrats, which underscores, in
fact, the need for the type of Federal investigation and
oversight that preclearance used to provide.
On top of all of that, if not for brave pro-voting-rights
lawmakers breaking quorum before our regular legislative ended
on May 31 of this year, Texas would have a new law further
restricting access. The fight is far from over. Texas Governor
Greg Abbott has promised to call a special session this summer
to try to again pass this complex omnibus law in S.B. 7.
S.B. 7 has included provisions that, among other devices,
would restrict early voting hours, prohibit polling places from
offering popular drive-through voting where voters can cast a
ballot from their car and reallocate polling places using a
racially discriminatory formula. Even though S.B. 7's
provisions are facially neutral, all of the evidence shows that
S.B. 7 would, in fact, disparately impact voters of color.
So, first, S.B. 7 would have mandated that voting take
place no earlier than 6 a.m. and no later than 9 p.m., and this
appears to be a direct response to extended-hour initiatives
implemented across Texas in recent years in a variety of
counties, and particularly in Harris County, where 24-hour
voting locations were set up in 2020. These were aimed at
voters who are shift workers and can't cast their voters during
regular business hours.
A lawyer's analysis found that extended hour voting in
Harris County in 2020 was disproportionately used by people of
color, even most of the people who voted early in Harris County
were White. Moreover, S.B. 7 prohibited voting from taking
place before 1 p.m. on Sundays, which would severely hamstring,
if not eliminate, Souls to the Polls, which is a long-standing
tradition in which Black faith leaders encourage churchgoers to
cast their ballots after services.
Plus, in 2020, health concerns about COVID and Texas'
refusal to expand voting by mail pushed innovation by local
officials to make in-person voting safer. I think what was
popular, arguably, was drive-through voting in Harris County:
which was used by approximately 127,000 voters, the major of
whom are voters of color. And despite the immense popularity of
that, S.B. 7 now seeks to permanently end this innovation.
Finally, an earlier version of S.B. 7, as originally passed
by the Texas House, included a provision that would have
required Texas counties with 1 million or more people, which is
all of our most racially diverse counties, to distribute
polling places based on the share of registered voters in each
State House district. I know that sounds complicated, but the
effects were really clear. Polling places would be pulled away
from communities of color. That is because these communities
have lower registration rates, which is because of historical
racism.
In fact, a study by the Texas Tribune found that of the 13
State House districts in Harris County that would lose polling
sites as a result, all but one are majority White; And this is
exactly the type of device that the Voting Rights Act was
implemented to protect against.
One last thing. So, for nearly five decades, there was
something close to a bipartisan consensus in Congress that
States with a long history of voting discrimination, like
Texas, should be subject to robust Federal oversight.
I am going to go ahead and quote Ronald Reagan when he
authorized the Voting Rights Act in 1982. He said: The right to
vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not
see its luster diminished.
Voting rights for people of color in Texas have been badly
tarnished, but I urge all members of this Committee to act now
to restore them.
[The statement of Ms. Marziani follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. Thank you very much for your
testimony.
At this time, the chair will recognize Commissioner Palmer
for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF DONALD PALMER
Mr. Palmer. Good morning, Chairman Butterfield, Ranking
Member Steil, members of the Subcommittee on Elections.
I appreciate the opportunity to testify this morning
regarding the 2020 elections and the work of the United States
Election Assistance Commission. The EAC is a bipartisan agency
focused on election administration and supporting election
officials across the country. This vital mission includes
offering guidance to improve polling place quality and
accessibility for those who need additional assistance,
ensuring that our voting systems can be used privately and
independently by voters with disabilities, and that the
procedures are in place to ensure equal access to all
Americans.
Now, during the 2020 elections, the EAC responded
immediately to the COVID-19 pandemic. We worked quickly in
partnership with Federal, State partners to help local
officials provide for the safety of their voters. These
officials had to quickly adapt existing procedures to provide
increased options for mail-in absentee voting, move to
consolidated or larger polling places, and include other
options or innovations in voting.
The increase in the EAC operational funding and State grant
funding made this essential assistance possible. Many States
utilized their CARES Act grants to enhance polling place
access, in some States actually increasing the number of
polling places, and to provide other options to vote during the
pandemic: For example, adding voting centers or consolidated
polling places, additional days and hours of early voting,
additional recruitment and training of poll workers, and
acquisition of additional equipment, all in an attempt to
reduce potential congestion on election day and to keep the
voters safe.
On behalf of my fellow commissioners and EAC personnel, we
appreciate your support and the attention you paid to our
mission. And the EAC aspires to do more. As a nonregulatory
agency, our clearinghouse function is an important part of our
mission to improve the administration of elections. We just
recruited a team of subject-matter experts to join the agency,
including three leading election administrators. They have a
combined nearly 40 years of experience. We have also
established a new position focused solely on the accessibility
of voting systems, polling places, and every aspect of business
of the EAC. This subject-matter expert is devoted to election
administration and ensuring election officials have the
resources they need to serve the voters.
We also are going to have a current--we are going to launch
a new advisory board, comprised of local election officials
from the 50 States to provide recommendations to the EAC, get
down to the local level. Together EAC and State and local
officials will continue to innovate and safeguard the integrity
of our Nation's elections and instill public confidence in
those elections.
Today's hearing addresses polling place quality and the
potential barriers. While we have not received all election
survey data, a recent U.S. Vote Foundation Survey found that 89
percent of respondents indicated they were satisfied with the
overall 2020 experience. This represents an improvement over
2016, at a rate of 27.6 percent. Moreover, voters who cast
their ballots in person at a polling place reported over 92
percent satisfaction in 2020. Now, this is in line with other
2016 polling where 95 percent of respondents said that the
performance of poll workers was excellent or very good. 2016
lines were shorter than they were in 2012, with 74 percent of
voters waiting less than 10 minutes and 18 percent waiting
between 10 and 30 minutes. That trend continues to move in the
right direction.
This was a similar positive opinion of polling place
management, where 82 percent of respondents were saying things
were run well at the polling place and 16 percent said things
were run okay. State and local officials deserve high praise
for these efforts. Election officials are truly public servants
who prioritize customer service to voters.
This is an impressive accomplishment, particularly with the
COVID-19 burdens and last-minute changes that the pandemic
necessitated.
As a former election official, I know that one size doesn't
fit all for all voter needs. From polling place locations to
the number of sites, local officials are responsible for
allocating resources based on the varying needs of their
jurisdictions and the procedures governing them. While local
governing bodies provide the resources and budgets for
elections, the election officials are constantly reviewing the
polling places to meet accessibility standards, identify new
polling places to better meet community needs, determine where
polling places are in strategic locations, locations to
facilitate the vote of population centers in a fair manner, and
deciding whether locations are large enough to efficiently
process voters. So the election officials require the ability
to act minimally to meet the needs of a local population.
The pandemic highlighted the importance of this
flexibility. As election officials made quick decisions to
identify locations that allow voters to better maintain social
distancing, consolidate locations to account for a decrease in
the number of poll workers, other jurisdictions developed new
procedures for a significant shift to larger scale mail-in
ballots to be printed, mailed, and returned.
I want to conclude briefly by talking about the Help
America Vote Act. The Help America Vote Act and other laws
affirm the voting rights and election procedures that are
essential to protecting our democracy. We take these mandates
seriously to assist election officials, identify best practice,
and serve voters. A critical mission includes enhancing access
to polling places.
While the EAC's work supporting election officials help
ensure a positive experience, we are already looking forward to
2022.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the
Subcommittee. Happy to answer any questions.
[The statement of Mr. Palmer follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. And we thank you for your testimony
as well.
I think we will now move to move to member questions.
The gentleman from California who will have a birthday next
week, Mr. Aguilar, you are recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that
reminder.
I wanted to start with----
Chairman Butterfield. Wikipedia is pretty powerful.
Mr. Aguilar. And occasionally correct.
Mr. Pettigrew, in your written testimony, you talked about,
during the 2020 elections, voters experienced long lines at
polling sites across the country. And while the previous
election was affected by the pandemic, your written testimony
and your verbal testimony here today talked about long lines
that consistently remained a chronic problem for non-White
voters. And just to underscore and make sure I heard you
correctly, that voters who are not White are three times as
likely to wait longer than 30 minutes and six times as likely
to wait more than 60 minutes to cast their ballot. So I wanted
to make sure I got that right.
But my first question to you is, how could a long line
during one election discourage voters from participating in
upcoming elections? And if you could share information from--
specifically related to the data of your research to
demonstrate this.
Mr. Pettigrew. Yes. Thanks for the question and happy early
birthday to you.
So, yes, I recently--actually this month it was finally in
print. I published a paper on the question of how long lines
affect future turnout. I mean, it is obvious that waiting hours
and hours on election day or in early voting has a burden on
the voters on that particular day, but one of the things I find
in my research is that experiencing a long line in one election
actually has a noticeable effect on whether or not a voter
participates 2 or 4 years later.
And, you know, the way that I come about that conclusion is
by, you know, I was looking at a giant database of voters, and
I had a good sense of data on how long the lines were in their
neighborhoods, and I was able to essentially pair voters in a
neighborhood with a short line against a voter in a
neighborhood who--a voter who looked demographically and, you
know, had a similar profile to a voter elsewhere in a place
where lines were longer, and what we see is that the person who
looks--you know, the two people who look similar, the one who
is in the neighborhoods with the longer line was considerably
less likely to turn out in subsequent elections.
And so, when you look at 2020 where we had, I think it was
16 million people waiting longer than the 30 minutes that was
suggested by the Presidential Commission about 20 years ago,
the implication is that that means hundreds of thousands of
those people may--you know, they may not turn out in 2022, for
example.
Mr. Aguilar. What opportunities could alleviate long wait
times at polling sites and ensure that voters have access to
the voting box?
Mr. Pettigrew. Yes. I think there is--yes, I kind of think
if I could wave a magic wand and try and solve this problem, I
think there is three main things that I would want to do and
want to see.
The first one is more access to mail voting. We saw--you
know, turnout was very high in 2020 largely because of mail
balloting, and so having more access to that just means there
is fewer people showing up to vote and fewer possibilities for
long lines to develop.
Another one, another thing I would change would be
increasing opportunities to vote early or just having more
hours of polls being open. You know, ideally you would have
polls, you know, especially during the early voting period,
open 7 days a week for the whole day, you know, maybe into the
night to accommodate people who have difficult work schedules.
And then the last thing I think is just more Federal
funding for local offices. I know--I think, you know, it was
great to have an infusion of funding this year due to the
pandemic, but, you know, a lot of these local offices haven't
had a major influx of money in a long time. And so just giving
them the resources to purchase more machines, do a better job
of recruiting more poll workers, all of that is going to have a
tremendous impact on how long voters wait and how satisfied
voters are with the process.
Mr. Aguilar. Thanks very much.
I wanted to shift briefly to Commissioner Palmer. Thanks
for your service with the EAC and to our country.
One of the troubling trends that we saw in the 2020
election was election officials, including EAC Commissioners,
were subject to threats for their safety. Are you concerned
that threats will discourage elections officials, staff, and
poll workers from working future elections and potentially
impact voter access?
Mr. Palmer. Instinctively I am concerned, but I do think
that most election officials, State and local, really have a
dedication to their duties, and the dedication to the voters
and to the process outweighs their fear of, you know, threats
to them on a personal level.
We have been talking about this as a community, and one of
the ways that we intend to address it is to do better training
of what the options are dealing with local law enforcement and
Federal resources and when it comes to how to take care of
ourselves and to our people and to our election offices and
just reassure our poll workers and election staff that we care
about them and that there are procedures in place like other
communities that might receive threats.
So I am concerned, but, again, I know the people really
care about their job and about their commitment to the American
voter, and they will continue to do their duties.
Mr. Aguilar. I appreciate it.
Sorry, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Butterfield. That is fine. Thank you.
At this time, the chair recognizes the Ranking Member of
the Subcommittee for 5 minutes.
Mr. Steil. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Morris, you studied the spring 2020 primary election in
Milwaukee? Correct?
Mr. Morris. Yes, that is correct.
Mr. Steil. And in the city of Milwaukee, polling locations
were reduced from 180 locations to five? Correct?
Mr. Morris. Yes, that is correct.
Mr. Steil. And the city of Milwaukee is a little more than
one-third African American? Correct?
Mr. Morris. I don't have that number right in front of me,
but that sounds about right.
Mr. Steil. Yes, a little over. I think it is closer to 38,
but we will call it a little over a third for sake of ease of
conversation.
And in contrast, the city of Madison, located about 70
miles to the west, 66 of 92 polling locations remained open,
also a Democratically controlled city and less--but also less
than 10 percent African American.
In your analysis, Milwaukee turnout was reduced by what
percentage directly attributed to the consolidation of polling
locations?
Mr. Morris. We estimate that it was about 9 percentage
points, between 8 and 9 percentage points.
Mr. Steil. And would that impact be even more significant
for Black residents in Milwaukee?
Mr. Morris. Thank you for the question.
Yes, we found that it was slightly--the negative turnout
effect was slightly larger for Black Milwaukee residents.
Mr. Steil. I appreciate you looking into this.
I hope the Committee takes the opportunity to investigate
this decision by a Democratically appointed election official
in the city of Milwaukee, when one of the key elections in that
spring primary election was a White incumbent Democratic male
mayor running against an African-American woman.
As I said in my opening statement, I think it would
surprise a lot of my colleagues that many of these closures
were mandated by Democrats and Democratic appointees. And so,
Mr. Morris, I appreciate you reviewing the Milwaukee primary
election, your review and insight into that.
Let me switch gears over to you, Mr. Palmer, if I can. As
part of the clearinghouse function, the EAC has engaged with
State and local election officials to assist with election
contingency planning. As we saw last year, election officials
across the country were tested at the highest levels as a
result of the COVID-19 pandemic and had to make emergency
changes to their processes and procedures for administering
both the primary and general election to ensure that voters
could vote safely and securely.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are seeking to
nationalize our country's election by implementing new unfunded
Federal mandates that would impact election officials' ability
to administer Federal elections.
Are there mandates that could limit an election official's
ability in responding in an emergency? Can you comment on that?
Mr. Palmer. Well, the EAC isn't involved in that process.
As a former lawyer at the Department of Justice, there used to
be a process in place where which every change at the local
level, county, township, locality would be submitted, and there
was a process for emergency procedures. But this was a unique
year with a lot of major strategic changes and minor changes at
the local level just to make sure that the process was safe.
And so, as you can see, there were a lot of procedures that
were made at the local level to get through the 2020 election.
Mr. Steil. But if those changes--say, we are outside the
emergency act, right, so there is an exclusion there you are
identifying. If these were all being reviewed by the Department
of Justice, what would have played out as people were trying to
make adjustments to make sure that people could vote safely and
securely during a very unique year?
Mr. Palmer. Well, there is a number of--just based on my
experience, there is a number of analysts that are within the
Department of Justice. Those requests would have to be
submitted, and there would be a number of weeks or months for
the Department of Justice to review those. Each locality would
have to submit those changes to the Department voting section
for preclearance.
Mr. Steil. So it would have significantly altered the
ability of local election officials to carry out elections
during the pandemic if those changes were trying to be made?
Mr. Palmer. It would have definitely slowed down the
process.
Mr. Steil. I appreciate your feedback on that, Mr. Palmer.
And, Mr. Chairman, I now yield back.
Chairman Butterfield. The gentleman yields back. Thank you,
Ranking Member.
At this time, the chair will recognize the gentlelady from
New Mexico, my friend Ms. Leger Fernandez.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Good morning. And thank you so much,
Chairman, for holding this hearing to examine how long lines,
limited polls, and restricted voting alternatives negatively
impact Americans' ability to vote.
I agree with Ronald Reagan that elections are indeed the
crown jewel of our democracy. So, conversely, restricting our
citizens' right to vote is simply un-American.
Dr. Pettigrew, you noted that long lines at polling places
are due to systemic factors and, as recounted by Representative
Aguilar, that wait times are substantially longer for non-White
voters than White voters.
Do you agree with the recommendation that 30 minutes is a
reasonable time to set as the goal for wait time at all polling
places? And is that an amount of time that you have seen in
White higher income precincts?
Mr. Pettigrew. Yes. And so that recommendation came out of
the 2013 Presidential Commission on Election Administration,
which, you know, they did extensive study of this specific
question of how long is reasonable, and that is what they came
to. And so that is what I have used in my research and other
political scientists have used, and it seems like a pretty good
standard.
In terms of your other question about income and its
interplay with line length, there is a relationship there. It
is definitely not as stark as the sort of relationship between
race and voting, but it does seem that voters--let me make sure
I get this right, that voters who live in higher income areas
tend to have shorter lines than voters in lower income areas.
But, again, you know, that relationship isn't nearly as strong
as the race relationship. And, in fact, in some of my research,
in evaluating the relationship with race, I was taking into
account things like income, and the effect of race was still
quite large.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you.
Do you think that disparate wait times where we have this
disparate wait times primarily on the fact of race, as you
noticed, should be a factor, could be a factor to trigger
preclearance under a revised Voting Rights Act?
Mr. Pettigrew. That is a good question. Obviously, I
haven't given a ton of thought to it, but it does seem like a
reasonable--it does seem like a reasonable thing to have as a
piece of the puzzle, especially given that, you know, as I
talked about in my written testimony, what we find is that long
lines tend to be a chronic problem in certain areas. It is not
as if, you know, we have long lines popping up randomly across
the country. And as an example, I talk about in my written
testimony about how, you know, South Carolina is a State that
over the last, I think since about 2008, they have consistently
been one of the four or five States with the longest lines, and
Vermont is the State on the other end of the spectrum where
they are one of the States who have the shortest lines.
And so the fact that lines are a chronic problem suggests
that there is some sort of systematic problem going on there.
And, yes, perhaps, you know, using that as a measure of, you
know, where preclearance needs to happen, it seems reasonable
to me, yes.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you.
Mr. Morris, you testified that voters of color have to
fight harder to vote than White voters. How does this statement
address the claims made at the beginning of this hearing that
the higher turnout in 2020 demonstrates that we don't have a
voting access that needs fixing? And what is your response to
these claims?
Mr. Morris. Thank you for that question.
I think it is important to recognize that it is a wonderful
thing that we saw as high a turnout in the last year's
elections as we did, but we still didn't have 100 percent
turnout. There are still eligible citizens who did not
participate, and I would imagine that some of those are
individuals who the costs were too high to participate or the
information was not clear enough or they had to travel too far
to get to their polling place.
And so, I guess, my feeling is that high turnout doesn't
necessarily mean that there are no problems anymore, and we
know there is a growing literature in the political science
world showing that some of these regressive voting laws do
disproportionately impact voters of color. And so, you know,
factors that increase turnout for everybody but might increase
turnout more for White voters can still lead to discrepancies
in the electorate.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you.
I did want to ask Ms. McCurdy regarding the 3.5 years to
ban North Carolina's law for the--that she had in her written
testimony that claimed it was the most restrictive voting law
in North Carolina seen since the era of Jim Crow and what that
told us about the need to reinstate section 5, but I see my
time has expired, so perhaps that could be a written question
that she responds to in writing.
And I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Butterfield. And I thank the gentlelady. Thank you
very much.
At this time, the chair recognizes the Ranking Member of
the full Committee, my friend, Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. Well, thank you. And thank you to my colleagues.
I will save the Committee on being able to watch my happy
birthday song to Mr. Aguilar. I will just sing it to you in
person next week, Pete, if that is all right.
Hey, Mr. Morris, I am glad I followed you. I am glad to
understand that you feel as though that people may not have
been able to go vote, but you don't have the statistics to back
a lot of that up. I certainly hoped we would get some of the
experts at this hearing to do an analysis of why we didn't get
to 100 percent voter turnout.
Is that something, Mr. Morris, that you are suggesting,
that we should have compulsory voting in the United States?
Mr. Morris. I am not suggesting that. I more was making the
point that there is still room for us to do better. I
appreciate the question, but----
Mr. Davis. There is a lot of room. There is a lot of room
for us to do better. And, frankly, Mr. Morris, I don't think we
get enough credit as the United States for what we did right
the last two election cycles. How about you?
Mr. Morris. I think that it is a wonderful thing that we
saw turnout as high as we did for the last two Federal
elections, absolutely.
Mr. Davis. And especially in the midst of a pandemic, when
we had local election officials trying to use the limited
resources they had to give everybody access, and that is what
is amazing.
I mean, we know what the end game of the Subcommittee
hearing process is going to be. We are going to call for
covered jurisdictions for every single jurisdiction in America.
I certainly would be interested in whether or not this
Subcommittee will put out a report that would advocate for
compulsory voting, as we see in other countries.
But I appreciate your optimism on what happened in 2018 and
2020, and I appreciate your expression of your opinion and
feelings as to what we can do to make it better, and certainly
hope we can get some statistical analysis in the future to see
what we can do to drive those last vestiges of folks out.
And what really stopped them from going to vote is, you
know--I mean, I feel too that many of them may just not wanted
to go vote. Maybe they didn't like the two candidates running.
Who knows? That is what is great about America; it is their
choice.
Hey, Mr. Palmer, glad to have you back, sir, as the chair
of the EAC and also as a former elections administrator. What
are some of the practical considerations that election
officials must consider right now in polling place management?
Mr. Palmer. Well, polling place management, I mean, when
you talk about trying to reduce lines, I worked at the
Bipartisan Policy Center on this, and I have really come to the
conclusion that it is about an investment in technology, it is
about more accurate voter rolls to make sure that we are
allocating the voting equipment properly, that election
officials at the local level have that information, and the
local governing bodies have that information about where voters
are, how many registered voters per precinct. That is one
solution.
I also think that--I am always a believer in more training
and transparency. And I think that if we have the resources and
the time, I think localities need to invest in better training
of their poll workers and being able to understand that other
voters have--may have needs in language assistance or with
disabilities, and so they are prepared for any event that takes
place.
But like I said in my testimony, some of the statistics are
really good when it comes to the opinion of voters for local
election officials, that they are actually serving them, and
that is very encouraging, from my perspective.
Mr. Davis. Do you think, Mr. Palmer, that when you look
at--when you look at the States--a State's failure to conduct
list maintenance as required under the National Voter
Registration Act, do you think that could have an impact on
long lines at polling places?
Mr. Palmer. Yeah, it absolutely does. The Presidential
Commission on Election Administration a number of years ago,
you know, it identified that when there is individuals that are
no longer living in the jurisdiction, it really does provide a
misallocation of resources. And so you may have two polling
places in an area where a lot of the people may have left
already or you have an increase in voters in one other area of
the county. If your register rolls are inaccurate, it is very
possible that you may not be as prepared as you think you are
to efficiently handle voters that come to the polling place.
And so there is always going to be lines in a lot of these
high-turnout elections. Election officials want to make sure
they have the most accurate data to efficiently process them,
to make sure that there is enough equipment to process them
through the voting process so the next voter in line can vote
in a timely manner.
Mr. Davis. Right, right. I know I am running out of time.
One last question. Has the EAC conducted any studies on polling
location wait times, and will election administrators ever be
able to get rid of wait times for voting?
Mr. Palmer. I don't have a precise answer to that question.
I know we did some work with the Bipartisan Policy Center on
that, and I did a lot of work personally on identifying that.
And so there has been a lot of people, including members of the
panel, that have looked at this issue. And my general comment
would be that it has really improved over the years. Over every
election, there has been an improvement in that process going
back all the way back to 2012.
Once we start targeting the issue using data, election
officials have been sort of oriented to the problem, how to
resolve the problem, and there has been a response to it. So,
to me, it is one of those examples where there was a problem,
we really put some of the best minds together to identify what
sort of resources would help local election officials solve the
issue, and we generally are improving in that area.
Mr. Davis. Great. I have no more time.
I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Mr. Davis.
At this time, the chair will recognize the gentlelady from
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, my friend, Mary Gay Scanlon.
Take it away, please.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you for convening this next in our series of hearings on voting
rights.
I would like to direct my questions to Dr. Pettigrew from--
also from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and my alma mater,
the University of Pennsylvania.
You know, Pennsylvania, in the last election cycle, had the
interesting experience of having, for the first time, universal
mail-in ballots available. Our Republican legislature had
passed, also with support from Democrats, a law in October
2019, prepandemic, had passed a law that, for the first time,
allowed no-excuses mail-in voting, and millions of
Pennsylvanians took advantage of that during the pandemic.
Now, obviously that created some issues, because we hadn't
had that access before and many of our counties were not quite
prepared for that. But they performed--as Mr. Davis suggested--
they performed admirably and with great integrity in meeting
the challenges of the day.
Can you speak about how having access to early and no-
excuses mail-in voting can help address issues of lines at
polling places?
Mr. Pettigrew. Yeah, certainly. So--so yes. So as you
noted, we had--you know, Pennsylvania was one of many States
that provided voters with more opportunities to vote by mail.
What is interesting about 2020 is that, you know, we had a
turnout that was higher than we have ever had before, but the
number of people who voted in person nationwide was actually a
lot smaller than it had been in any election since, I think, at
least 2008. That was as far back as I looked.
We had about--I think about 15 or 20 million people--
fewer--15 or 20 fewer people voting in person in 2020 than in
2016, and a lot of that is attributable to mail voting. And
what a lot of the research shows on this point is that--is
that, you know, increasing access to mail voting will have a
positive impact on lines because it just means there is fewer
people showing up on election day or during the early period.
And, similarly, having more opportunities to vote in person
during the early voting period, it also has a good impact on
lines.
Now, obviously, 2020, what we saw--so, as was noted by
others, you know, we have had--there has been progress made on
this issue of lines. Now, 2020 was--was a year where the lines
actually were longer. A lot of the data we have suggests that
lines were longer than they had been in the last 10 or 15
years, and I think a lot of that is probably attributable to
things related to the pandemic in particular.
But, yeah, early voting--or more early voting, more mail
voting, those are--those are great ways to limit capacity--
limit the number of people showing up and limit the possibility
for bottlenecks to create long lines and bad experiences for
voters.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you. Yes. And I know just, you know,
having for years, you know, been working a full-time job and
having kids to get to soccer games and everything on every end
of the day, it can be a struggle for folks to get to the
polling place during the hours that are available. So just from
a practical standpoint, it is wonderful to have the option to
vote when convenient.
And I know--you mentioned research on this. From speaking
with folks who run elections in States that have had mail-in
voting for some time--Colorado, Washington--they talk about the
fact that it increases participation. Isn't that right?
Mr. Pettigrew. Yeah. There is some research on that that
suggests that--that it can have a positive impact on turnout.
Ms. Scanlon. Right. And I would second what you said about,
you know, some of the lines we saw in 2020. We did see that
issue as well, having lines at polling places. But in part it
was because so many of our polling places, at least in
Pennsylvania, are often staffed by seniors, and of course the
pandemic had a disproportionately harsh effect on seniors, and
many of them chose not to volunteer this year because of
concerns for their health. So that created staffing shortages,
which we also had to deal with.
But, overall, it appears that we have the know-how, we have
the means to move forward to make it easier for people to vote
safely and vote in our systems that have, you know, integrity.
So thank you for the work that has gone into the research on
this panel to show that we can do this.
And, with that, I would yield back.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Ms. Scanlon. The
gentlelady yields back.
At this time, the chair will recognize himself for five
minutes.
Let me begin with you, Ms. McCurdy. Thank you again for
your testimony. Thank you for all the work that you do.
Ms. McCurdy, you noted in your testimony that since the
Shelby County case back on June 25, 2013, a day that we shall
never forget, polling places have been significantly reduced in
formerly covered jurisdictions. What has been the impact of
these closures on the voting experience of African-American
voters, Hispanic voters, Asian-American voters, and any other
racial minorities? What has been the impact?
Ms. McCurdy. I mean, I think you have heard some of the
evidence of the impact in some of the testimony today: long
lines, confusion about polling places, being--you know,
standing in--or being in a situation where you are not able to
vote because you don't know the information about early voting
or voting hours, consolidation of polls. You go to the wrong
poll, you find out that you are at--that you--that the
consolidated poll is too far away for you to make it before the
voting--the voting polls close. And so--and that
disenfranchises many people.
And to the question that has been asked about long lines
and how that discourages people in the next election, when you
stand in a long line in 2020 to vote, and then you have to plan
your voting process for 2022, you take that in account and you
ask yourself whether or not you will have time to stand in the
long line that you assume that you will have to in 2022 when
you planning your vote--yourself to vote. And oftentimes, that
discourages people from voting, when they think back on their
experience----
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you.
Ms. McCurdy [continuing]. In the previous election.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you for that.
You know, over the next few weeks, we are going to be doing
some legislating in this space. We have already passed H.R. 1,
the For the People Act, in the House of Representatives, and we
are waiting for action in the Senate on that. But over the next
few weeks, we hope to be introducing H.R. 4.
What reforms should Congress undertake to combat
disenfranchising effects on polling places? That is something
that you are concerned about, we are concerned about. What can
we do to combat disenfranchising effects on polling places?
Ms. McCurdy. Well, I think that most----
Chairman Butterfield. I think I lost my video. Were you
able to hear the question?
Ms. McCurdy. Yes.
Chairman Butterfield. Yes. Thank you.
Ms. McCurdy. Yes. So, I mean, I think the most important
thing is to--is to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act, and that will create a new--new formulas for
areas who are--have historically--they were historically
discrimination, in particular for Black, Brown, and indigenous
people. And that--so the Department of Justice can take a look
at any of these voting changes before they become--before they
are effective and make sure they do not have a racial impact.
That is the most important thing.
What we are seeing, since the Shelby County decision, is
there is no analysis around the racial impact that these voting
changes will have, and they are also not transparent, and there
is not notice that are given to voters when there are changes,
and that is where you see the confusion come in.
Chairman Butterfield. And let me thank you for mentioning
our intent to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement
Act, and we certainly plan to do that. But the purpose of these
hearings--and we are going to have 16 hearings. This Committee
is having--this Subcommittee is having six hearings. I think
the House Judiciary Committee is having six or seven, and the
Senate Judiciary Committee will be doing the same. But we are
going to have these 16 hearings, because we want to build a
very significant legislative record that will be persuasive to
the Supreme Court if this were ever challenged.
Let me conclude by talking to Ms. Marziani. In your
testimony, you make note of the fact that your State previously
had to seek preclearance before changing any voting law or
policy and that the State is no longer--must demonstrate that
the proposed change would not negatively impact the
participation of people of color.
How has the lack of any required impact analysis negatively
impacted your voters?
Ms. Marziani. I mean, in myriad of ways. And, again, I have
submitted extensive evidence in my written remarks of the
voting law changes, which sadly have been numerous.
Just on polling place closures alone, we have heard that
Texas closed more than any other State in recent years. The
Texas Civil Rights Project did an analysis of county compliance
with State election law, and actually found that in 2018, Texas
was short as many as 270 polling places across the whole State
that impacted more than 4 million people. And the Blacks were--
the reduction of polling places was particularly impactful in
cities like Waco, Texas, that have large Black populations.
So, you know, we see it, honestly, in almost everywhere you
look at voting in Texas. And as I said, unfortunately,
lawmakers seem poised to pass yet another law this summer
without any sort of impact on the racial disparities that it
threatens to have.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you. The gentleman's time has
expired. Thank you. Thank you so very much.
Let me thank all of the witnesses for your testimony. It
has been very insightful, and we thank you very much. You are
helping us to build a legislative record that will be very,
very valuable as we write the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act. Thank you very, very much.
In just a moment, we are going to be moving to our second
panel. I am going to take a 2-minute break.
[Recess.]
Chairman Butterfield. All right. The Subcommittee is now
back in session.
Thank you for your patience, and thank you again to our
first panel.
Joining us today on our second panel are Michael Herron of
Dartmouth University; Gilda Daniels of Advancement Project;
Danielle Lang of Campaign Legal Center; Isabel Longoria--I
cannot pronounce it. Help me, staff--Longoria--thank you--the
elections administrator of Harris County, Texas; and Ashlee
Titus of the Lawyers Democracy Fund. Thank you for joining us
today.
Next, we have Dr. Michael Herron. Dr. Herron is the William
Clinton Story Remsen 1943 professor of government at the
legendary Dartmouth University. His areas of expertise include
election administration and applied statistical methods, and
his research has analyzed the impact of a variety of election
administration practices on turnout in minority voters. Dr.
Herron holds his degree, his Ph.D. degree, in political science
from Stanford University.
Next is Gilda Daniels. Ms. Daniels is the director of
litigation at the Advancement Project, and an associate
professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She is
a nationally recognized voting rights and election law expert,
served as a deputy chief in the Voting Section of the
Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division under President
Clinton and President Bush.
Next is Danielle Lang. Danielle is the director of the
Voting Rights program at the Campaign Legal Center, where she
litigates a wide range of voting rights and redistricting
matters before Federal courts, including our Supreme Court. Ms.
Lang also has an active amicus brief before the Supreme Court
and other Federal courts as she is an adjunct professor at
Georgetown Law, where she teaches an election law practicum.
Isabel Longoria. Thank you. Thank God for staff. Ms.
Longoria is the elections administrator for Harris County,
Texas. She is the first person to serve in the newly created
office appointed by the County Commissioners Court. During the
2020 election, she worked alongside Harris County Clerk Chris
Hollins at the County Elections Office helping implement many
of the successful and innovative voting policies in Harris
County that they used during the election of 2020.
Finally, Ashlee, Titus, Ashlee is a board member and the
corporate secretary of the Lawyers Democracy Fund. She is a
partner at the law firm of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, which
she joined in 2004, and she maintains a nationwide law
practice, advising clients on compliance with complex campaign
finance and advertising, lobbying, and nonprofit tax exempt
statutes and regulations.
Thank you to the witnesses.
And now I will recognize each witness. I will begin with
Dr. Herron. You are now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENTS OF DR. MICHAEL C. HERRON, PROFESSOR, DARTMOUTH
UNIVERSITY; MS. GILDA DANIELS, DIRECTOR OF LITIGATION,
ADVANCEMENT PROJECT; MS. DANIELLE LANG, DIRECTOR, VOTING
RIGHTS, CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER; MS. ISABEL LONGORIA, ELECTIONS
ADMINISTRATOR, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS; AND MS. ASHLEE TITUS,
BOARD MEMBER AND CORPORATE SECRETARY, LAWYERS DEMOCRACY FUND
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL C. HERRON
Mr. Herron. Thank you, Representative Butterfield and
Representative Steil, for this opportunity to speak to the
Committee. I appreciate this.
My work as an academic is in the field of what is called
election administration. We obviously heard a lot about that in
the first panel. This is a field in political science. It dates
roughly to 2000. That is--in the Presidential election, it was
complicated, disputed then. That was the origin of a lot of
interest in political science and the sort of questions that we
are engaging in discussion today. My own research reflects that
as well.
It is a nonpartisan field. People interested in election
administration study how it is that voters cast their ballots,
not why some are Democrats or Republicans. I just want to
emphasize that so it is clear that this is really a scientific
field trying to understand how a system works.
A key concept in the field of election administration is
what is called the cost of voting. This refers to a cost--not
necessarily a financial cost--that individuals must pay in
order to participate in democracy.
So one cost is time. It is called a time tax. People
waiting in line is a cost of voting. Gathering documents,
traveling to vote, possibly determining where to vote, these
are all activities that incur costs, and so it is a generic
part of a cost of voting for a voter.
One question that people in election administration address
is: Is the cost of voting roughly the same for all Americans?
This is a question about equal treatment. It is different than
the question of is the cost of voting low. It is the question:
Are all voters treated the same in this matter? So I will
return to that briefly at the end of my presentation.
The cost of voting, I will organize my thoughts around
this. There have been efforts within the past several decades
in the United States to lower the cost of voting for Americans.
These are--travel under the name of convenience measures or
convenience voting. Two of them that are very common or
prominent now are early voting and voting by mail.
Early voting is voting in person prior to election day. And
the research on this study has two consistent findings. One is
that minority voters are disproportionately heavy users of
early voting. My own work shows this. We already heard about
souls to the polls. My own work sort of shows the effective
Sunday early voting for minority voters, in particular, African
Americans. So we see that regularly across the country.
The second finding in the literature on early voting is
that more of it leads to more voting. The effects are not
enormous, but they are there nonetheless. And when I say more
of it, I am referring to days and times. States have discretion
over where--how much early voting they want to offer. Many
States don't offer any, but the ones that do can have--choose
the number of days and hours. So the research that has
primarily come out of State of Ohio shows that more early
voting leads to voting--leads to more voting in general.
The second convenience measure that I mentioned earlier is
voting by mail. So we have heard, again, about this in the
first panel. We know that there was a surge in voting--in vote
by mail in the pandemic election. And just to draw out the
consequences of the cost of voting, I just want to, like, give
you some statistics in Florida that are broken down by race.
So if we compare, say, the vote-by-mail rates in Florida in
2016 and in 2020, what we notice is that the African-American
voters surged heavily toward vote by mail, 89 percent increase
from, say, 20 percent of African-American voters in Florida
voting by mail in 2016, to 39.3 of them in 2020. That is a much
greater increase than any other ethnic or racial group in
Florida. And this just illustrates how certain types of groups
take advantage of convenience voting and at different rates.
The two other aspects of the cost of voting I just want to
briefly touch on--we have heard about them before--one is
lines, and Professor Pettigrew already summarized the
literature on that, which shows that minority voters have to
spend extra time in line compared to non-minority voters. In
other words, their cost of voting is greater.
And, in addition, there is literature on the effect of
voters receiving new polling places. So this literature, which
is concentrated in Florida, North Carolina, and California,
shows that when individuals receive new polling places, that
their voting rates tend to drop in a very--in a subtle way, but
they tend to be lower in future elections, much as voters who
wait in lines tend to have slightly lower turnout rates in
future elections.
We know that these features of election administration--
lines, polling places, closures, and so forth--
disproportionately affect minority voters. And that means that
these individuals, circling back to sort of how I wanted to
start, disproportionately have higher costs of voting than
nonminority voters, and that just--that shows that these
election administration practices have consequences for equal
treatment of voters and, in particular, different racial and
ethnic groups in the country.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Mr. Herron follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Butterfield. And thank you for your testimony.
At this time, the chair recognizes Ms. Daniels for five
minutes.
STATEMENT OF GILDA DANIELS
Ms. Daniels. Thank you to Chairperson Butterfield and to
the Committee on House Administration, Subcommittee on
Elections, for holding today's important hearing discussing how
voting restrictions impede the right to vote.
I have more than two decades of expertise in the voting
rights area. I have dedicated my career to ensuring free and
fair access to the right to vote. It is appropriate to have
this discussion today with the onslaught of proposed
legislation across the country that has as its intent to make
it harder to access the right to vote.
My testimony today will discuss historical and
contemporaneous challenges to the right to vote, the
disproportionate impact on voters of color, and the need for
Federal legislation that protects the right to vote.
So we have been here before. We have seen these cycles of
voter suppression, and they are throughout our history, from
the founding, where only White male property owners were
allowed to vote, certainly to the passage of the Civil War
amendments where, during Reconstruction, Black men were able to
elect persons to local, State, and Federal offices. Historians
said that it was the first time that we witnessed a multiracial
democracy.
In my book, ``Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in
America,'' I have a subtitle that says, ``free at last, not so
fast,'' which is certainly what they experienced, because,
shortly thereafter, we saw literacy tests, grandfather clauses,
poll taxes, felon disenfranchisement, and all-White primaries
as prevalent conniving methods that prevented people of color
from registering and accessing the right to vote. It was State
laws throughout the South and other parts of the country that
barred people of color from the voting--from the voting booth.
It was the Voting Rights Act that provided Black and Brown
people the ability to access the right to vote. The impact of
the Voting Rights Act cannot be overstated. We must note that
Blacks have been in this country for 400 years and have only
been voting for 56.
This is a testament to the power of the Voting Rights Act.
It removed barriers such as literacy tests, as well as poll
taxes and other disenfranchising mechanisms, and allowed Black
and Brown people across the country, but particularly in the
South and Southwest, to access the right to vote.
The Act has been severely weakened and endures constant
assault. The Shelby County v. Holder decision, which has been
discussed earlier, sounded the alarm for legislatures to once
again pass laws that would make access to the right to vote
harder and impede the ability of voters of color.
Some States responded, almost immediately, to pass
restrictive and suppressive legislation that adversely impacted
voters of color. Since Shelby, a weakened Voting Rights Act
allows States to engage in the process of voter suppression
without consequence, and that is certainly what we are seeing
today.
Advancement Project has chronicled the Shelby effect on
communities of color in several publications that are included
in my written testimony, and I would ask that they would be
included and entered into the record today.
We conducted people's hearings across the country in 2019,
and allowed persons to provide firsthand accounts and tell the
story of resilience, perseverance, and voter suppression.
Voters of color encounter a plethora of problems in their
attempt to exercise their right to vote. When polling places
close or other barriers are erected to access the right to
vote, the burden and cost to voting increases tremendously in
communities of color.
Since the Shelby decision, voters of color have been
increasingly harmed by polling site closures, language access
barriers, States' failure to comply with the ADA, financial
barriers to voting, and lack of transparency on voting law
changes, among many other voter suppression tactics. These
tactics force voters to travel long distances to register or to
cast a ballot, and certainly are inclusive of those cost of
voting measures that Professor Herron just recently discussed.
We saw in November 2020 certainly the--that access to early
weekend voting was crucial, and we saw that, certainly in
Georgia, that voters of color participated in--that voters of
color participated in souls to the polls and weekend voting at
a higher percentage than White voters.
We have also--Advancement Project and other civil rights
organizations have been engaged in certainly trying to expand
access to the ballot in 2020 and are now challenging laws that
seek to roll back that access in 2021.
As a former deputy chief in the Civil Rights Division
Voting Section, I must say that litigation is not enough.
Litigation alone will not address the widespread assault on the
right to vote. Without section 5, we have returned to the
piecemeal litigation that does not address the systemic
problem.
Congress must pass legislation that addresses the
disproportionate impact and burden on voters of color accessing
the right to vote, which requires States with a proven history
of voter suppression and discrimination to prove that any
changes to their election laws will not disenfranchise voters.
Congress has the power to rewrite and certainly to write an
ending that supports access and addresses the disproportionate
impact on voters of color--on voters of color.
This should not be a partisan issue. It is an issue that is
fundamental to our democracy, and I encourage Congress to
protect our democracy and pass appropriate legislation.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Daniels follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. Thank you very much, Ms. Daniels.
At this time, the chair will recognize Ms. Lang for five
minutes.
STATEMENT OF DANIELLE LANG
Ms. Lang. Good afternoon, and thank you to the Committee
for holding these hearings and the opportunity to testify on
these important matters.
Voting in America today does not occur solely in person on
a single Tuesday. Americans routinely vote early in person or
by mail. Indeed, for many Americans, including those with
disabilities, student voters, elderly voters, voters of color,
and low-income voters with unforgiving schedules and limited
transportation, these voting options are a necessary lifeline.
The early in-person voting and vote by mail options are
wildly uneven nationwide. While some Americans enjoy a broad
range of voting opportunities, others face increasing
constraints on their voting options. Early in-person voting
access, which ensures that the fundamental right to vote does
not hinge on one's schedule on a single day, is an essential
component of our voting system. Weekend voting days are
particularly crucial for those who cannot afford to lose pay or
risk job security to vote during working hours.
And, unsurprisingly, voters of color take advantage of
early voting options at higher rates. After all, as you have
already heard, they are more likely to face structural barriers
to voting on election day and longer wait times at the polls.
Further, Black voters have rallied around Sunday voting options
to organize highly effective souls to the polls campaigns.
Early in-person voting is just as secure as election day
voting, yet legislators have sought to restrict it when people
of color use it effectively.
In 2011, Florida eliminated a Sunday voting day after 2008
election data showed that Black and Hispanic voters used Sunday
voting the most and White voters used Sunday voting the least.
In 2013, North Carolina also eliminated a Sunday voting day
because of its disproportionate use by Black voters, leading a
court to call it as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to
see in modern times.
And in 2014, Ohio eliminated its ``Golden Week,'' an
overlapping period of early voting and voter registration, an
option that was, once again, most popular with Black voters.
Finally, just this session, both Georgia and Texas
legislators pushed, albeit unsuccessfully for now, bills that
would eliminate or severely restrict Sunday voting.
In addition to early voting, we know that equitable vote-
by-mail practices increase voter participation. These practices
include universal eligibility, reasonable application and
submission procedures, and opportunities to correct technical
errors. But, once again, Americans fare much--some Americans
fare much better than others on this score.
First, while most States can now give all voters the option
to vote by mail, 16 States continue to limit access to voters
that fit within rigid criteria, locking most residents out.
Second, the processes for vote by mail can make the option
elusive. In Mississippi, a vote-by-mail application has to be
notarized. In Alabama, the ballot must be accompanied by a copy
of a photo ID and a notary or two witness signatures. In
Minnesota, a mail ballot requires the signature from another
registered Minnesota voter, an obvious hurdle for out-of-State
voters. In fact, we have seen students take to Twitter to try
to find Minnesotans in their area to witness their ballots.
Third, States have restricted access to secure ballot drop
boxes. Last year, about 41 percent of mail-in voters chose to
use drop boxes, yet Texas and Ohio both moved to limit drop
boxes to one per county. Predictably, this hit large urban
counties with the highest percentage of voters of color the
hardest.
And, fourth, in some States, election officials have
unfettered discretion to reject a ballot if they perceive
discrepancies in the voter's signature, leading to the
disproportionate rejection of ballots of voters of color. And
while most States now allow voters to fix such issues, a few
States, notably Texas and Tennessee, do not.
Indeed, Tennessee's mail voting rules are a model on what
not to do. The State has rigid eligibility criteria, refuses
access to most first-time voters, criminalizes distribution of
applications, does not allow any drop boxes, and has no process
to allow voters to fix discrepancies. And this year, Georgia
and Kansas have mimicked Tennessee by prohibiting or
restricting the mere distribution of mail ballot applications
to voters.
Finally, our electoral system wholly ignores the
approximately 750,000 voters who find themselves in jails on
election day. These voters are largely eligible to vote but de
facto disenfranchised because jails and election officials
alike have not set up systems to enable their participation.
This Congress has a historic opportunity to create an
equitable baseline of voting opportunities and stop the
onslaught of discriminatory voting proposals.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I would be
happy to answer any questions.
[The statement of Ms. Lang follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. And thank you for your testimony.
At this time, the chair recognizes Ms. Longoria for five
minutes. You are recognized.
STATEMENT OF ISABEL LONGORIA
Ms. Longoria. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Isabel Longoria, and I am the elections
administrator of Harris County, home to Houston, Texas, and the
third largest county in the United States, and one of the most
diverse.
During the November 2020 Presidential election, despite a
global pandemic, Harris County had a historic 1.68 million
voters participate in a safe, accessible, transparent, and
equitable manner. The increased turnout was driven by
innovations like drive-thru voting, 24-hour voting, and a
proactive mail ballot program, methods that intentionally and
successfully increased voting in minority communities and
reduced wait times.
For example, though only 38 percent of early voters in the
Presidential election were Black, Latino, or Asian, 53 percent
of those communities used drive-thru voting. The increased
turnout has been sustained in multiple elections since, nearly
doubling in our most recent local May elections.
However, instead of promoting and expanding these voting
initiatives, in Texas, we have been met with lawsuits and
extremist legislation to restrict these efforts, such as Texas
Senate bill 7, stopped only by a quorum break just a few weeks
ago, that would have hurt voters of color in voting in Harris
County and beyond, and here is how.
First, forbidding election offices from sending mail ballot
applications directly to voters. In Texas, where we have
neither online voter registration nor online mail ballot
applications, preventing our office from sending applications
means that voters must bear the cost of printing and mailing
their own applications annually, which they must also do, and
it provides a system that disproportionately affects those
without printers and computers, such as low-income; minority
communities.
Second, expanding voter ID requirements to mail ballot
applications, creating an unnecessary hurdle for the disabled
and senior voters most likely to use mail ballots and for which
we already have a proven signature verification process to
validate.
Third, limiting voting hours by applying Jim Crow-esque
sundown laws to voting, thereby banning 24-hour voting, which
is often used in communities of color, and specifically
preventing voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays, a direct attack on
souls to the polls programs used at Black churches.
Fourth, preventing options like drive-thru voting, which
have become a standard practice in Harris County over the past
four elections, that reduce wait times, increase access for
voting, and, again, are used more often by voters of colors
than their peers.
Fifth, moving election day voting locations from Black,
Latino, and Asian neighborhoods to primarily White
neighborhoods in reaction to the fact that we increased,
sometimes even doubling, the number of voting locations in our
elections.
Sixth, giving poll watchers carte blanche at voting
locations, a force that has been used historically and today to
purposefully intimidate voters of color.
Seven, restricting access to voters with disabilities by
limiting the disabilities that qualify for mail ballot voting
and then forcing those voters to prove their disability, even
going so far as to require extreme provision on family members
and assistance during curbside voting, an option exclusively
for people with disabilities.
While we await the Governor of Texas to call a special
legislative session to pass these blatant low-income, minority,
and disabled community voter suppression laws, I remind this
Committee that none of these restrictions would be possible
under a voting rights preclearance State, which is why I as an
elections administrator believe the need for Federal
intervention in the conduct of elections is clear and urgent,
because without Federal intervention, Texas leaders will
continue rewriting the State's election code to
disproportionately harm voters of color.
And while everyone else gets to talk about it, I am the one
who has to make it happen. So for those with the pithy argument
that preclearance is just too much work for election offices
like mine, give me a break. My duty as a civil servant is to
jump through hoops so that the voters don't have to. No voter
protection will ever be too onerous for me to implement when
compared to the alternative of a weakened democracy.
So, in summation, Harris County, Texas supports Federal
legislation that would provide nationally guaranteed fair
elections free from voter suppression, restoring the full
protections of the Voting Rights Act, including a preclearance
process and other initiatives, like online voter registration
and universal mail ballots that help voters vote.
And, with that, I look forward to your questions.
[The statement of Ms. Longoria follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. Thank you for your testimony.
At this time, the chair recognizes Ms. Titus for five
minutes.
STATEMENT OF ASHLEE TITUS
Ms. Titus. Thank you, Chairman Butterfield, Ranking Member
Steil, and members of the Committee, for allowing me to speak
today on the important issue of free and fair access to the
ballot.
It is essential to a functioning and enduring democracy and
ensures all eligible voters can vote and be confident that
their votes count. It means that citizens recognize the
election as free and fair and, therefore, accept the results of
an election, no matter which candidate wins. Safeguards that
protect the freedom and fairness of the entire election process
give the American people that confidence in the election
results.
My name is Ashlee Titus. I am an attorney at Bell,
McAndrews & Hiltachk in Sacramento, California, specializing in
campaign finance and election law. As part of my practice, I
organize lawyers to observe elections in California, and have
been an observer myself in several California counties over the
last 17 years.
I also serve as the secretary and on the board of directors
of Lawyers Democracy Fund, a nonprofit, nonpartisan
organization dedicated to promoting the role of ethics and
legal professionalism in the electoral process. LDF's research
focuses on the effectiveness of current election methods and,
in particular, on voter confidence.
As this Committee explores the intersection of ballot
access and election security, it is vital to keep in mind the
current crisis in voter confidence. Recent polls indicate that
an astonishing 41 percent of voters say the November election
was not well run, and 39 percent of people did not have
confidence in the 2020 election results.
It is not a lack of ballot access that prevents voters from
participating; it is a lack of voter confidence in the voting
system. The Knight Foundation found in early 2020 that 38
percent of nonvoters do not believe election results accurately
reflect the will of the people.
Voter confidence is the real issue at hand, and the only
way to increase confidence is to implement and maintain
effective ballot integrity safeguards. Efforts to expand voting
opportunities and maintain effective ballot integrity--
opportunities have unfortunately not been effective in
increasing voter participation.
For example, studies consistently show that early voting
does not increase turnout and actually risks reducing turnout.
This is because it shifts existing voters from election day to
early voting without recruiting new voters, raises the cost and
complication of get-out-to-vote efforts, and decreases focus on
election day as a civic event.
My home State of California has perhaps the most open
ballot access laws in the country. Yet in spite of California's
ballot access laws, which are designed to optimize
opportunities to vote, often at the expense of the integrity of
elections, California's voter turnout in 2020 was average
compared to other States across the country.
Not only do laws aimed at increasing opportunities to vote
often fail to increase voter turnout, when they are enacted
without proper safeguards, they risk undermining the entire
electoral system they are trying to improve.
Consider laws allowing for third-party ballot collection,
also known as ballot harvesting or ballot trafficking. This is
where someone other than the voter, often a paid political
operative, collects and returns any number of voters' mail
ballots. Unscrupulous harvesters can pressure voters to cast
their ballot in a particular way and, in doing so, undermine
the secrecy of the ballot box, a long-held essential principle
of American elections intended to preserve the right to vote
one's conscience.
The sad reality is that those at most risk from coercion or
disenfranchisement by an unscrupulous ballot harvester are the
most vulnerable in our society. But even as States put
meaningful limitations on ballot harvesting to ensure
integrity, allowing 24-hour unmonitored drop boxes to receive
voted ballots makes these limitations nothing more than words
on paper.
Unmonitored drop boxes create de facto unlimited ballot
harvesting and present a genuine risk to the security of every
voter's ballot deposited in such a box. Drop boxes need
extensive physical security protections to prevent voting
ballots from being destroyed or lost and systematic procedures
implemented by elections officials to timely and securely
retrieve ballots and deliver them to their office for
processing.
The solution to increasing voter participation is not to
force California's constantly changing rules on the entire
country. It is to build voter confidence through the enactment
of effective election security safeguards and clear procedures
established well in advance of an election to allow voters time
to understand and election administrators time to implement.
Each State should be free to enact the appropriate election
methods that serve the diverse needs of its electorate,
coupling procedures that make voting more accessible with
safeguards that protect the integrity of the process. No State
needs to look the same. One State can restrict ballot
harvesting while providing mobile voting units to rural voters,
and another could expand ballot harvesting--or a voting law
providing strong chain of custody laws and monitored drop
boxes.
Thank you for the opportunity to present my comments and my
perspective to the Committee.
[The statement of Ms. Titus follows:]
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Chairman Butterfield. And we thank you for your testimony
as well.
It is now time for member questions. And as usual, we will
start with the gentleman from California, Mr. Aguilar.
Five minutes.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Longoria, from the Harris County perspective, you
talked about drive-thru voting in the 2020 election. And
through this new and innovative method, obviously voters can
drop their completed ballot at designated drop-off locations
and remain in their car. This method of voting proved to be
safer for voters during the pandemic.
It has been a while since my kids were in car seats, but I
would imagine that parents with voting age--with children in
their car, to avoid waiting in those long lines, as well proved
helpful.
Can you speak to the benefits of drive-thru voting outside
of a pandemic and share data or information about who used this
type of voting in the last election?
Ms. Longoria. Absolutely. So right off the bat, we know
that over 50 percent of people who used drive-thru voting were
Black, Latino, or Asian. And to be clear, we not only used it
in the November 2020 Presidential election, but the July and
December elections as well, and most recently in May. And
people love it.
No matter what part of the city, no matter what their
background, as you shared, being able to have your kid in the
car while you vote means you don't have to call your kid out of
their car seat and deal with the temper tantrum and risk that
as you are trying to vote.
But same with our seniors. We actually saw vans coming from
senior centers where people appreciated being able to sit in
their cars, right, or their vans with the community they know
and having easy voting access, instead of having to get eight
seniors in and out of a van. Sometimes that is cumbersome.
We saw people with disabilities come and use it as well
when curbside voting, which, in Texas, is mandated at every
voting location, became sometimes too onerous because you could
only have one voting machine there instead of the multiple that
we were able to offer at drive-thru voting.
So we know that beyond the pandemic, it is something that
helps voters vote and, honestly, gets them excited about voting
again.
Mr. Aguilar. Thanks so much. You mentioned temper tantrums,
and I just remind you that you might hear from the ranking
member, Mr. Davis, a little bit later that will remind you
about that.
But wanted to ask this next question to Ms. Longoria and
Ms. Marziani, and specific to Texas and Senate bill 7. We heard
you speak about this, Ms. Longoria, restricting early voting
hours, including Sunday mornings, which have been utilized for
souls at the polls initiatives; prohibiting drive-thru voting;
and reallocating polling places using racially discriminatory
formulas, amongst other restrictions.
If drive-thru or curbside voting was restricted, what
impact would this have on disadvantaged communities, including
communities of color?
And a second question. As I am the only litigator on our
side--I am the only person on our side not a litigator, so can
you talk to me about the litigation and why litigation alone is
going to be inadequate to challenge a law like SB7?
Ms. Longoria to start, and then Ms. Marziani.
Ms. Longoria. Absolutely. So we know that over 170,000
people use drive-thru voting. Another basically 15,000 or so
use those late-night and expanded hours. And so you are looking
at literally hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't have
voted in November and wouldn't have voted in our May or
December or July elections either.
And so when we are looking at these impacts, if you cut
these types of voting, you will affect the kinds of votings
that we see at other--you know, compared to early voting in
person. More communities of color, more people of color use
methods that are easier, that are more accessible, and that,
quite frankly, are just fun to use for voting, like drive-thru
voting, 24-hour, those curbside methods, and our mail ballots.
And as an elections administrator, it is all good and well
to say, well, you can take it to the courts, but I have to do
elections in 6 months. I have to do elections. Today is early
voting for me in another election. So I don't have 6 months to
3 years to wait for litigation to pan out. I need help today.
Mr. Aguilar. Ms. Marziani.
Ms. Marziani. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with all that. I
mean, on litigation, you know, to be sure, there will be
litigation against the State of Texas if SB7 is passed. But
litigation is resource intensive. It is long, it is onerous.
And as the Honorable Isabel Longoria pointed out, elections
will pass during that time and people will likely be
disenfranchised. So that is not a solution.
I might also point out that curbside voting is a very
particular type of voting. It is required under the Americans
with Disabilities Act. Drive-thru voting is much broader. So
it, for instance, encompasses someone like me with two kids
under five in the scenario that we discussed. And so that is
one of the reasons it is so very important to expand
participation.
Mr. Aguilar. Thanks so much, Ms. Marziani and Ms. Longoria.
Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you, Mr. Aguilar.
At this time, the chair recognizes the Ranking Member of
the Subcommittee, Mr. Steil, five minutes.
Mr. Steil. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Longoria, I see your current role is with the election
administration--you are the election administrator for Harris
County. How long have you been in that role for?
Ms. Longoria. Six months as the elections administrator,
and another year total working on elections in Harris County,
and then 10 years working on elections----
Mr. Steil. No, no. I just wanted----
Ms. Longoria [continuing]. And democracy here in Harris
County.
Mr. Steil. I only get five minutes. I got to keep it tight
here. So you were not the election administrator for Harris
County at the time of the November 2020 election. Is that
correct?
Ms. Longoria. I was the number three in the office.
Mr. Steil. So you weren't the election administrator. You
were obviously involved. I think that is helpful for us to
know. So you have never been the election administrator for an
election previously. Is that correct?
Ms. Longoria. If you are asking about my resume, I can
provide that to you. But, yes, I do run elections here in
Harris County and have been deeply involved for the past 10
years.
Mr. Steil. But have you been an election administrator
for--have you previously ever been the administrator for an
election in your career?
Ms. Longoria. Nope.
Mr. Steil. It is not a problem if not.
Ms. Longoria. Everyone's got to start somewhere, so I----
Mr. Steil. Oh, no.
Ms. Longoria [continuing]. Started 6 months ago as the
elections administrator.
Mr. Steil. Not a problem at all. Just want to make sure we
are clear that, previously, you haven't had the opportunity
yet, you will in the future, to be administrator for election.
I think that is important for the record as we understand, you
know, analysis of how we are doing this.
Let me just dive in, though, for--in Harris County. Last
year, Congress appropriated $400 million in the CARES Act
emergency funds to States to assist with administering
elections during a pandemic. And, according to the EAC, the
State of Texas received $24.5 million in CARES Act funding.
Do you know if Harris County received any portion of these
funds, and, if yes, how much?
Ms. Longoria. Sure. We received definitely funds from
Federal, State, and even our local partners to administer the
elections, and have since hosted four elections, or sorry--I am
sorry--two more elections with all of those----
Mr. Steil. But out of the CARES Act funding, out of the
25--roughly $25 million that Texas received, do you know what
Harris County received?
Ms. Longoria. I can get you that number, sir.
Mr. Steil. That would be great.
Did Harris County receive funds for election administration
from nongovernmental sources in 2020?
Ms. Longoria. Yeah. We work with tons of national
nonprofits and local nonprofits as well to host elections in a
fair, accessible, and free manner here in Harris County.
Mr. Steil. And, in particular, I believe Harris County
received $9.6 million from one grant related to ultimately the
donation of Mr. Zuckerberg. Is that correct?
Ms. Longoria. You have asked me that already. Yes. We
receive funds from multiple nonprofits to host elections----
Mr. Steil. But----
Ms. Longoria [continuing]. In Harris County for the
Presidential and others as well.
Mr. Steil. And $9.6 million ultimately came from Mr.
Zuckerberg and paid for--my understanding, it paid for grants,
including 24-hour polling locations, drive-thru voting, et
cetera.
Did--were some of these funds used to purchase ads on
Facebook or any other social media platforms to increase voting
turnout in Harris County?
Ms. Longoria. We use funds to educate voters about their
methods----
Mr. Steil. But I just asked a----
Ms. Longoria [continuing]. And options for voting in Harris
County.
Mr. Steil [continuing]. Yes or no. Were some of those funds
used to purchase ads on Facebook?
Ms. Longoria. Understood, sir. I am just trying to provide
context on what we do in Harris County and why we have these
methods of voting.
Mr. Steil. You can follow up with written remarks as you
like, but were funds used for Facebook ads, yes or no?
Ms. Longoria. Yes, as in every election.
Mr. Steil. So some of the funds coming from Mr. Zuckerberg
were ultimately used to purchase Facebook ads. I think it is
relevant to know.
And was the grant solicited or unsolicited?
Ms. Longoria. What do you mean by that question?
Mr. Steil. Did you solicit a grant from--ultimately, from
Mr. Zuckerberg's operation for the election?
Ms. Longoria. I mean, I want to be clear.
Mr. Steil. [Inaudible] Harris County [inaudible]
Ms. Longoria. Again, we--we as a county do look to
supplement the funds that we don't receive from, you know,
State and Federal resources----
Mr. Steil. So you solicit----
Ms. Longoria [continuing]. To host free and fair--I am just
trying to answer your question, Representative.
Mr. Steil. Understood. So the county or the election
administrators have solicited funds from private parties in the
past to support the election operations of Harris County?
Ms. Longoria. We don't solicit funds from private parties.
Mr. Steil. Oh, you don't. Okay. You don't solicit funds
from private parties. Okay.
Let me just park this, because we have got limited time.
I think it is interesting, and maybe it is something that
this Committee should look into, about how private party funds
are used. We have seen this in Wisconsin. We saw it in
Milwaukee, in Madison, in Racine, Kenosha, Green Bay, and they
shared about $6.3 million and some of that Federal funding as
well. And I think it is an opportunity for our Committee to
examine how those funds were used.
In my very short amount of time left, let me just shift
gears. I would like to just ask a quick question of Ms. Titus,
if I can.
You have been very involved in promoting elections. You
have looked at how H.R. 1 in particular, I think, and how
California has aspects of that. Some of the challenges that we
see about unlimited ballot collections by third parties, can
you just comment briefly--you spoke a little bit in your
opening statement--just adding a little color to some of the
challenges that we have--that you see, in particular in
California, what would happen if we rolled that out nationwide?
Ms. Titus. Well, first, as a general matter, I think it is
interesting that H.R. 1 proposes to nationalize certain
standards. And in 2020, there were numerous counties in
California that had to seek waivers from the State's laws to--
because they simply couldn't comply with them, they didn't work
for them geographically or demographically, and most of these
were rural counties.
And so it is often that these laws are written for more
urban counties and urban voters, and they leave out and really
do not serve the voters of more rural counties. And so for that
reason, I just don't think it is a good idea to have a system
of laws where we have to constantly seek waivers and exceptions
to those laws. And so that is as a general matter.
And then, more specifically----
Mr. Steil. So--so, Ms. Titus, I would love to continue.
I know we are going to upset the chairman if I go way
beyond my time. So I am going to hold you there and look for
you to add some--maybe some color in some written statements at
the end.
And, Mr. Chairman, in recognition of the time, I will yield
back.
Chairman Butterfield. I thank the gentleman.
At this time, the chair recognizes Ms. Leger Fernandez for
five minutes.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you.
Ms. Longoria, your testimony noted that Harris County had
historic turnout due to innovations that intentionally and
successfully increased minority voting. You then set out eight
ways in which you believe SB7, as proposed by the Texas
Republicans, was intended to impact minority, low-income voting
suppression laws.
Now, I would note that, as an election administrator and
someone who helped administer elections in Harris County, you
specifically called upon Congress to act.
So in thinking about how we can act, let me ask you this:
Do you believe that H.R. 1 and a revised Voting Rights Act
would protect minority voting access?
Ms. Longoria. I can't speak to all of the exact provisions
in H.R. 1 or the revised Voting Rights Act specifically, but I
will say that, yes, as I have stated, we need Federal
intervention. I don't have time to wait for litigation to
protect me in Texas.
We already see that the Texas leadership is not going to
act in a way, as they have stated in their own personal and
public statements, right, in a way that is going to help
protect these innovations. And, sadly, what we consider an
innovation in Texas is standard practice in some parts of the
country.
And so I want to frame that as well that, though many parts
of the country are good actors and doing what it takes to
support voters, in Texas, we don't have that environment right
now. And so that is why we need your help at the congressional
and Federal level immediately.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you, Ms. Longoria.
Ms. Lang, your written testimony described how the 65-plus
age requirements in Texas absentee ballot law especially hurt
the Latino community. Can you describe why this is the case and
if there are other examples of election laws with age
requirements that disproportionately impact Latino or the
minority voters?
Ms. Lang. Yes. Thank you very much for that question.
So CLC was involved in litigation about this particular
issue representing LULAC and the interest of the Latino
community.
What was particularly pernicious was that the Latino
community was facing these restrictions on vote by mail at a
time when the Latino community was suffering from the effects
of COVID-19, the worst in Texas.
But at all times, these restrictions disproportionately
affect Latinos because of the demographics in Texas. It just is
the case that the Latino community, and to some lesser extent
the Black community, in Texas are younger, and that is well-
known. And so the White community is disproportionately older.
And so older, White Texans have had a free range to vote by
mail while Latino voters largely could not, even though they
often lived in multigenerational homes, and so they were
putting at risk their older members.
A number of other States have these types of age
restrictions that, on their face, perhaps look reasonable, but
underlying the demographics of age in our country lead to
disproportionate effects on minority communities. It is the
case in many States that Latino and Black communities are
disproportionately younger than White communities in States
that have these type of roles.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you.
I want to switch to issues relating to Native American
Tribes. As my colleagues on the Committee know, I represented
several Native American Tribes before joining Congress.
You shared that, in 2018, a county recorder closed an early
voting site for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in Arizona, and this
meant that 4,000 voters on the reservation had to travel at
least 2 hours round trip by bus to vote early.
Can you describe how the Shelby decision impacted the
ability of Native Americans to vote?
Ms. Lang. Absolutely. So this was just one example of many
that we heard about earlier today on the first panel of
closures that have affected minority communities, and this one
was particularly problematic for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in 2020
when they were trying to reduce in-person voting on election
day and an early voting location on the reservation would have
made an enormous difference. Native Americans face a lot of
issues in Arizona in particular, but across the country, of
longer trips, a lot of polling places off-reservation that are
not only long distances away but places where Native Americans
often feel unwelcome. They are too often not granted polling
place locations on the reservation where they can kind of have
Native Americans be the workers there and have a more welcoming
community.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you.
Ms. Daniels, you noted that protecting all, especially
minority voting rights is not a partisan issue. I agree with
you. Restricting our citizens' right to vote is not partisan;
it is un-American.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the November
2019 report ``We Vote, We Count: The Need for Congressional
Action to Secure the Right to Vote for All Citizens'' by the
Racial Equity Anchors Collaborative be added to the record.
Chairman Butterfield. Without objection, the report will be
received. Thank you.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you very much. I yield.
Chairman Butterfield. All right. At this time, the chair
will recognize the Ranking Member of the full Committee, my
good friend, Rodney Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Davis. Okay. Thank you, my friend, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Longoria, just real quick, yes or no, I just want to
make sure I heard something correctly because I don't have a
lot of time either, and I have got to get to some other
witnesses.
Harris County did not solicit any private funds from Mark
Zuckerberg, correct? They were unsolicited?
Ms. Longoria. I think that is incredibly misleading, sir.
Mark Zuckerberg was a part of a foundation and a nonprofit
organization that created funds for election administrators
across the county, and so we were able to receive some funds
from that nonprofit.
Mr. Davis. Mr. Chair, can I get some more time if I am not
able to get a simple yes or no answer.
Did Harris County solicit this foundation money that Mr.
Zuckerberg is part of, or did you not? Was it just given to
you, or did you solicit it? That is a simple answer.
Ms. Longoria. I am unclear on what your definition of
``solicit'' is. We do have to, like all nonprofits, apply for
funds.
Mr. Davis. So you did solicit that money. Okay. That is
what I just wanted to clarify because on your application, you
solicited it. Right?
Ms. Longoria. Respectfully, it seems we disagree on the
word of ``solicit.''
Mr. Davis. Okay. Well, it is something that I think the
Committee needs to look at whether or not funds are available
to other rural communities and rural counties that may have
some interest in having outside funding help with their
election administration, Mr. Chair. I don't think it should be
relegated to just more populated counties in this country.
Now, I do want to say to my colleague--or to Ms. Titus,
thank you for being here. Thanks for mentioning the ballot
harvesting report, the California ballot harvesting report that
the House Administration minority issued last Congress.
Do you agree with the report's finding?
Ms. Titus. Yes. The interesting experience that we had in
California in 2020--and I am sure the members of the Committee
are aware of, I guess, you could call it a controversy with the
California Republican Party attempting to have its own drop-box
program, is that when the California attorney general got
involved, and as lawyers for the California Republican Party,
we were on the phone with nine lawyers from the California
department of justice, and all of the questions seemed to
suggest that we should be following a number of protocols and
safeguards that simply are not in the law. And while we didn't
necessarily disagree with their implications, you know, they
simply were not part of the law that was written, and yet they
were intuitive. These were all safeguards that the lawyers on
the phone seemed to think were the law, should be the law, and
yet were not the law.
And so California has this program that allows anybody to
harvest ballots. A union member could walk up to a colleague's
door, demand their ballot, encourage them to vote in a
particular way. Political party operatives could do the same.
There is really no requirement that somebody actually sign the
outside of that person's ballot, that they tell the voter who
they are, who they represent, whether they are being paid.
There is no receipt. There is no chain of custody. There are
literally zero safeguards in the law, except that they not be
tampered with and that they be submitted to the Elections
Office within 3 days.
Beyond that, the law has no requirements. And yet while
Democrats and union members were freely engaging in this
activity without being harassed by State law enforcement, when
the California Republican Party sought to implement it and, in
fact, went above and beyond the law and the legal requirements,
they were harassed by the Attorney General's Office, as well as
district attorneys and elections officials on Twitter. One of
our low-level field staff had his life turned upside-down. And
yet other candidates for Congress who happened to have a D
after their name were not subject to the same harassment.
Mr. Davis. Interesting. Interesting to hear.
Speaking of California statewide elected officials,
according to information provided to us by the Secretary of
State's office, former Secretary of State, now U.S. Senator
Alex Padilla used $34 million of CARES Act funds that the State
received to procure a contract with SKDKnickerbocker for the
Secretary of States' Vote Safe California initiative. According
to the contract, the scope of work included Get Out the Vote,
which we all know what GOTV services are, and I know you know
what they are, so SKDKnickerbocker's management of the
leadership strategies for the Biden campaign, would you
consider this a conflict of interest?
Ms. Titus. Yes, absolutely. I mean, not only did you have a
consulting firm that was working for the Democratic
Presidential candidate, this firm was also working for a number
of California Democratic congressional candidates, and yet they
were hired by the State of California to perform this Get Out
the Vote program. We don't know which voters they were actually
trying to get out, although we have our suspicions. And even
worse, they had to cover their tails after the fact because it
turns out they spent the money improperly, and they needed to
go back to the legislature months after they had committed
these funds to SKDKnickerbocker, months after the program had
ended and get the legislature to procure the fact that they
really didn't have the appropriation to spend the money in the
way that they had spent it. It was intended and originally
appropriated to be spent by counties, and the State essentially
stole it from the counties and had to fix it after the fact.
Mr. Davis. Well, thank you for your time. Thank you for
your response. I am out of time.
I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you to the Ranking Member.
At this time, the chair recognizes Ms. Scanlon for five
minutes.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to focus some of my questions on disability voting
rights. I introduced the Disability Voting Rights bill, which
was included in H.R. 1, and the Accessible Voting Act, both of
which would help folks with disabilities, which include older
Americans, veterans, et cetera, help them access and exercise
their right to vote.
Ms. Longoria, currently what are the options now for people
with a disability to vote or register to vote in your
jurisdiction?
Ms. Longoria. In Harris County to register to vote, it all
has to happen on pencil with pen. Even if you print your form
online, you still have to do it with a wet signature. Folks
with disabilities or maybe have physical impairments can get
assistance or witnesses to help them out, but there is no
online voter registration.
When it comes to voting, there is a couple of options:
Curbside voting, so that is for every in-person voting
location, we have to have a buzzer outside where someone can
drive up, hit that buzzer if they don't feel they can make it
inside the location and request that a machine be brought out
to them. We are happy to comply, but as you can imagine, taking
a machine out from inside the location to bring it outside
slows down voting both for the folks inside and outside,
depending on how long the ballot is.
Interestingly enough, Harris County I think is one of the
few, if not the only county, still under preclearance with the
DOJ specifically for ADA accessibility. So we already have to
go through a very limited preclearance, so used to the
paperwork, to make sure that all of our voting locations have
accessible ramps and accessible means of voting for those who
can make it inside a voting location either with an aide or
not.
And then drive-through voting, as was shared earlier, is
available to everyone, including folks with disabilities or
older Americans, which folks found extremely convenient to just
drive up, not have to wait in lines, to have machines brought
out to you and to use to vote, whether you are there with your
senior who had, you know, a handicap placard, for example, or
something else, and mail ballot voting, of course.
Ms. Scanlon. Right. Yes, I mean, it is really interesting
how when we pay attention to things like things that help folks
with disabilities exercise their right to vote, it helps other
people. Pennsylvania just put the voter registration
application online, just making it that much easier to get
access to. You know what? It was helpful to my college-age kids
to be able to print out that application and get it done. So we
do see that the benefits extend beyond just perhaps that
targeted population. And the same, obviously, with the mail-in
voting.
How did the most recent Texas legislative session threaten
to impact voters with disabilities?
Ms. Longoria. In Senate bill 7, which, again, was stopped
by a quorum but has been threatened to bring back in a special
session, we saw requirements in there for voter ID expansion to
applications, which, again, when you don't have online mail
ballot applications, people would have to print out, scan, et
cetera, all of their documents, include it in a piece of mail
and send it in. There were restrictions on who qualified as
disabled to use mail ballot voting, including people, in
certain instances, taking them off, and then, on top of that,
putting even more restrictions on assistance of caregivers who
would drive people to vote or to do mail ballot voting by
having to fill out paperwork, step out of the vehicle. So, if
you imagine a senior living facility or an assisted living
facility that brought a van of five people to come vote, then
all of them would have to get out of the car while the person
inside the car is voting and switch out who is allowed to be in
the car if utilizing curbside voting.
Ms. Scanlon. Wow. It is almost like people were trying to
make it harder for certain groups of people to vote.
You know what? I don't have any further questions at this
time. So I would yield back.
Thank you.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you. The gentlelady yields
back.
At this time, the chair recognizes himself for five short
minutes.
Let me begin with you, Professor Herron.
Can you tell us a little bit more, please, about what your
research says about the utilization of early voting by minority
voters, racial minority voters? Just tell us what your research
says about utilization of early voting.
Mr. Herron. Sure. Thanks for that question.
So some States keep track of the races of their voters,
races and ethnicities. And my research uses that administrative
data to track when people vote, and what we can see is that--
and this is drawn by other entrants in the literature as well--
that minority voters are disproportionately heavy users of
early voting. Even within early voting periods, they are
disproportionately often to vote on Sundays. We have already
heard Souls of the Polls discussed, and there is some evidence
on weekends in general. And so I would say that is the clear
story here: Minorities vote very heavily on early voting.
Chairman Butterfield. Thank you for that.
Let me now go to Ms. Lang, if I may.
Ms. Lang, in your voting rights litigation practice, to
what extent have you seen jurisdictions restrict alternative
options for voting, such as early voting and absentee voting,
in a discriminatory way?
Ms. Lang. Unfortunately, we are seeing it more and more.
This is an area where, again, as Professor Herron explained,
because voters of color are effectively using some of these
mechanisms for voting, early voting and vote by mail, there
have been increasing attempts to restrict access.
So, for example, during 2020, I mentioned that after Harris
County had already set up a number of early voting locations--
drop-box locations and early voting locations, the Governor
suddenly announced that you could only have one drop box per
county and severely restricted access to drop-box services and
did so right in the middle of the election. And we saw
something similar in Ohio. Of course, this had the biggest
effect on cities that serve, you know, millions of people and
can't do so with one drop-box effectively.
Chairman Butterfield. Now, we all know that the Supreme
Court has suspended the use of section 5, but section 2
continues to be the law of the land, and it is being used very
forcefully by some groups across the country. We are waiting to
see what the Supreme Court is going to do in the Arizona case
in the next few days, but we hope it will continue to be a very
valuable resource.
How do you utilize the existing protections, that is,
section 2 in the Voting Rights Act, to litigate against
discriminatory practices?
Ms. Lang. Section 2 is absolutely critical to my voting
rights practice, but there are obvious limitations to section
2. For example, one of the most important section 2 cases I
have ever litigated is the Texas voter ID case where the courts
held that that law was discriminatory under section 2 of the
Voting Rights Act and, therefore, unlawful. The district court
held that, a Fifth Circuit panel held that, an en banc panel of
the Fifth Circuit held that, and the Supreme Court denied
Texas' attempt to bring it up to the Supreme Court. And, yet,
that discriminatory law was in effect from when Shelby County
was decided until the 2016 election. For years, elections went
by with a law that every Federal court that saw it said was
unlawful under section 2 until 2016 when we were finally able
to get an injunction.
So section 2 takes some time and, unfortunately, you know,
can be eroded with Federal court interpretation. We are looking
forward to hearing the Supreme Court's decision in Brnovich
this month and hope that the Supreme Court takes the
opportunity to strengthen section 2, since it is the only
meaningful tool we have under Federal law to attack
discriminatory voting laws.
Chairman Butterfield. I certainly agree with you that we
need to strengthen section 2 and not weaken it. As a voting
rights attorney many, many years ago, I tried cases using the
intents standard. I tried cases using the results standard, and
I can tell you that it is very difficult at times to prove what
is in the heart and minds of those who prepare election
systems, but we certainly know the electoral result. So
hopefully the Supreme Court will leave it intact.
It appears that I am running out of time. And before I do
so, I want to ask unanimous consent, if I can, to add an
October 12 New York Times article, which is titled ``California
Republican Party Admits It Placed Misleading Ballot Boxes
around State,'' which is related to documents pertaining to
election fraud committed by the California Republican Party
related to ballot collection.
I have that in front of me. It is a New York Times article,
and I ask that it be included in the record.
Thank you. Without objection, it will be received.
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Chairman Butterfield. My time has expired. At this time I
will yield back the balance of my time.
All right. Mr. Ranking Member, it looks like we are winding
down.
Is there anything administratively that we need to take
care of before we close?
Mr. Steil. I do not believe so on my end.
Chairman Butterfield. All right. Let me close by first
thanking all of today's witnesses for their very valuable
testimony. Both panels have been just absolutely valuable--
invaluable.
Thank you to the members for your questions as well. The
members of the Subcommittee may have additional questions for
these witnesses. And, if so, we will ask you to respond, that
is the witnesses, to respond to those questions in writing.
The hearing record will be open. It will be held open for
those responses.
And so it is good to see all of you today, and thank you
for your participation. The Subcommittee on Elections of the
Committee on House Administration, without objection, will now
stand adjourned.
We will see you next week.
This Subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:24 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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