[Senate Hearing 117-47]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                         S. Hrg. 117-47

 PROTECTING THE FREEDOM TO VOTE: RECENT CHANGES TO GEORGIA VOTING LAWS 
AND THE NEED FOR BASIC FEDERAL STANDARDS TO MAKE SURE ALL AMERICANS CAN 
                VOTE IN THE WAY THAT WORKS BEST FOR THEM

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                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                 COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             JULY 19, 2021

                               __________

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules and Administration
    
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]    


                  Available on http://www.govinfo.gov
                  
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
45-206                      WASHINGTON : 2021                     
          
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                 COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION

                             FIRST SESSION

                  AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota, Chairwoman

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California         ROY BLUNT, Missouri
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York         MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia             RICHARD SHELBY, Alabama
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont            TED CRUZ, Texas
ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine            SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West 
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon                     Virginia
ALEX PADILLA, California             ROGER WICKER, Mississippi
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  DEB FISCHER, Nebraska
                                     CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
                                     BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee

                    Elizabeth Peluso, Staff Director
             Rachelle Schroeder, Republican Staff Director
                         
                         
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

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                                                                  Pages

                         Opening Statement of:

Honorable Amy Klobuchar, Chairwoman, a United States Senator from 
  the State of Minnesota.........................................     1
Honorable Raphael Warnock, a United States Senator from the State 
  of Georgia.....................................................     4
Honorable Billy Mitchell, Georgia State Representative, Stone 
  Mountain, Georgia..............................................     6
Honorable Sally Harrell, Georgia State Senator from the State of 
  Georgia........................................................     9
Helen Butler, Executive Director, Georgia, Coalition for the 
  People's Agenda, Madison, Georgia..............................    11
Jose Segarra, Warner Robins, Georgia.............................    12

                         Prepared Statement of:

Honorable Raphael Warnock, a United States Senator from the State 
  of Georgia.....................................................    33
Honorable Billy Mitchell, Georgia State Representative, Stone 
  Mountain, Georgia..............................................    35
Honorable Sally Harrell, Georgia State Senator from the State of 
  Georgia........................................................    38
Helen Butler, Executive Director, Georgia, Coalition for the 
  People's Agenda, Madison, Georgia..............................    40
Jose Segarra, Warner Robins, Georgia.............................    60

                  Materials Submitted for the Record:

Klobuchar--Southern Poverty Law Center...........................    64
Klobuchar--League of Women Voters of Georgia.....................    79
Klobuchar--Indivisible...........................................    83
Klobuchar--Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, Inc.................    85
Klobuchar--Letter from Rhonda M. Burnough, member of the House 
  Special Committee on Election Integrity........................    87
Klobuchar--Letter from Dr. John Eaves............................    89
Klobuchar--Comments by the Georgia Advocacy Office (GAO).........    92
Ossoff--Letter from Bishop Reginald T. Jackson...................    95
Ossoff--Letter from the Dekalb Pastors Christian Alliance........   102

                  Questions Submitted for the Record:

Honorable Amy Klobuchar, Chairwoman, a United States Senator from 
  the State of Minnesota to Honorable Sally Harrell, Georgia 
  State Senator from the State of Georgia........................   105
Honorable Amy Klobuchar, Chairwoman, a United States Senator from 
  the State of Minnesota to Helen Butler, Executive Director, 
  Georgia, Coalition for the People's Agenda, Madison, Georgia...   106

 
 PROTECTING THE FREEDOM TO VOTE: RECENT CHANGES TO GEORGIA VOTING LAWS 
AND THE NEED FOR BASIC FEDERAL STANDARDS TO MAKE SURE ALL AMERICANS CAN 
                VOTE IN THE WAY THAT WORKS BEST FOR THEM

                              ----------                              


                         MONDAY, JULY 19, 2021

                               United States Senate
                      Committee on Rules and Administration
                                                        Atlanta, GA
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m. at the 
National Center for Civil and Human Rights, 100 Ivan Allen Jr. 
Blvd., NW, Atlanta, GA, Hon. Amy Klobuchar, Chairwoman of the 
Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Klobuchar, Merkley, Padilla, and Ossoff.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE AMY KLOBUCHAR, CHAIRWOMAN, A 
       UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Good morning. It is my honor to call 
to order this hearing of the United States Senate Committee on 
Rules and Administration, the first field hearing that the 
Senate Rules Committee has held in over 20 years, and I can not 
actually think of a better place to hold it than in this 
beautiful, beautiful museum.
    We are here today in Atlanta to shine a spotlight on what 
has been happening in Georgia and in states around the country 
to undermine the freedom to vote. Over 400 bills have been 
introduced, 28 have passed and been signed into law, and 
Exhibit A is the one right here in the State of Georgia.
    We are here to listen to people in Georgia about the 
changes to the state's voting laws, and we are here to discuss 
why it is so critical for Congress to enact basic federal 
standards to ensure that all Americans can cast their ballots.
    I would like to thank my colleagues who are in attendance: 
Of course, Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock--I got the 
privilege to attend Ebenezer with him yesterday; and also 
Senator Ossoff, who, of course, was also recently elected and 
is a leader on this committee; and, of course--okay, we all 
cheer for both Georgia senators right now.
    [Applause.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you.
    Also with us today is Senator Merkley from the State of 
Oregon, who is the lead author of the For the People Act. Last 
but not least, Senator Padilla, who many of you know was the 
Secretary of State of California--incredibly knowledgeable in 
the area of voting rights and took a red-eye to get here today, 
so that is a long way from California.
    [Applause.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. I would also like to welcome the 
following leaders from the State of Georgia who are here with 
us today: Georgia Rep. Billy Mitchell, who will also give a 
statement, who is the Chair of the Georgia House Democratic 
Caucus and the President of the National Black Caucus of State 
Legislators; Chair of the Georgia Black Caucus of State 
Legislators, Senator Tonya Anderson, who I had the privilege to 
talk to yesterday; Representative Debra Bazemore, who is with 
us as well; Representative Rhonda Burnough; Representative 
Sandra Scott; and former Representative Cleo Washington.
    In addition, I want to welcome our witnesses: Senator Sally 
Harrell, right here. She wore the right color, matching with 
me.
    [Laughter.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Ms. Helen Butler, well known to the 
community; and Mr. Jose Segarra, who I will introduce shortly. 
I want to thank Senator Blunt's staff who are here with us as 
well.
    The location of today's hearing, the National Center for 
Civil and Human Rights, is a powerful reminder of how our 
country has long fought against the forces of injustice, and 
that it has only been through the power of citizens standing up 
to the forces of oppression, through speaking truth to power, 
that change has occurred.
    This morning we had the opportunity to tour the exhibits, 
and anyone watching today I really urge you to come to this 
museum in Atlanta and tour this museum. You literally can sit 
at a model of a lunch counter where the freedom fighters sat 
and have headphones on and picture yourself in that position 
and how long can you sit there, how long can you tolerate it.
    There is another exhibit honoring Georgia's own hero, 
Representative John Lewis, who passed away just over one year 
ago, who never gave up on justice, never stopped marching 
toward freedom.
    I have always been in awe of Congressman John Lewis, of his 
persistence, his resilience, his faith that this country could 
be better, if only we put in the work. His faith in our country 
led him to coordinate efforts for the Mississippi Freedom 
Summer, recruiting college students from around the country to 
join the movement to register Black voters in the South. It 
took him to Selma, where he helped lead 600 marchers across the 
Edmund Pettus Bridge on that dark day that became known as 
Bloody Sunday. The horrific events of that day shocked the 
Nation, with marchers attacked with billy clubs and tear gas. 
Congressman Lewis' skull was fractured. He bore the scars until 
the very end of his life.
    Soon after, President Lyndon Johnson came to the Capitol 
and, as he said, ``with the outrage of Selma still fresh,'' 
called on Congress to take action to guarantee the right to 
vote. Months later, with the help of former Minnesota Senator 
and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the Voting Rights Act was 
signed into law.
    I was fortunate, like every single senator up here, at 
points in my life to visit that bridge. One in particular 
stands out for me. It was actually the 48th anniversary. That 
weekend, after 48 years, the white police chief of Montgomery 
handed his badge to Congressman Lewis and apologized for not 
protecting him and the Freedom Marchers.
    Forty-eight years is a long time for an apology, and it 
only happened because Congressman Lewis never quit fighting for 
progress, for civil rights, for economic justice. But now, over 
five decades since that day in Selma and since the Voting 
Rights Act became the law of the land, so much of the progress 
that Americans have fought for, that are documented in this 
museum, that Americans have died for, is at stake.
    It is no coincidence that this assault on the freedom to 
vote is happening just after the 2020 election, when nearly 160 
million Americans cast a ballot, more than ever before, in the 
middle of a pandemic, in an election that the Trump Department 
of Homeland Security declared the most secure in history.
    This year alone, as I noted, hundreds and hundreds of bills 
have been introduced. That is why we are here.
    We are here in one of the states today where legislation 
was signed into law by Georgia's Governor in March. The new 
Georgia law not only limits the number and availability of 
ballot drop boxes and puts limits on the hours of early voting, 
it also strips power away from local election officials and 
ultimately puts it in the hands of the state legislature, 
something that Senator Reverend Warnock has introduced a bill 
to change.
    This new law also reduces the time for runoff elections 
from 9 weeks to 28 days, and since Georgia law requires voters 
to be registered for at least 29 days before Election Day, this 
means that previously unregistered voters will not be able to 
make their voices heard in the runoffs. Do you think it is a 
coincidence that it is 28 days for the runoff and then 29 days 
when you register? It is not one bit a coincidence. It is a 
blatant exercise of raw power.
    It also limits early voting for runoffs to one week, Monday 
through Friday, so you can not vote on weekends; allows a 
single person to challenge the registration of an unlimited 
number of voters; and makes it a crime for volunteers to give 
food and water on a non-partisan basis to people in line.
    With similar bills now being considered in state 
legislatures across America or signed into law already, this is 
a coordinated effort to limit Americans' freedom to vote.
    Our Constitution--in Article I, Section 4--has equipped us 
to do exactly what we should do. That provision makes clear 
that Congress has the power to ``make or alter'' laws governing 
federal elections ``at any time.'' It is as clear as day.
    We must meet this moment. As President Biden said in 
Philadelphia last week, this is the ``test of our time.''
    That is why we are here to hear firsthand about the attack 
on voting rights in Georgia, why we must pass the For the 
People Act, of which we are all co-sponsors, of which Senator 
Merkley is the chief sponsor. This would create those basic 
federal voting rights that are allowed for by our Constitution, 
that were clearly anticipated in our Constitution, as well as 
cut down on the dark money in our politics and do something 
about ethics reform.
    With that, it is my honor to introduce our first witness 
and your Senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE RAPHAEL WARNOCK, A UNITED STATES 
               SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA

    Senator Warnock. Well, thank you so very much. I want to 
say welcome to all of my colleagues to the great State of 
Georgia. We are very glad to have you and to welcome you to our 
state.
    Thanks so much, Chair Klobuchar, for inviting me to speak 
today about the urgent need for federal voting rights 
legislation. I am especially grateful that the members of the 
Rules Committee have come here to the State of Georgia for its 
first field hearing in two decades and will hear from Georgia 
advocates, many of whom I have worked with and alongside across 
the years, like Helen Butler, who have long been on the ground 
in this fight and can they speak extensively to the detrimental 
impacts of voter suppression in Georgia.
    Over the last year, Georgia has become ground zero for the 
sweeping voter suppression efforts we have seen gain momentum 
all across our country. We saw record-breaking voter turnout in 
our last elections. What we did in Georgia this last election 
in terms of turnout should have been celebrated by everyone, 
regardless of political party. But instead, it was attacked by 
craven politicians who are more committed to the maintenance of 
their own power than they are to the strengthening and 
maintaining of our democracy. Spurred by the Big Lie, these 
same actors are now busy rolling back voting rights in a way 
that we have not seen in size and scope since the Jim Crow era. 
In fact, Georgia became the first of now 19 states in just a 
few short months to pass laws that restrict voter turnout in 
the wake of the November 2020 election.
    My home state exemplifies the effectiveness of these 
suppression efforts, as well as the power and the opportunity 
of what federal voting rights legislation can accomplish.
    Your vote is your voice, and your voice is about your human 
dignity. To fight for voting rights is to fight for human 
rights. There is nothing more noble, more important for us to 
do in a moment like this. Sadly, what we are seeing in Georgia 
is an attempt to deny certain people of the ability to have 
their voices heard in our democracy. As I have said time and 
time again, some people do not want some people to vote. They 
are trying to deny access to the ballot, to set up hurdles that 
voters have to cross as if voting is a privilege and not a 
right.
    This new law in Georgia, S.B. 202, would make voting harder 
for countless Georgians by creating these hurdles that voters 
have to jump through in order to request an absentee ballot 
while also reducing the number of drop boxes where voters can 
return their ballots; by making it harder for community 
organizations to assist voters, whether from requesting a 
ballot to just handing out a bottle of water; by letting a 
single person make unlimited, mass challenges to the ability of 
other Georgians to vote, clearing the way for baseless 
accusations. Imagine that, your neighbor being able to 
challenge countless numbers of other citizens and their right 
to vote.
    Then even if you clear all of those hurdles, even if you 
are registered to vote and you have got your ballot in the 
door, your ballot still might not be counted because this new 
law also allows partisan officials in the state legislature to 
control our state board of elections and take over local 
elections. It allows them to engage in these takeovers even 
while the votes are still being cast. This is a recipe not only 
for voter suppression but for chaos in our democracy.
    But if we passed federal voting rights protections, which 
the Congress has the ability and the constitutional right to 
do, we can reverse these restrictions. We can provide a 
baseline for voting, basic standards that apply no matter what 
state you live in. We can pass legislation that would create 
uniform national standards so that your right to vote cannot be 
challenged. We can protect the freedom of voters to decide how 
they want to vote, whether it is on Election Day, during early 
voting, or by mail. We can strengthen election security by 
providing new funding for states to replace old voting machines 
and enhance training for election administrators.
    Along with Chair Klobuchar, as well as our colleagues and 
Senators Merkley, Warner, and Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, I 
have also introduced the Preventing Election Subversion Act. 
This legislation would address some of the specific challenges 
we are seeing in Georgia by stopping mass challenges against 
voters and preventing state takeovers of local election boards.
    I want to be clear: Congress must take action on voting 
rights, and we have no time to spare. There is nothing more 
important for us to do this Congress. Since January, nearly 400 
bills that would restrict voting have been introduced in 48 
states. They have passed in 19 states. As we speak, the Texas 
legislature is trying to become the next state.
    We Americans live in a great house that democracy built, 
and right now that house is on fire. What good is it to expand 
the foundation if the house is on fire? We have to have 
national standards that push against what we are seeing in 
Texas and Georgia and all across our country. While our brave 
brothers and sisters in the Texas legislature have risked so 
much to stop this effort, I am disappointed that some members 
of the United States Senate could not even bring themselves to 
open up debate on this critical issue. That is what went down 
the other day in the Senate--not the bill, but the ability to 
have a debate on the maintenance of our democracy.
    I submit that voting is not just an issue alongside other 
issues. I believe that democracy is the political enactment of 
a spiritual idea, this notion that all of us have within our 
sacred worth, and thus the right to determine, to help 
determine the direction of our country and our destiny within 
it. Voting rights provide the framework in which all of the 
other debates about issues impacting our lives takes place: 
Infrastructure, climate change, health care, you name it, all 
critical issues, but democracy is the framework. Congress must 
act. Congress has a unique responsibility to protect voting 
rights for every eligible American.
    To put it plainly: We are only able to work on these issues 
because someone voted to send us to Washington, and woe on us, 
shame on us, if the people send us to Washington to stand up 
for them and we will not stand up for their voices in their own 
democracy.
    I want to be clear that we are only in the beginning of 
this stretch. Our fight has only begun, and I am going to keep 
working in earnest with my Senate colleagues to pass voting 
rights legislation, and to do it in this Congress.
    As I conclude my remarks, I can not help but reflect on the 
fact that we are in the Center for Civil and Human Rights, and 
I think of Congressman John Lewis, whom I knew personally. He 
was my parishioner. I was the pastor, but he clearly was the 
mentor. As I was preparing to preside over his funeral I asked 
myself what was he thinking about as he crossed the Edmund 
Pettus Bridge. I assure you, he was not thinking about winning 
a Presidential Medal of Freedom. He wanted to win voting rights 
for every citizen because he was a patriot in the best sense of 
the word.
    Sitting in this shrine to civil and human rights, I cannot 
help but reflect on the words of Dr. King, who said in 1957: 
``Give us the ballot. And we will place on the benches in the 
south judges who will do justice and love mercy. And we will 
send Governors to lead us who have felt not only the tang of 
the human but the glow of the divine.''
    This is a sacred moment. This is an inflection point in our 
country. We are in a 911 emergency for our democracy. History 
is watching us, and the future is waiting to see if we will 
act.
    [The prepared statement of Senator Warnock was submitted 
for the record.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you, and thanks for being such 
a patriot. Thank you very much, Senator Warnock.
    We now have the honor of hearing from Representative Billy 
Mitchell, who is here to give testimony today.
    Before we begin with our witnesses, as I mentioned, he is 
the Chair of the Georgia House Democratic Caucus and President 
of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, a 740-member 
organization of African American state legislators from across 
the country. He represents Georgia's 88th District, which 
includes parts of Stone Mountain, Tucker, and Lithonia.
    Thank you for being here, Representative Mitchell.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF BILLY MITCHELL, GEORGIA STATE 
               REPRESENTATIVE, STONE MOUNTAIN, GA

    Mr. Mitchell. Well, thank you, Chairwoman Klobuchar, and in 
absentia Ranking Member Blunt, and members of the committee. 
Because I sit here before you today as a member of the largest 
state legislative Black caucus in the nation--I will give some 
deference to our Chair, Senator Tonya Anderson; because we were 
literally in the trenches on this issue, doing whatever we 
could to combat and, in some cases, prevent it from being worst 
law; because, in large measure, it is the voters that we 
represent that will be most negatively affected by these new 
laws; because we value this committee's purpose here today, and 
so appreciate your members, particularly your member and our 
Senator Jon Ossoff and your Senator Raphael Warnock who gave 
remarks--I want to express my sincere appreciation for this 
opportunity to come before you.
    If I may, Madam Chair, I can tell you firsthand that 
Senators Ossoff and Warnock are not only extraordinary public 
servants but the kind of people that make you want to take 
leave from your job to speak all over the state on their 
behalf, to give, and to do all you can to motivate voter 
participation.
    After the most successful election--and I define its 
success not by our candidates winning these elections but by 
the fact that when you have as many people who voted in the 
2020 election cycle, with as few problems, with all the 
challenges being dismissed, you have to consider that to be 
successful, evidence of a strong democracy. For those who are 
amending election laws in states where they can, you really do 
not have to wonder what their true intent is.
    Since we are here in Atlanta, the birth and nurturing place 
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am reminded of what he said 
decades ago, as Reverend Warnock said, when asked about voting 
rights that pertained to African-Americans--but he certainly 
could have been talking about any American--when he said, 
``Some people do not want some people to vote.'' When you have 
the highest levels of voter participation, combined with the 
lowest levels of challenges, why would you want to change that?
    It is worth noting that the laws we operated under during 
the last election cycle were put in place by the same majority 
party that is now trying to tear them down.
    I could not agree more with President Biden, we are facing 
the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War, 
of which I am particularly sensitive about, as I represent 
Stone Mountain, Georgia, which is home to the largest memorial 
to the Confederacy in the world for now, but I digress.
    I heard a member of the United States Congress proclaim 
that their intent was to make certain these state laws passed 
so that those states could firmly be in control of the upcoming 
reapportionment process, assure Republican control, and create 
more Republican state legislative and congressional districts.
    As president of the National Black Caucus of State 
Legislators, I hosted the Texas House Democratic Caucus for 
dinner in Washington last week. We compared legislative 
language as passed in Georgia and proposed in Texas. I 
suspected that the language would be similar but discovered 
that it was mostly identical, verifying these proposals 
sweeping the Nation are being provided by such groups as the 
Heritage Foundation and others.
    There is much talk about not being able to give food or 
water to voters on line, but the actual law is much more 
abhorrent than that. The actual law states, and I am going to 
read it: ``Nor shall any person give or offer to give or 
participate in giving of any money, gifts, anything of value, 
including but not limited to food and drink.'' Meaning if a 
person goes to the polls with their spouse and merely offers 
them some chewing gum or a magazine to read while in line, that 
person would be subject to arrest, up to a $1,000 fine, and up 
to a year in jail.
    We all know the uneven way this will be enforced throughout 
the state, the equal protection issues. The vagueness of it 
makes this ripe for court challenge.
    I believe that dark money and unlimited campaign spending 
is wrong, and I hope that you will be able to do something 
about it, but we will compete. I further believe that voter 
suppression is unfair and it is wrong, and hope you do 
something about it, but our grandparents and great grands 
endured far worse, and we will use this to motivate our voters 
to get out.
    But what I am most concerned about, and hope you come up 
with a solution for, is cheating umpires that these laws are 
creating. They are replacing elected officials in the states 
and counties, who must concern themselves with the will of the 
voters, with political appointees, whose only concern is the 
will of the person who appointed them.
    County election boards throughout the state run our 
elections. They are changing the law such that not only are 
they no longer required to be non-partisan but if they do not 
like the outcome of an election they can simply and immediately 
just take over the election board. These political appointees 
could overturn elections without fear of being held accountable 
by the voters. For that reason alone, these election laws 
should concern us all.
    My former colleague, Stacey Abrams, says it best: ``Our 
selections may be partisan, but the operation of our elections 
should be nonpartisan.''
    Lastly, let me say that the House of Representatives was 
the final arbiter of this law in Georgia. It came from the 
Senate to the House, then to the Governor's desk for signing, 
within hours. Moving that fast is virtually unprecedented.
    As Chair of the Georgia House Democratic Caucus, I was the 
last speaker to the bill before we voted. I was so impressed 
with Senator Warnock's maiden speech on the United States 
Senate floor that I texted him to let him know I was going to 
use some of his words in my closing on the House floor. Being 
who he is, he sent back a quick prayer as he wished me well. I 
would like to close with some of the remarks used.
    ``The designers of our government intended the voters to be 
able to pick their candidates, not the candidates to pick their 
voters, lest we have democracy in reverse. The four most 
important words in a democracy are `the people have spoken.' So 
we must do what we can to let the people speak.''
    Once again, thank you for this opportunity.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Mitchell was submitted for 
the record.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank 
you, Representative.
    All right. I want to call our witnesses up. I am going to 
introduce them and then swear them in.
    Our first witness on the panel today is--maybe we will 
change these out while I introduce them--is Georgia State 
Senator Sally Harrell. Since 2019, Senator Harrell has 
represented Georgia's 40th Senate District, which includes 
DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett Counties. Senator Harrell serves 
on five committees, including the Senate Ethics Committee, 
which has jurisdiction over election and voting issues. Senator 
Harrell also has served three terms in Georgia's House of 
Representatives, from 1999 to 2005. She received her Bachelor's 
degree in Social Work from Georgia State University and 
received a Master's degree from the University of Georgia.
    Our second witness is Helen Butler, who serves as the 
Executive Director of the Georgia Coalition for the People's 
Agenda and is a former member of the Morgan County Board of 
Elections. Ms. Butler has worked for the Georgia Coalition for 
the People's Agenda since 2003 and served on the Morgan County 
Board of Elections from 2010 until just last month. Ms. Butler 
previously served as a member of the State of Georgia Help 
America Vote Act Advisory Committee, and in 2013 she was 
appointed to serve on the United States Commission on Civil 
Rights as a member of the Georgia Advisory Committee.
    Ms. Butler recently received the AFL-CIO's Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr. Defender of the Dream Award, and in 2002 she 
received the National Association of Secretaries of State Award 
for Voter Education. Ms. Butler earned her Bachelor of Business 
Administration and Master's of Public Administration degrees 
from the University of Georgia, and she was one of the first 50 
African American students to attend the University of Georgia 
after the integration of the school in 1961.
    Finally, our third witness is Mr. Jose Antonio Segarra, a 
resident of Houston County and a Georgia voter since he moved 
to Georgia in 1992 as an Air Force officer and registered to 
vote in the state that same year. Mr. Segarra has worked with 
the Air Force for 35 years and is an engineer at Robins Air 
Force Base. He served for six years as a military officer, 
including serving during Operation Desert Storm.
    Mr. Segarra has voted in every general election in Georgia 
since moving to the state, including the November 2020 
Presidential election and January 2021 Senate runoff elections. 
During both of those elections he voted early and in person. He 
waited for over three hours in line during the November 
Presidential election, and also waited during the January 
runoff election. He was determined to vote. He lives in Warner 
Robins, Georgia with his wife of 33 years and has three 
children and one grandchild.
    Now we will swear in the witnesses.
    Please stand up. Thank you.
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
    All right. Why do we not start with you, Ms. Harrell? Thank 
you for being here.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE SALLY HARRELL, STATE SENATOR 
                   FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA

    Ms. Harrell. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, members of the 
Senate Rules and Administration Committee. Thank you so much 
for coming to Georgia today to hear our story. We desperately 
need your help.
    I am Senator Sally Harrell and I am currently serving my 
fifth term in the Georgia General Assembly, representing the 
northern suburbs of the Atlanta area. In my capacity as a 
minority member of the Senate Ethics Committee, I have 
deliberated several large and impactful pieces of legislation 
in Georgia, including H.B. 316, which paved the way for a 
state-wide procurement of new computerized voting machines with 
printed ballots, paper ballots; and more recently S.B. 202, the 
bill that just became law in Georgia.
    Though S.B. 202 bears the title ``Senate Bill,'' you might 
be surprised to know that this bill was never vetted by the 
Senate Ethics Committee. When Senate Ethics passed S.B. 202, it 
was a two-page bill addressing absentee ballot applications. 
The House replaced this bill with a new 98-page voting bill, 
and the only vote that the Senate had on this new bill was to 
agree or disagree with the changes made by the House. There was 
virtually no chance to debate this bill in the Senate committee 
or on the Senate floor.
    The Senate Ethics Committee did, however, consider dozens 
of election bills during the 2021 session. Some of these bills 
would have resulted in obstacles to voting much more severe 
than what finally passed in S.B. 202. For example, the majority 
party proposed ending Georgia's Department of Motor Vehicles 
automatic voter registration. They attempted to eliminate 
Sunday early voting, and thus the popular program ``Souls to 
the Polls'' events that are found in our Black communities. 
They also tried to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, which 
they themselves had enacted when they gained power in 2005.
    All these discussions were held in committee rooms eerily 
void of the public. This was due to the pandemic, but it was 
also due to constant last-minute meeting notices, as well as 
committee hearings scheduled before dawn and after dusk. 
Election bills were rushed through and voted on along party 
lines. The Georgia Secretary of State, who oversees our 
elections, was never asked to address the committee. Minority 
party committee members often saw bills for the first time 
minutes before they were voted on. Questions addressed to bill 
authors by minority members were frequently answered 
dishonestly and disrespectfully. It was very apparent to me 
that there is no required oath to tell the truth in the Georgia 
General Assembly.
    I remember asking a legislator, the one who wanted to end 
automatic voter registration, if he could explain his claim 
that this bill increased voter confidence. He simply said ``it 
does.'' I changed the wording of my question a bit and asked 
him again; same answer, ``it does.'' In the 9-years I have 
served in the Georgia General Assembly, I have never seen such 
blatant disregard for the legislative process as I did with 
S.B. 202, and I see my colleagues nodding their heads with me.
    Georgia's legislative process needs reform much more so 
than our voting laws do. It is the voters who will suffer.
    One of my constituents worked the polls at a library in my 
district which, prior to the election, had been an early voting 
location. She told me the story of a young man who came to the 
library on his lunch hour, thinking he could vote, because he 
had voted at this library in the past. However, since it was 
Election Day, he was supposed to vote in his home precinct, 
which was way across town. Because he could not take more time 
off work, he cast a provisional ballot. Now, under S.B. 202, 
that man's vote would have been thrown out because it was cast 
before 5 p.m. Had the majority party not rushed through S.B. 
202 with total disregard to public comment and input from 
experts, the Georgia General Assembly could be holding hearings 
right now, learning and studying actual problems with our 
election system, rather than reacting from fallout from 
conspiracy theories and lies.
    Georgia is not unique. Election laws are currently being 
written all across the Nation. Obviously, from our previous 
testimony, they are even mimicking Georgia's laws. But where 
you live should not determine how hard it is to vote or whether 
or not your vote counts. This is the time to take action to 
pass national voting standards, and I implore you to do so.
    Thank you for allowing me to take this time to address you 
this morning, and I do look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Harrell was submitted for 
the record.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you very much.
    Ms. Butler?

OPENING STATEMENT OF HELEN BUTLER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGIA, 
         COALITION FOR THE PEOPLE'S AGENDA, MADISON, GA

    Ms. Butler. Good morning, Chairwoman Klobuchar and members 
of the committee. Thank you so much for allowing me this 
opportunity.
    Of course, the People's Agenda is a non-partisan, non-
profit organization founded by the late Dr. Joseph Lowery, and 
it is made up of representatives from diverse organizations 
throughout the state. We have always been dedicated to fighting 
for the voting rights of Georgia's citizens through public 
education, training, advocacy, and litigation.
    In the wake of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder 
decision, and due to the lack of the pre-clearance process, we 
have been forced to spend even more time and resources fighting 
discriminatory voting laws and policies and practices at the 
state and local levels.
    It is ironic that 56 years later, we are still fighting 
those same voter suppression laws that our founder, Dr. Lowery, 
along with Congressman Lewis, Dr. King, and so many others, 
fought against in 1965.
    Today we are faced with new laws passed by the majority 
Republican Georgia General Assembly in the wake of efforts by 
the former president and his allies to undermine the confidence 
in Georgia's elections with false and misleading claims of 
massive voter fraud. The majority party of the General Assembly 
wasted no time using that disinformation campaign as the 
foundation for passing numerous new restrictions on the right 
to vote in Georgia.
    My written testimony that I submitted to you outlines 
numerous burdensome and arbitrary requirements and other 
changes that directly attack voting methods being used by Black 
voters and other voters of color in Georgia in greater numbers. 
These changes also impact non-profit civic engagement 
organizations like ours which devotes substantial time and 
resources to register, educate, and mobilize communities of 
color and assist voters before and on Election Day through our 
election protection program.
    But today I want to talk about my service as a member of 
the Morgan County Board of Elections. I served there from 2010 
until my termination as a board member on July 1, 2021, 
following the passage of a separate law placing the power to 
appoint board members in the hands of a majority white and 
Republican Board of County Commissioners instead of its 
longstanding bipartisan appointment process.
    During my time on the Morgan County Board of Elections, I 
took my position as a board member very seriously and worked to 
ensure the administration of elections in Morgan County was 
done fairly for all voters regardless of partisan preference, 
race, or ethnic origin. We certified elections, determined 
which polling locations should be open. We counted the absentee 
ballots. We decided whose provisional ballots counted. We never 
had a violation during my time that I served on this board.
    The reconstitution of county boards of elections to ensure 
majority party control and the takeover provisions under S.B. 
202 allowing for the majority party in the legislature to 
dictate policy by the state election board to take over the 
day-to-day administration of county boards of elections and 
remove county supervisors of elections raises the specter that 
the goal will be to nullify the lawful votes of Georgia voters 
when the majority party is not satisfied with the outcome of an 
election, thereby achieving the result that the former 
president was unable to obtain in 2020.
    In short, the numerous changes in S.B. 202 attacking voting 
methods increasingly used by Black voters and other voters of 
color, taken in conjunction with the undemocratic takeover of 
boards of elections, may lead to the partisan nullification of 
lawful votes clearly demonstrates why federal standards must be 
enacted to restore the full protection of the Voting Rights 
Act, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act; S. 
1, the For the People Act; and S. 2155, Preventing Election 
Subversion Act of 2021.
    It is critical. It was not just in my county of Morgan 
County that they have taken over control. They are now looking 
at other locations to take over. We worked too hard to ensure 
equal and fair access to the ballot to turn back now.
    I would be happy to answer your questions, and thank you 
for your time.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Butler was submitted for the 
record.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you, Ms. Butler. Do you want to 
explain--your county is a rural county, right? Where are you 
located?
    Ms. Butler. It is definitely a rural county. It is 60 miles 
east of Atlanta going toward Augusta.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Okay. I mean, not everyone is from 
Georgia here, so I thought it would be good to clarify that.
    Okay. Mr. Segarra?

               OPENING STATEMENT OF JOSE SEGARRA,
                       WARNER ROBINS, GA

    Mr. Segarra. Good morning, Madam Chairwoman Klobuchar and 
members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity you 
have given me to express my voting experience in the 2020 
general election.
    I came to Georgia as a United States Air Force officer in 
August 1992. I served in the Air Force between 1986 and 1992 
and served during the Gulf War. I still work for the Air Force 
at Robins Air Force Base.
    Voting is sacred to me. I see the voting process as one 
that should be as easy as possible for all eligible voters, and 
I feel like voting rules should be everything but in no way to 
restrict people's freedom to vote.
    This past year, I had to go to extraordinary lengths to 
accomplish the simple but consequential task of casting my 
ballot. I, along with thousands of Georgians, had to wait for 
hours in order to cast my vote. In fact, I had to go to the 
polls twice in order to vote.
    The first time, I went to the closest polling place open 
the first day of early voting. That was Perry Courthouse in 
Perry, Georgia. I went with an elderly couple in their 70's. We 
arrived at 7:15 in the morning, Tuesday, October 13th, knowing 
that the voting polls will open at 8 a.m. We thought that we 
arrived with plenty of time to vote quickly and be on our way.
    To our surprise, there was already a line around the 
courthouse, snaking all the way around the block. One of my 
elderly friends is a knee replacement candidate and is 
diabetic. His wife, a retired teacher from the State of 
Georgia, has an acute arthritis condition and uses a walker. I 
was worried about them standing in line and going up the stairs 
as there was no separate line for people with disabilities. We 
knew that they could not sustain waiting in that line, so we 
left without voting. They ended up voting by mail.
    A week later, on October 27, 2020, a Tuesday, my wife and I 
went back to early vote. This time we went to the Middle 
Georgia Technical College in Warner Robins, which was open only 
for the last two weeks of early voting. We arrived around 3 
p.m. My wife had a co-worker who recently moved from Puerto 
Rico and was new to Georgia. She registered to vote but had no 
previous experience voting in Georgia and was confused about 
the process. We arranged to meet her at the time we arrived at 
the line at the polling place.
    Once again, the line outside went around the building in 
the open, with no protection from the elements. After an hour-
and-a-half standing outside, we made it inside the building, 
finally, just to find out that the line inside the building was 
just as long as the line outside the building. My wife's co-
worker became concerned that she would not be on time to pick 
up her baby at the childcare center, which closed at 6 p.m. We 
ended up casting our ballots around 6 p.m., hours, three hours, 
after we arrived. We learned later that her husband had to take 
time off from work and was able to pick up the baby.
    We were able to handle those three hours standing in line, 
but we know that not everybody can. Election observers reported 
that several people fainted while in line in Savannah and in 
Atlanta. I have also learned that between 2012 and 2018, 214 
polling locations were closed in the State of Georgia, mostly 
affecting minority voters, making this issue even worse.
    Senators, this is wrong. It should not take so long to 
vote.
    According to the Presidential Commission on Election 
Administration, no citizen should have to wait more than 30 
minutes to vote. I had to wait six times that measure, and 
other citizens of this state had to wait even more. It is 
unacceptable that in Houston, Cobb, and Chatham Counties, a 
person will have to wait half a day or miss a full day of work, 
or maybe two, just to exercise their constitutional right.
    Our government needs to ensure that we have adequate 
systems and processes in place to allow every eligible voter to 
cast their ballot without such undue burdens. We need to have 
an adequate number of polling places, properly resourced and 
open for as expansive a period of time as possible, especially 
after regular duty hours.
    Voters should have the opportunity to vote on Saturdays or 
Sundays. After all, if malls are open on Sundays, why not 
voting places? Lots of people work on Saturday, so Sunday needs 
to be an option as well.
    It would also make it much easier for some people to vote 
if Election Day were to be a holiday.
    In conclusion, I served my country as a member of the Armed 
Forces and continue to serve by encouraging voting in my 
community. I am here to respectfully ask for your help, 
Senators, in protecting the freedom of all voters to vote 
regardless of their political affiliation by passing 
legislation that will address the unacceptably long waiting in 
lines and to ensure that every eligible voter has the 
opportunity to participate, not just those of us who can take 
three hours off from work and stand in line, and so that nobody 
has to choose between a paycheck and exercising a much sacred 
constitutional right.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Segarra was submitted for 
the record.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Segarra.
    Thanks to all our witnesses.
    I do want to make clear that we, of course, gave the 
opportunity for our colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
to provide witnesses to defend the law, but they chose not to 
have anyone here, or had trouble finding anyone, to defend this 
law.
    With that, I would like to ask you, Mr. Segarra, as someone 
who has served our country, shared your story about what 
happened in Houston County in south central Georgia, when you 
signed up to serve our country, to join the Air Force, you did 
not have to wait in line; is that correct?
    Mr. Segarra. That is correct, ma'am.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Most people you know who served, they 
were probably welcome to serve and to put their life on the 
front line, and they did not have to stand in a waiting line.
    Mr. Segarra. That is correct.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Do you agree that voters should not 
have to wait in line to participate in our democracy?
    Mr. Segarra. Most definitely.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Okay. How does that make you feel 
when you have to go to those lengths not only for yourself and 
your family but your neighbors and friends and seniors to help 
them, when, in fact, you have served our country on the front 
line? Tell me a little bit about that, your decision to serve 
our country, and then your devotion to our democracy.
    Mr. Segarra. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico in a 
family with military background. My grandfather served in the 
front line in Europe during World War II, in the front line in 
Korea, and also in Vietnam. He was my inspiration to join the 
military, and I took an oath to protect and defend the 
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign 
and domestic. As citizens of this Nation, we have the moral 
right and sacred duty to vote. I felt awful that I was standing 
in line and was not able to cast my vote, nor the people that I 
brought with me.
    I saw people in the line waiting, some people in that line 
coming into the parking lot and seeing the size of the line and 
leaving. That is not acceptable. So much blood was shed in 
those battles, and the minimum we can do as citizens is to be 
allowed to exercise freely our right to vote.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you. Yesterday I was in Cobb 
County with Stacey Abrams and we heard very similar stories 
from across Georgia with the lines and people getting so hot in 
the sun, and the fact that this bill would now deny the right 
of non-partisan volunteers to provide water would make things, 
I would say, even worse.
    Let me go to you, Ms. Butler. You saw many voters cast 
ballots last year as a former elections official in rural 
Morgan County. Do you agree that the new Georgia law will 
result in fewer voters casting a ballot in future elections, 
and how do you think it is going to impact the citizens in your 
county?
    Ms. Butler. It definitely will make it more difficult, 
barriers, hurdles that they will have to get across to even 
exercise their right to vote. For instance, in rural Georgia, 
you do not have broadband. Now you have photo I.D. You have to 
make copies of those. You can not upload them on a portal for 
the absentee ballot portal that is supposed to be put in place. 
There is not broadband that people have in those rural areas 
that will be able to do that. To even make copies for each and 
every election, you have to make a copy of that I.D. in order 
to be able to use the process of absentee voting. In COVID, as 
it is still flaring up again, we know that it may still be in 
place for this next election cycle that is coming up.
    But it makes it more difficult for people to really 
exercise their right. For me, being on the board, having people 
that are able to look at the process and say this is how we 
should do it is not going to be available as well, because you 
will have these partisan boards that will be instituted by a 
one-sided party, for my county exactly.
    It will take away the ability of people to have more 
polling locations, drop boxes inside, the hours that they will 
be able to vote----
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Right, limiting the hours.
    Ms. Butler. The farmers, you have people that do farming, 
they work late hours. They will not be able to get there by 5 
o'clock. If they do, they lose revenue. Those are the kinds of 
things that will happen as a result of these barriers that are 
put in place. They may be able to get over the hurdles but, my 
God, what kind of barriers will they have to do to get there to 
that, paying somebody to take you to the polling locations for 
those hours? You can only use a drop box in early voting----
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Early voting locations.
    Ms. Butler [continuing]. locations.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Following those hours. You have the 
farmer who wanted to go there afterwards, those drop boxes will 
not even be allowed to receive votes, which is the whole idea 
of a drop box.
    Ms. Butler. Correct.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. In addition to less drop boxes.
    Ms. Butler. Exactly. If you miss the early voting period, 
you will not be able to use the drop box process at all. That 
is a problem with this bill.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Okay. Thank you very much.
    Senator Harrell, another strange thing in this bill--I 
guess not strange but intentional--is that they brought back 
the idea that you have to put your birthdate on an envelope; is 
that correct? The inner envelope.
    Ms. Harrell. That is right. There are several things that 
you have to write on the envelope, and then the flap covers 
that information. But one of the reasons that the birthdate was 
removed is because people got confused and instead of putting 
their birthdate, they put the date that they filled out the 
application.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. I would think they would think that 
date was more relevant at that moment, yes.
    Ms. Harrell. Right, exactly. That led to confusion. They 
have again legislated situations that are going to increase the 
confusion on the part of the voters and give the election 
officials, which are going to be more partisan, more reason to 
reject those ballots.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. I hope people watching today see this 
pattern here, because a lot of focus has been on the water, and 
we are grateful to Senator Ossoff for the bill to address that, 
but we know there is even more. A lot of this is about 
confusion. The different rules that were set that you can not 
vote on Saturdays and Sundays in the runoff but you can in the 
general election, you can imagine someone might have voted that 
way, they think they can, and then they show up and they find 
out they can not; the date going back on the envelope; the 
changing hours and polling locations that are open for one 
election and not the other.
    Could you briefly talk about, Senator Harrell, how that 
just leads to people just turning away from voting?
    Ms. Harrell. Sure. In general, this bill is just making it 
harder to vote. In 2020, 26 percent of our voters voted by 
mail, and that was due to the pandemic. I assume that that will 
probably go back down. But many of the people who voted by mail 
did so because they knew the process was confusing but they 
knew they knew how to do it, and it would mean that if they 
voted by mail they did not have to show up in person to vote, 
which would keep the lines shorter.
    The more you confuse the vote-by-mail process, the more 
people are going to be in line to vote in person. When they can 
not file those absentee ballots the weekend before the 
election, those ballots have to be canceled in person, which 
gums up the lines more.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Let me just ask you one last 
question. Some people claim that I.D. requirements were needed 
to prevent fraud, but we know that election fraud is 
exceedingly rare. In fact, as the New York Times editorial 
board noted, Oregon, home of my good friend Senator Merkley, 
has sent out more than 100 million mail-in ballots since 2000 
and has documented only about a dozen cases of proven fraud. 
Rounded to the seventh decimal point, that is .0000001 of all 
votes cast.
    Do you think, just based on what you know of the 
legislative discussion in Georgia, do you think that the new 
identification requirements in S.B. 202 in Georgia were really 
intended to prevent fraud?
    Ms. Harrell. No, I actually do not. We had a number of 
Republicans who stated that, in fact.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Really? They said that they were not 
intended to? Because I thought they were saying they were.
    Ms. Harrell. No. In fact, one of my colleagues in the 
House, Representative Alan Powell, actually in a committee 
meeting said to somebody who was testifying, ``You are correct, 
it was not found,'' meaning fraud. ``It is just in a lot of 
people's minds that there was.'' He actually said that in a 
committee meeting. It is just not--it is really not there, it 
is just in a lot of people's minds that there was. This 
legislation is based on things of the imagination in people's 
minds.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Much worse stuff than that. I would 
call that, as a former prosecutor, a smoking gun piece of 
evidence, where you have someone admitting that there really is 
not fraud but they are going ahead anyway.
    Thank you.
    Senator Merkley?
    Senator Merkley. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for 
your testimony.
    Mr. Segarra, you mentioned that a lot of voting locations 
were eliminated. I think you said hundreds of voting locations 
that had a bigger effect, if I understood you correctly, on 
communities of color. Did I understand that correctly?
    Mr. Segarra. That is correct.
    Senator Merkley. We have a bill, the 1965 Voting Rights 
Act, which says that denial of the ability to vote or the 
abridgement to vote is unlawful when it is targeted at 
communities of color. It sounds like, certainly at least in 
spirit and perhaps in law, a violation of the Voting Rights 
Act.
    Mr. Segarra. That is correct.
    Senator Merkley. I am very struck that there was a 
significant factor of using long lines and fewer voting 
locations targeted at communities of color, and it is just 
wrong on every moral, ethical, and perhaps legal level. That is 
an issue that should be fixed.
    I wanted to ask State Senator Harrell, in those 80 pages of 
Senate Bill 202--202? Do I have the number right?
    Ms. Harrell. Yes.
    Senator Merkley. Did they address having a fair number of 
precincts and a solution so that people would not have to wait 
in line, so that everyone would have a fair and free and equal 
chance to vote?
    Ms. Harrell. There actually is a piece of--a section in the 
bill that says that if it is documented that people have to 
wait for a certain amount of time, that during the next 
election that precinct would be split. But that is a bit of a 
smoking gun as well, because another tactic that has been used 
in the past for voter suppression is the changing of precinct 
locations, okay. Voters are creatures--people are creatures of 
habit. They tend to--if they did something one way once, they 
think that that is supposed to happen the same way the next 
time, and that is logical. The voting location changes or if 
the precinct gets split, they go to where they used to vote and 
wait in line, and their name is not on the roll, so then they 
have to go someplace else. Or they go someplace and it is 
closed and they do not know where to go.
    Senator Merkley. Right. Promising to do it in a future 
election is pretty irrelevant because they could change the 
precinct locations anyway in all sorts of other fashions.
    One of the points of confusion I also heard was that the 
early voting locations were not necessarily the same as 
Election Day locations, and that created confusion. Does the 
bill that was written address that real problem?
    Ms. Harrell. No, it does not, and that is a huge issue for 
voters, showing up where they voted early and finding out that 
they can not vote there, like the gentleman that I described.
    Senator Merkley. In fact, they made it worse because they 
said if you vote out of precinct on Election Day, too bad, your 
vote is burned up, wasted, tossed aside.
    Ms. Harrell. Unless it is after 5 o'clock.
    Senator Merkley. Shredded. That is really completely 
outrageous.
    As the Chairwoman pointed out, in Oregon we have had vote 
by mail. It was initiated by Republicans in our state who 
wanted to increase turnout in the Republican Party. We have 
vote by mail in Utah, a very red state. This has not been a 
partisan issue at all in that it serves all citizens well, and 
it is an antidote to the antics on Election Day, because what 
we see across the Nation is it is so easy to discourage or 
obstruct voting on Election Day. You move the location. You put 
the location where there is not enough parking. You understaff 
it so people are in long lines.
    We heard yesterday about folks who had waited, one man, 
six-and-a-half hours; one woman, seven hours to vote. People 
have children to pick up at daycare. They have jobs they can 
not be apart from. They have health conditions.
    Are these Election Day tactics really basically another new 
form of Jim Crow antics to try to prevent Black Georgians from 
voting? Ms. Butler?
    Ms. Butler. I would say yes, it is. It is for people of 
color. It was put in place just for that purpose. Long lines 
and making it more difficult is just a barrier.
    Senator Merkley. Well, I was struck by the testimony that 
the no-excuse vote by mail was implemented while the state, as 
I understand it, was majority Republican in the legislature, in 
the House and the Senate, and I believe the Governorship as 
well, in 2005. What magically happened?
    As pointed out in Oregon, we have found fraud is 
infinitesimally rare, and when it happens, that fraud is 
normally somebody who moved into Oregon from another state, so 
they vote in an earlier primary, then they vote in a later 
primary, which they are not supposed to do, or something of 
that nature. We are talking, even though a small number of 
cases, to the seventh decimal point rare. But was something 
dramatically different in Georgia that suddenly vote by mail 
became a documented source of corruption or illegality?
    Ms. Butler. Well, it was primarily used beforehand by non-
people of color. This time, because of the pandemic, a lot of 
people of color decided that they were not going to get exposed 
to COVID, so they used the vote by mail process.
    We were pushing vote by mail. We wanted people to be safe. 
We wanted our election workers to be safe. Therefore, we all 
did vote by mail. We have been pushing for decades now Souls to 
the Polls or vote from the comfort of your pew. I did a program 
with faith-based organizations where we would teach them how to 
use the absentee voting process and do it as a Sunday activity 
where they all fill out their ballots at home, bring it, put it 
in the mail bin, and the mailman picks it up, and they will 
have voted from the comfort of the pew with their pastors. That 
is a process we were teaching them to do.
    Senator Merkley. When this tool was primarily utilized by 
White voters, it was promoted and celebrated. But when Black 
Georgians said we too will use this tool, suddenly it came 
under attack by the legislature.
    Ms. Butler. Yes.
    Senator Merkley. I am just extraordinarily appalled by 
this. Because we were the first vote by mail state, we in 
Oregon pay a lot of attention to this, and there are multiple 
provisions which I will not go through because you are all 
familiar with them making it harder to do vote by mail, from 
drop boxes to I.D. requirements, so on and so forth. But this 
is of extraordinary concern that here we are in the year 2021, 
56 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed, when we 
thought we had finally come to the point of a full 
understanding in America that we are all about fair and free 
elections for every American to participate in, new forms of 
obstruction. They are more subtle. I think Georgia was the 
first state in the Union to produce a poll tax to try to 
prevent poor individuals from voting and communities of color 
from voting. Well, here we are with a modern version of that, 
and it is deeply disturbing, and I thank you all for your 
testimony.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you, Senator Merkley.
    Senator Padilla?
    Senator Padilla. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    I want to pick up on an issue that Senator Merkley raised 
about the partisanship versus bipartisanship nature of this 
whole conversation. When we are in Washington, in the Capitol, 
many of our Republican colleagues talk about the need for 
bipartisanship if we are going to be amending or changing 
voting rights laws or election laws and how Democrats should 
not pass voting rights protections on a party-line basis. That 
is what they tell us.
    Now, look, I agree. We should not have to. Defending our 
fundamental right to vote should not be a partisan issue. It 
should be a non-partisan issue. Just last week in a Judiciary 
Committee hearing, I reminded our colleagues on both sides of 
the aisle of this radical concept I think we all were taught in 
high school Government class, that our democracy works best 
when as many eligible people participate. We actually went 
around the table with the witnesses, both Democratic witnesses 
and Republican witnesses, and asked a question, if they agreed 
or disagreed. Of course, they all agreed. Our democracy is 
stronger when more eligible people participate, not less.
    But unfortunately, our Republican colleagues' deeds do not 
match their words. They will say publicly that they support 
voting rights, but their actions show something different.
    Now, indeed, when a lot of our Republican colleagues in the 
Senate minority held up democracy expanding legislation like 
the For the People Act in Washington, they stay silent when 
their Republican colleagues in statehouse after statehouse 
after statehouse across the country are ramming through voter 
suppression laws without input from Democratic colleagues in 
those very same statehouses.
    In the news these days is dozens of legislators from Texas 
that have left the state to break quorum in an effort to block 
these voter suppression laws. They are in Washington, bringing 
their advocacy there. Texas is the most recent example, but 
clearly in calendar year 2021 Georgia was the first.
    I have a question for Senator Harrell. I know you touched 
on this in your earlier testimony. You serve on the Ethics 
Committee and you saw the change in S.B. 202 from an original 
two-page bill to a 98-page bill that was passed by the House, 
then by the Senate. Can you describe, just shed a little bit 
more light on how bipartisan or collaborative the process was 
in the Georgia statehouse, or how it was not?
    Ms. Harrell. There was not an ounce of bipartisanship, and 
there was not back when we had the voting machine legislation 
either. Amendments were brought forward. They were immediately 
opposed. Zero amendments were accepted.
    I have never seen anything like it, really. It is extremely 
disappointing.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you. Because I care so much, for 
those who may not be aware, prior to joining the Senate I 
served as California Secretary of State. I served as the chief 
elections officer for the state with the largest population, 
the most diverse population. I am proud that there we built the 
most inclusive democracy, maintaining the security and 
integrity of our elections but making it easier for eligible 
voters to register, to stay registered, and to be able to cast 
their ballot.
    I have tried to figure out where our Republican colleagues 
are going with this or what they are thinking, and I have heard 
in event after event, in committee after committee, their 
mantra. They will start a lot of their presentations and 
discussions and debates with a simple line that they are just 
trying to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Have you 
heard that?
    Now, the phrase clearly made its way here to Georgia, too. 
I just want to highlight that we all have got the second part 
down right, the harder to cheat, because study after study, 
investigation after investigation, commission after commission 
all show the same thing, as Senator Merkley said: Voter fraud 
in America is exceedingly, exceedingly rare. Election official 
after election official has stood up for the integrity of the 
process, including the Georgia Republican Secretary of State, 
saying publicly there is zero evidence of any widespread or 
systematic voter fraud. He was standing up to pressure from the 
former president of the United States.
    Yet, we see Republicans forcing through bills, as I 
mentioned, in statehouse after statehouse, including S.B. 202 
here in Georgia. It makes us wonder what is their true motive.
    But they have forgotten the first part of their equation, 
the easier to vote. Let me not reference the Voting Rights Act 
of 1965. Let me insert into the conversation here today the 
National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which was adopted on a 
bipartisan basis. Oh, how times have changed.
    But let me read Section 2 of the National Voter 
Registration Act, and I will be brief here. In the findings, 
``The Congress finds that the right of citizens of the United 
States to vote is a fundamental right.'' It goes on to say, 
``It is the duty of the federal, state, and local governments 
to promote the exercise of that right.'' That is pretty clear 
to me.
    Should we not be better focused, if we have the election 
security piece down, putting more energy and effort onto what 
it is that truly makes it easier for eligible people to vote 
and focus on the issues of long lines, focus on the issues of 
unfair provisional ballot policies, focus on maybe making it so 
that more people can vote by mail without needing an excuse, 
without having to be of a certain age, all these things?
    Again, and maybe it was for Senator Harrell, and then we 
will go to Ms. Butler and Mr. Segarra, one or two examples of 
S.B. 202 as are we making it easier to vote, or are we 
violating the National Voter Registration Act and not 
facilitating people's participation in our democracy?
    Senator?
    Ms. Harrell. Yes, I wanted to actually correct myself. When 
I said zero percent bipartisan support, I would like to change 
that to two percent because I remembered that there were two 
Democratic bills, small Democratic bills that were included in 
Senate Bill 202. One was to allow absentee ballots to be 
scanned prior to Election Day in order to speed up the 
counting. This was something that was done during emergency 
rule that they codified. The second was a colleague of mine had 
a bill that required signage to be put up, 4x4 signs at 
precinct places that had closed or were changed, and that bill 
was included in Senate Bill 202. Since I am testifying under 
oath, I wanted to clarify and up the zero percent to two 
percent.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Excellent.
    Anyone else want to add anything?
    Ms. Butler. You said what would make it easy to vote?
    Senator Padilla. Or harder. I am just trying to----
    Ms. Butler. Well, one of the hard things, of course, is out 
of the provisional ballot process, out-of-precinct voting would 
make it more difficult for people to exercise their right to 
vote, as opposed to what is required under HAVA, to allow them 
to do that. To me, that is a provision that needs to be 
corrected to allow people to vote provisionally.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Mr. Segarra?
    Mr. Segarra. I think we have seen examples of the bad. I 
think one example of the good is expand the early voting window 
for the early voting to three weeks. I think it is very 
important that people have more time to exercise that 
constitutional right.
    Senator Padilla. I will just end with a quick note because 
I know I am way over my time, but before 5:00 versus after 
5:00, some have said that is completely arbitrary. I do not 
think so. I have seen elections, not just as an elections 
official, not just as a candidate, not just as a voter, but as 
an organizer. For working folks, there is a surge when you get 
out of work to vote on Election Day. Those who are impacted 
before and after, it is not proportional. Thank you.
    Ms. Butler. Our first responders would not be able to 
actually exercise their right to vote.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Right. Very good.
    Ms. Harrell. I actually filed a bill that would allow 
people to vote in any precinct. We do that during early voting 
already. You can go anywhere in the county and cast your vote.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. In the county. You are talking about 
in the county.
    Ms. Harrell. In the county, in the county. You can vote 
anywhere in the county during early voting. We have the 
technology now to do that. The old precinct idea of voting at 
your polling place was before we had that technology. I 
actually filed a bill that would allow you to vote in any 
precinct within your county on Election Day.
    Senator Padilla. Be happy to answer any questions for any 
of your colleagues if they are wondering, because Colorado has 
it, what they call Vote Centers. California does, Arizona, 
Nevada, during the early voting period.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. You see why we are so lucky to have 
Senator Padilla on this committee. Not only does he know his 
stuff, but he takes the red-eye to get here.
    Next up we have got Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for 
bringing the Committee to the great State of Georgia. Thank you 
to our panel for your testimony today.
    I want to note that it is just three days since we marked 
the first anniversary of the passing of Congressman John Lewis, 
a man who had his skull fractured marching across the Edmund 
Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, his self-sacrifice and the 
sacrifice of hundreds of others that day, paving the way for 
passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As you all know well, 
Congressman Lewis was proud of the progress that our country 
has made, but he also urged vigilance, because the right to 
vote can never be taken for granted, and that vigilance is 
seriously needed today.
    As Georgia's state legislature has passed restrictions on 
ballot access, surgically targeting Black voters in the State 
of Georgia, restricting access to early voting in runoff 
elections, restricting access to absentee ballots, making it a 
crime punishable by up to one year in prison for a non-partisan 
Good Samaritan volunteer to hand a bottle of water to a voter 
unjustly forced to wait 5 hours to vote, and these restrictions 
are not meant to solve any real problem observed in the 
administration of Georgia elections. The only real problem for 
Georgia's GOP is that they lost.
    But do not take it from Democrats. Do not take it from me. 
Take it from them. Take it from our Republican Lieutenant 
Governor, Jeff Duncan. Take it from our Republican Secretary of 
State, Brad Raffensperger. Take it from the Chief Operations 
Officer at the Secretary of State's office, Gabriel Sterling, 
who all avowed repeatedly that there was no evidence of 
widespread fraud, that it was a secure election conducted 
successfully.
    S.B. 202, passed in this state, is a gross and transparent 
abuse of power, partisan legislation intended to make it harder 
for some voters to vote to protect Republican power in this 
state, and we as the United States Congress, under Article 1, 
Section 4 of the Constitution, have the full authority to 
establish minimum standards for ballot access across this 
country to protect the right to vote and to prevent state 
legislatures from abusing their legislative power for partisan 
ends.
    I want to ask you, Ms. Butler, to shed some light on the 
intent of this law which, as I mentioned, restricts early 
voting in runoff elections, restricts access to vote by mail. 
What were the demographics of voters, Ms. Butler, in the 2020 
election who made heaviest use of early voting and voting by 
mail?
    Ms. Butler. Well, early voting in Georgia is very popular. 
Over 60 percent of people exercised that method of voting. 
Certainly it was people of color--African Americans, Asian, 
Latino--that really used that method to vote because of the 
pandemic. Beforehand, most of the time, we would vote in person 
early voting. But this time we used absentee voting, we used 
early voting. We used both of those tools to really exercise 
our right to vote. The most impact will be for people of color, 
those language assisted, those people in the field that are 
working who do not speak English fluently. They will be most 
impacted by a lot of S.B. 202 in terms of what I.D. I am going 
to produce, how many times I produce them, that kind of thing. 
It is really aimed and targeted, if you look at all of the 
polling changes that happened within the state, those are 
targeted to people of color.
    Senator Ossoff. Is it reasonable, Ms. Butler, to presume 
that these restrictions on access to voting by mail will drive 
more people to need to vote in person?
    Ms. Butler. Of course it will. I mean, if you can not 
exercise the absentee ballot process because you do not have 
the I.D., and by the Secretary of State's own words there are 
approximately three percent of the seven million registered 
voters who did not use an I.D. during that process, that is 
approximately 200,000 people that can change any outcome of any 
election, but most of those people are people of color who do 
not have access to the I.D. that is required. Yes, it will 
force them to stand in line. Of course, all of the polling 
locations that have long lines have been documented to be in 
places where people of color exercise their right to vote. It 
would most definitely impact them, whether it be in Randolph 
County in rural Georgia, whether it be in Gwinnett County, 
where there is the most diverse population in Georgia.
    It will definitely force people to be in long lines to be 
able to exercise their right to vote. All of the confusion 
around the rules is definitely something that will be a 
problem. To get an I.D., driver services are not located in 
every county. Certain counties would have to drive to other 
counties. They only have it on certain days, they only have it 
on certain hours. Everything will make it difficult for people 
to be able to exercise their right as an absentee ballot and 
force them to stand in long lines that we saw in the general 
election, as well as some of the runoff locations where people 
had to stand for seven, eight, nine hours to exercise their 
right to vote.
    Senator Ossoff. Ms. Butler, just to get it very clearly for 
the record again, we are restricting access via this partisan 
legislation in Georgia passed by the Republican state 
legislature to voting by mail, driving more people to need to 
vote in person, while at the same time restricting access to 
early voting in runoff elections, driving up the time folks 
will have to wait.
    By the way, as I mentioned to you once, Ms. Butler, my wife 
and I had to wait four-and-a-half hours to vote in the primary 
last year. We vote at a majority Black precinct. We had to wait 
four-and-a-half hours to cast our ballots. I was on the ballot. 
That line was wrapped around the location for hours and hours 
and hours.
    Again for the record, Ms. Butler, which voters--and this 
has been documented extensively--are typically made to wait 
much, much longer to vote in our state?
    Ms. Butler. The people that wait the longest in this state 
are people of color--Black, Latino, Asian American, and other 
people of color.
    Senator Ossoff. Ms. Butler, is it correct that S.B. 202 
allows partisan appointees at the state election board?
    Ms. Butler. It does.
    Senator Ossoff. To replace, reconstitute, and take over 
county election boards?
    Ms. Butler. It does, and that is the most egregious part of 
S.B. 202, because, as you know, those local boards control the 
implementation of the process, from registration to the 
counting of the ballots to the certification of the election. 
Where the polling locations are going to be, who is going to be 
working those polling locations. I can determine whether I am 
going to have the hours of early voting from 9 to 5 or 7 to 7, 
but it is arbitrary, it gives a lot of leeway.
    But again, if I do not like the outcome of a type of 
election, then with the reconstitution of the boards, they can 
take over and put in place a person that really has no 
knowledge of the process and can just implement what they want 
to have.
    Senator Ossoff. A partisan appointee can now take over 
local election boards. Is it the case, Ms. Butler, that our own 
Republican Secretary of State in this most recent election was 
threatened with political and personal reprisal and potential 
criminal prosecution by the sitting president of the United 
States if he did not ``find the votes'' to overturn the will of 
the people in Georgia?
    Ms. Butler. That is correct.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you to our witnesses.
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
    I think we have a little time for maybe 3 or 4 minutes of 
questions. I will let Senator Merkley start.
    But I first want to ask unanimous consent to enter into the 
record three letters that urge Congress to pass the For the 
People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act--
mentioned by you, Ms. Butler; thank you--to protect the freedom 
to vote. One is submitted by the Southern Poverty Law Center 
Action Fund, which highlights the challenges many southern 
voters face in accessing the ballot box and the need for 
federal legislation to prevent this. Another is submitted by 
the League of Women Voters of Georgia, which outlines the 
restrictive measures in S.B. 202 and again the need for federal 
legislation. A final letter is submitted by 17 chapters of 
Indivisible in Georgia, representing over 9,200 Georgians, 
which underscores the need for democracy reform to also include 
campaign finance and redistricting reform.
    Without objection, the materials will be entered into the 
record.
    [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
    Senator Ossoff. Madam Chair?
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. You have an objection?
    Senator Ossoff. No, I do not. I would ask unanimous consent 
as well to submit two letters, one from a group of pastors led 
by Bishop Reginald Jackson, 6th District African Methodist 
Episcopal Church, and another from the DeKalb Pastors Christian 
Alliance.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Excellent. Thank you very much. That 
will be entered into the record.
    [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Senator Merkley?
    Senator Merkley. I was thinking about three forms of 
corruption of the election process. One is partisanship, one is 
purging, and one is intimidation. Senator Ossoff I think has 
addressed the partisanship, how important it is to have a non-
partisan process to inspire citizens that you will have fair 
elections. Elections should not be controlled by partisan local 
boards or have the state legislature be able to stack the state 
election board which can then replace the local county boards, 
I think, with a single individual under this. Talk about a 
sense of inappropriateness in terms of the legitimacy of the 
election. I am glad Senator Ossoff has raised that.
    The second on purging, we did hear a lot about the purging 
of the voting rolls in Georgia across the Nation. I am told 
that there was a high error rate, that 63 percent of the 
citizens removed in 2019 were removed incorrectly. Every person 
removed incorrectly is a person who has been denied the right 
to vote.
    On the one hand we have basically virtually zero cases of 
people inappropriately voting vote by mail, but in this case we 
have thousands of individuals who are deliberately excluded 
from voting by being inappropriately removed from the 
registration list. Do we have any sense of how that impacted 
different communities across the state? I will ask whoever 
feels like they have some sense of that.
    Ms. Butler. Well, in terms of the purge process, it was 
predominantly people of color that were purged, if you look at 
the numbers themselves, due to inaccurate addresses or 
mismatches. The People's Agenda filed a lawsuit, along with the 
NAACP, just recently with DeKalb County that was taking people 
off the roll incorrectly, and we have gotten that resolved. But 
that is generally what the makeup of the breakdown of the 
people that are usually purged.
    Senator Merkley. It is certainly important that there not 
be a process that invalidates the right of citizens to vote. I 
understand that the Secretary of State in Georgia has announced 
that over 100,000 voters could have their registration canceled 
this year. The highest numbers are in Democratic-leaning 
counties, so another form of bias being introduced.
    I wanted to turn to that third factor, which is 
intimidation. The issue that has been raised in election law 
from mass challenges, that one individual can challenge the 
legitimacy of basically everybody in that precinct, I believe, 
to be able to vote. Then if they do not appear in court to 
defend themselves, they become guilty until proven innocent. If 
you do not appear in court in 10 days, get notified to appear, 
your vote is invalidated.
    Senator Harrell, would you like to elaborate on what 
problem this is trying to address or, alternatively, what 
unfairness this is creating?
    Ms. Harrell. Yes. I am glad you brought this up because 
this is a section of Senate Bill 202 that most of the people in 
the public do not know about and has not been discussed by the 
media. But it is current law that citizens can challenge 
people's registration or their vote, and this actually happened 
after the November election in my county, in DeKalb County, 
where citizens challenged a long, long list of voter 
registrations. It might be because they compared data bases and 
found somebody with the same name in Georgia as in Arizona, so 
that became a challenge. It turned out that most of those were 
just duplicate names and they had different birth dates or 
things like that, so the challenge did not work. But it took a 
lot of time for the local election boards to deal with those 
challenges at the same time that they were counting and 
recounting votes.
    What Senate Bill 202 does is remove the cap for how many 
people can be challenged. Unlimited numbers of names could be 
challenged now, which gums up the system. It is just one of 
those tactics, another one of those tactics that just takes 
time away from people's jobs, and that is a form of 
intimidation. It is not only a form of intimidation for the 
person whose name is on the list, but it is kind of an 
intimidation for our entire election infrastructure.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Before I turn to Senator Padilla, 
just to add one more question to the topic. For the January 
2021 Senate runoff election, a Texas-based group actually 
challenged the eligibility of over 360,000 Georgians. I assume 
they did not know them. But only a few dozen cases--is this 
true, that they challenged this from Texas?
    Ms. Harrell. I have read that, that there is a specific 
organization that is behind these challenges, True the Vote.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you.
    Senator Padilla?
    Senator Padilla. I have a follow-up election administration 
question for Ms. Butler. But before I do that, I know we talked 
about the transient vote by mail participation in different 
voter groups. I just wanted to add some statistics and data to 
the conversation and for the record.
    We know in Georgia, like in most parts of the country, 
Black voters have historically been less likely to cast their 
ballots by mail than White voters. There is something to be 
said about showing up and watching that ballot go into the 
ballot box. But in recent years that has changed, and 
especially in the 2020 election cycle.
    Black voters' reliance on absentee voting increased 
dramatically, even surpassing that of White voters. In November 
2018, only seven percent of Black voters voted absentee. Two 
years later, November 2020, almost 30 percent cast an absentee 
ballot, compared to about 24 percent for White voters.
    In the 2021 runoff, almost 28 percent of Black voters cast 
an absentee ballot, compared to 22 percent of White voters.
    I appreciate, Ms. Butler, that you keep recognizing it is 
not just Black voters. It is voters of color, communities of 
color more broadly. I know Georgia is increasingly diverse. The 
Latino community registration has increased by 60 percent from 
2016 to today. Latino turnout has grown by about 70 percent in 
the 2020 cycle, and similar trends when it comes to vote by 
mail. The same for Asian voters, Native Americans, et cetera. I 
just thought it was helpful to add some data to the recognition 
of that.
    The elections administration question is this part on 
absentee ballot requests. As I understand, when requesting an 
absentee ballot, voters must now include either their driver's 
license number on the application, and if they do not have 
that, then they have to include a photocopy of some other form 
of I.D. An alternative, for example, is they could use the last 
four Social as part of the voter record, part of maintaining 
accurate voter lists. But when a voter votes that absentee 
ballot, they can include either their driver's license or the 
last four of the Social.
    Why the difference in the criteria for requesting the 
ballot versus submitting the ballot? It seems to me that that 
causes some confusion. That is one question.
    The other part is the change in the drop box policy, not 
just the reduction in the number of drop boxes--we should be 
adding convenience, not less--but also what seems to me like an 
arbitrary deadline of 30 days before the election you can not 
use a drop box anymore?
    Ms. Butler. Let us talk first about the I.D. for requesting 
a ballot versus actually voting the ballot. Yes, there is a 
difference, and it is confusing. If they do not have a Georgia 
driver's license or Georgia I.D., they can use a bank 
statement, a passport, some other document that they have. Or 
they could even get a free photo I.D. for voting. You have that 
in Georgia. But even with the free photo I.D. and the other 
forms of I.D., you have to provide a copy of that I.D. If you 
have a Georgia driver's license or a Georgia I.D., you can just 
put in the number and it can be matched.
    Again, to have the difference between the Social Security 
number and the driver's license is just to confuse the voters 
because now, what do I need for the application, and what do I 
need to actually exercise my ballot? It is just confusing, and 
therefore having more for people to understand what the process 
is. It was not there for any other purpose than that.
    We have been voting for decades now using absentee voting. 
You did not have to provide an I.D., never had to provide an 
I.D. But all of a sudden, because of the turnout in 2020 and 
2021, now we need to provide the I.D. It hurts people with 
disabilities, it hurts older people that we help. There are 
illiterate people. I cannot now help that person complete their 
absentee ballot application that we were doing before, so it 
can only be a relative or a caretaker. I am not their 
caretaker, so I can not do it for them. I can not turn it in 
for them. I used to fax in hundreds of them, applications, and 
they could get it at home, fill it out, and mail it back in. 
They are putting more restrictions on even accessing versus 
casting your ballot.
    It is just confusing to the voter. It will be confusing, 
and we will have to work to make sure people know what the 
process is.
    Senator Padilla. A super-quick comment on the drop boxes?
    Ms. Butler. The drop boxes, again, it was working perfectly 
for the pandemic. It was outside. It was available 24/7. It had 
cameras. They had to pick it up. There is a log where two 
people had to pick it up so there was a witness to it.
    Now it is only during early voting. It is inside the local 
board of elections offices or the early voting locations. You 
have to go inside, which defeats the purpose. As well as the 
Post Office. I mean, you can not rely on the Post Office. If I 
live in Albany, Georgia, it is very rural. My mail goes to 
Florida and then comes back, so I may never get it. That is a 
problem why we should have the drop boxes without the burden of 
it being inside.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Very good. Thanks, Senator Padilla.
    Senator Ossoff?
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, thanks to 
you for offering the people of Georgia the opportunity to 
express our dismay at the blatant targeting of voters of color 
in our state with this voter suppression legislation.
    I noted, Mr. Segarra, that you raised your hand at the 
conclusion of my previous questioning, so I will just offer you 
the opportunity to make any statement you so wish, and then to 
each of the other two witnesses as well in conclusion.
    Mr. Segarra. It was in line with a statement that you 
mentioned about the three gentlemen in our state who had the 
integrity to stand for the people and do the right thing. I 
just want to bring that statement up. As a military, I give a 
lot of value to people with integrity, and these three 
gentlemen in this state deserve that.
    Senator Ossoff. Mr. Segarra, just for clarity and for the 
record, I believe you are referring, are you not, to Lieutenant 
Governor Jeff Duncan, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, 
Gabriel Sterling of the Secretary of State's office, all three 
Republicans who stated emphatically that the election here was 
conducted securely and with integrity, and that there was no 
fraud or malfeasance to alter the result; correct?
    Mr. Segarra. That is correct, Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Segarra.
    Ms. Butler, any final remarks?
    Ms. Butler. My final remarks are you have our written 
testimony that has outlined a lot of problems with the bill, 
but it is imperative--Dr. Lowery and so many others gave their 
lives to make sure we had this right to vote. I am asking that 
you pass S. 1, the For the People Act, that you pass the John 
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act because we need pre-
clearance, and to also pass the bill that Reverend Warnock just 
introduced. We have got to have that to ensure that people can 
exercise their right to vote, to choose the right people that 
will make policies that will improve their communities.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Butler.
    Senator Harrell?
    Ms. Harrell. Over the last few years I have watched more 
and more efforts to suppress votes, and I am constantly amazed 
at the creativity. At first it was, like, oh, the machines can 
be hacked. Well, the machines can still be hacked, but that is 
kind of a high-level hard thing to do. What I have seen develop 
over the last few years are very creative attempts to suppress 
votes, and it is small things like, oh, we forgot the extension 
cords; we have a line. Amazing. Or it is what happened to Ms. 
Butler. It was these local bills that all of a sudden started 
appearing this past session on the local consent calendar 
changing the way appointments are made to local boards. It took 
us a while to catch on to what was going on. Then as 
legislators, there was very little we could do about it because 
the local consent calendar is voted on all together. We could 
not pull out that bill that removed her from that board. We 
could not pull out that bill because we were not members of 
that delegation. Only members of that delegation could pull out 
that bill that was changing the appointment from a bipartisan 
way of appointing members to an all-White county commission 
appointing members.
    We could not pull that bill out because we were not from 
her community. If we started voting against all the local 
bills, then we would end up having to vote against our own 
local bills. That is creative.
    What I say to you is thank you again for coming to Georgia 
to listen to this story. We need your help. We desperately need 
your help. But there is no one solution to this problem, and it 
is not a static thing where you are going to be able to pass 
one bill and solve it all, because the methods keep changing. 
Stay with us. We need to keep feeding you this information so 
that Congress can constantly help ensure that where you live 
does not determine if your vote counts. Thank you.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Senator Harrell.
    Madam Chair, I yield.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you. That was amazingly said, 
as were all the comments from the witnesses. I want to thank 
you.
    I think one of the messages we take away from this and one 
of the things that I have learned and I know my colleagues have 
learned here is the devil is in the details in these bills. If 
you are looking for evil, you can find it pretty easily. That 
evil is taking a runoff time period which, for those of us in 
states that do not have runoffs and think it works fine just to 
make the final decision in the general election, this is 
somewhat unique.
    But if you have a runoff, what they have done here for the 
last and final election that determines who is going to be the 
United States Senator or other federal offices, they basically 
have said, well, we are just going to limit that time to 28 
days. Guess what? You can not register during that time anymore 
because our law says 29 days. We know very well that in this 
last election, 76,000 voters registered during that time. The 
devil is in the details.
    Or that these drop off boxes cannot stay open beyond the 
time of the early voting. If you were working at night, as 
Senator Padilla was talking about some of these voters who were 
working day and night, several jobs, then they can not go to a 
drop off box. I do not care if you are White or Black, if you 
are in a rural area, if you are suburban or urban, these rules 
hurt you. They hurt people. They hurt working people that are 
trying to vote.
    I come from a state that has some of the best voting laws 
in terms of making it easier for people to vote, with same-day 
registration and the like. As a result, we have the highest 
voter turnout--Jeff does not like to hear this--almost every 
single year. I do want to point out something as we talk about 
partisanship and what this all means. Our state actually has 
produced Republican Governors, Democratic Governors, and Jesse 
Ventura. We did that with open voting laws.
    What I see as the difference when I go around our state is 
that when more people vote, even if you might not like the 
outcome, they feel part of the franchise, the franchise of our 
democracy. I think it is really important to note for our 
colleagues back in Washington--we are all going to have to 
leave very soon because we do not want to lose our right to 
vote in the next vote we are taking this evening, so we have to 
get on a plane and go back--that this is about our very 
democracy. What we have learned here today has been incredibly 
helpful because so much of this is, like we said, in the 
details, and that is why we came today.
    We have got to be as sophisticated in Washington as the 
people who are trying to mess with us. That is what civil 
rights legislation was back in the 1960's. As Senator Harrell 
just pointed out, people are doing this again. They are finding 
new ways to mess with the fundamental right of citizens to 
vote.
    The way you get at that is you are supposed to find 
salvation in the Constitution and from the Federal Government, 
and this is that moment.
    Senator Merkley?
    Senator Merkley. John Lewis said the right to vote is 
precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-
violent tool we have in a democratic society. I think we all 
know that the vote is really the pulsating heart of a republic.
    It is under attack in a way I could never have imagined 
across the country. We have a responsibility under Article 1, 
Section 4 of the Constitution to set terms and conditions, 
basic standards across the country to secure the vote.
    It is not just about fairness for the citizens of Georgia. 
Every citizen in the country is affected by having honest and 
fair elections everywhere because it affects the representation 
in Congress, and that affects laws that affect every citizen. 
We all have a stake in this.
    As we entered the museum, there is the quote that is 
powerful. I have heard it all my life, where Martin Luther King 
quoted the Book of Amos, and what he said before that is he was 
referring to the barriers to voting targeted at Black Americans 
and whether we would be satisfied while those barriers still 
remained.
    Then he said this: ``No, we are not satisfied until justice 
rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.''
    We are not going to be satisfied until we fully defend and 
protect the right to vote for every American, take on the issue 
of billionaires buying elections with dark money, and end 
gerrymandering. That is our responsibility.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Very good.
    Next is Senator Padilla, some closing remarks.
    Senator Padilla. I will be brief and yield the bulk of my 
time to Senator Ossoff, our home state senator here. Thank you 
for the hospitality.
    I just want to make something very, very clear for 
everybody. What we have done here today, what we are trying to 
do in the Senate, it is not about Democrat or Republican. It is 
about our fundamental right to vote. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Very good.
    Senator Ossoff?
    Senator Ossoff. Well, thank you again, Madam Chair, and 
thank you again to our witnesses and to my colleagues for 
coming from across the country to examine the impact of this 
voter suppression law in Georgia.
    I want to close by reflecting on something that Ms. Butler 
stated in her final remark, that the blatant racial targeting 
of this legislation makes so clear how vital it is that we 
restore the pre-clearance provisions under Section 5 of the 
Voting Rights Act, and the legislation to restore pre-clearance 
is indeed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and our 
efforts to pass that legislation will continue robustly.
    Thank you again to our panel.
    Chairwoman Klobuchar. Thank you very much to the senators, 
to our witnesses, to Senator Warnock for being here. We really 
appreciate it.
    The hearing record will remain open for one week, and 
members are welcome to put anything on the record, including 
defenses of this bill, which we did not hear today, I think for 
good reason. But the hearing record will remain open, and we 
look forward to seeing all of you in the future, both in 
Georgia and in Washington, DC, where we must get this done.
    Thank you. The hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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