[Senate Hearing 117-764]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                                ------                                
                                                         S. Hrg. 117-764
 
                       JIM CROW 2021: THE LATEST
                      ASSAULT ON THE RIGHT TO VOTE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               ----------                              

                             APRIL 20, 2021

                               ----------                              

                          Serial No. J-117-10

                               ----------                              

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
         
                [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 

                        www.judiciary.senate.gov
                            www.govinfo.gov
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                          UNITED STATES SENATE
                          
                          
                          
 



                                


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-764

                       JIM CROW 2021: THE LATEST
                      ASSAULT ON THE RIGHT TO VOTE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 20, 2021

                               __________

                          Serial No. J-117-10

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
         
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
 
         
         
         


                        www.judiciary.senate.gov
                            www.govinfo.gov
                            
                            
                              ______

               U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
53-977                  WASHINGTON : 2024                       
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                   RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois, Chair
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont            CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Ranking 
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California             Member
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island     LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota             JOHN CORNYN, Texas
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware       MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut      TED CRUZ, Texas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              BEN SASSE, Nebraska
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey           JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
ALEX PADILLA, California             TOM COTTON, Arkansas
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
                                     THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
                                     MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

             Joseph Zogby, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
      Kolan L. Davis, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                       APRIL 20, 2021, 10:01 A.M.

                    STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS

                                                                   Page

Durbin, Hon. Richard J., a U.S. Senator from the State of 
  Illinois.......................................................     1
Grassley, Hon. Charles E., a U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa.     4
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont.     6
Cornyn, Hon. John, a U.S. Senator from the State of Texas........     8

                               WITNESSES

Witness List.....................................................    70
Opening Statement of Hon. Patrick J. Leahy, a U.S. Senator from 
  the State of Vermont...........................................     6
Abrams, Hon. Stacey, founder, Fair Fight Action, Atlanta, Georgia    22
    prepared statement...........................................    72
Anderson, Carol, Ph.D., Charles Howard Candler Professor, Emory 
  University, Atlanta, Georgia...................................    16
    prepared statement...........................................    76
Gardner, Hon. Bill, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Concord, 
  New Hampshire..................................................    17
    prepared statement...........................................   113
Ifill, Sherrilyn, president and director-counsel, NAACP Legal 
  Defense, Washington, DC........................................    18
    prepared statement...........................................    79
Jones, Hon. Jan, Speaker Pro Tempore, Georgia House of 
  Representatives, Milton, Georgia...............................    20
    prepared statement...........................................   114
Owens, Hon. Burgess, a Representative in Congress from the State 
  of Utah........................................................    12
Warnock, Hon. Raphael, a U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia..    10

                               QUESTIONS

Questions submitted to Stacey Abrams by:
    Ranking Member Grassley......................................   118
    Senator Cruz.................................................   120
    Senator Cotton...............................................   121

                                ANSWERS

Responses of Stacey Abrams to questions submitted by:
    Ranking Member Grassley......................................   122
    Senator Cruz.................................................   127
    Senator Cotton...............................................   129

                MISCELLANEOUS SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

AMAC Action Letter, April 19, 2021...............................   133
Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State Statement, April 20, 2021.   176
Fair Fight Action, August 16, 2021...............................   215
FGA--Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021 Statement............   136
Georgia Election Law Letter, April 20, 2021......................   140
Heritage Action For America Letter, April 20, 2021...............   157
Heritage Foundation Releases Fact-Check on Georgia Election Law, 
  April 16, 2021.................................................   159
Hon. Kay James, President, Heritage Foundation Letter, April 20, 
  2021...........................................................   163
Ken Cuccinelli Statement.........................................   170
Lies the Left Tells Article (FGA)................................   171
Office of the Iowa Secretary of State Letter, April 19, 2021.....   168
Record Submission 1 (Meet the Press--March 14, 2021).............   179
Record Submission 2--CNN (Voting Rights), April 8, 2021..........   206
Record Submission 3--Georgia election reform law isn't voter 
  suppression, April 1, 2021.....................................   209
Tea Party Patriots Action Letter, April 20, 2021.................   212
Voter Turnout Charts.............................................   173


                       JIM CROW 2021: THE LATEST



                      ASSAULT ON THE RIGHT TO VOTE

                              ----------                              


                        TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2021

                              United States Senate,
                                Committee on the Judiciary,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in 
Room 216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard J. Durbin, 
Chair of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Durbin [presiding], Leahy, Whitehouse, 
Klobuchar, Coons, Blumenthal, Hirono, Booker, Padilla, Ossoff, 
Grassley, Graham, Cornyn, Lee, Cruz, Hawley, Cotton, Kennedy, 
Tillis, and Blackburn.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD J. DURBIN,

           A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

    Chair Durbin. The hearing will come to order.
    Today the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding its first 
hearing on voting rights since the Democrats last controlled 
the Senate. As Chair of the Constitution, Civil Rights, and 
Human Rights Subcommittee, I had a series of hearings about a 
wave of voter suppression laws then under consideration across 
the country. Sadly, the situation is much worse today.
    I would like to start with a video showing how far the 
fight for democracy has come and the progress we have yet to 
make.
    [Video shown.]
    Chair Durbin. Since our Nation's founding, there has been 
an intractable conflict between champions of democracy, and 
defenders of white supremacy. In 1890, white supremacists won a 
victory that would inspire a generation of legislation to deny 
full citizenship to Black Americans. They called it the 
``Mississippi Plan.'' Historian Carol Anderson, who is one of 
today's witnesses, has described it as ``a dizzying array of 
poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding clauses, newfangled 
voter registration rules, good character clauses, all 
intentionally racially discriminatory but dressed up in the 
garb of bringing integrity to voting.''
    The president of the State Constitutional Convention that 
spawned the Mississippi Plan, S.S. Calhoun, announced, and I 
quote, ``Let us tell the truth if it bursts the bottom of the 
universe. We came here to exclude the Negro. Nothing short of 
this will answer.'' They succeeded.
    Three years later, a local newspaper reported that about 94 
percent of Black men in Mississippi who were eligible to vote 
under the old Constitution would no longer be eligible under 
new rules. In the words of one reporter, it marked ``practical 
elimination of the majority race from the politics of the 
State.''
    What happened in Mississippi did not stay in Mississippi. 
By 1910, States including South Carolina, Louisiana, North 
Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma had adopted 
statutes that sought to emulate Mississippi's success in 
systematically suppressing Black voters. By the late 20th 
century, the Federal Government recognized these laws, passed 
during the Jim Crow era, amounted to a national crisis of voter 
disenfranchisement. Many of the most egregious voter 
suppression tactics were outlawed by civil rights legislation 
in the 1960s, but the insidious effort to suppress the right of 
voters of color has evolved and continued, most recently 
through a scourge of voter suppression laws introduced in State 
capitals across America.
    Just this year--just this year--more than 360 bills with 
restrictive voting provisions have been introduced in 47 
States. These new pieces of legislation may not involve 
literacy tests or counting the number of jelly beans in a jar 
like the original Jim Crow, but make no mistake. They are a 
deliberate effort to suppress voters of color.
    This is the reality of our political landscape following 
the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013, 
which gutted the Voting Rights Act. Some of the new proposed 
laws require voters to show ID and cut back early voting. One 
Texas bill would make it a felony--a felony--for election 
officials to distribute absentee ballot applications. The law 
that has received the most attention in recent weeks is the one 
that Georgia's Governor signed last month. It will make it 
harder for Georgians to vote early or by absentee ballot and 
make it a crime--a crime--to offer water to voters waiting in 
line.
    It was not long ago that an American could be barred from 
voting for failing to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. 
They might not be able to vote because they are stuck in a 
lengthy line on a hot day, and they cannot even receive a drink 
of water from a Good Samaritan.
    Why are States like Georgia making it harder for Americans 
to exercise their most fundamental right? The response from 
proponents of these laws is that they help maintain the 
integrity--integrity--of the election system, another tactic 
taken straight from the Mississippi Plan playbook.
    President Trump's own officials--President Trump's 
officials--at the Department of Homeland Security declared that 
the 2020 election was the ``most secure election in American 
history.'' Some of my colleagues on this Committee were on the 
same ballot as President Trump, and they are willing to accept 
the results that showed their reelections valid. If our 
elections are secure, these laws are not really about 
integrity.
    What is the problem that lawmakers in Georgia want to 
address with the new law? The problem is obvious. Too many 
voters are showing up. Georgia saw historic voter turnout 
during the last election. Among Georgia voters who returned 
absentee ballots, we get an answer to our question. Sixty-five 
percent of those who returned absentee ballots voted for 
President Biden; 35 percent for Donald Trump. It seems 
Republican lawmakers in Georgia have concluded that the 
solution to their election problems is to make it harder to 
vote, because the voters who did vote in the last election were 
not their voters. That is fundamentally un-American. In the 
words of Senator Warnock--and thank you for joining us today--
it is democracy in reverse. In our republican--republic, 
politicians do not choose our voters. The voters choose us. We 
ought to enact legislation that makes it as easy as possible to 
vote while ensuring our elections are safe and secure.
    There are a number of steps Congress can take to advance 
this goal, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act 
and enshrining an affirmative right to vote in the United 
States Constitution.
    I went back today to read the transcript and the reporting 
of the transcript of the January 2nd telephone conversation 
between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State of 
Georgia, Mr. Raffensperger. It was recorded. There is no doubt 
what was said in that conversation. The President of the United 
States, Donald Trump, was explicit. Here is what he said: ``I 
just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we 
have.'' The President, who had 17 days left in his 
administration, hinted that Mr. Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, 
the chief lawyer of the Secretary of State's office, could be 
prosecuted criminally if they did not do his bidding.
    Here is what the President said: ``You know what they did, 
and you are not reporting it,'' he said. ``You know that is a 
criminal--that is a criminal offense, and you know you cannot 
let this happen. That is a big risk to you and to Ryan, your 
lawyer.''
    ``That is a big risk,'' the President of the United States 
said in the conversation that was recorded.
    It is no surprise that this President goes on to claim not 
only several conspiracy theories, including debunked charges 
that ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, were shredded, that 
voting machines operated by Dominion Voting Systems were 
tampered with and replaced. Mr. Germany, in this conversation, 
can be heard telling the President that such charges are flatly 
untrue, even as Trump insists otherwise.
    ``You want to have an accurate election and you are a 
Republican,'' Mr. Trump told Mr. Raffensperger. Mr. 
Raffensperger replied, ``We believe that we do have an accurate 
election.'' Trump responded, ``No, no, no, you don't, you don't 
have, you don't have, not even close. You guys are off by 
hundreds of thousands of votes.''
    I reread that to think for a moment about this State 
election official, Mr. Raffensperger, in Georgia who had the 
foresight to tape that conversation so that history would be 
clear, but also made it clear that in an election where nearly 
5 million votes were cast, the notion that they could find 
11,790--11,780 votes, as President Trump requested, was just 
plain wrong. Of all the absentee votes, of all the votes in 
person, of all the activities that took place before and after 
the election, Raffensperger refused to concede that point.
    I can tell you, it cost him, because when it came time to 
pass the new laws, the Georgia legislation signed into law by 
the Georgia Governor stripped the Secretary of State, Mr. 
Raffensperger's position, of his power to preside over the 
State Election Board. He paid a heavy price for being honest 
and courageous in that conversation with President Trump. The 
Secretary of State is also removed, under this new Georgia law, 
as a voting member of the State Election Board. Clearly, a 
majority of those who voted in the Georgia Legislature were out 
to send Mr. Raffensperger a message, that if you do not take 
the Trump line and follow it and allege that you found some 
votes that were not counted or were counted improperly, you 
will pay a price for it.
    That is what we are up against here, and that is why this 
hearing is taking place. One of my heroes and friends and 
former colleagues, John Lewis, said, ``The vote is precious. It 
is almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool in a 
democracy.''
    Recent efforts to prevent Americans from participating in 
our democracy remind us how much work remains to protect this 
precious, almost sacred right.
    I will turn to Ranking Member Grassley for his opening 
remarks.

         OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. GRASSLEY,

             A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF IOWA

    Senator Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    We all know this is supposed to be a hearing about voting 
rights. Unfortunately, it is just the latest attack on one of 
our States for enacting election integrity laws. Pretty simple.
    National Democrats and big business have colluded to bully 
Georgia in retaliation for its new voting laws. We would be 
naive to think that they will stop with the Peach State. 
Indeed, many of Georgia's new provisions are similar to those 
we have in my State of Iowa, where we have experienced record 
turnout recently and no instances of anyone being hindered from 
voting.
    I object to the title of this hearing. Like others on this 
Committee, I am a fan of history. I try to learn from it. I do 
not use it to insult my opponents.
    As I said, the title of this hearing is offensive. As a 
student of history, this title diminishes the very real 
challenges and unfairness that minorities endured in the Jim 
Crow South at the hands of Southern Democrats. The right to 
vote should not be political. We should all agree that 
participating in American democracy at the ballot box is a 
fundamental right. It is a right we should want to protect, and 
it should not become a political football.
    At a time when voters on both sides of the aisle have 
doubts about the integrity of our elections, polarizing 
rhetoric that distorts history is not helpful.
    I am eager to hear from Congressman Owens what he thinks 
about these comparisons of voter ID requirements to the evil 
system of legalized racial oppression in which he grew up.
    There are a lot of falsehoods being peddled about the new 
Georgia law. When President Biden repeatedly said that Georgia 
ended voting ``hours early,'' the liberal Washington Post gave 
him four Pinocchios in its fact-check. Their fact-checker was 
shocked that, after the four Pinocchios, Biden kept repeating 
the same false claims. It goes to show that these claims about 
Georgia are not about truth; they are about politics.
    It goes beyond politics. The concerted efforts of liberals 
and their allies to mislead about Georgia's voting laws have 
had terrible effects on Georgia itself. There is an organized 
campaign started to make big business punish the people of 
Georgia for their political choices. When you make political 
comments and it hurts people's pocketbooks, that ought to be 
something everybody would be offended by. Most infamously, 
Major League Baseball moved the All Star Game from Atlanta, a 
move that is likely to cost the city's economy $100 million. 
That is affecting the income of Georgians and probably some 
jobs in Georgia.
    A State Senator lost his job at a prominent law firm after 
political activists took a break from fleecing their donors to 
get him fired for his work as a citizen legislator. When 
partisans and companies collude to ruin the livelihoods of 
their opponents, there is a term for that. It is ``economic 
terrorism.''
    The American people do not like this. A recent NPR poll 
asked whether people support or oppose professional sports 
using their public roles, positions, and events to influence 
politics: 55 percent opposed it; only 40 percent supported it.
    On the other hand, the American people do like secure 
elections. A recent poll showed that 77 percent of Americans 
support voter ID laws, including 74 percent of Independents; 66 
percent even support voter ID for absentee ballots; 80 percent 
agreed that States need to balance no-excuse voting with 
election integrity safeguards; 93 percent say that voter 
registration rolls should be accurately maintained, with 83 
percent saying States should remove old registrations.
    I do not get it when we hear, not just in Georgia but other 
States, that there is something wrong when somebody died that 
they ought to be removed from the voting rolls.
    In 2021, I am not sure that apple pie would poll as well as 
common-sense election integrity. I can tell you the people of 
Iowa, whom I represent, like secure elections. That is why we 
have recently passed laws to do just that. I have a statement 
for the record from our Secretary of State explaining how we 
work to make elections law easy and honest.
    This last election showed why secure elections are 
necessary. We will be hearing from our Democrat friends that 
voter fraud is so rare that we do not need to take steps to 
prevent it. In Iowa's 2nd District, Representative Marianne 
Miller-Meeks won her race last fall by just six votes. That is 
six. Every vote counts in Iowa, which means they better be 
legitimate.
    In fact, during each election in Iowa, we find numerous 
instances of double voting. It is not a big number, but it does 
happen. With congressional races being decided by only six 
votes, it obviously matters.
    At the same time, I want to be clear: There is no evidence 
of anyone being unable to vote in Iowa due to our voting 
security provisions.
    All this talk about the importance of voting from Democrats 
is less than amusing. Just last month, Speaker Pelosi tried to 
use the power of her majority to throw Dr. Miller-Meeks out of 
the House, 2nd District in Iowa, even though her election was 
fully certified--it was fully certified by a committee of three 
elected Republicans and two elected Democrats. Her opponent did 
not want to admit she lost. She skipped the courts, and the 
Democrats' ``super lawyer''--who, by the way, is facing 
sanctions in Texas--tried to change the results in the House 
instead. When people will stop at nothing to win races, it is 
more important than ever that our election laws be secure.
    Sadly, my friends on the other side seem to disagree. 
Elections and voting legislation that has been proposed in 
Congress will take away the ability of States to establish 
their own voting rules. I hope to hear from Secretary Gardner 
why it is so important for States--like Iowa, New Hampshire, 
and Georgia--to manage their own elections and why Federalized 
election rules are bad for election integrity and for voter 
participation.
    I hope to hear from President Pro Tem Jones about what 
really happened in Georgia, not the made-for-TV headlines about 
Jim Crow 2021, but a sensible, fair, common-sense effort that 
they made to increase voter confidence in their election. 
Baseless claims of voter suppression are just as corrosive to 
our democracy as baseless claims of voter fraud. We heard too 
much about that from last November. We should all be committed 
to making elections accessible and secure to maintain the 
confidence of the voters.
    When I hear about voter suppression and the loser in this 
election won by more--lost with more votes than any loser ever 
in the history of the country got and the winner won by more 
than any winner in the history of elections, and you are 
telling me about voter suppression the way people turn out? 
Give me a break.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Grassley. We are speaking 
about what happened since that election in State legislatures 
across the country.
    Since 2014, Senator Leahy has led the efforts in the Senate 
to restore the Voting Rights Act. Due to a conflict with an 
Appropriations Committee hearing this morning, he may not be 
able to question witnesses, but he has asked to make opening 
remarks, and I am going to extend the same courtesy to Senator 
Cornyn after Senator Leahy is finished. Senator Leahy.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY,

            A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT

    Senator Leahy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I do appreciate 
the courtesy.
    I think it is excellent that you are holding this timely 
hearing. I think this is the greatest crisis facing our 
democracy today. Back in my own State of Vermont, where 
everybody can vote and is encouraged to vote, we do everything 
possible to vote. We elected a Republican Governor and a 
Democratic Lieutenant Governor. Every vote counts, and we make 
sure they do. People in my State look at what happened in the 
Georgia Legislature. They cannot understand that is happening 
in the 21st century.
    You know, the 2020 election should be a great source of 
pride for our Nation. We suffered through a deadly pandemic, 
but even so, more Americans voted in 2020 than in any modern 
time in modern history, both Republicans and Democrats. Instead 
of celebrating that significant achievement, the former 
President mounted a campaign of misinformation, spreading the 
big lie that widespread voter fraud led to his defeat. His 
disinformation campaign led directly to the violent assault on 
the Nation's Capitol and took the lives of five Americans.
    I was proud when Republicans and Democrats in Congress 
stood bravely together amid the broken glass and ransacked 
offices to reject the former President's big lie. I was proud 
that we crossed party lines to certify one of the most secure 
elections in our history. When Republicans and Democrats came 
together, again, days later for the Inauguration of President 
Biden, America sent a powerful message to the world. Neither a 
deadly pandemic nor a violent insurrection could defeat our 
American system of self-government.
    That was just 90 days ago. Instead of capitalizing on 
measures that resulted in the highest voter turnout in over a 
century, dozens of States have moved forward to restrict access 
to the ballot. As of March, more than 360 bills have been 
introduced in State legislatures to make voting harder for 
Americans. These cynical efforts have been justified on the 
grounds that it should be harder to cheat, which, of course, 
falsely implies that voter fraud was a widespread problem.
    Did we not just go through an election where there was 
virtually no evidence of voter fraud? It was looked at by the 
courts, and that is the conclusion they came to. Did we not 
just reject a violent attempt to overturn our election based on 
the utterly false claim that it was stolen through fraud?
    I realize memories may be short, but this wave of voter 
suppression laws is premised on little bit more than the big 
lie with a slapdash paint job. If you rejected the big lie 
then, you should oppose these efforts today. We should all 
easily agree that when any voters in any party are 
disenfranchised, our democracy suffers.
    Depriving Americans of the foundational right to vote also 
denies them representation in our democratic republic. That is 
exactly why the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which helps the Federal 
Government prevent voter disenfranchisement, has been 
bipartisan. Every Congress from 1965 to 2006 repeatedly 
reauthorized the Voting Rights Act on a bipartisan basis, 
including in our body, Mr. Chairman, in 2006 by a vote of 98-0.
    Among those who joined me in voting yes in 2006 were 
Ranking Member Grassley, Senator Graham, and Senator Cornyn. 
The reason the Voting Rights Act has always been a bipartisan 
bill is that it is pro-democracy, not pro-Republican or pro-
Democrat. I hope there will be increased support for the 
already bipartisan John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It 
just restores the Federal Government's powers under the Voting 
Rights Act.
    Without Section 5 powers, which my dear and close friend 
John Lewis, a hero to many, called the ``heart and soul'' of 
the Voting Rights Act, no administration of either power--party 
has the necessary tools to prevent States from enacting changes 
making voting more difficult for Americans. As we watch--as we 
watch--almost daily States unleash a wave of ill-founded laws 
that restrict the precious right to vote, not protect it but 
restrict it.
    The oversight role of the Federal Government envisioned by 
the 1965 Voting Rights Act is more urgently needed than ever. 
All of us, Republicans and Democrats, should remember what we 
saw and how we felt on January 6. We should all recall casting 
our votes in the twilight hours of January 7 in our Capitol, 
the seat of our Government that bore the fresh wounds of a 
violent attack that sought to deny the American people's will. 
On that day we put aside our partisan differences in defense of 
something much bigger than political party: our democracy 
itself.
    In the months ahead, Mr. Chairman, I hope we can answer 
that same call to defend our sacred right to vote, the right 
that gives democracy its name. Thank you.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Leahy. Senator Cornyn.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN CORNYN,

             A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS

    Senator Cornyn. Thank you, Senator Durbin and Senator 
Grassley, for holding this important hearing today. This is an 
important topic, but I do not think we do justice to this topic 
by entitling this ``Jim Crow 2021.'' Unfortunately, rather than 
the usual oversight and fact-finding and legislating process, 
it looks like today's hearing is really just performance art in 
order to enhance a false narrative about how far we have come 
in this country, thank goodness, when it comes to minority 
voting rights participation.
    The right to cast a ballot, of course, is the cornerstone 
of our democracy. It is the process through which the will of 
the people is heard and turned into action. The very basis for 
the legitimacy of our laws is the consent of the governed, and 
they consent by electing their public officials at the ballot 
box.
    I believe our standard should be that we should make it 
easier to vote legally in America, but also at the same time 
make it harder to vote illegally.
    Sadly, the right to vote was denied to a generation of 
Americans based solely on their gender or race. This type of 
discrimination stands in stark contrast to the founding 
principles of our country, and I hope I can speak on behalf of 
everyone in this room when I say we need more Americans to 
participate in our democracy, not fewer.
    In Texas in 2020, we had a historic turnout of registered 
voters: 66 percent of registered voters of all ethnicities and 
race. Just as Americans have a right to make their voices heard 
in our elections, Congress has a responsibility to make sure 
those elections are fair and free. If we do not have fair and 
free elections, we do not preserve the core constitutional 
right of the people to make their voices heard through the 
ballot box.
    Expanding voter access does not have to come at the expense 
of common-sense guardrails and protections that preserve the 
integrity of the ballot. For every one person who votes who is 
unauthorized or is disqualified to vote, that dilutes the vote 
of legitimate and legal voters. Disparaging those same common-
sense protections like voter identification as "Jim Crow 
2021"--or, in other words, racist--is false, and I believe 
dangerously so.
    Our Founders understood that all power ultimately resides 
in the hands of the people. When Government takes this power 
away from State legislators, it is effectively seizing power 
from the people of those States to hold their elected officials 
responsible. This is very important because our Founders gave 
us a road map--in other words, the Constitution--as to the 
power residing in the hands of the people through their ability 
to hold their State legislators accountable.
    Article I, Section 4 explicitly gives the States the power 
to regulate ``the times, places, and manner of holding 
elections.'' Congress may, however, ``at any time make or alter 
such regulations, except as to the place of choosing 
Senators.''
    I read this to mean that the States are to chart their own 
course for elections subject to guardrails and, where 
necessary, Congress can provide additional guidance but cannot 
hijack the process entirely.
    Nowhere in the Constitution does it empower the Federal 
Government to completely usurp the role of the States in 
holding elections. Indeed, nowhere does the Congress have the 
authority in one of its enumerated powers, as reflected in 
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
    In a recent gerrymandering case, Chief Justice Roberts 
noted that the Framers assigned the issue to the State 
legislators expressly checked and balanced by the Federal 
Congress. Yet through H.R. 1, Congress is not acting as a 
check. It is acting like a hijacker to take over the 
constitutional authority from the States and acting as the sole 
arbiter as to how an election is run in rural Vermont or 
downtown Chicago.
    This past election, for example, we had the highest turnout 
ever in a Presidential election. According to network exit 
polls, the number or percentage of African Americans who cast 
their ballot is roughly the same as the percentage of the 
African American population in America. I am encouraged by this 
trend of more people voting and hope it continues. I agree we 
should have this hearing, and we should look at appropriate 
bipartisan solutions to improve voter access. Using charged 
rhetoric to describe aspects of State voting laws, like the one 
in Georgia, is misleading. It is not constructive, and it 
undermines public trust in Congress and in our election system.
    In fact, as we have learned, the Georgia law comports with 
the existing laws of many Democrat-run States and also reflects 
the safeguards supported by the bipartisan Carter-Baker 
Commission. This is not to say that there is not more work to 
be done, but it is important that we temper the charged 
rhetoric and understand the specifics that we are actually 
talking about rather than jumping head first into this debate 
across the country in a rush to judgment. Here is just one 
example.
    The Georgia provision requires a free ID card in order to 
receive an absentee ballot. That is nearly identical to the 
provision in the 2002 bipartisan bill supported by then-Senator 
Biden and the current Chairman of this Committee. Indeed, the 
Help America Vote Act would have required everyone voting in a 
Federal election to provide a copy of a photo ID, and if they 
do not have one, they can get one or provide a copy of a bank 
statement, paycheck, Government document, or utility bill. In 
other words, they can do it for free.
    I do not think this is a radical proposition to suggest 
that voting identification coupled with the offering of free ID 
cards is a radical restriction on voting. It just does not hold 
up.
    To the contrary, it is a basic safeguard to preserve the 
right of people to vote and for their vote to count equally in 
a free and fair election, and this safeguard helps inspire 
public confidence at the same time.
    The Carter-Baker Commission--Jimmy Carter, James Baker III, 
named for them--looked at preserving the integrity of our 
elections, and they reached the same conclusion. The electoral 
system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist 
to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters. 
Photo IDs are currently needed to board an airplane, to enter a 
Federal building like this one, to operate a motor vehicle, to 
cash a check, to buy alcohol, and pick up ``will call'' tickets 
at the Major League Baseball games. I support efforts to expand 
voter access, but these efforts cannot interfere with the 
integrity of our elections.
    Today's hearing is an excellent opportunity to discuss that 
and expanding access to the ballot box for all eligible voters. 
I appreciate the Chairman and Ranking Member holding this 
hearing, not so much the title of the hearing, but I do think 
the subject matter is important. I am eager to hear more from 
today's distinguished witnesses.
    Chair Durbin. Thanks, Senator Cornyn.
    Today, we welcome two Members of Congress to testify: 
Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Congressman 
Burgess Owens of the 4th District of Utah. In addition to 
representing the State of Georgia after his election earlier 
this year, Senator Warnock serves as senior pastor of the 
historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where our late 
colleague Congressman John Lewis was a member.
    Senator Warnock, could you please proceed with your 
statement?

               STATEMENT OF HON. RAPHAEL WARNOCK,

            A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA

    Senator Warnock. Thank you, Chairman Durbin and Ranking 
Member Grassley and Members of the Committee, for inviting me 
here today. I am especially glad to join these distinguished 
witnesses.
    Mr. Chairman, I have come here today to stress the critical 
need for the Federal Government to act urgently to protect the 
sacred right to vote. America is a land where possibility is 
born of democracy. Our vote is our voice, a chance to help 
determine the direction of our country and our own destiny 
within it.
    Record numbers of Georgians used their voices and voted in 
the last election. In response to this swell in democratic 
participation, politicians in our State legislature responded 
not in celebration but with retaliation. They could have gotten 
busy having not seen the outcome that some of them wanted. They 
could have gotten busy changing their message or adjusting 
their policy. Instead, they got busy changing the rules as if 
the democracy belongs to them and not the people.
    We have seen voter suppression bills since the election in 
November and January all across this country, 360 voter 
suppression bills in 47 States, an increase of 100 bills since 
I highlighted this issue on the Senate floor just a month ago. 
As of today, five of these bills, including in my own State of 
Georgia, have been signed into law.
    These efforts vary in exactly how they suppress voting. 
Some new laws like in Georgia will make it harder to vote by 
mail. Some will make lines that are already too long longer, 
harder to cast a provisional vote. The new law also gives State 
politicians, some of the same politicians who still today 
refuse to acknowledge President Biden's lawful and decisive 
victory, the power to override local election officials.
    We may be tempted to dissect these bills as if analyzing 
them piece by piece makes them more rational. That narrow 
analysis only obscures the larger unmistakable picture. This is 
a full-fledged assault on voting rights, unlike anything we 
have seen since the era of Jim Crow.
    For all of their differences in exactly how they suppress 
the vote, what these bills all share is that they are 
predicated on the big lie that the outcome of our last 
elections were the result of fraud, or at least the 
Presidential election. I guess the Members who won their 
elections are okay with that outcome.
    The truth is politicians in their craven lust for power are 
willing to sacrifice our democracy by using the big lie as a 
pretext for their true aim: some people do not want some people 
to vote.
    To be sure, we have seen these kinds of voter suppression 
tactics before aimed at the same communities. They are part of 
a long and shameful history in Georgia and throughout our 
Nation, but that history is also filled with moments of hope 
and promise when our Nation has come together in recognition 
that preserving our democracy is absolutely essential. Voting 
rights are preservative of all other rights.
    Just 15 years ago, the United States Congress reauthorized 
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 under a Republican President and 
with a bipartisan vote in the Senate of 98-0. At the time our 
colleague Senator Mitch McConnell praised its passage, 
declaring it a law that would make a difference for all of 
America. Many Members of this Committee, including the Chair 
and the Ranking Member, enthusiastically voted in favor of it. 
That was 2006. Why shouldn't voting rights legislation be just 
as bipartisan now in 2021 as it was in 2006? Voting rights 
should always be bipartisan. It is not the difference between 
right and left, but the difference between right and wrong.
    Many argue that the United States Senate is dysfunctional 
and incapable of governing in a bipartisan manner. We can 
boldly refute these claims by coming together not as Democrats 
or Republicans but as supporters of democracy itself to pass 
the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights 
Advancement Act. Together these two bills would turn the tide 
against State-level voter suppression proposals all across our 
country.
    These pieces of legislation would expand and protect access 
to the ballot for every citizen, Democrats, Republicans, and 
Independents, because strengthening our democracy does not 
benefit one party over another. Instead, democracy reform 
benefits all of us by ensuring that our Government is of the 
people, by the people, and for the people.
    John Lewis was my parishioner. I was honored on many 
occasions to stand with him as we took people to vote after 
church at Ebenezer. He understood that our democracy transcends 
all else, and he nearly died on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 
defending it.
    Today our country faces the most widespread assault on 
voting rights since that era. The four most powerful words in a 
democracy are, ``The people have spoken.'' The highest and most 
sacred action that the Senate can take is to protect the right 
of the people like it did in 1965.
    As we move forward in this discussion, I have asked myself 
on many occasions: What would have happened had we not passed 
Federal legislation affirming the covenant of our democracy in 
1965? Where would Georgia be? How would it prosper on the other 
side of the segregationist curtain? If we had not acted in 
1965, what would our country look like? Surely I would not be 
sitting here, only the 11th Black Senator in the history of our 
country and the first Black Senator in Georgia. Maybe that is 
the point.
    It concerns me that some do not hear the irony in their 
statement that we must protect minority rights in the Senate 
while refusing to protect minority rights in the society. We 
have got to act. History is watching us. Our children are 
counting on us. We must pass Federal voting rights legislation 
no matter what.
    [The prepared statement of Senator Warnock appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Warnock.
    Senator Grassley, would you please introduce your guest?
    Senator Grassley. It is a great pleasure to introduce him, 
and most of you probably know him better as an outstanding NFL 
football player, but it is my pleasure to introduce Congressman 
Burgess Owens. Congressman Owens represents the great State of 
Utah along with our colleagues Senator Mike Lee and Senator 
Romney. Congressman Owens is a new addition to the House, and 
we are so pleased to have him here with us this morning.

                STATEMENT OF HON. BURGESS OWENS,

      A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH

    Representative Owens. Thank you, Chairman Durbin, Ranking 
Member Grassley, and Members of the Committee, for the 
invitation to join you today at this hearing.
    My American story begins with my great-great-grandfather, 
Silas Burgess, who arrived in America as a child, shackled in 
the belly of a slave ship. Silas was sold on an auction block 
with his mother in Charleston, South Carolina, to the Burgess 
plantation. He escaped through the Underground Railroad and 
later became a successful entrepreneur, purchasing 102 acres of 
farmland, paid off in 2 years.
    My grandfather, Oscar Kirby, served our country in World 
War I and was a respected and successful farmer, raising 12 
children. All of them graduated from college.
    My father, Clarence Burgess Owens, Sr., was stationed in 
the Philippines at the end of World War II. When he returned 
home to Texas, actual Jim Crow laws denied him a postgraduate 
education. Raised in a generation that used this as motivation, 
he received his Ph.D. in agronomy at Ohio State University and 
had a successful career as a professor, researcher, and 
entrepreneur.
    I grew up in the era of actual legalized institutional 
racism. I grew up in the Deep South in Tallahassee, Florida, in 
the 1960s during the days of KKK, Jim Crow, and segregation. My 
first experience of white Americans was at 16 years old. At 18, 
I was the third Black athlete to receive a scholarship to play 
football at the University of Miami. I proudly represent Utah's 
4th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress.
    I sit today before you as someone who has lived the 
American dream, as have millions of other Americans of all 
races from every background. This is due to our country's 
mission statement that all men and women are created equal, a 
mission statement that every American should have the equal 
opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
    As someone who has actually experienced Jim Crow laws, I 
would like to set the record straight on the myth regarding the 
recently passed Georgia State law and why any comparison 
between this law and Jim Crow is absolutely outrageous.
    Here are a few examples of my own life of what Jim Crow 
laws actually look like. At the age of 12, my father allowed me 
to participate in a demonstration with college students in 
front of the segregated Florida State Theater, where, because 
of our color, we could not enter. I was the youngest 
participant there. Only 50 years later did I learn that my 
father parked across the street to watch and make sure I was 
safe.
    In the seventh grade, my school never received new books. 
Instead, we received books from the all-white school across 
town. At service stations there were white men-only restrooms, 
white women-only restrooms, and a filthy restroom in the back 
of the station for Black Americans designated as ``colored.'' 
In addition, Jim Crow laws like poll tax, property tests, 
literacy tests, and violence and intimidation at the polls made 
it nearly impossible for Black Americans to vote.
    The section of the Georgia law that has brought so much 
outrage from the left, it simply requires any person applying 
for an absentee ballot to include evidence of a Government-
issued ID on the application.
    If a voter does not have a driver's license or ID card, 
that voter can use a current utility bill, bank statement, 
Government check, paycheck, or any other Government document 
that shows a name and address of this voter. If a voter somehow 
cannot produce one of these forms of ID, that voter can still 
vote and cast a vote, a provisional ballot. By the way, 97 
percent of Georgia voters already have a Government-issued ID.
    What I find extremely offensive is the narrative from the 
left that Black people are not smart enough, not educated 
enough, not desirous enough for education to do what every 
other culture and race does in this country--get an ID. True 
racism is this. It is the projection of the Democratic Party on 
my proud race. It is called the ``Soft bigotry of low 
expectation.''
    President Biden said of the Georgia law, ``This is Jim Crow 
on steroids.'' With all due respect, Mr. President, you know 
better. It is disgusting and offensive to compare the actual 
voter suppression and violence of that era that we grew up in 
with a State law that only asks that people show their ID. This 
is the type of fearmongering I expect in the 1960s, not today.
    By the way, literacy tests and poll tests were initiated by 
the Democratic Party. The intimidation of Black Americans by 
the KKK was initiated by the Democratic Party. Jim Crow, that I 
grew up in in the South of segregation, was initiated by the 
Democratic Party.
    The soft bigotry of low expectation now projected on Black 
Americans--not Italians, not Asians, not Polish, not Jewish, 
but only Black Americans--is being done by the Democratic 
Party.
    Where Black misery today thrives and is prevalent--lack of 
education, lack of jobs, high crimes, the call for defund the 
police--it is all done in Democratic parties. By increasing 
illegal votes and not giving voice to those legal Americans, 
Black Americans who are seeing and waking up today, is the real 
tragedy of this process.
    We are seeing 18 percent of Black men turn away from the 
Democratic Party because they are seeing that their vote can 
count and their future can matter. We are seeing twice the 
percentage of Black women doing the same, a record number of 
Hispanics, Asians, and gay community members doing the same.
    Know what all Americans very simply expect is fairness, 
security to walk away from the poll booth knowing that my 
count--my vote counted. If we did not win, we work harder next 
time to make sure my message, our message resonates.
    To call this ``Jim Crow 2021'' is an insult, my friends. 
For those who never lived Jim Crow, we are not in Jim Crow, and 
for Black Americans to go out every single day and vote the way 
we feel we should is a right that we should have and not be 
demeaned by something 60 years ago in which we had no right to 
do any of the above.
    Thank you very much.
    [The prepared statement of Representative Owens appears as 
a submission for the record.]
    Chair Durbin. We will now turn to our panel of witnesses. 
We thank the Members for attending.
    Today we welcome five witnesses to testify about the latest 
assault on the fundamental right to vote. I will introduce the 
majority witnesses. Then, I will ask Senator Grassley to do the 
same for the minority witnesses.
    Our first witness is Professor Carol Anderson. She is the 
Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies 
and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University in 
Atlanta. Professor Anderson's research focuses on public policy 
and the intersection of race, justice, and equality in the 
United States. She is the author of multiple books, including 
``White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide,'' and 
``One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our 
Democracy.''
    Sherrilyn Ifill is well known to the Committee and others. 
She is the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal 
Defense and Educational Fund, a civil rights organization 
founded by Thurgood Marshall in 1940 that has led some of the 
most significant legal battles for racial justice and equality. 
She first joined LDF in 1988 and took over as director-counsel 
in 2013.
    Finally, the Honorable Stacey Abrams, joining us from 
Atlanta. She served for 11 years in the Georgia House of 
Representatives, including 7 years as Democratic leader. In 
2018, she became the first Black woman to be the gubernatorial 
nominee from a major party in the United States. After 
witnessing the voter suppression efforts during the 2018 
election, she launched Fair Fight and Fair Fight Action to 
protect the voting rights of Georgians and other Americans.
    Ranking Member Grassley, would you please introduce your 
witnesses?
    Senator Grassley. Yes. I am going to introduce Speaker Pro 
Tem Jan Jones, and then Senator Cotton is going to introduce 
Secretary Gardner.
    It is my pleasure to introduce Ms. Jones. In her nearly 20 
years in office, Speaker Jones has distinguished herself as an 
advocate for changing lives and increasing economic opportunity 
through improved public education and Government that responds 
to the people. She was elected by her peers to serve as the 
highest elected woman in the Georgia General Assembly in 2010 
after serving as majority whip. She has authored various bills 
involving local control, transparency, and accountability. She 
has also done much to reform Georgia's K-12 education. Speaker 
Jones lives in Milton, Georgia, with her husband. She is a 
graduate of the University of Georgia and has an MBA from 
Georgia State. She is a businesswoman and a mother of four. I 
thank her for appearing today.
    Senator Cotton.
    Senator Cotton. Thank you, Senator Grassley. I am pleased 
to introduce New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, the 
longest-serving Secretary of State in the country. Secretary 
Gardner was first elected to serve the people of New Hampshire 
in 1976, just 1 year before I was born, and Senator Grassley 
does not even want to know how many years before Senator Ossoff 
was born. He has been serving for that long because he has been 
serving the people of New Hampshire so well. I would point out 
that Secretary Gardner is a Democrat, and, of course, I am a 
Republican. I am sure there are probably some things we do not 
agree on, but I invited Secretary Gardner to appear because 
this is not a partisan issue--or, rather, it should not be. 
Free and fair elections administered by our 50 State 
governments are an American issue. That is what our Founders 
intended, and that is why there is bipartisan opposition to 
these bills that would Federalize our State-based system.
    Secretary Gardner is well positioned to talk about these 
problems and how this bill would wreak havoc on our elections, 
but more fundamentally, he can talk about the real problem, the 
fact that this legislation is a complete takeover of our 
Federal election system. I want to thank Secretary Gardner for 
being willing to testify. I would suggest to all of those 
watching that the longest-serving Secretary of State in America 
and a Democrat has a lot to say that we should probably listen 
to before we make radical changes to our State-based election 
system.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Cotton.
    The procedure we will follow today, we will swear in the 
witnesses, and each witness will then have 5 minutes to provide 
opening statements. There will be one round of questions, and 
each Senator will have 5 minutes, and I would ask them to 
please try to stay within their allotted time.
    I would like to ask all the witnesses--and they are in 
remote status--to please stand in place to be sworn in. Raise 
your right hand. Do you affirm that the testimony you are about 
to give before the Committee will be the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
    Professor Anderson. I do.
    Secretary Gardner. I do.
    Ms. Ifill. I do.
    Speaker Jones. I do.
    Ms. Abrams. I do.
    Chair Durbin. I am going to assume that all witnesses 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you all.
    Professor Anderson, please proceed with your opening 
statement.

              STATEMENT OF CAROL ANDERSON, PH.D.,

              CHARLES HOWARD CANDLER PROFESSOR OF

         AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND CHAIR OF AFRICAN

      AMERICAN STUDIES, MORY UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

    Professor Anderson. Thank you for this opportunity to speak 
with you about the history of voting rights. I will focus on 
three key themes that echo powerfully in today's electoral 
landscape: one, the target of disfranchisement; two, the use of 
race-neutral language to evade the 15th Amendment; and, three, 
the cloaking of disfranchisement under the banner of election 
integrity.
    In 1890, during the rise of Jim Crow, Legislator James 
``Big Chief'' Vardaman bragged that the sole reason the 
Mississippi Legislature revised the State's Constitution was 
``To eliminate the Negro from politics.''
    Similarly, Virginia Representative Carter Glass, like so 
many others, rushed to champion a bill in the legislature that 
would ``Inevitably cut from the existing electorate four-fifths 
of the Negro voters'' in the State.
    I call it ``Bureaucratic Violence'' because it is designed 
to attack and undermine African Americans' voting rights and 
other citizenship rights, while providing an aura of legitimacy 
that physical violence simply cannot bring. What Vardaman and 
Glass were advocating was an omnibus disfranchisement program, 
the Mississippi Plan, which was modified throughout the South, 
and included the poll tax, the literacy test, the grandfather 
clause, and other barriers to the ballot box. Not surprisingly, 
Black electoral participation dropped precipitously.
    In 1880, for example, Black voter turnout was 81 percent in 
North Carolina; by 1912, a few years after the State amended 
its Constitution to include the poll tax, the literacy test, 
and the grandfather clause, Black voter turnout had dropped to 
just 1 percent.
    The States were able to destroy Black voter participation 
by violating the spirit and the intent of the 15th Amendment, 
while adhering to the letter of the Constitution. They did so 
by deploying race-neutral language that used the legacies of 
slavery as a proxy for race. The poll tax, for example, 
required all voters to pay a fee to cast a ballot. What the 
poll tax actually did, though, was to prey on the endemic 
poverty created by centuries of unpaid labor, followed by the 
post-Civil War Black Codes, and then sharecropping. The tax 
seemed innocuous on its surface, but because of the poverty, it 
amounted to Black farm laborers paying in 1900 the equivalent 
of $239 in 2020 to vote.
    Similarly, the literacy test, which required a voter to 
read a section of the Constitution, exploited the consequences 
of denying education to the enslaved for hundreds of years, and 
then after the Civil War, grossly underfunding Black schools.
    The race-neutral ploy worked. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 
in the 1898 Williams decision that the poll tax and the 
literacy test did not violate the 15th Amendment because they 
applied to everyone who wanted to vote. That decision, of 
course, ignored that not everyone had to deal with the legacies 
of having their ancestors enslaved for centuries. The result of 
the Court's blessing of a Jim Crowed electorate was that by 
1940, only 3 percent of age-eligible African Americans in the 
South were registered to vote.
    These States justified erasing millions of American 
citizens from the ballot box by claiming they were fighting 
election fraud and protecting democracy. They knew that was not 
the case.
    The lie of massive rampant voter fraud is serving the same 
function today as it did during the rise of Jim Crow. It stokes 
fear in a segment of the population that democracy is in peril 
and, thus, provides cover for laws that target Black voters 
with race-neutral language.
    In the 21st century, as Indiana implemented the first voter 
ID law in the nation, Secretary of State Todd Rokita, recalled 
that, ``Back in 2001 and 2002, election integrity was a huge 
issue . . . there was a fear of votes being stolen. Even,'' he 
added, ``If the fear did not pan out to be true . . . the fear 
was still there.''
    In 2021, as Georgia passed S.B. 202, State Representative 
Alan Powell admitted that ``Widespread voter fraud . . . was 
not found. It is just in a lot of people's minds that there 
was.'' That fictional ``Loch Ness monster'' has led Republican 
legislators in 47 States to propose 361 voter restriction bills 
to address concerns about supposed voter fraud. If left 
unchecked, this onslaught of bureaucratic violence will make 
the Mississippi Plan look tame by comparison.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Professor Anderson appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Secretary of State 
Bill Gardner is next.

              STATEMENT OF THE HON. BILL GARDNER,

               NEW HAMPSHIRE SECRETARY OF STATE,

                     CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE

    Secretary Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, 
Members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak 
to you today about a critically important issue that impacts 
all of us: the integrity of our elections, a foundation of our 
free society.
    While I certainly support efforts of individual States to 
improve their own elections, the States have long been testing 
grounds for innovation in enhancing and protecting the most 
fundamental right of the citizens in this country. That is our 
right to vote. With that said, I am deeply troubled and 
concerned about the direction some in Congress would take the 
States in terms of the conduct of elections. An unjustified 
Federal intrusion into the election processes of the individual 
States will damage voter confidence, diminish the importance of 
election day itself, and ultimately result in lower voter 
turnout. We only need to look at the history of the National 
Voter Registration Act of 1993 that was commonly called the 
``Motor Voter'' law to see that Federal involvement in the 
election process does not render the promised results.
    When the NVRA was enacted by Congress, it was believed that 
many more United States citizens would be able to vote and, 
thus, vote. Millions of dollars were spent by the States to 
comply with that act. It completely changed the voter 
registration process in the States.
    In contrast, New Hampshire maintained an exemption to the 
NVRA due to having election day registration at the polling 
place and as a result saw its voter turnout of voting-age 
population surge to the top tier of voter turnout among the 
States and has consistently maintained its position in the top 
three States for the past four Presidential elections. Since 
the year 2000, New Hampshire has been double-digit percentage 
points higher than the national average, again, using voting-
age population.
    The attached voter turnout charts will illustrate these 
trends, and it will be very important to take a close look at 
those charts. In a one-size-fits-all Federal approach, 
legislation known as the ``For the People Act'' would trample 
New Hampshire's State Constitution which requires all votes to 
be received, counted, and the results publicly announced on the 
day of the election, and permits absentee ballots to be used 
only by voters who will be absent on election day or who have a 
disability preventing the voter from attending the polling 
place.
    The election process in New Hampshire is a relatively 
simple one. The massive Federal legislation contemplated by 
Congress will overcomplicate our election system at tremendous 
financial cost. It would negate traditions and procedures that 
have served New Hampshire voters well, some for over 200 years. 
I believe the charts that I have provided based on facts are 
self-explanatory and why I believe this legislation, H.R. 1, 
will hurt--or S. 1 will hurt voter participation in the States, 
and especially in my State of New Hampshire.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Secretary Gardner appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. Sherrilyn Ifill is 
the next witness.

          STATEMENT OF SHERRILYN IFILL, PRESIDENT AND

           DIRECTOR-COUNSEL, NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND

             EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC., WASHINGTON, DC

    Ms. Ifill. Good morning, Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member 
Grassley, and Members of the Committee. My name is Sherrilyn 
Ifill, and I am the president and director-counsel of the NAACP 
Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or LDF. Thank you for the 
opportunity to testify before you this morning.
    Since its founding in 1940, LDF has been a leader in the 
struggle to secure, protect, and advance voting rights for 
Black voters. We represented Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 
marchers in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. We have litigated seminal 
cases interpreting the scope of the Voting Rights Act over 
decades, and we continue to litigate on behalf of and work with 
communities in the South to strengthen and protect the ability 
of Black citizens to participate in the political process free 
from discrimination.
    Beyond litigation, we monitor primary and general elections 
every year through our nonpartisan Prepare to Vote and Voting 
Rights Defender Initiatives, and we are a founding member of 
the nonpartisan civil rights Election Protection Hotline, which 
is now administered by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights 
Under Law.
    Last year, we partnered with LeBron James and the More Than 
a Vote Initiative to recruit young poll workers for the 2020 
election to ensure that polling places could remain open in 
Black communities despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and over 
40,000 new poll workers were recruited as a part of that 
effort.
    Our experience last year, outlined in detail in my 
submitted written testimony, makes clear that, contrary to 
numerous news reports, the 2020 election did not go smoothly. 
Instead, voters overcame a litany of barriers and obstacles 
with determination and resilience to produce the highest 
turnout ever recorded in a Presidential election, and voters 
did so during a nationwide pandemic.
    Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, LDF was involved 
in numerous lawsuits and other efforts challenging the lack of 
safe and accessible voting options for Black and medically 
vulnerable voters during the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas, 
Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina. Our lawsuits resulted 
in changes in mail-in voting requirements, identification 
policies, and curbside voting access, significantly increasing 
voter protections and accessibility.
    Nevertheless, voters stood for hours on long lines to cast 
a ballot during the primary and general elections, up to 9 
hours in some instances. Their determination was extraordinary. 
One elderly African American woman who fainted while waiting 
hours on line to vote in the general election in Alabama 
refused to get into an ambulance, insisting that she would stay 
and cast her ballot.
    Polling place closures and consolidations created confusion 
for voters. Robocalls targeting Black and Latino voters in 
Flint, Michigan and Detroit encouraged voters to vote on 
Wednesday rather than the Tuesday, November 3rd election. The 
civil rights Election Protection Hotline received over 30,000 
calls from voters facing obstacles to voting in the general 
election, and in one of the most disturbing features of the 
2020 election, voter intimidation at levels not seen for 
decades became an alarming feature.
    For example, during early voting, numerous Floridians 
received emails threatening that the Proud Boys, an extremist 
far-right group, would come after voters who did not cast their 
ballots for the Republican Presidential candidate.
    The efforts at voter suppression continued even after 
election day, stoked and encouraged by the former President. 
People across the country in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, 
and more participated in a campaign to disrupt the counting and 
certification of ballots cast in those States. The violent 
attack on the Capitol on January 6 was the result of concerted 
efforts to undermine faith in the election and to overturn its 
results. Since January 7, State lawmakers in dozens of States 
have unleashed a wave of restrictive voter laws.
    According to the Brennan Center, as of March 24th, State 
legislators have introduced 361 bills with restrictive 
provisions in 47 States. Georgia enacted a law which, among 
other restrictive provisions, criminalizes the provision of 
water to voters standing on line. Arkansas and Florida are 
following suit.
    A bill in South Carolina would effectively prohibit the 
Souls to the Polls voter participation effort favored by Black 
churches by outlawing early voting on Sundays--Sundays.
    Litigation is the principal tool we have had available to 
us to challenge discriminatory voter suppression laws and 
practices since the Supreme Court ended the preclearance 
provision of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County v. 
Holder case in 2013. Litigation cannot fully meet the challenge 
we are facing. It is slow, and it is expensive. The average 
length of Section 2 cases is 2 to 5 years during which 
thousands if not millions of voters are effectively 
disenfranchised.
    This is not a model that can be sustained in a healthy 
democracy. We need Congress to act. The Framers of the 14th and 
15th Amendments gave Congress the explicit power to enforce the 
guarantee of equal protection and the protection against voting 
discrimination based on race. For 100 years, after the 
ratification of those amendments, until the passage of the 
Voting Rights Act in 1965, Congress abdicated its obligation to 
use this enforcement power as Black people were systematically 
disenfranchised by poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding 
clauses. Congress must once again use this power to fulfill the 
promise of full citizenship guaranteed to Black Americans by 
the Civil War amendments to our Constitution.
    My full testimony has been submitted, and it provides 
greater detail and source material that I hope will aid the 
Committee in its deliberations.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Ifill appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Durbin. Thank you very much, Ms. Ifill.
    We have President Jan Jones.

                STATEMENT OF THE HON. JAN JONES,

             SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE, GEORGIA HOUSE OF

                REPRESENTATIVES, MILTON, GEORGIA

    Speaker Jones. Thank you, Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member 
Grassley, and distinguished Members of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, for inviting me to testify before today's Committee 
hearing. I come before you as a proud Georgian and member of 
the Georgia General Assembly, where I serve as Speaker Pro Tem 
of the Georgia House of Representatives.
    In Georgia, we are making it easier to vote and harder to 
cheat. We are ensuring voter accessibility, transparency, and 
integrity. In 2021, we held both primary and general elections 
utilizing a new statewide election system during the first 
modern worldwide pandemic, and with record turnout. All these 
together, along with changes in voter preferences and choices, 
stressed our elections system. Our obligation was to initiate a 
comprehensive review to assure our State's citizens have the 
ability to vote easily in a timely manner and with confidence.
    Strengthening Georgia's elections processes is not new to 
2021. In fact, from 2003 to 2020, since Republicans have had 
control, 59 elections-related bills were signed into law, 
including at least one bill each of every year. 2019 
legislation addressed concerns primarily expressed by Democrats 
after the 2018 general election, including a process procuring 
provisional ballots and lengthening the period to 9 years 
before some inactive voters are removed from the rolls. Senate 
bill 202 is a forward-facing approach to elections, 
implementing measures to increase voter accessibility and 
fairness. Please allow me to break down some of the key 
components.
    For the very first time, elections superintendents shall 
continue processing, counting, and tabulating ballots until 
such activities are completed on election day to prevent the 
untimely release of returns. It makes clear that the business 
of elections is to be run and funded by the government, not 
tech billionaires and their partisan allies.
    Again, for the first time, Georgia law now requires two 
Saturdays, instead of one, and two optional Sundays of early 
voting. Senate bill 202 creates more uniformity of days and 
hours of early voting in all 159 counties. 134 of Georgia's 159 
counties will offer more in-person voting hours than ever 
before.
    I would note Georgia's total amount of 17 to 19 days of 
early voting is more than Delaware, the District of Columbia, 
New Mexico, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and 
Wisconsin. For the first time, start and end dates for absentee 
ballot applications will more logically coincide with in-person 
early voting and practices in other States. This change will 
increase the likelihood that a voter successfully casts an 
absentee ballot. Ninety percent of absentee ballot requests in 
2020 made greater than 10 days before the election were 
successfully voted. In contrast, only 50 percent of requests 
made fewer than 10 days before the election were successfully 
voted. This provision increases successful voting.
    Certainly, though, the legislation does not prohibit poll 
workers from giving water to people in line and even voters 
bringing their own food and water along with them, as has been 
the long practice. In fact, the bill does the opposite. It 
prohibits offering anything of value within 150 feet of a 
polling place, except for water offered by election officials. 
This is because in 2018 and 2020 activists and candidates 
appearing on the ballot aggressively for the first time passed 
out water, food, gift cards, some with logos affixed to them, 
at polling locations while voters stood in line. It is a 
practice commonly referred to as ``Line Warming'' and surely 
violates the spirit of free elections. The fact is that most 
States have a prohibition of activities considered to be 
campaigning or electioneering within a protected space, ranging 
from 30 feet in Virginia to 100 feet in California to 150 feet 
in Oklahoma.
    Finally, I would be remiss if I did not note the entirely 
selective outrage I have seen over the last few weeks. As 
Georgia makes our no-excuse absentee voting more secure, States 
like Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and 
New York, among others, simply do not have any no-excuse 
absentee voting. The shame is theirs to bear, not Georgia's.
    We also eliminated subjective signature matching for 
absentee ballots and ballot applications, as was criticized by 
Democrats and Republicans in 2020, and replaced it with 
objective forms of identification. Let me be clear: Georgia did 
not eliminate no-excuse absentee voting.
    It is easy to write alarming words and give misleading 
sound bites that would lead people away from the facts, because 
the facts simply do not support what many are hearing or seeing 
about the mainstream, sound Georgia elections law, and it is 
just plain wrong.
    Members of the Committee, I look forward to answering your 
questions and setting the record straight on how we are making 
it easier to vote, harder to cheat, and ensuring every legal 
vote counts. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Speaker Jones appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I am sorry if I got 
your title wrong when I introduced you. I think I elevated you 
to president in that introduction. Thank you very much for your 
testimony.
    We now have Stacey Abrams.

              STATEMENT OF THE HON. STACEY ABRAMS,

          FOUNDER, FAIR FIGHT ACTION, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

    Ms. Abrams. Thank you, Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member 
Grassley, and Members of the Committee. Today's conversation 
regarding the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act does 
occur against the backdrop of a resurgence of Jim Crow-style 
voter suppression measures sweeping across State legislatures 
grounded in the big lie about fraud and insecurity in the 2020 
election.
    As a necessary reminder, post-Reconstruction laws, known as 
``Jim Crow,'' that targeted Black voters never explicitly 
excluded eligible citizens by race. Then, as now, the law is 
surgically aimed at behaviors to limit access. With hundreds of 
bills pending, a significant number of the worst attacks on the 
right to vote are made possible by the Supreme Court's gutting 
of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the 2013 Shelby County v. 
Holder decision.
    That decision that authorized States and localities with a 
history of voting discrimination to again impose limits, 
restrictions, and barriers to participation. The dramatic 
proliferation of State-level anti-voting laws across the 
country in 2021 demonstrates the need, the urgent need for 
Congress to bring the VRA's preclearance formula into the 
modern era, to reinstate Federal oversight over discriminatory 
voting practices, and to strengthen and protect voting rights 
wherever suppression occurs.
    Throughout its history, Georgia has been among the worst 
actors, including malicious prosecution of lawful absentee 
ballot users in 2010 and intimidation of Black voters by deputy 
sheriffs in 2015. Under preclearance, the Department of Justice 
objected to 170 discriminatory voting changes in Georgia at the 
State and local level. After Shelby removed preclearance, 
analysis showed that Black voters were 20 percent more likely 
than white voters to not vote due to poll closures, including 
an estimated 54,000 to 85,000 voters being unable to cast 
ballots in 2018 alone after 214 such poll closures. Had the VRA 
been in effect, these changes would have been examined by a 
Federal court or the DOJ to determine whether they were 
discriminatory before being put into effect.
    Georgia voters are now anticipating the deleterious effects 
on elections created by Senate bill 202 which relies on 
misinformation, falsehoods, and flawed analysis to restrict 
access for voters, primarily targeting communities of color. 
With dozens of attacks on voting rights embedded in the law, I 
will highlight only a few.
    Voters of color in Georgia were more likely than white 
voters to vote by mail for the first time in the last two 
election cycles. Suddenly, S.B. 202 shortens the time period to 
request and return an absentee ballot application and imposes 
new restrictive ID requirements that will have amplified 
effects on disabled voters, older voters, voters of color, and 
Black Georgians in particular.
    Voters of color in Georgia are more likely than white 
voters to stand in long lines, including the 8-hour debacle 
that occurred in June 2020. S.B. 202 criminalizes a volunteer 
handing a bottle of water or food to voters or their children 
while in line. Across the country, these State laws target 
voters of color by restricting access to the ballot for Black, 
Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native 
American communities. In Texas, Arizona, and Michigan, each are 
considering laws to restrict voting rights by people of color.
    When the fundamental right to vote is left to the political 
ambition and prejudices of State actors, ones who rely on 
suppression to maintain power, Federal intercession stands as 
the appropriate remedy. Simply put, the John Lewis Voting 
Rights Advancement Act is essential to the protection of 
democracy.
    Protecting voting rights has been a bipartisan endeavor 
since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and 
through every subsequent reauthorization. While each of us may 
likely have declared a party loyalty, our first obligation is 
to the fundamental standards of democracy, which must be 
aggressively nonpartisan. Actions taken to restrict access, 
thwart participation, or discourage engagement are antithetical 
to our national creed and should be condemned by every patriot. 
Instead, we must advocate for voting rights--not to ensure the 
success of a single party or ideology, but to guarantee a 
vigorous and fair debate amongst Americans of goodwill. It is 
my profound hope we will honor the legacy of my late friend 
Congressman John Lewis and the lives of those lost in the fight 
for a more perfect union by enacting this critical legislation 
into law.
    I thank you for the opportunity to take part in this 
important discussion, and I urge you to continue to strengthen 
our democracy.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Abrams appears as a 
submission for the record.]
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Ms. Abrams.
    Let me concede at the outset that Jim Crow at its worst was 
more violent than the situation we face today. I do not want to 
recount all of the horrors of that bigotry and racism that 
occurred in that era, but I think the bottom-line question 
which we are addressing in this hearing is whether there is a 
design or an intent in legislation that is being considered and 
passed in many States, including the State of Georgia, to limit 
or restrict the rights to vote of minority populations with the 
intent of having influence on the outcome of the election. I 
think that goes without saying. Clearly there is a difference 
in the witnesses who appear before the Committee, but I would 
like to ask Stacey Abrams, for example, the Speaker Pro Tem, 
Ms. Jones, said earlier that the new Georgia law made it easier 
to vote in the State. You can--You have recounted a few 
instances, but can you think of elements in the law that was 
signed by Governor Kemp which do the opposite?
    Ms. Abrams. First is this falsity that has been proposed 
that this is an expansion of rights. Let us be clear. In the 
State of Georgia, 60 percent of Georgians live in counties that 
already had, for example, two Saturdays of early voting. What 
is changed is that now additional counties will join the ranks, 
and that is a good thing. At the same time that those counties 
will join those ranks, they have reduced mandatory dates, they 
have eliminated weeks of early voting during Federal runoffs--
and let us be very clear that Federal runoffs in Georgia were 
predicated on a racist premise of eliminating access to the 
right to vote for African Americans. They eliminate access to a 
mandatory weekend voting day.
    Another example is the falsity that this expands hours for 
voting. Yes, it codifies that you can vote between 9 to 5 as 
the business hours. For 78 percent of Georgians, prior to this 
bill, the hours for voting during early voting was 7 a.m. to 7 
p.m., so this actually eliminates hours of voting and mandates 
only a shortened period of time. That was the misunderstanding 
that I think is still misunderstood by the Washington Post, 
because early voting hours that exceed that are now optional 
and not mandatory. We have 78 percent of Georgians who would 
experience longer voting hours, and now we will see shortened 
hours.
    In addition, there is a narrative that says that the use of 
a Social Security number is allowed for returning your absentee 
ballot if you do not have access to the ID. Well, let us be 
clear. You cannot apply for an absentee ballot with your Social 
Security number. You must have some forms of identification 
that are unavailable to currently 200,000 Georgians.
    Those are just a few of the issues, and I will certainly 
address the criminalization of the handing out of water. We 
have to be clear that in the State of Georgia, 8-hour lines for 
communities of color have become not an unusual circumstance. 
Usually we have seen between 4- and 8-hour lines. People do not 
often come prepared to stand in line for the whole of a 
business day. They certainly do not often bring their food with 
them, and this ignores the fact that the overworked poll 
workers who are inside the buildings do not have the time to 
come out and hand out refreshments since they are busy 
processing so many voters who have been underserved.
    I would use those as a few examples of why this bill is 
deleterious in its effect and malicious in its intent.
    Chair Durbin. Ms. Jones, I would like to ask you to respond 
to this question. There was an allegation made by the former 
President of the United States relating to the voting in the 
State of Georgia. He went so far at one point in the recorded 
conversation to say that 5,000 dead people had voted. Mr. 
Raffensperger replied that there were only two that they could 
find and that was two too many. I would like to ask you if you 
would comment on the 2020 election. Do you believe there was 
voter fraud in Georgia, as President Trump alleged?
    Speaker Jones. You know, I am here to discuss what is in 
Senate bill 202, not relitigate the 2018 election in which my 
former colleague Stacey Abrams never conceded, nor am I here to 
relitigate the 2020. What I can say is that the bill does 
increase accessibility. Forty-seven counties had no two 
Saturdays of voting and will be required to now under this 
bill.
    Additionally, not one single Georgian will have reduced 
hours of voting in early voting because it allows up to 7 a.m. 
to 7 p.m., but what it does do is mandate from 9 in the morning 
to 5 p.m., and we have 134 counties with less or fewer voting 
hours for early voting.
    Chair Durbin. Ms. Jones, if I----
    Speaker Jones. The bill absolutely does increase the 
amount.
    Chair Durbin. If I could follow through on that, the reason 
for my question is this: I am trying to understand the logic 
behind new voting laws which would give less time to request 
absentee ballots, strict new ID requirements for absentee 
ballots, illegal for election officials to mail out absentee 
ballot applications and the like. In light of the 2020 
election, I believe Mr. Raffensperger spoke the truth--and 
there certainly is no evidence to suggest otherwise--when he 
suggested that the election in 2020 following the old law was 
absent any major voting fraud and should not be questioned in 
terms of results.
    If the election--if the premise was 2020 was sound, why the 
changes that restricted certain practices that created 
opportunities for people to vote in Georgia?
    Speaker Jones. Thank you, Chairman Durbin, for the 
question. Since 2003, 59 elections bills have been passed by 
the Georgia General Assembly, at least one each and every year. 
After the 2018 elections, we had an elections bill that 
addressed some of the concerns expressed by Democrats. In this 
bill, after a worldwide pandemic, record turnout, a new 
election system, once again we are coming back to address 
concerns expressed by both Democrats and Republicans. The bill 
absolutely will reduce the long lines, and it will make clear 
that there has to be--it makes clear there has to be proper 
notice so that voters can know if a precinct is changed; it has 
to require notice at the old precinct location with a 4-foot-
by-4-foot sign also at the new location.
    There are many provisions in it, but let me just mention 
specifically with regard to your question about shortening 
absentee hour--days to request an absentee ballot. As 
recommended by the Association of County Commissioners, which 
is a bipartisan group, and the U.S. Postal Service, our timing 
to request an absentee ballot allowed someone to request one 
the Friday before the regular election, which almost certainly 
meant they would have an unsuccessful vote. This moves it back 
to 10 days, which is more expansive, I will admit--11 days, 
than what the U.S. Postal Service recommended, which was 14 
days, but it, I do believe, will result in more successful 
absentee ballots cast regardless of whether one lives anywhere 
in the State and whether they are a Democrat or a Republican.
    Chair Durbin. I would just say in conclusion that giving 
Georgia voters under the new law less time to request absentee 
ballots and shutting down the number of dropboxes from 94 to 23 
cannot make it easier to vote or create more opportunity. I 
think just the opposite is the case.
    Senator Grassley.
    Senator Grassley. Speaker Jones, did you look at any other 
States for guidance or inspiration in the provisions of S.B. 
30--202?
    Speaker Jones. Yes, sir, we most certainly did. We wanted 
to make sure that although our voting system is more expansive 
than many in the country, particularly in the Northeast, we 
wanted to make sure that any changes we made were mainstream, 
common sense, and made it easier, more fair, more transparent, 
and secure for a voter regardless of their geography or 
whichever party they tended to vote for. I do believe this bill 
does that.
    We--Like, frankly, most States in the Union, we do have a 
voter ID which is common-sense regulation and required to pick 
up a child from daycare, board a flight to go visit 
grandmother, it is to cash a check, and I think the bigger 
issue, for the 3 percent who do not currently have either a 
driver's license or a free--and I emphasize ``Free''--voter ID, 
I am most concerned about their ability to participate in the 
21st modern century and society as a whole, and that is perhaps 
where we should give our efforts to, is not undermine the 
security of elections for absentee ballots but, rather, help 
the few that do not have one to obtain one. Thank you, sir.
    Senator Grassley. Also to you, Speaker Jones, can you tell 
me what S.B. 202 does to reduce lines to vote? If it has got 
ten examples that you can give, give me just one or two.
    Speaker Jones. Yes, sir. Thank you. Because particularly in 
the June primary, when we had a brand-new elections system, 
elections officials, poll workers were learning how to utilize 
the machines, we did have some long lines in some areas of the 
State. They were primarily in counties that are Democrat-run, 
but regardless of that, what we did was we have required that 
at any single point in time in the next general election if 
there is a line of 1 hour or longer, at the next following 
subsequent general election, the election superintendent for 
that county must either split the precinct, add poll workers, 
add machines, or all of the three.
    Senator Grassley. I would like to ask Senator--Secretary 
Gardner, Iowa and New Hampshire brag about first in the Nation, 
one for caucus, one for primary. In fact, H.R. 1 or its State 
equivalent, S. 1, is passed, if so, what effect do you think 
that would have on the ability of our States to preserve their 
first in the Nation status?
    Secretary Gardner. Senator, S. 1 would not specifically 
have an effect. However, I made the statement that it could put 
the New Hampshire primary in a perilous position, and I stand 
by that statement.
    Senator Grassley. Okay. Let me ask you one other question. 
Your State has voting laws that are seen as restrictive, yet as 
you have told us in your opening statement, it is consistent 
that some of the--it consistently has some of the highest 
turnout elections in the country. Would you agree with me that 
voters tend to turn out more for elections when they have more 
confidence that their vote will be counted appropriately? And 
what effect has your voter ID provision had on turnout?
    Secretary Gardner. Absolutely, the trust and confidence 
voters have in the process is a huge boost to turnout. New 
Hampshire had a voter ID law for the first--in the 2012 
Presidential election. So 2020, 6 months ago, that was the 
third Presidential election that we had voter ID. We had in 
2012 the highest turnout since 1960 in New Hampshire, over 14 
percent higher than the country as a whole and higher than we 
had had in over half a century among our own Presidential 
elections in 2012. In 2016, we even went higher than that, 14.5 
percent higher than the country as a whole, with the second 
Presidential election using voter ID. And in 2020, it was the 
same.
    When voter ID was going through the legislature, there were 
people saying that 10 percent of the population was not going 
to be able to vote, this would hurt certain groups more than it 
would hurt other groups. There were polls that nonprofits like 
Pew, Public, came and testified in our hearings saying that it 
could be an 11-percent decline. In our State, it was just the 
absolute opposite. As I said, three Presidential elections in a 
row averaging--you have to go back half a century.
    Those are the facts on that issue in New Hampshire.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Gardner.
    Senator Whitehouse, remote.
    Senator Whitehouse. As you know, I am inclined to ask why 
about things, and I cannot help but wonder why, after the Trump 
administration's top election security official and Georgia's 
own election officials vouched for the integrity of the last 
election, as did seemingly every Republican-controlled 
legislative body in the country pivot as if on command to file 
and move voter suppression bills, 361 of them by one count. 
When you see group behavior, it is often interesting to look 
for the motivation.
    You have the big lie that the election was stolen, which 
allows for skepticism to be brought against elections, even if 
it is not founded in fact. At the same time, you have unpopular 
policies demanded by a Republican donor elite that has every 
interest in building an electorate that will give the donor 
elite its policies rather than giving up on their policies in 
order to attract voters. As our friend Reverend Warnock says, 
limiting voters serves this, particularly when limiting voters 
is to make sure that some people are not voting. Of course, 
dark money is that donor elite's weapon of choice, and we see 
the conservative dark money groups have already announced $39 
million in spending campaigns to restrict voting rights at the 
State level and block passage of the For the People Act, and 
that number is likely going up because these very same groups 
spent over $100 million in dark money during just the 2018 
election cycle.
    At the State level, we see two particular groups very 
prominent, one, the State Policy Network, and, two, the 
American Legislative Exchange Council, the so-called ALEC. ALEC 
is toxic enough that Exxon severed its ties to ALEC. When 
Exxon-Mobil thinks it needs to clean up its act by severing 
from you, that is a pretty strong signal.
    ALEC has singled out Representative Jones for praise, 
calling her an ``ALEC legislator.'' ALEC is funded by Koch 
Industries. It has received millions of dollars from right-wing 
foundations like the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the 
Searle Freedom Trust, the Bradley Foundation, and also through 
the identity-laundering Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.
    It is working now with the Heritage Foundation on a $24 
million campaign to produce model voting legislation for State 
legislatures like Georgia's to adopt and even to hire lobbyists 
in what they call ``Crucial States.'' ALEC has created a secret 
working group on election-related matters led by Cleta 
Mitchell, who many people will remember for her role backing 
Trump's efforts to flip Georgia's election results. ALEC has 
its hands all over this.
    There is also the Georgia Public Policy Center, which is 
the local affiliate of the State Policy Network. Representative 
Jones has said, ``I want to publicly say how much I appreciate 
Georgia Public Policy Foundation. We rely on Georgia Public 
Policy Foundation's research and work. They have been an 
invaluable--invaluable resource to us.''
    Guess what? ALEC is an official associate organization of 
the State Policy Network with the Georgia Public Policy Center, 
and the over group, the SPN, State Policy Network, has paid for 
dozens of its think tanks to become ALEC members. There is a 
lot of back and forth between the dark money ALEC group and the 
dark money State Policy Network. Like ALEC, State Policy 
Network is largely funded by big corporations and right-wing 
family foundations, including the Koch Brothers, the Waltons, 
the Bradley Foundation, the Rowe Foundation, the Coors Family, 
and, of course, the ubiquitous identity launderers Donors Trust 
and Donors Capital Fund.
    There are lots of other familiar names moving into this 
space. The Heritage Foundation, the Koch-funded dark money 
group's political arm, Heritage Action for America, announced 
plans to spend $24 million on a 2-year effort to shape States' 
voting laws and to work at the Federal level to block the For 
the People Act. In March, Heritage Action boasted that Heritage 
Action recently launched ``an effort to strengthen Georgia's 
election laws and restore voter confidence in the State, 
including a $600,000 TV ad buy, digital advertising, and a 
grassroots advocacy initiative for an initial total investment 
of $1 million.'' That is a quote from them.
    At the same time, we have the so-called Honest Elections 
Project, which is Leonard Leo's new outgrowth of his vast dark 
money network, that has pledged tens of millions of dollars 
into conservative election efforts.
    Honest Elections Project is an alias group that can use all 
of the anonymous funds given to its preexisting Judicial 
Education Project, which Leo used to steer Bradley Foundation 
grants into coordinated amicus brief efforts that I have 
chronicled elsewhere. His Honest Elections Project for Georgia 
released a string of press releases urging Georgia to 
investigate its 2020 results and to take up voter suppression 
legislation and congratulated the State for enacting S.B. 202 
last month.
    Last is True the Vote, a group whose main aim has been to 
recruit poll watchers whose task of finding suspicious activity 
is often focused on voters and neighborhoods of color. Like the 
other groups, its finances are largely opaque, coming through 
anonymized donations via Donors Trust as well as the Bradley 
Foundation and, of course, the State Policy Network.
    There is this complex, interlocking network of billionaire 
right-wing dark money that I think tends to signal why the 
whole herd would have moved at once based on no actual evidence 
of fraud or dishonesty in the elections, and----
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Whitehouse. Is my time expired?
    Chair Durbin. I am afraid it is.
    Senator Whitehouse. My apologies. My clock does not run 
when I am remote, and I will yield back my nonexistent 
remaining time. Thank you, Chairman.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator. Senator Graham.
    Senator Graham. Thank you. To my dear friend Sheldon, I 
appreciate your consistency.
    What would account for--the elephant herd is apparently 
marching in one way. H.R. 1 I believe is supported by most 
every liberal group in the country. Most of my Democratic 
colleagues support H.R. 1. Why? What motivates you?
    Redistricting. Under your proposal, you would take 
redistricting away from State elected officials and give it to 
some independent commission. What has that got to do with 
voting? That is about trying to change the ability of red 
States to be able to draw new lines based on population shift.
    H.R. 1 has a 6:1 match for low-dollar donations. What has 
that got to do with voting? Nothing. It has got to do with 
political power, trying to have the Federal Government 
subsidize campaigns favorable to you. If a 6:1 match had been 
in place in my recent election, South Carolina would have 
probably had over $1 billion spent. I think the people of South 
Carolina deserve better than that. I raised 110. My opponent 
raised 132. If you had a 6:1 match, that would have been about 
$1 billion. I think that is cruel and probably violates the 
Geneva Convention.
    H.R. 1 is not about righting wrongs. It is about power. It 
is about trying to grab power, and I can understand why people 
want to grab it. I do not understand why people on our side 
would willingly sit on the sidelines. We are not. We are here 
today to talk about the voting process.
    Mr. Gardner, you are sort of a legend in your part of the 
world, I think rightly so. It is my understanding that you 
oppose H.R. 1 and the Senate equivalent. Is that correct?
    Secretary Gardner. Yes.
    Senator Graham. In 30 seconds or less, why?
    Secretary Gardner. First of all, we do not have any early 
voting in New Hampshire, and for all the studies that show that 
early voting actually helps turnout, I can show you plenty of 
academic studies that show the opposite. That just because you 
make voting easier does not raise the turnout automatically. We 
have election day that is a day for everything in New 
Hampshire. It goes all the way back to the beginning. Our 
Constitution predated the Federal Constitution, and it ends 
that day. It is our tradition, because every polling place, the 
chief election officer has to that evening of the election read 
publicly the votes cast for every candidate on the ballot, and 
that is the end of it.
    The--and our early voting--it is called ``early voting''--
is just not allowed under our----
    Senator Graham. You believe it would be a power grab when 
it came to New Hampshire voting--is that fair to say--by the 
Federal Government?
    Secretary Gardner. Yes. The same thing with no-fault 
absentee.
    Senator Graham. Okay.
    Secretary Gardner. It is the same thing.
    Senator Graham. Thank you very much.
    The Carter-Baker Commission looked at voter fraud in voting 
in 2008. They found that there is no evidence of extensive 
fraud in U.S. elections or multiple voting, but both occur and 
it could affect the outcome of close elections and many other 
findings.
    The absentee ballots remained the largest source of 
potential voter fraud. That is what the Carter-Baker Commission 
said, not me. The Carter-Baker report said--recommend--to 
reduce fraud, recommended prohibiting third-party organization 
candidates and political party activists from handling absentee 
ballots. I think that is related to ballot harvesting.
    My question for Ms. Abrams: Do you support voter 
identification laws?
    Ms. Abrams. Yes.
    Senator Graham. Okay. Do you support----
    Ms. Abrams. There are 35 States in the United States that 
have had voter identification laws. In fact, every State 
requires some form of identification.
    Senator Graham. Right, okay.
    Ms. Abrams. What I have objected to is restrictive voter 
identification laws that narrow the set of permissible 
materials that----
    Senator Graham. The answer is yes as a concept. Do you 
support the idea that voting should be limited to American 
citizens?
    Ms. Abrams. Yes.
    Senator Graham. Do you support that we should have--do you 
support ballot harvesting? Are you familiar with that term?
    Ms. Abrams. I am familiar with the term of art that has 
been promulgated to describe a variety of efforts, but, for 
example, on Native American reservations where they are 
precluded from access due to underfunding to reach in a timely 
fashion locations for voting, I do believe that it is 
appropriate for tribal elders to collect ballots and retrieve 
them and use a single source of delivery to provide those 
ballots and, thus, provide Native Americans with the 
opportunity to participate in elections.
    Senator Graham. Do you support it beyond Native American 
voting?
    Ms. Abrams. As I said, I believe that it depends on the 
situation and that the term of art that is being used describes 
a variety of behaviors, and each of those behaviors should be 
examined for utility and for veracity. To the extent that they 
help voters participate in elections in a lawful manner, they 
should be permitted.
    Senator Graham. Okay. Do you believe the Republican 
majority in Georgia, House, Senate, when they are making the 
changes to your State voting laws, do you think they are 
motivated by trying to suppress the African American vote?
    Ms. Abrams. I have seen it happen sometimes that they are. 
I have seen other bills that have been truly bipartisan in 
nature that have looked at and fully examined----
    Senator Graham. You believe that is the motivation behind--
do you believe----
    Ms. Abrams. I am sorry?
    Senator Graham [continuing]. That is the motivation behind 
these laws?
    Ms. Abrams. I believe the motivation behind certain 
provisions in S.B. 202 are a direct result to the increased 
participation of communities of color in the 2020 and 2021 
elections. I have participated for 11 years. As Speaker Pro Tem 
Jones pointed out, we served together, and almost every year 
there was a voting law. And when those voting laws were neutral 
not only on their face----
    Senator Graham. I am out of time. Do you think----
    Ms. Abrams. [continuing] I would support it.
    Senator Graham. Do you think the Speaker of the House, 
Speaker Pro Tem, Jan Jones, is motivated by trying to limit the 
African American voters in Georgia? Do you think that is----
    Ms. Abrams. I believe there is racial animus that generated 
those bills. I would not assume that that racial animus is 
shared by every person----
    Senator Graham. Thank you.
    Ms. Abrams. [continuing] But the result is that racial 
animus exists, and if it eliminates access to the right to 
vote, then regardless of a certain person's heart, if the 
effect is deleterious to the ability of people of color to 
participate in elections, then that is problematic, and that is 
wrong, and it should be rejected by all.
    Chair Durbin. Senator Klobuchar.
    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank 
you to our witnesses.
    I am just looking at the facts, and I think that we need to 
get these facts straight. In the 2020 election, more than 160 
million Americans voted, more than ever before, and, in fact, 
the Trump administration's Homeland Security official charged 
with protecting elections deemed the election the ``Most secure 
election in American history.'' Is that correct, Ms. Abrams?
    Ms. Abrams. That is correct.
    Senator Klobuchar. Former Attorney General Barr stated that 
there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have 
changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Is that right?
    Ms. Abrams. That is also correct.
    Senator Klobuchar. My problem is this: Why do you think 361 
bills have been introduced in 47 States that would restrict 
access to the polls when, in fact, the way things were running 
was working for the people of this country? They were voting by 
mail like never before. They were exercising their right to 
vote, and they did it safely. Why did this happen?
    Ms. Abrams. With all due respect to Secretary of State 
Gardner, I would actually refer us back to Senator Sheldon 
Whitehouse's commentary, and that is this: We saw an increased 
participation from communities that are considered unfortunate 
or that are not favorable to Republican victories. No one is 
entitled to win. I am a person who is a living example that 
there is no entitlement to victory. We are all entitled to 
participation, and what these laws have done in stunning and 
uniform fashion is reduced entitlement to participation. They 
have done so by targeting behaviors that are specifically 
attributable to communities that voted in opposition of 
Republican values.
    That is not to say that every person of color intends to 
vote Democratic. It is not to say that every young person votes 
Democratic. When the overwhelming majority in those communities 
exercised their right to vote in this last election, we have 
seen a raft of laws that have been targeted at their behaviors. 
When laws are targeted at the behaviors of communities of 
color, that is not only reminiscent of the Mississippi Plan and 
the Jim Crow laws, as Dr. Anderson has so clearly played out, 
those are intentionally a resurgence of voter suppression 
similar to Jim Crow, which is why we use that language, because 
we cannot leave our history behind.
    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. As Reverend Warnock said 
earlier, maybe it just boils down to some words, and that is 
that some people do not want some people to vote.
    Ms. Ifill, can you tell me about how rare voter fraud is? I 
think there was a recent editorial in a major newspaper talking 
about since 2000 Oregon has sent out more than 100 million 
mail-in ballots and documented only about a dozen cases of 
fraud. Rounded to the seventh decimal point, that is 0.0000001 
percent of all ballots. Ms. Ifill?
    Ms. Ifill. That is correct, Senator Klobuchar. You have a 
better chance of being struck by lightning than finding 
widespread voter fraud. In fact, President Carter spoke out 
about the report that was referenced earlier. He believes that 
the report was being distorted to support the provisions of 
S.B. 202. In fact, what the report called for was a deeper 
study of vote by mail. They were basing their study on 2005 to 
2008. The report specifically noted that we have two States, 
Oregon and Washington State, that do all voting by mail, and 
there is no significant voter fraud in those two States.
    So voter ID, you know, for absentee voting, that is 
actually quite unusual. There are only three, I guess now with 
Georgia four States that require photo ID for absentee voting, 
and that is what we are talking about with S.B. 202. It is 
actually a rare and unusual thing.
    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. You know, we are going to be 
marking up the Senate File 1 in the Rules Committee, so I am 
pretty familiar with this bill. Could you explain, Ms. Ifill, 
why--yes, it has some very important standards for voting given 
what we are seeing, the assault on voting across the country. 
Why given that we have not had any Federal campaign legislation 
passed since McCain-Feingold, which was basically dismantled by 
the courts, it is time to also focus on all of the dark money 
flooding into our politics as well as ethics rules that are 
necessary for all of us? That used to be a bipartisan issue.
    Ms. Ifill. I think, Senator Klobuchar, it is important to 
see this all of a piece. This is about access to the political 
process. This is about ordinary people having access to the 
political process. We think of the right to vote as scared, the 
casting of the ballot, the counting of that ballot. If there 
are forces that neutralize the ability of that ballot to have 
meaning, then Congress needs to examine that also so that 
citizens can feel that they truly have a role in our democracy 
and have their voice heard. It cannot be a sham. It cannot be a 
shell. When activists marched and risked their lives for the 
right to vote during the civil rights movement, they were not 
just looking at the ceremonial act of casting a ballot. They 
truly believed that being able to participate equally in the 
political process would allow them to meaningfully change the 
condition of their lives and communities.
    Everything that bears on the ability to give that vote 
meaning it seems to me is relevant and important for this 
Committee to consider.
    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. With your indulgence, just 
one very fast question with a fast answer, Ms. Abrams. One of 
the things, as I prepare for this hearing that I am chairing 
next month, one of the arguments made is that, oh, it will be 
so hard for States to enact these. However, we already have 43 
States with early voting, 21 States with same-day registration, 
19 States with automatic voter registration, 45 States that 
allowed all voters to cast a ballot by mail last year. In 2018, 
Michigan approved many changes to its election procedures that 
went into effect before the November 2020 election. Would you 
agree that States like Georgia and others have been able to 
implement these changes in a correct way without a problem?
    Ms. Abrams. Absolutely.
    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you.
    Chair Durbin. Senator Cornyn.
    Senator Cornyn. My first question is for Ms. Abrams. Ms. 
Abrams, is the Georgia election law that Speaker Jones talked 
about, is it a racist piece of legislation?
    Ms. Abrams. I think there are components of it that are 
indeed racist, because they use racial animus as a means of 
targeting the behaviors of certain voters to eliminate--limit 
their participation in elections.
    Senator Cornyn. You believe that the Georgia Legislature 
made deliberate attempts to suppress the minority vote?
    Ms. Abrams. Yes.
    Senator Cornyn. Georgia has a no-excuse absentee voting 
provision in that law. As Ms. Jones I think has said, certainly 
in her written statement, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, 
New Hampshire, and New York do not have any no-excuse absentee 
voting. Are the voting laws in Connecticut, Delaware, 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York racist?
    Ms. Abrams. I would say they are behind the eight ball and 
they need to be improved, and that is why I support the For the 
People Act voting rights provisions that would expand access to 
no-excuse absentee voting. As we explained earlier, it is how 
these behaviors are targeted. The State of Georgia targeted 
communities that used these resources for the first time to 
their benefit and, thus, after 15 years of Republican-dominated 
use of absentee balloting, it suddenly changed its mind about 
the utility, the processing, the timeliness, and----
    Senator Cornyn. You do think--excuse me. We only have 5 
minutes to ask questions, and so if you would respond to my 
question. Just to be clear, you think Connecticut, Delaware, 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York that have more 
restrictive no-excuse absentee voting, you believe those 
election laws are racist?
    Ms. Abrams. Senator, I am responding to your question. Your 
question----
    Senator Cornyn. No, you--Ms. Abrams, you are filibustering. 
Could you answer yes or no?
    Ms. Abrams. I am not. Sir, I am not filibustering. I am 
stating very specifically, I believe that restrictive voting 
laws should be addressed by the For the People Act. I believe 
that the Georgia decision----
    Senator Cornyn. Just to be clear, whether they are racist 
or not, you just--you think they need to be changed because you 
disagree with them, right?
    Ms. Abrams. No, that is not what I have said.
    Senator Cornyn. Okay.
    Ms. Abrams. I have said that those laws that were changed 
in 2021 in response to an increased use by people of color, 
laws that were put in place by Republicans 15 years ago and 
they were perfectly satisfied with the utility of those laws, 
until they were used successfully by people of color, that the 
intent matters, and the intent behind these laws----
    Senator Cornyn. You think--you think----
    Ms. Abrams [continuing]. Matter in the State of Georgia.
    Senator Cornyn. You think voter ID requirements are racist?
    Ms. Abrams. No, sir. I have always said that--in fact, I 
wrote a book about----
    Senator Cornyn. Doesn't that restrict----
    Ms. Abrams [continuing]. I support voter identification.
    Senator Cornyn. Doesn't that restrict voting, the 
requirement of a voter ID?
    Ms. Abrams. I support voter identification. What I object 
to is restrictive forms of voter identification that limit who 
is permitted to use their identification and that create a 
narrower and narrower----
    Senator Cornyn. Georgia gives--you can use a free ID or a 
utility bill or something like that. You do not believe that 
the Georgia law restricts voting because of the voter 
identification requirement, if I----
    Ms. Abrams. That is not what I have said, sir. What I said 
is that the absentee ballot requirement that now adds voter ID 
in an exceptionally rare usage because it will now push almost 
200,000 voters who do not have access or do not currently have 
those IDs out of the process----
    Senator Cornyn. So voter ID----
    Ms. Abrams. [continuing] People of color----
    Senator Cornyn. Sometimes it is racist, sometimes it is not 
racist?
    Ms. Abrams. The intent always matters, sir, and that is the 
point of this conversation. That is the point of the Jim Crow 
narrative, that Jim Crow did not simply look at the activity; 
it looked at the intent. It looked at the behaviors, and it 
targeted behaviors that were disproportionately used by people 
of color.
    Senator Cornyn. Do you know that----
    Ms. Abrams. That is the----
    Senator Cornyn [continuing]. Gallup says that 69 percent of 
Black voters support voter ID and 75 percent of voters overall?
    Ms. Abrams. Sir, I am among those who support voter ID. I 
have never objected to voter ID. I object to narrowly tailoring 
and narrowing the permissive ability----
    Senator Cornyn. You agree with voter ID in some 
circumstances and not in others.
    Ms. Abrams. That is not what I have said, sir. I----
    Senator Cornyn. No, you said it is based on intent, so 
voter ID without malintent is okay----
    Ms. Abrams. No, sir, that is not what I said.
    Senator Cornyn. Well----
    Ms. Abrams. Senator, I am happy to respond to your 
questions----
    Senator Cornyn. Ms. Jones, I have a question for you in my 
remaining time----
    Ms. Abrams. [continuing] But if you are going to 
mischaracterize my responses, that is inappropriate.
    Senator Cornyn. Ms. Jones, Connecticut, Delaware, 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York do not have any no-
excuse absentee voting. Georgia decided to permit it. Why the 
differences between Georgia and these other States?
    Speaker Jones. Thank you, Senator Cornyn. Georgia has a 
long history, particularly since Republicans have been in 
charge since 2003, of expanding access to voting. Senate bill 
202 does no differently, and the voter ID requirements that are 
being put in place for absentee voting are no different than 
the voter ID requirements for in-person or early voting. They 
are exactly, precisely the same.
    Senator Cornyn. Mr. Chairman, can I ask one last question 
of Mr. Gardner?
    Mr. Gardner, I think you said that there is no early voting 
in New Hampshire, but you do not believe that impacts turnout. 
Could you explain that? That seems a little counterintuitive.
    Secretary Gardner. Yes, it certainly is counterintuitive, 
but it is factual. If you take a look at the charts that I have 
submitted to the Committee, there are two important things. New 
Hampshire has no early voting. We have election day, and it 
stems back to our Constitution from a long time ago. The second 
one is the no-fault absentee. That is unconstitutional in New 
Hampshire. The chart is really important. If you look at the 
chart that I gave--and I am going to be very specific with it--
I have been Secretary of State during 12 Presidential election 
years. The first five Presidential elections, the State of 
Oregon had a turnout higher than New Hampshire in each of those 
five. Starting in 1996, after Oregon decided to go to all mail 
voting, we have had seven Presidential elections. Oregon has 
had a turnout lower than New Hampshire in all seven of those 
Presidential elections. That is fact.
    I have lived through these years watching results that take 
place in certain States, and that is why I am not projecting 
onto the country what New Hampshire does, because other States 
are different than New Hampshire. What I am saying is in my 
State I have seen over the years what ways to make it easier to 
vote actually work and what ways that make it easier to vote do 
not work. These charts are factual. This is all factual 
information.
    For seven Presidential elections in a row, ever since 
Oregon decided to get rid of election day registration at the 
polls and go to no-fault, everyone is mailed a ballot, there 
are no polling places; they have multiple days to vote, 
multiple locations where they can cast their ballot.
    Academics say that is the easiest, it is effortless, but I 
know what has happened between the two States. The Secretary of 
State of Oregon actually tried to convince me back in the early 
1990s to join with him because he thought that in 5 years the 
whole country would be voting by mail, if New Hampshire did it 
on the east coast and Oregon did it on the west coast.
    This is factual, and those charts I gave to the Committee, 
I implore you to take a look at those charts. It ranks every 
State, all 50 States, starting in 1976, where they ranked. Take 
your own State. Take a look at it. Compare one State to another 
State.
    It is based on voting-age population.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Gardner.
    Secretary Gardner. It is not----
    Chair Durbin. Thank you very much. Senator Coons.
    Senator Coons. Thank you, Chairman Durbin, and thank you to 
our witnesses today and to this Committee for paying so much 
attention to the urgent issue of voting and the rights of 
Americans to vote.
    It is so profoundly disappointing to me that in 2021, 
following our last election, we need to have a hearing to 
address a surge in voter suppression efforts around the 
country. In a healthy democracy, the side that loses an 
election then takes time to reflect on why and how and what the 
issues were that might have moved voters to their side. We 
instead see in legislatures across the country efforts to 
suppress the access to the ballot box and the opportunity to 
vote. Bills like the one that passed in Georgia I view as an 
affront to the legacy of John Lewis and others who risked or 
spilled their own blood to win the right to vote.
    As Ms. Ifill knows well, I have long worked to support my 
colleagues' efforts, Senator Leahy's efforts and others, to 
pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act, now renamed the John 
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and I want to ask some 
questions about that today and about our efforts to try and 
plug the hole created by the Supreme Court's ill-conceived, I 
think, decision in Shelby County in 2013.
    Ms. Ifill, if I might just start with you. As a matter of 
common sense, I think we all have a pretty clear idea of why 
some States are pursuing these laws. Under the Voting Rights 
Act as it currently exists, can you explain why these laws are 
so difficult to successfully challenge in court?
    Ms. Ifill. Thank you, Senator Coons. As I said at the 
outset, litigation is one of the tools that we have available, 
and we, by the way, have challenged S.B. 202 under the 
Constitution. We challenged it under the First Amendment, under 
the 14th Amendment, under the 15th Amendment, and under the 
Voting Rights Act.
    Litigation takes a long time. It is expensive. It can take 
from 2 to 5 years. I will give you an example. LDF was part of 
the team that successfully challenged Texas' voter ID law 
between 2014 and 2018. During the pendency of that litigation, 
there were 500 offices that were elected in Texas, Justices of 
the Texas Supreme Court, Attorneys General, district attorneys, 
lower court judges, county councilpersons, elections that 
proceeded despite the fact that we had demonstrated in our 
litigation that 600,000 Texans were likely disenfranchised by 
that particular voter ID law.
    Litigation is a blunt instrument. What preclearance gave us 
was the opportunity to get out ahead of voting discrimination 
before it happened, to have a review of the kind that should 
have happened with S.B. 202, which is one of the features that 
has not been talked about. The way this law was rushed through, 
we were there. Bills were dropping at 11 p.m., and then 
hearings were held on them the next day at 7 a.m., as we tried 
to keep up with this process. This sweeping bill, this omnibus 
bill, was passed in this fashion that did not even give a real 
opportunity for study. Where is the racial impact study on 
these provisions and how they will affect Black voters in the 
State? You will not find it because it was not done.
    A preclearance provision would have allowed a neutral 
authority, a Federal authority, to look at every single 
proposed voting change and to determine the effect on Black 
voters. That was in answer to Senator Cornyn's question about 
what was the motivation, what is the effect of the laws, but we 
did not do that because we do not have preclearance and because 
Georgia was hell-bent on pushing this law through as quickly as 
possible. So, now we are left with litigation.
    Senator Coons. Thank you, Ms. Ifill.
    Ms. Abrams, good to see you again. How would having the 
John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in place operate on 
other similar laws in the future? Given the point you made 
earlier about the timing and the intent and the context of 
voting legislation is critical, how would preclearance analysis 
have impacted the enactment of Senate bill 202?
    Ms. Abrams. Senator Coons, you frame it properly. What 
preclearance does is look not simply at the piece of paper 
before you in the form of a law, but look at the context, look 
at the history, and look at the effect. Those have to be taken 
in toto because Georgia has a different history than, let us 
say, Texas or New Hampshire. In each State, one would have to 
look at what has happened when these things occurred, not in 
the macro but in the very micro sense of what happened in the 
places where these laws are taking effect.
    For example, in the State of Georgia, the closure of 
polling places, 214 that closed by 2018 led to between 54,000 
and 85,000 voters not being able to cast their ballots because 
they could not get to their polling place. This is not 
incidental. This is the difference in elections.
    We also know that the requirement of providing ID for 
200,000 voters who have not been required to physically send in 
their identification will change how they can participate in 
our elections. Despite the misnomer of free ID, there is 
nothing free about identification when you have to pay for the 
paperwork to comply with the identification.
    Senator Coons. Ms. Abrams, if I might ask you one quick 
closing question, one provision in S.B. 202 surprised me or 
concerned me. It strips authority over election administration 
from the Secretary of State and transfers it to the State 
legislature. Given the context of the 2020 election, how will 
this transfer of power affect the partisanship of future 
election administration? How would you read it given the recent 
history in Georgia?
    Ms. Abrams. This is very, very offensive language that not 
only removes home rule, it actually will put into power people 
who have nothing to do with communities. For a body that seems 
to believe that those who are closest to the people should be 
making the decisions, giving these--number one, giving State 
legislatures the authority on their own motion to remove 
officials, elections officials, is dangerous. If that had been 
in place in 2020, the outcome of the 2020 election could have 
been vastly different. We should be deeply concerned by the 
aggressive and naked attempt to wrest control away for purely 
partisan purposes.
    Senator Coons. Thank you, Ms. Abrams. Thank you for what 
you and Fair Fight Action are doing. Thank you, Ms. Ifill, and 
thank you to everyone who is participating in today's hearing.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Durbin. Senator Lee.
    Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I am disappointed and, frankly, shocked that the majority 
party and the Chairman would choose such an inflammatory title 
for this hearing by calling it ``Jim Crow 2021.'' The lack of 
judgment in this instance not only belittles those who endured 
such dehumanization and indignity through the Jim Crow era, it 
also reminds us, reminds all of us or certainly should, of what 
Jim Crow was and how and when it happened and under whose 
leadership.
    We have to remember that it was, in fact, Republicans who 
pushed through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the 
Constitution following the Civil War--the 13th Amendment 
getting rid of slavery; the 14th Amendment guaranteeing all 
Americans, including Black Americans, including Black Americans 
who had been slaves and those who had not, equal protection 
under the laws; and including the 15th Amendment guaranteeing 
Black Americans the right to vote.
    These had a significant effect. They were enacted with 
great opposition coming from the Democratic Party. We got them 
through. The 15th Amendment was the last of the three to be 
ratified. It was ratified on March 30, 1870.
    1870 was a big turning point for civil rights in America, 
for Black Americans. It was in 1870 that we saw the very first 
Member of Congress, a gentleman by the name of Joseph Rainey, 
who was elected to the House of Representatives in 1870, the 
same year the first Black American was elected to the United 
States Senate. That is Hiram Rhodes Revels who was elected to 
the Senate, the U.S. Senate, from Mississippi.
    All in all during the Reconstruction period, there were 16 
Black Americans elected to the Congress. There were over 600 
Black Americans elected to State legislatures, and there were 
hundreds and hundreds more elected to local positions 
throughout the country. All of them, every last one of them, 
happened to be Republican.
    Jim Crow was a response to that. White Americans who did 
not want Black Americans coming into power and who resented 
their votes as Republicans, in fact, did not want them to have 
the right to vote at all, notwithstanding the fact that the 
15th Amendment had by then been ratified, figured out a way to 
suppress them. Once President Rutherford Hayes through the 
Compromise of 1877 ordered the withdrawal of Federal troops 
from the South, it paved the way for Jim Crow. Jim Crow 
policies restricted unconstitutionally the right of Black 
Americans to vote, and it restricted all kinds of other 
behaviors put in place by Democratic governments in each of 
those States. It was an unfortunate era, one that lasted for 
roughly a century, to make sure that Black Americans could not 
only not vote but they could not be elected.
    Michael Lancaster is the Georgia State Director of the 
Frederick Douglass Foundation and the descendant of people who 
suffered under Jim Crow. In a recent Washington Times article, 
Mr. Lancaster stated, ``Comparing absentee ballot changes and 
ID requirements to banning Black people from restaurants and 
drinking fountains is absurd. A civil debate about voting 
rights is an important conversation to have, but comparing 
Georgia's election reform to Jim Crow is simply insulting to my 
Black ancestors who suffered through those dehumanizing 
segregation laws.''
    There were some others who wrote, ``It has become clear 
that even well-intentioned critics of the Georgia law simply 
have no idea what the law is. It is clear that they have no 
idea how favorably Georgia's law compares with most other 
States, including President Biden's home State of Delaware. It 
is clear that they have no idea that a majority of Black voters 
across the country support key provisions attacked by critics, 
including the provision that is a simply requirement that 
voters be able to identify themselves upon voting.''
    Speaker Jones, as I understand it, 77 percent of Americans 
support voter ID requirements, and specifically 74 percent of 
Georgians, including 63 percent of Black voters in Georgia, and 
all of those numbers indicate support for the new Georgia voter 
ID requirements. Is that correct?
    Speaker Jones. That is correct, Senator.
    Senator Lee. If a potential absentee voter in Georgia does 
not have a driver's license, he or she could also show a State-
issued voter ID card. Is that also correct?
    Speaker Jones. That is correct, or one of the other forms 
of federally accepted forms of ID.
    Senator Lee. If somebody does not have that, then that 
could be provided free of charge. Is that also right?
    Speaker Jones. That is correct, at any Department of Motor 
Vehicles office or at any of the 159 elections boards. Please, 
if I may, Senator, the voter ID requirements are not more 
restrictive for absentees now than they have been widely 
accepted and certainly not criticized in the past for Georgia. 
It is precisely the same requirements to vote in person or to 
vote by absentee. It actually seems kind of incongruent to make 
rules for one form of voting but not another, but thank you, 
Senator.
    Senator Lee. Mr. Chairman, I see my time has expired, and I 
suppose I will be able to submit some additional questions for 
the record. I would note in closing Secretary of State 
Raffensperger, who was, I am told, interested in testifying and 
willing to testify at this hearing--you have invoked his name 
several times. It is disappointing that the Secretary of State 
of that State is not here to be able to testify in response to 
that.
    I also want to thank my friend and Utah colleague 
Congressman Burgess Owens. He is a man who has been alive, has 
existed in this country at a time when Jim Crow laws were still 
in effect. In some ways, he has been subjected to some of the 
same insults underlying Jim Crow. He has been lampooned, he has 
been drawn in caricatures alongside a Klansman in a brazen act 
of demeaning someone based on his race, demeaning him in a way 
that ignores the truth, the reality behind Jim Crow laws. This 
was a system of laws designed to help hold Black Americans 
back, hold them back in part because white Democrats in the 
South did not want them to vote and did not like the fact that 
they were voting as and being elected as Republicans.
    Let us not compare a voter registration law, one that makes 
sure that dead people cannot vote, to that. We can do better 
than that, and we should.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Lee.
    For the record, and I will concede, the era of Jim Crow in 
the South was propagated primarily by Democrats, Southern 
Democrats and Segregationists. The political alignment changed 
in America starting in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, and 
Republicans became more dominant in those States for the most 
part.
    What we have today is the party of Lincoln which is 
refusing to join us in extending the Voting Rights Act. That 
used to be a bipartisan exercise. Democrats support the 
extension of the Voting Rights Act and trying to overcome the 
Shelby County decision and making certain that we can review 
every State's activities as to whether or not they are fair or 
not fair.
    I would concede the historical point, but I do not think 
that the Senator stuck with the proposition to the present day.
    At this point we have Senator Blumenthal. Is he available 
by remote?
    Senator Lee. Mr. Chairman, if I could respond to that for a 
moment.
    Chair Durbin. You may, of course.
    Senator Lee. Look, so Republicans never ceased to be the 
party--never ceased to be the party that believes that the 
13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments matter, and that the inherent 
dignity of the immortal human soul is such that it should never 
be denigrated by subjecting someone based on their race to a 
lack of civil rights. It is not fair, it is not accurate to 
portray the two parties as having somehow crossed as if in the 
1950s. It is just not accurate.
    Chair Durbin. Senator, my only point----
    Senator Lee. Yes, some Southern Democrats later became 
Republicans. That is true.
    Chair Durbin. My point, Senator----
    Senator Lee. That did not change the Republican Party's 
alignment on this issue.
    Chair Durbin. My point was the political alignment has 
changed. That is obvious. Second, the Voting Rights Act, which 
is the nature and subject of this hearing, used to be a 98-0 
proposition. Now only Democrats will vote for it since 
Congressman Sensenbrenner is gone.
    Senator Lee. You are talking about Section 5 of the Voting 
Rights Act, which subjects some States to preclearance. The 
designation of preclearance and concerns of a constitutional 
nature raised by the Supreme Court of the United States itself 
is very different than stated opposition to the Voting Rights 
Act itself and to the many other provisions that have done some 
good and that still have overwhelmingly entirely bipartisan 
support, and I resent that.
    Chair Durbin. I am sorry you resent it, Senator, but it is 
a fact that we are dealing with the Voting Rights Act which 
used to be universal and bipartisan and now is not. The 
Democrats support it; the Republicans do not.
    Senator Lee. It is not accurate to say Democrats support 
the Voting Rights Act and Republicans do not. We are talking 
about a particular application of Section 5 of the Voting 
Rights Act, that based on its implementation and based on the 
failure to update findings was leaving some States 
unconstitutionally, in the judgment of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, in a different position.
    Chair Durbin. I happen to disagree with that opinion. You 
see it differently.
    Senator Hirono by remote. Senator Hirono is not available?
    Senator Hirono. No; I am available. Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Durbin. Yes, you have 5 minutes, Senator.
    Senator Hirono. I am sorry. I thought Senator Blumenthal 
had been called, so thank you. I am here.
    Chair Durbin. Many are called. Please proceed.
    Senator Hirono. Some actually answer and show up.
    Okay. This is for Ms. Ifill. You noted that the average 
length of Section 2 cases is 2 and half--2 to 5 years and it is 
simply not sustainable, and that is why we need to pass the 
John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Perhaps you can tell me how 
effective is the current Section 2 in protecting people's right 
to vote in comparison to the preclearance process that was in 
place under Section 5?
    Ms. Ifill. Thank you very much for that question, Senator 
Hirono. Let me clarify also just given the last colloquy. The 
Supreme Court actually invited Congress to update the formula 
under Section 5. It did not strike down Section 5, and so I am 
very hopeful that Senator Lee and others are willing to 
participate in a process to update the formula so that we can 
pass a new preclearance formula under the Voting Rights Act.
    The difference is that the preclearance formula allows us 
to stop discrimination before it happens by introducing a 
Federal process that allows for a neutral review, whether the 
Federal authority is Republican or Democrat in terms of the 
Attorney General or the district court in DC, to review an 
election law to determine what its racial impact would be. That 
would happen before the law would be passed. Every provision of 
S.B. 202 would have gone through that process before it became 
law. Instead, the law was rushed through. It now exists. We 
have filed suit along with other organizations. We will 
litigate that case likely for more than a year, and during that 
time there will be elections in Georgia.
    As I said, in the Texas case, we were still litigating in 
2018 a voter ID law that was enacted in 2014. If we think that 
that is appropriate for a healthy democracy to hold scores or 
hundreds of elections in which potentially hundreds of 
thousands if not millions of voters are affected and that law 
may ultimately violate the Constitution, or the Voting Rights 
Act, or the Americans with Disabilities Act, or any of the 
other reasons why voting changes have been struck down, then I 
think that is what this Committee has to really focus with.
    As a matter of democracy, we need to deal with these 
matters before they become law.
    Senator Hirono. I agree with you, Ms. Ifill. In the 
meantime, though, the Supreme Court has before it two cases 
that test Section 2, and I know some of the arguments that the 
opponents of Section 2--they would like to very much limit the 
impact of Section 2. Bad enough that--the Department of Justice 
under the Trump administration brought how many Section 2 
cases?
    Ms. Ifill. I think it is zero, maybe one.
    Senator Hirono. I think one would be about it. That would 
be the maximum. It is hard enough under Section 2, but some of 
the arguments made, if the Supreme Court goes along with the 
arguments that were made to limit Section 2, that would make it 
even harder. You would have to show different impacts. You 
would have to show much more than what you currently have, 
which is hard enough to do under Section 2. Would you agree?
    Ms. Ifill. It would be utterly devastating. It would be 
utterly devastating, a blow to our democracy, a blow to one of 
the finest moments in this country, which was the passage of 
the Voting Rights Act in 1965. When the Senate passed the 
Voting Rights Act in 1965, they were very clear that they meant 
to get only at--not only current forms of discrimination that 
existed in 1965, but the Senate report said it was also 
designed to get at ingenious forms of discrimination that might 
be created in the future. Congress was forward-looking. They 
understood that voter suppression would not go away, and to 
wipe out that history would be an affront to every martyr of 
the civil rights/voting rights movement, to Senator John Lewis, 
and to the many Black voters who actually feel demeaned when 
they are told that they cannot give water to their elderly 
relatives standing on line trying to vote.
    Senator Hirono. That is what I call the kind of cruelty 
that is exemplified too often in these kinds of cases. The 
Shelby County decision was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Ginsburg 
famously wrote, ``Throwing out preclearance when it has worked 
and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is 
like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are 
not getting wet.''
    Are you concerned that this Court with these two cases 
before it will render possibly--probably, possibly--a 6-3 
decision to further limit the Section 2 remedy?
    Ms. Ifill. Senator Hirono, I sincerely hope that the United 
States Supreme Court has seen what has happened since 2013 when 
the power of Section 5 was gutted, that they will understand, 
that they will be humble enough to recognize that there are 
things perhaps they did not know or understand that are 
happening in this country, and that they will read the record, 
that they will take account of what the reality is, and that 
they will respect what I believe President Reagan called the 
``Crown Jewel of Civil Rights Legislation,'' the Voting Rights 
Act, and ensure that it remains intact and an effective tool 
for combating voting discrimination.
    Senator Hirono. Ms. Ifill, I appreciate the dialogue I had 
with you, and I really appreciate the other--of course, Stacey 
Abrams and Ms. Anderson, whose books I read, and the others who 
have testified for the enactment of the John Lewis Act. I just 
want to mention one more thing, though. I have heard some 
comparisons to Hawaii voter laws and saying, well, Georgia is 
better than Hawaii--oh, give me a break. For the first time 
ever, Hawaii had all mail-in ballots the last election, and we 
had the second highest percentage of voter participation as a 
result. This is why mail-in voting is so important and why we 
need to look at what the post office was doing in the 2020 
elections that made it that much harder, and the person who 
heads up the post office is still there. He needs to be 
removed. That is an editorial comment.
    Thank you. I think my time is up.
    Chair Durbin. Thanks, Senator Hirono. Senator Cruz.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Abrams, it has been over 2 years, and you still refuse 
to concede that you lost the race for Governor in Georgia in 
2018. You have said that you ``Do not concede that the process 
was proper'' and that ``They stole it from the voters of 
Georgia.''
    Yes or no, today, do you still maintain that the 2018 
Georgia election was stolen?
    Ms. Abrams. As I have always said, I acknowledged at the 
very beginning that I--Brian Kemp won under the rules that were 
in place. What I object to are rules that permitted thousands 
of Georgia voters to be denied their participation in this 
election and to have their votes cast out. I will continue to 
disagree with the system until it is fixed. We have seen marked 
progress made, and, unfortunately, it was undone in S.B. 202. I 
will continue to advocate for a system that permits every 
eligible Georgian to cast their ballot----
    Senator Cruz. Ms. Abrams, I am going to ask you to please 
answer the question I asked, which is, yes or no, do you still 
maintain the 2018 election was stolen? That is your language.
    Ms. Abrams. My full language was that it was stolen from 
the voters of Georgia. We do not know what they would have done 
because not every eligible Georgian was permitted to 
participate fully in the election.
    Senator Cruz. You also told the New York Times that your 
loss ``Was fully attributable to voter suppression.'' Ms. 
Abrams, do you know in Georgia whether the percentage of 
African American Georgians who were registered to vote and who 
turned out to vote, is it higher or lower than the national 
average?
    Ms. Abrams. It is higher than the national average because 
Georgia is one of the largest States with an African American 
population.
    Senator Cruz. That is not tied to the size of the 
population. The percentage of Black Georgians who were 
registered to vote in 2018 is 64.7 percent. That compares to 
60.2 percent as the national average. The percentage of 
Georgians who voted in 2018, the election you claim was stolen 
from you, was 56.3 percent. That is higher than the national 
average of 48 percent.
    Let me ask you this, Ms. Abrams: In 2018, do you know which 
demographic group in Georgia had the highest registration 
percentage and the highest turnout percentage?
    Ms. Abrams. I have a guess, but I will defer to you for the 
answer.
    Senator Cruz. The answer is African Americans had the 
highest registration and the highest turnout despite your 
claiming that the election was stolen and there was somehow 
voter suppression.
    Let us shift to the Georgia law in particular, which there 
have been mountains of lies spread by both Democratic 
politicians and by the press. Does the Georgia law reduce the 
number of early voting days? Yes or no.
    Ms. Abrams. Yes. It does so because you have to look at it 
in toto. It is not simply looking at the number of days that 
were expanded for 40 percent of the population, which for 60 
percent of the population had been the norm. It also has to 
look at the early voting runoff days that were indeed 
shortened. If you add----
    Senator Cruz. Is it correct----
    Ms. Abrams [continuing]. Together the total number of 
days----
    Senator Cruz [continuing]. That the law increases the 
number of mandatory days of early weekend voting?
    Ms. Abrams. It is a partial answer to say that certain days 
were increased in certain counties that had not participated in 
the use of all of those days in elections. They had been 
optional, and most--60 percent of Georgians had been able to 
vote for those full number of days. Forty percent will now 
join, and that is a good thing. At the exact same time this 
same bill eliminates weeks of early voting during runoff 
elections and limits--allows the elimination of weekend voting.
    Senator Cruz. Do you believe that requiring an ID to vote 
suppresses votes?
    Ms. Abrams. As I have said, written, testified, and 
repeated today, I believe that voter identification is always 
appropriate. You should know who is voting. What I object to 
are the ways that we are narrowing and restricting who has 
access to the right to vote, and that has been a common and 
necessary complaint. As we noted in 2018, what happened to 
Native Americans in North Dakota who were denied the right to 
vote because they were required to have--they were required to 
have photo identification that included language and include 
perquisites that they were not entitled to demand. When we have 
narrowing of opportunities without expansion of access, that is 
absolutely wrong, and I will stand against it in Georgia and 
everywhere.
    Senator Cruz. During the 2020 election, did your 
organization, Fair Fight, collect ballots for voters? If so, 
were the people collecting ballots for your organization paid?
    Ms. Abrams. We did not collect ballots. We did not pay 
people to collect ballots. We sent to voters absentee ballot 
applications, as did the Secretary of State, as did a number of 
other organizations, because in the midst of a pandemic, we 
thought it was important for voters who may or may not have had 
information about what their rights were to ensure that they 
had the education and opportunity for engagement in our 
elections.
    Senator Cruz. I want to be clear about your testimony to 
this Committee. Your testimony is that your organization did 
not pay any person in the State of Georgia in 2020 to collect 
ballots for anybody else?
    Ms. Abrams. No, sir.
    Senator Cruz. Okay. Thank you.
    Chair Durbin. From Georgia, Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to 
our panel for joining us.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into the record a 
number of statements which may clarify for some of our 
colleagues the motives and circumstances that led to the 
passage of this infamous law in Georgia.
    Chair Durbin. Without objection.
    [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
    Senator Ossoff. This is Georgia's Republican Lieutenant 
Governor, Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, who said 
about the law, ``This is really the fallout from 10 weeks of 
misinformation that flew in from former President Donald 
Trump.''
    He further said, ``There is solutions in search of a 
problem. Republicans do not need election reform to win. We 
need leadership.'' That was on ``Meet the Press.''
    He further said in an op-ed in USA Today, ``Knee-jerk 
reaction legislation such as not allowing the distribution of 
water within 150 feet of a polling station just to appease the 
extreme right corners of legislators' districts and to avoid 
primary challenges.''
    Ms. Abrams, in the exchange that you just shared with 
Senator Cruz, the question of early voting opportunities was 
raised. Can you please clarify for this Committee what has 
changed about early voting in runoff elections in Georgia under 
this new law and what the impact might be of those changes?
    Ms. Abrams. Certainly. In the State of Georgia, previously 
the law said that elections occurred during business hours. 
Most counties--or, sorry, 60 percent of voters were able to 
vote between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., which is the hours of operation 
on election day. For the majority of Georgians, the time 
allowed was from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
    The law now mandates that it be 9 to 5 p.m. with the 
option. The challenge with an optional permission is that it is 
no longer a given, and we have a number of counties that have 
taken options as an opportunity to restrict access.
    We celebrate the fact that more voters will have access to 
weekend voting, but it is not an expansion of a right when 60 
percent of Georgians previously enjoyed that right. We know 
that 78 percent of Georgians were able to vote--I am sorry. The 
actual days and weekends, we know that 78 percent of Georgians 
were able to vote during those earlier voting hours, and that 
is what is being constricted.
    We know that, for example, in the State of Georgia we have 
159 counties, but some of our counties have as small a 
population of fewer than 2,000 persons. It is insufficient to 
simply look at the number of counties participating. We have to 
look at the populations that are participating. We know in the 
State of Georgia that this law is restricting access to the 
right to vote.
    We also know that the optional notion of a Sunday vote, for 
example, was something that counties felt that they had the 
right to do, and we had a number of counties that were already 
using Sunday voting. Yes, to the extent that it is clarified in 
the law, that is one thing. To claim that it is an expansion of 
access to a majority of Georgians is not only untrue, it is 
misleading and it is false.
    Senator Ossoff. Isn't it the case, Ms. Abrams, that under 
this new law, where there were previously 3 weeks of mandatory 
early voting in runoff elections, now there is just one?
    Ms. Abrams. Yes.
    Senator Ossoff. Ms. Abrams, Fair Fight Action, your 
organization, has issued an extraordinary report documenting 
the history of voter suppression in Georgia, which accelerated, 
as we have discussed in this hearing, following the Shelby 
County v. Holder decision of the Supreme Court, which ended the 
preclearance functions of the Voting Rights Act. Since 2013, 
since that Supreme Court decision, Georgia has closed hundreds 
of polling places, and the average distance voters have to 
drive to go vote has more than doubled. Not surprisingly, 
according to a nonpartisan analysis by the Atlanta Journal 
Constitution, Black and brown voters have been impacted the 
hardest by many of these changes and are 20 percent more likely 
to miss voting in an election because of the long distances 
they are forced to travel.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter this verified action 
report, ``Georgia's Enduring Racial Discrimination in Voting 
and the Urgent Need to Modernize the Voting Rights Act,'' into 
the record, with your permission.
    Chair Durbin. Without objection.
    [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
    Senator Ossoff. Ms. Abrams, can you explain why the 
closure, the changing, and the consolidation of voting 
locations without DOJ preclearance can be so harmful and why 
the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act--which, again, to 
just remind everybody on this Committee what we are here to 
discuss, we are talking about restoring Section 4 and Section 5 
of the Voting Rights Act so the Department of Justice Civil 
Rights Division will preclear changes to election procedure and 
law that may have disparate, disproportionate racial impact.
    Ms. Abrams, why is restoration of the preclearance function 
so vital to ensuring harm is not done by the closure of polling 
locations such as those we have seen in Georgia over the last 
decade?
    Ms. Abrams. Over the last decade, we have seen more than 
214 polling places close. We have seen a number of 
consolidations and a number of shifts. We saw in Clayton County 
at one point an attempt--sorry, not Clayton County--in Macon, 
Bibb County, an attempt to move a polling place from a location 
that was a publicly neutral place to a police station, which 
was going to have a deleterious effect on the likelihood of 
voters of color going to vote if they had to go to a police 
station to cast their ballots.
    We know that in the State of Georgia, under a 2019 analysis 
by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, that the closure of 
polling places, given the sheer size of Georgia and the 
increased distance that people have to travel without access to 
public transportation, led to between 54,000 to 85,000 people 
who were not able to cast their ballots, and Black voters were 
20 percent more likely to be affected by these closures.
    Taken together, the elimination or the changing of polling 
locations without accommodating those changes for communities 
that do not have access to public transportation, do not have 
cars, do not have the ability to drive, this changes their 
ability to participate in our election.
    I do want to clarify something I said earlier, Senator, 
with your permission. It is not that State legislators can 
change the composition of the SEB boards on their own motion. 
This SEB itself, I did want to clarify that, but writ large, 
the way these laws are written with preclearance, instead of 
being able to wholesale remove access to voting locations, 
these voters would be protected by a process that looks at 
things like distance, cost of travel, access to transportation, 
and the ease of voting being either expanded or constricted, 
and it should always be our intention in the United States to 
increase access to the right to vote, never to restrict it.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Abrams.
    Mr. Chairman, I request one more minute.
    Chair Durbin. I am sorry?
    Senator Ossoff. I request just one more minute to ask a 
follow-up question.
    Chair Durbin. Yes.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you.
    Ms. Abrams, the closure of these polling places and the 
changes of polling locations at the last minute, which anybody 
who has run for office and anybody who has voted in Georgia 
knows is common, causes all kinds of confusion, leads people to 
show up at the wrong precinct, often through no fault of their 
own. Again, I want to clarify for my colleagues on the other 
side who have taken a genuine interest in the contents of this 
new law in Georgia exactly what these changes mean, and I hope 
that this is clarifying. Under the prior law, voters who showed 
up at the wrong precinct because of closures or changes could 
cast a provisional ballot at that precinct. Under the new law, 
if they arrive before 5 p.m., they are forced to go to a 
different precinct, to travel in some cases across town, in 
some of these counties to travel up to an hour to a different 
precinct in order to cast their vote or risk 
disenfranchisement.
    Ms. Abrams, what does this change in the new Georgia law 
mean for voters who rely on public transportation to vote or 
have their kids with them or have a shift that they cannot miss 
at work?
    Ms. Abrams. It presumes that people who vote before 5 p.m., 
that those people have universal access to transportation, to 
information, and the ability to change their behavior. Let us 
assume that you get into line at 1 p.m., and you get to the end 
of the line at 4:58 p.m. only to discover that you have used 
all the time you have before your 6 o'clock shift to cast your 
ballot, it would no longer permit you to cast a provisional 
ballot, which was put in place under HAVA by this very Congress 
to solve for this problem. Those out-of-precinct provisional 
ballots would be discarded, and that is inappropriate because 
these are not people who are making the choice not to do what 
is right.
    During the 2020 and 2021 election, as you know, Fair Fight 
had volunteers standing in front of polling locations directing 
people to new locations because they had been given 
misinformation or not received information, and we know of a 
number of counties that changed their information. While this 
new law attempts to address it, we know that the law has not 
been tested and, thus, we do not know that voters will be 
protected. To penalize voters before we know the protections 
necessary for your benefits are in place is anti-American.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Abrams.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Ossoff. Senator Hawley.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the 
witnesses for being here.
    Ms. Jones, can I just come to you? We have heard an 
extraordinary number of lies told about this law from the 
President of the United States all the way down, certainly 
including Members of this Committee, including today, and also 
from an unbelievable assortment of for-profit corporations. 
This has been one of the most incredible organized campaigns by 
these mega corporations in American history to try to influence 
legislation and ultimately to overturn it. Of course, these 
same corporations are now taking this effort to States across 
the country, no doubt soon coming to mine, to the State of 
Missouri, where we have our election integrity measures adopted 
by our voters and our legislature and also by referendum will 
soon, I am sure, be in their sights.
    Let me just ask you about these lies that have been told 
over and over. The President of the United States, his big lie 
that this legislation cutoff the amount of time, closed the 
polls early, that was a lie. We have heard that water is not 
made available to people waiting in line. That is a lie. We 
have seen it told over and over and over.
    I want to zero in on the corporations, their unprecedented 
power. Tell me, why do you think these corporations, so many of 
them, have been so eager to parrot lies that they know are not 
true? It is not like they do not have whole teams of lawyers. 
These are the most powerful corporations in the world. They 
have entire legal departments at their disposal. Why do you 
think they have been so eager to lie over and over about this 
law that your legislature adopted?
    Speaker Jones. Thank you, Senator, for the question. You 
know, I cannot speculate precisely on their motivation, but I 
can say that if they do have teams of lawyers and people to 
analyze the bill, their unjustified outrage is really 
ridiculous. I believe most of these corporations, if they read 
the bill and compared our voting laws to most of the rest of 
the State, they would know, you know, that Georgia has an 
expansive system of voting. We have made it more expansive. I 
must clarify, Senator, that Georgians always have had for 
decades the ability to offer early voting--or not decades. As 
long as we have had early voting, the hours up to 7 to 7. That 
continues to be the case.
    What we did was counties that offered fewer than 9 to 5 
early voting hours, we have required them--134 more counties 
will offer longer early voting. It has been disappointing to 
see some--and I will just say it is some in the business 
community--either not read the bill or feel that they would be 
punished somehow by some of these enormous nonprofit 
organizations that have placed a lot of pressure on them.
    Senator Hawley. Let me just ask you about some of the 
pressure tactics that these corporations have brought to bear. 
We have seen in public what they have done. We have seen the 
statements that they have made and the lies that they have 
told. Tell me about the companies, what they have been doing in 
the legislature. I am sure they have teams, fleets of 
lobbyists, just like they do here in this Capitol.
    Speaker Jones. Right.
    Senator Hawley. What are the sort of tactics that they have 
used there in the legislature to try to influence, intimidate? 
I mean, just give us a sense of what has been going on?
    Speaker Jones. I will say I have worked closely on the bill 
and participated in the writing of every word of it, and I can 
say I was quite surprised by a couple of the companies' outrage 
given that I never heard from a single one of them. If they had 
particularly--well, let me also say that by a couple of the 
chambers of commerce, the very provisions that they wanted 
retained in law were retained. In fact, we went further by 
requiring now two Saturdays of early voting; whereas, 
previously it was only one Saturday of early voting. We 
expanded the ability for voters for early voting to vote, but 
yet I honestly, Senator, cannot explain their reaction other 
than to say they must fear some of these organizations that 
have an unbelievable amount of money. We have seen about $10 
million spent already in Georgia inaccurately portraying this 
legislation. As you know, if you say something often enough, 
however inaccurate it is, there are those that will begin to 
believe it. So perhaps they have been influenced by that.
    Senator Hawley. What you are saying is that many of these 
corporations that are now howling in public and are spreading 
active disinformation in public and lies, they actually had 
nothing to say earlier, but now they are out there denouncing 
the law, calling it ``Voter Suppression,'' calling it ``Jim 
Crow,'' and when they had the opportunity to actually shape the 
bill or work on the bill, they did not. They are mounting a 
public pressure campaign. They are saying they are going to go 
work in other States. They have changed their tune and are 
trying to ratchet up the pressure. Have I got that right?
    Speaker Jones. I would just clarify by saying that the few 
provisions, if the chambers of commerce were representing their 
interest and they were not communicating with us specifically, 
we retained those provisions, like 3 weeks of very expansive 
early voting and, in fact, expanded the number of hours 
available. We kept no-excuse early voting, which, I am sorry to 
say, Delaware in particular, the President's State, does not 
have, and it neither has early voting. We retained the few 
areas, and I supported that, those provisions.
    What I mostly hear is not facts from those who are, to use 
your word, ``Howling'' about the bill but, rather, incendiary 
just propaganda that does not at all align with the facts of 
the bill.
    Senator Hawley. Mr. Gardner, let me come just briefly to 
you and ask you here--thank you, first of all, for being here--
and just ask you about a statement you recently released about 
H.R. 1. You said, and I am quoting you now, ``Our State 
Constitution requires that a voter must be present to vote 
unless a voter is absent from the town or city or physically 
disabled. This would also be taken away with H.R. 1. Contrary 
to our Constitution, H.R. 1 would require no-excuse absentee 
voting, early voting with multiple election days, and 
continuing to receive and count ballots after the election."
    Just give us a sense of why these provisions that are in 
your Constitution are so important in your view for election 
security in your State.
    [Pause.]
    Secretary Gardner. I am sorry.
    Senator Hawley. There you go.
    Secretary Gardner. They are important for New Hampshire 
because it is what has made our turnout what it has been. It is 
a combination of the trust in the process and the ease of the 
process. If you take that away from New Hampshire, then we are 
not going to have the turnout that we have had over the years. 
I mentioned earlier that the conventional view that anything 
that makes voting easier will increase the turnout. Those 
charts that I provided, you can see the facts. That is just not 
the case.
    Many academics say that Oregon is a State that is the 
easiest in the country. If everybody is mailed a ballot, they 
have multiple days, multiple locations, and--but when Oregon 
went to that process, they have had a lower turnout than New 
Hampshire seven Presidential elections in a row. Before that, 
when they did not have it, they were ahead of New Hampshire 
five Presidential elections in a row. The States are different. 
The States have--integrity is important. The belief that the 
process is honest is important. It is a fine balance, and all 
the States try to attain that fine balance, trying to work with 
a process that keeps people trusting, because if they lose 
trust in it, they are not going to bother. If it is not of any 
value to them, it does not have anything meaningful for them 
anymore, they stop doing it. We are always striving to reach 
that sort of mid-ground that people can trust it, but it is 
also easy. We have had the third highest turnout four 
Presidential elections in a row based on voting-age population. 
We were fourth in Presidential elections before that. You can 
see in the charts that I have given you, you can look at all 
the States. It works for New Hampshire.
    Chairman Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Gardner.
    Secretary Gardner. If we take away----
    Chair Durbin. Thank you very much for your testimony. We 
appreciate that. Senator Blumenthal.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
    I am intrigued by the argument that corporations should 
have been sooner in their opposition to these restrictions on 
voting rights and that their social conscience was overdue or 
that they needed legions of lawyers to tell them that these 
restrictions infringed on the franchise and curtailed the 
voting opportunities of people in Georgia. The fact of the 
matter is, as has been established irrefutably and powerfully 
today, these restrictions will impact adversely and enduringly 
the rights of citizens in Georgia and other States where they 
are being imposed, and the positions of the corporations really 
are beside the point. What is important is the effect on voters 
and their rights.
    In Shelby County, the Supreme Court tossed out the 
preclearance provision of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 
which for decades served to protect communities of color from 
voter suppression. As the late Justice Ginsburg noted in her 
dissent, ``Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is 
continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like 
throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not 
getting wet.'' What we are seeing in Georgia right now and in 
other States around the country in those 361 restrictive laws 
that have been imposed is beyond a rainstorm. It is a tsunami 
threatening democracy. We are here because of the Supreme 
Court's decision in Shelby County and the current torrent of 
voter suppression bills.
    I think we must act, we should act on the John Lewis Voting 
Rights Act and the For the People Act, which would work in 
tandem. Let me ask you, Ms. Ifill, how, in fact, would they 
combine to protect voting rights in Georgia and other States 
where they are threatened?
    Ms. Ifill. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal. If you look at 
the core provisions of H.R. 1, particularly those that relate 
to automatic voter registration, early voting, absentee voting, 
they go right to the heart of the provisions that we have been 
spending the morning talking about here in the Georgia bill and 
in many of the provisions that are being teed up in other 
States that will restrict access or burden access to the vote.
    The Voting Rights Advancement--John Lewis Voting Rights 
Advancement Act would require that voting changes, that where 
jurisdictions want to make changes to voting, where they want 
to consolidate polling places or eliminate polling places, 
where they want to impose new voter purge regimes, where they 
want to impose new laws, that those laws first have to go 
through the scrutiny of a Federal authority.
    One aspect of it in H.R. 1 would create a regime that would 
immediately provide for greater access to voters across the 
country by expanding registration, early voting, and absentee 
voting. The other would protect voters against discriminatory 
voting changes that are proposed by State or local 
jurisdictions. We need both of those elements to strengthen our 
voting system and to protect in particular minority voters.
    Senator Blumenthal. I think that answer is very, very 
important because it shows that the effects of Shelby County 
are more than just changing the location or reducing the number 
of polling places. It is an effect on the entire system, on 
access to the ballot box.
    I was very critical in the Georgia runoffs when there was--
were sweeping attempts to suppress the vote through 
disinformation and intimidation online, particularly targeting 
communities of color. In fact, I wrote a letter demanding that 
Facebook and Twitter take stronger action to fight 
disinformation in those runoff elections, including fact-
checking, labeling, and reducing the spread of information.
    I would like to ask both Ms. Abrams and Ms. Ifill, how 
would you grade Facebook and Twitter for their handling of the 
spread of disinformation during the Georgia runoff elections?
    Ms. Ifill. I will go first, very briefly. I have been in a 
years-long conversation with Facebook in particular to address 
the issue of misinformation on the platform. We believe this is 
yet another form of voter suppression. Facebook is used very 
much by African Americans, and we have had an ongoing 
conversation.
    What we have asked Facebook to do is simply to apply their 
own policies. They have policies against misinformation in 
voting, policies against voter suppression, and we have really 
pressed them to have a more aggressive and clear internal 
infrastructure to deal with these matters when they occur.
    It was not just in the special election. I recall actually 
something that really disturbed me--this was not on Facebook; 
this was on Twitter--when during the counting of ballots in 
Georgia, after the November election, when the former President 
was discrediting the process, the license plate of a ballot 
counter was posted on Twitter by someone who wanted to stop the 
count and to undermine the legitimacy of the election, 
something incredibly dangerous to those people who were so 
bravely just doing their civic duty and counting ballots.
    I think there is a long way to go. I think that there were 
certainly improvements over the last few years on both Facebook 
and Twitter, but there is still a ways to go to make sure that 
the platform does not allow for the kind of misinformation and 
intimidation that we saw in 2020.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator----
    Ms. Abrams. I would simply agree with Ms. Ifill.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you very much, Senator Blumenthal.
    Senator Blumenthal. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
Still a long ways to go. Thank you.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you. Senator Cotton.
    Senator Cotton. Ms. Abrams, I want to talk about your role 
in the decision by Major League Baseball to boycott the State 
of Georgia and move the All Star Game, at an estimated cost of 
$100 million in economic activity and thousands of jobs for 
Georgia's residents.
    On March 8th, when describing the Georgia election law, you 
called it ``Jim Crow in a suit and tie.''
    On March 10th, well before the Georgia election law was 
passed, you registered the website stopjimcrow2.com.
    On March 14th, you called the Georgia election bill a 
``Redux of Jim Crow.''
    On March 25th, the bill passed into law.
    On March 31st, you wrote an op-ed in USA Today about 
Georgia's law, and your first two words in that op-ed were, 
``Boycotts work.''
    Two days later, on April 2nd, Major League Baseball 
announced its boycott of Georgia. According to media reports in 
the days leading up to Major League Baseball's decision to pull 
the All Star Game from Georgia, you spoke with baseball 
executives. You described the law as ``Jim Crow 2.0,'' and you 
urged Major League Baseball to speak out.
    After its decision to withdraw the game from Georgia, you 
conveniently claimed that you had strongly urged them not to 
boycott after the horse is out of the barn and the damage was 
already done.
    Ms. Abrams, in sum, you publicly attacked the Georgia law 
as Jim Crow no fewer than ten times before Major League 
Baseball withdrew the game. You told corporations that boycotts 
work, and you told corporations that if they do not attack 
Georgia's law, ``I cannot argue with an individual's choice to 
opt out for their competition.''
    Ms. Abrams, after all these efforts to smear Georgia as a 
Jim Crow State, do you regret your central role in causing 
Major League Baseball to withdraw the All Star Game from 
Georgia?
    Ms. Abrams. First, Senator, I would not call Georgia a Jim 
Crow State. I would say that S.B. 202 is a law that has Jim 
Crow aspects, and I stand by that characterization because we 
have, I think to great detail and great effect, explained today 
why that is so.
    Also in line two of that same op-ed, I acknowledged that 
boycotts work because, as the progeny of those who used 
boycotts to gain access to the very rights we are fighting to 
defend, I recognize the utility of boycotts. However, I took a 
great deal of effort to explain why I do not think a boycott in 
Georgia at this time is the appropriate remedy. I believe it is 
important to reserve all civil disobedience rights when you 
seek to achieve the outcome of justice and access in the United 
States.
    Number three, I would say that my conversations with Major 
League Baseball were very clear about the fact that I did not 
think a boycott was necessary. I was very intentional about my 
language. I continue to be intentional about my language. While 
I am not the Commissioner of Baseball, I am not the head of a 
corporation, I am a Georgia citizen, and I have every right and 
responsibility to speak out against laws that will have an 
effect on my community. Yes, while I certainly regret the 
decision that MLB made to remove their game from Cobb County 
and the economic effect that it will have on Georgians, writ 
large, I support anyone who will fight to stop this type of bad 
behavior, this type of racial animus, this type of voter 
suppression from happening in Georgia or elsewhere in the 
country, because to me 1 day of games is not worth losing our 
democracy.
    Senator Cotton. Thank you, Ms. Abrams. After you spent 
weeks condemning your legislature for passing Jim Crow laws and 
telling corporations boycotts work, I doubt that your words are 
going to be very comforting to the thousands of Georgians who 
will lose their jobs, will have their livelihood affected by 
Major League Baseball's decision.
    I want to turn now to Secretary Bill Gardner. I want to 
stress again that he has been in office since 1976, longer than 
three members of this Committee have been alive. Back in the 
Army, we had a term for grizzled soldiers who had been in 
combat repeatedly, not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but sometimes 
Mogadishu or Panama, or I even served with one guy that jumped 
into Grenada in 1983. They were called "been there and done 
that." If anyone has been there and done that when it comes to 
election laws, it is Bill Gardner.
    You have repeatedly over decades reviewed election laws. 
You see what is before the Congress now in the For the People 
Act with its sweeping reforms. What do you think this 
Federalization of our State-based election system would do to 
your elections in New Hampshire, Secretary Gardner?
    Secretary Gardner. Senator, it would be harmful to our 
elections in New Hampshire. I go back, when the FECA, Federal 
Election Campaign Act, originally passed and there was a 
threshold, States that met the threshold were not going to be 
affected by it. Then within 2 years, States were completely 
taken out of that. We no longer could control the rules for the 
election of our U.S. Senators and House Members.
    Then we went to the National Voter Registration Act in 
1993, and that act, people of New Hampshire, the local 
officials, wanted voter registration to be an in-person 
process. The only way to maintain that in-person process was if 
we became exempt from the National Voter Registration Act. We 
passed legislation, made it retroactive to the effective date 
of that act. That was the only way to get exempt so that we 
could keep our election process the way New Hampshire wanted 
it. We were sued not by anyone from New Hampshire, because both 
parties were agreeable then, but from some organization in New 
York City. We ended up the Federal Government gave an exemption 
to us so that we no longer had to comply with NVRA. That has 
made all the difference.
    If you look at the chart, you can see what happened in New 
Hampshire starting in 1996, the first time a Presidential 
election happened after the National Voter Registration Act. 
New Hampshire from that point on has been at the top of the 
country because we do not allow people to register by mail 
unless they are absent, they are out of town or out of the 
city, or they are disabled. We have our rules that we have 
applied all these years, and you can see what it has resulted 
in. Four Presidential elections in a row, third highest in the 
country. The one before that, five, we were fourth in the 
country. You can go back. You can see from those charts.
    Then we went to the Help America Vote Act. We became exempt 
from parts of NVRA because--because we were exempt from NVRA, 
we did not have to comply with the Help America Vote Act. We do 
not have provisional ballots in New Hampshire. We are one of 
four States in the country that does not have provisional 
ballots.
    We have gone our way that has worked for the people of New 
Hampshire. The proof is in the pudding, the turnout. It is the 
same with this. They want to--you know, if you were to pass 
this, you are completely taking away a process that has 
developed in New Hampshire for many, many years, works in the 
State. Why would you want to do it when the turnout is as high 
as it is? You know, listening to all this, it is a pretty sad 
story in a way, because you have the State of Georgia. There is 
a New England State, Rhode Island, that actually had a lower 
turnout in 2020 than Georgia. States have different ways of 
doing it that work. That is why I said at the beginning I do 
not want Texas to have to be like New Hampshire or Arkansas or 
California. Why should we be made to be like California, in 
particular, or other States?
    We have a way of doing it that works for the people of New 
Hampshire. The turnout is the proof that it works, and this 
kind of Federal legislation is harmful for our way of voting. 
I----
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. I appreciate your 
testimony.
    Senator Cotton. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
    Chair Durbin. Senator Booker.
    Senator Booker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Stacey Abrams, I would like to direct some questions to you 
really quick. I just wanted you to continue to specify the 
difference between absentee ballot IDs and in-person voter 
participation. I think there are things that have been muddled 
in that, and I would really appreciate it if you gave again 
some clarification why the Georgia laws are limiting particular 
voters' access.
    Ms. Abrams. If you think about--thank you, Mr. Senator. 
When you address the issue of voter identification when you are 
walking into a polling place, you are demonstrating who you are 
for the purposes of receiving a ballot, but you are not asked 
to surrender that proof. You are not asked to give it to a poll 
worker who will then be able to retain it in perpetuity. You 
show it to prove who you are, and then you proceed to the 
voting booth.
    Georgia for 15 years had a similar situation with regards 
to voting by mail, but instead of requiring you to put 
identification in an envelope that would be clearly marked for 
anyone seeking to steal your identity, instead said you could 
use a signature verification process. We took exception to some 
provisions of the signature identification process after 2018, 
and in 2019 and 2020, those changes were made to make it more 
equitable and fair for all participants.
    That was a change that was necessary, and it worked. In 
fact, it worked so effectively, we saw more people successfully 
participating in voting by mail. To now change it to an 
identification process where you have to surrender your 
identification, you have to surrender it in an envelope that is 
clearly marked for anyone seeking to steal your identity, that 
they could open that envelope and get signifying information 
about you, either a photocopy of your information or 
distinctive numbers that will allow them to steal your 
identity, is absolutely troublesome and should be deeply fear--
should create deep fear in any person considering this. It is 
not an apples-to-apples comparison. There is no other form 
where we say that these pieces of information will sit in a box 
or sit in an office for no--there is no provision for how long 
and who can have access to it. It is a very real difference 
with an absolute distinction that can cause harm to voters.
    In addition, signature mismatch allows for those thousands 
of voters who admittedly do not have the requisite 
identification to submit. It gave them an alternative process 
to use, and it has worked for 15 years. There is nothing that 
occurred in 2020 and 2021 to discredit that process except that 
it finally worked for most voters and, in particular, voters of 
color for the first time in Georgia's history successfully used 
it to actually help change the outcome of an election.
    My challenge is not with whether it is a Democratic victory 
or a Republican victory. It is that it is a harm to voters and 
disproportionately will harm voters of color who are the most 
likely to lack the identification. We should also be deeply 
concerned about disabled voters and older voters who are now 
going to have to sacrifice their personal private information 
in order to participate in elections, and that should be deeply 
concerning to every American.
    Senator Booker. Thank you, Ms. Abrams.
    Really quickly to Sherrilyn Ifill, just in terms of the 
landscape of our Nation on voter ID laws and with regard to 
challenges to voters, how does the Georgia bill fit into that? 
Can you give us in my final 1 minute and 20 seconds just a 
vision of what the landscape looks like and why this is so 
concerning in terms of the changes we are seeing and the effect 
they are going to have on the right for franchise?
    Ms. Ifill. Thank you, Senator Booker. I think people do 
confuse this idea of ID as though we are talking about all one 
thing. First of all, Georgia is now one of only four States 
that requires this photo ID for absentee voting. Yes, many 
States require voter ID, but not all States require Government-
issued photo ID. There are 12 States that require ID, but it is 
a non-photo ID. It can be a utility bill. It can be other forms 
of identification that connect you to your address.
    There are some States that require no ID to vote unless you 
are voting for the first time, and those include Maryland and 
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia. 
Then, of course, there are the vote-by-mail States, Oregon and 
Washington.
    It is really important to understand that when people talk 
about whether you are for or against ID, there is ID and there 
is ID. The question is: Are you requiring people to have the 
kind of onerous ID that you have to get by going to the Motor 
Vehicle Bureau, even if the ID is free, you have to pay 
sometimes to get your birth certificate because you may not 
have it. You have to travel to a Motor Vehicle Bureau. In the 
21 contiguous counties in the Black Belt in Georgia, the Motor 
Vehicle offices are only open 2 days a week, some only open 1 
day a week.
    That is really the concern about the ID. It is the kind of 
ID that is required, and we should not presume that all States 
that require photo ID require Government-issued photo ID. They 
require some form of ID to connect you with your address.
    Senator Booker. Thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, I will not encroach upon the time and yield 
to the great, kind, gregarious, wise Senator from Louisiana.
    Chair Durbin. I think I am going to call on Senator Kennedy 
instead. Senator Kennedy.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Senator Booker. You are a fine 
American, sir.
    Ms. Abrams--can you hear me? I do not know where to look. I 
hate these Zoom hearings.
    Ms. Abrams. Yes, sir.
    Senator Kennedy. In terms of voter confidence in our 
electoral system and perception of voter integrity and voter--
and election--let me start over. I am sorry.
    In terms of the confidence that Americans have in their 
electoral system, do you think we are better off having an 
election day or an election month?
    Ms. Abrams. I think we are better off having a process that 
allows every single American the opportunity to participate in 
elections, and given that the initial notion of an election day 
was based on an agrarian economy that no longer exists for 
millions of Americans, and given the fact that we have a number 
of Americans who are limited in their access because in States 
like Georgia there is no paid time off for voting, I think we 
have to make every opportunity to make voting accessible to 
every American.
    There is no other----
    Senator Kennedy. Let me stop you because I have got--Ms. 
Abrams, I have got a bunch of questions before you get off the 
subject and get me off. You are okay with us not knowing, say, 
weeks or months after an election who the winner is?
    Ms. Abrams. Yes.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay. Can you tell me----
    Ms. Abrams. We have had times in this country where we have 
not----
    Senator Kennedy. Talking about the Georgia bill, help me 
understand, and I am not interested in a 30,000-foot view. That 
is not meant to be a criticism. I am speaking to myself, I 
guess. I am not interested in platitudes. Tell me--you are 
against the Georgia bill, I gather. Is that right?
    Ms. Abrams. I am against certain provisions of it, yes.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay, and I think you have called it a 
``Racist Bill.'' Am I right?
    Ms. Abrams. I think there are provisions of it that are 
racist, yes.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay. Tell me specifically, just give me a 
list of the provisions that you object to.
    Ms. Abrams. I object to the provisions that remove access 
to the right to vote, that shorten the Federal runoff period 
from 9 weeks to 4 weeks, that restrict the time that a voter 
can request and return an absentee ballot application, that 
eliminate----
    Senator Kennedy. Slow down for me because our audio is not 
real good here.
    Ms. Abrams. Certainly.
    Senator Kennedy. Could you start over for me?
    Ms. Abrams. Certainly.
    Senator Kennedy. Thank you, ma'am.
    Ms. Abrams. It shortens the Federal runoff period from 9 
weeks to 4 weeks.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay.
    Ms. Abrams. It restricts the time a voter can request and 
return an absentee ballot application.
    Senator Kennedy. Right.
    Ms. Abrams. It requires the voter has a photo 
identification or some other form of identification that they 
are willing to surrender in order to participate in the 
absentee ballot process.
    Senator Kennedy. If I could stop you, that is where they 
are going to--not comparing signatures, but to voter ID?
    Ms. Abrams. Yes, and as Ms. Ifill has pointed out, we would 
become only the fourth State in the Nation to require voters to 
put at risk their identity----
    Senator Kennedy. What else? What else?
    Ms. Abrams. It eliminates over 300 hours of dropbox 
availability.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay. What else?
    Ms. Abrams. It bans nearly all out-of-precinct votes.
    Senator Kennedy. Bans what? I am sorry.
    Ms. Abrams. It bans nearly all out-of-precinct votes.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay.
    Ms. Abrams. Meaning that if you get to a precinct and you 
are in line for 4 hours and you get to the end of the line and 
you are not there between 5 and 7 p.m.----
    Senator Kennedy. Okay. What else?
    Ms. Abrams [continuing]. You have to start all over again.
    Senator Kennedy. Is that everything?
    Ms. Abrams. No, it is not. No, sir. It restricts the hours 
of operation because it is now under the guise of setting a 
standardized timeline. It makes it optional for counties that 
may be--may not want to see expanded access to the right to 
vote. They can now limit their hours. Instead of those hours 
being from 7 to 7, they are now from 9 to 5, which may have an 
effect on voters who cannot vote during business hours during 
early voting. It limits the hours----
    Senator Kennedy. Okay. I get the idea. I get the idea.
    Ms. Abrams. Yes.
    Senator Kennedy. Let me ask you--let me approach this 
another way. If a State decides to require a voter to prove who 
the voter says he is or she is, do you consider that racist?
    Ms. Abrams. Not at all, sir. Voter identification has been 
a part of the American theory of democracy almost from the 
beginning. I support----
    Senator Kennedy. You are okay with it?
    Ms. Abrams. I support voter identification, yes.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay. How about ballot harvesting? I heard 
earlier you were talking about letting the Tribal elders 
collect ballots. I am not talking about that. I am talking 
about where the parties--and, believe me, both parties will do 
it and probably are doing it--pay operatives to go out and help 
people with their ballots and collect their ballots. Are you 
okay with that, or are you against that?
    Ms. Abrams. I do not think it is an either/or situation. I 
think it depends on what the conditions are, what the rules 
are. Making it easier for those who want to participate in 
elections to do so safely and securely I think is----
    Senator Kennedy. You are okay with ballot harvesting?
    Ms. Abrams. No, sir, I did not say that. I said--because 
that is a term of art that encompasses a wide range of 
behaviors, and----
    Senator Kennedy. I am sorry, but I am trying to get down 
from the platitudes and understand what you are for and 
against.
    Ms. Abrams. Sir, what I am for----
    Senator Kennedy. Help me with this. Let us suppose that the 
Republican Party wanted to hire people to go out and knock on 
doors of voters and say, ``Have you voted yet with your mail 
ballot?'' They say, ``No.'' Then the operatives are told to 
contact the voter and say, ``Let me help you with your ballot 
if you have any questions. I can even suggest who you might 
want to vote for. After you vote, I will collect the ballot for 
you and you make it easy.'' Is that okay?
    Ms. Abrams. Sir, I am both an attorney and a former 
legislator, and it is not simply the words that you are 
saying----
    Senator Kennedy. I am an attorney and a current legislator, 
and I might want to trade places with you. But keep going.
    Ms. Abrams. My point is, as you and I both know, the 
context, the rules, and the structure matters. In the very 
narrow circumstance that you have just described, if there are 
no controls and it turns into buying votes, of course I object 
to that.
    Senator Kennedy. Okay.
    Ms. Abrams. If you look at the piecemeal components that 
you are describing and if we are talking about how do we make 
it easier for voters to participate in elections, I am not 
certain what that looks like. What you described in the very 
specific and narrow construct, it sounds like you are in 
violation of a number of different rules, not the least of 
which is buying a vote.
    Senator Kennedy. All right. Let me ask you one last 
question. Our Chairman has really indulged me here. Do you 
think it was a smart thing for President Biden to do when he 
called everybody who supported the Georgia bill a ``Racist''?
    Ms. Abrams. I think that this bill is grounded in racial 
animus. I think that the language that we are using to 
describe----
    Senator Kennedy. Can I ask you how you know that, Madam? I 
mean, it is an honest question. How do you know that?
    Ms. Abrams. Because for 15 years the Republican Party of 
Georgia not only sanctioned but celebrated its vote-by-mail 
provisions. It was only after voters of color for the first 
time in 15 years successfully used those provisions in favor of 
the party that they disproportionately support that those rules 
changed. It is that for years, for more than nearly two 
decades, we had early voting hours that supported voters that 
were perfectly fine. It was only after communities of color 
used those provisions----
    Senator Kennedy. Why doesn't that hurt Black and white 
people and brown people? This is what I am----
    Ms. Abrams. I think it hurts everyone. If you have watched 
me, I have fought for the right to vote for every person. No 
one is entitled to a victory.
    Senator Kennedy. That is a long way from the President 
calling people a ``Racist'' because they support a State bill.
    Ms. Abrams. Sir, I am responding to the question you asked 
me. My point is that when your motivation is grounded in the 
race of those who are engaging in behaviors that you disagree 
with, that is racist, particularly when it is targeted at 
communities of color by people in power.
    Senator Kennedy. I agree with that. I agree with that. I 
agree with that. The Chairman has gaveled me. I just need to 
ask, how do you know that is what they meant?
    Ms. Abrams. Because we asked them not to do it because we 
showed them what the effect was, and they refused to answer, 
and they refused to abide. I worked with these people for 11 
years. I do not believe that every single person who supported 
this bill has deep racial animus in their hearts for all 
purposes. For the purpose of the voting rights, when racial 
animus is your predicate, then, yes, you should be held 
accountable, and those bills should be stopped.
    Senator Kennedy. Thank you. I am sorry I went over, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Kennedy. Senator Padilla.
    Senator Kennedy. I am sorry, Senator.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would invite my 
colleague, any colleague actually who would like to discuss the 
intricacies of election administration, I am more than happy to 
do so, having served as a chief elections officer for not just 
the most populous State in the Nation for the past 6 years but 
home to the largest, most diverse, and inclusive democracy of 
any State in the Nation, even if it takes some alligator 
sausage and California wine to bring us together.
    Speaking of, Mr. Chair, I feel in many ways this hearing is 
a continuation of the quality conversation that was begun by 
the Rules Committee prior to the most recent State work period, 
of which I am a member, as is Majority Leader Schumer, Minority 
Leader McConnell, and other leaders on this topic. I raise that 
because in that hearing, some of our Republican colleagues 
raised the frame of working to make it easier to vote but 
harder to cheat, as if it is some sort of mantra or guiding 
value. There was a reference that that law was inspired by 
partisan action on election reforms after the 2000 Presidential 
administration. I have seen and heard firsthand a lot of 
Republican Secretaries of State in recent years use that 
mantra, easier to vote and harder to cheat, and some might 
attach a helpful prism, because it seems like we have done a 
heck of a great job on the second part, the harder to cheat. 
Study after study, report after report, investigation after 
investigation continues to document that voter fraud in America 
is exceedingly rare.
    The easier to vote part still requires a lot of work, and I 
thank you, Mr. Chair, for prioritizing this topic for a hearing 
in this Committee today and I hope action by Congress in the 
very near future. The easier to vote part requires a lot of 
work. I will tell you what the signs are that we have a lot of 
work to do: the long, long lines that we see in multiple States 
on general election night; the movement in some States for 
fewer days or fewer hours or fewer locations to vote as time 
goes on; the shame in some States where we can debate the value 
added of a voter ID law, but when these laws are written in 
such a way that a concealed weapons permit allows you to get 
into the voting booth, but a State-issued State university ID 
does not, we know there is an agenda behind the impact of these 
laws, and on and on and on.
    I tell you what does help: amplifying, increasing the 
opportunity to vote by mail for eligible voters, as was done in 
New Hampshire, which was a big part of their increase in 
participation in 2020. I can assure you it was a big part of 
California's record turnout in 2020 as well, offering eligible 
voters more days, more hours, more flexibility of where to vote 
in person if that is their choice. The acceptance of more vote-
by-mail ballots that are postmarked on or before election day, 
even if they arrive after the election; the implementation of 
post-election audits to continue to buttress election 
integrity, et cetera, et cetera.
    Mr. Chair, we have the playbook on how to strengthen our 
democracy, maintaining the security and integrity of our 
elections, while facilitating more participation. Sadly, the 
term ``Voter Fraud,'' the potential for voter fraud, is used as 
a pretext to do the opposite.
    Several of our colleagues have also referenced how 2020 was 
an election year that saw record registration in most parts of 
the country, probably nationally as a whole, record turnout in 
many, many States across the country nationally as a whole. Why 
are the proposals making their way through Congress necessary?
    You have to ask the same question when we see the--as of 
March 24th, as of March 24th, 361 bills introduced in 47 States 
that would restrict opportunities to vote in our election. I 
know some of our colleagues have said, ``Well, just because 
they are introduced does not mean these measures are going to 
see the light of day.'' Five have already been enacted; 29 have 
been passed by at least one Chamber, and more still under 
consideration.
    Mr. Chair, that is a long preamble in the lead-up to my 
main question for our witnesses here, and I begin with saying 
what more people should recognize, and that is that voter 
suppression is rooted in white supremacy.
    During the Jim Crow era, we know that racially targeted and 
racially motivated voter suppression was often blatant. 
Legislatures adopted overtly racist policies like literacy 
tests and poll taxes in an effort to shape the electorate. 
Today's voter suppression playbook is still rooted in white 
supremacy and motivated by the same factors as their Jim Crow 
predecessors, but it looks different. Overtly racist policies 
have been replaced by facially neutral ones like mandated in-
person voting requirements, the de-commissioning of polling 
sites and manipulated discriminatory photo ID laws, as I have 
mentioned. Just because these new voter suppression tactics are 
facially neutral, it can be harder for people to recognize and 
understand the pernicious effects.
    My question for Ms. Ifill, Ms. Abrams, and Professor 
Anderson is simply: Can you explain, can you share how these 
seemingly race-neutral policies nonetheless have 
disproportionate racial impacts?
    Ms. Ifill. If I might begin, Senator Padilla, and thank 
you, let us talk about a provision that we have not talked 
about today, which is that this law, S.B. 202, provides for 
unlimited challenges to the legitimacy of voters. I am sure 
many people are aware that there are organizations who make it 
their business to challenge voters, to determine whether a 
voter, in fact, should have been able to cast a vote, 
organizations like True the Vote. There were 360,000 challenges 
after the November election in Georgia, and the Georgia 
Secretary of State found that there were no substantial 
findings that supported any widespread voter fraud through 
those challenges.
    If that was the case, if 360,000 challenges failed to 
produce anything significant, why does S.B. 202 now provide 
that anyone can make unlimited challenges to the legitimacy of 
voters? This is a form of voter intimidation that can often be 
used to target Black and Latino voters, to target voters who 
are from immigrant communities. What is the predicate? What is 
the underlying basis for that provision of the law? Why create 
this untrammeled system in which anyone can engage in these 
unlimited challenges to voters?
    We know that this will disproportionately be targeted at 
communities of color, and yet it is in S.B. 202. It is not 
connected to any evidence or predicate that it is necessary. It 
is not narrowly tailored. It is not designed to actually get at 
voter fraud. It is actually designed to create an unlimited 
system of voter intimidation that will be targeted at Black and 
brown voters.
    Senator Padilla. Ms. Abrams.
    Ms. Abrams. I would only add that we know that of those 
364,000 challenges, one of the provisions that are included in 
this is that the counties that were able to legally dismiss 
these challenges for lack of evidence and lack of basis are now 
going to be penalized by the State if they do not engage in 
sham hearings that can serve to not only terrify voters, but 
often push them out of the process because they are unaware of 
how these processes work, and they could be terrified that if 
they participate, it could somehow imperil their ability to 
participate in work or otherwise.
    As Ms. Ifill pointed out, this is just one more example, in 
addition to the number that we have given earlier, that 
demonstrates just how difficult it is to behave with integrity 
when you are being attacked with impunity by those who use 
racial animus and your mere presence as a threat to democracy. 
I would actually like to cede the rest of this to Dr. Anderson, 
who I think most ably can connect the dots between Jim Crow 
before and Jim Crow 2.0.
    Professor Anderson. Thank you so much, and thank you, 
Senator Padilla, for your question. The challenges that Ms. 
Ifill has described were in these Jim Crow Constitutions, such 
as the one in North Carolina, that allowed any voter, anybody 
to go up and challenge the veracity, the validity, the 
legitimacy of a voter. That was intimidation. That kind of 
engagement, that kind of harassment is what we see replicated 
in this bill.
    I would also say that one of the things that we see is the 
limitation of dropboxes. The dropboxes were really designed to 
deal with the pandemic and designed to deal with the fact that 
the post office was being deliberately undercut in terms of its 
ability to deliver absentee ballots in a timely fashion. The 
rise of dropboxes provided access to voters to be able to 
engage in this election process.
    What we saw--What we see with S.B. 202, however, is 
elimination--in Atlanta, where the majority of Black voters 
are, you see that we go from 94 dropboxes to 23. Those 
dropboxes are now to be housed inside, in buildings that can be 
closed. This is how you can limit access to the ballot box 
while writing race-neutral laws. These are not race-neutral. 
They are not as race-neutral as the poll tax was or as the 
literacy test was. Neither of those said, ``We do not want 
Black folks to vote,'' but that was the underlying premise 
behind them, as Big Chief Vardaman made very clear, and that is 
what we are seeing right now with these voter suppression laws. 
It is in response to the massive wave of Black voter turnout 
that happened at the 2020 and 2021 elections.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Padilla.
    Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Chair Durbin. Senator Tillis.
    Senator Tillis. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the 
witnesses for being here.
    Speaker Pro Tem Jones, thank you for your leadership in the 
Georgia Legislature. I know a little bit about Georgia. Both my 
kids were born there. I lived in Atlanta. I have got a lot of 
family down in south Georgia.
    Over the past several weeks, I have heard a number of 
reports; I have also heard several comments today. It seems to 
me that we are not properly characterizing many of the aspects 
of Senate bill 202. What would you consider to be some of the 
more blatant mischaracterizations that you have heard today or 
that you have heard reported in the press?
    Speaker Jones. Thank you, Senator Tillis. It would take me 
quite a while to go through the ones today, but I will just go 
through a few of the most recent ones. No ID is surrendered to 
vote absentee. The exact same voter ID requirements that are in 
law and have been in law to vote in person are now simply going 
to apply to absentee voting.
    Senator Tillis. Ms. Jones, if I may, how does that work? 
You know, if you go to a poll location, they ask for an ID. You 
have a Government-issued ID or I guess other acceptable forms 
of identification. How does that mechanically work in an 
absentee process? Are they copied and submitted with the 
ballot? How does that work?
    Speaker Jones. No, sir, if one has a pen, a ballpoint ink 
pen and you can take the number on your driver's license or the 
number on your free voter ID, or I might add, I would like to 
clarify, someone said a utility bill could not be used. You 
could use any one--if you do not have one of those two, which 
97 percent of Georgians do, you can submit a copy of a utility 
bill, for example, one of the federally allowed forms of ID. 
This is not a hardship, and----
    Senator Tillis. Ms. Jones, I just want to be clear, because 
I have got a lot of other questions I want to ask you.
    Speaker Jones. Okay.
    Senator Tillis. When we hear people talking about an 
unreasonable requirement--in North Carolina, I think our 
driver's license number is somewhere around eight or ten 
digits. You are saying provided that you have a writing 
instrument and you can write down 10 or 12 digits--let us say 
yours is a little bit longer--then you have satisfied the ID 
requirement on the absentee ballot?
    Speaker Jones. Yes, sir, that is true.
    Senator Tillis. Okay. People said that--I think it was Ms. 
Abrams that said she focused on the 9 to 5 window for voting. 
It sounds to me like in the law that was more or less 
established as a floor and that you provided the options for 
local boards of elections to do 12 hours, 7 to 7 voting. Is 
that correct?
    Speaker Jones. That is correct. We had 134 States that 
offered fewer hours than 9 to 5, and so it is expanding the 
number of hours available for early voting in most counties.
    Senator Tillis. How about the assertion that was mentioned 
by one of the other witnesses--I cannot recall who it was--that 
said that providing water to your elderly parents or 
grandparents could get you in jail? Is that a part of this 
bill?
    Speaker Jones. No, sir. The--Just as has been in long-time 
current law and is in most States and probably your State, 
there is a protected distance that was, frankly, being gamed 
and manipulated during the last two election cycles by 
activists and candidates handing out items of value, sometimes 
with their logo on it, and this simply puts----
    Senator Tillis. Right. It is another mischaracterization.
    Speaker Jones. It clarifies----
    Senator Tillis. That is what I mean. All this stuff is 
mischaracterization. You know, I cannot----
    Speaker Jones. That is right. This is mischaracterized.
    Senator Tillis. I think it is important to point out that 
in Georgia you have just under 4 weeks of early voting. Is that 
correct?
    Speaker Jones. We have 3 weeks of early voting, which is 
quite expansive.
    Senator Tillis. Okay. That includes a Saturday and Sunday 
option? Is that correct?
    Speaker Jones. It includes--it mandates two Saturdays in 
Senate Bill 202. Previously only one Saturday----
    Senator Tillis. The option for Sunday voting.
    Speaker Jones. Two Sundays are absolutely available.
    Senator Tillis. Are there provisions----
    Speaker Jones. May I just say, Senator, only 16 counties 
utilized Sunday voting in 2020. All 159 counties are able to 
utilize it if they so choose.
    Senator Tillis. Is the provision for dropboxes driven more 
by the logistics of where you can secure the dropbox to prevent 
tampering? The prior witness said you went----
    Speaker Jones. Yes, sir.
    Senator Tillis [continuing]. From 90 to 24 in the Atlanta-
Fulton County area. Was that just based on your best judgment--
--
    Speaker Jones. The numbers are somewhat----
    Senator Tillis [continuing]. Of where you could have secure 
dropboxes?
    Speaker Jones [continuing]. Different from that. I live in 
Fulton County. There would be sufficient dropboxes. We never 
had dropboxes before 2020.
    Senator Tillis. Yes.
    Speaker Jones. They were purely put in place by the State 
Elections Board out of social distancing concerns. I certainly 
am optimistic we will not have social distancing concerns at 
the time of the next general election, but should we have them, 
the law also allows for the State Elections Board to take them 
back to the way they were during the pandemic, which was 
outside of early voting locations. For security reasons, we had 
dropboxes that were overflowing because they were not 
monitored. No one was watching the camera on them. This will 
make sure that every vote counts.
    Senator Tillis. That seems rational.
    Mr. Chair, I have to associate myself with Senator Lee's 
comment. You know, this has been a contentious hearing, and 
these sorts of hearings can be. This Committee rightly has 
members with our differences on it. I really believe that we 
need to start getting the facts on some of the voting laws. I 
do not think setting the premise with Jim Crow 2021 is a 
particularly productive way to get people to talk about States 
like Delaware that is only currently implementing early voting. 
States like North Carolina, we were the first to cast ballots 
in the last election cycle. You could start casting your 
absentee ballot in September. We do allow for weekend voting. 
We have a lot of early voting sites. Yet when I was Speaker of 
the House and the gentleman that went behind me had had those 
bills even by members of this Committee being Jim Crow bills. 
The fact of the matter is we have had increased participation 
among the African American demographic and the minority 
demographic.
    There does seem to be a number of States that I am sure we 
will never have a hearing on here. I think Ms. Abrams even said 
they are behind the eight ball. I think they are right. I think 
if we had some of the restrictions that we see in other States 
in Southern States, then we would be probably rightfully 
insulted. And yet they get a pass.
    I hope that the people of Georgia and that the American 
people will get past some of the misinformation. The 361 bills 
has been referred to repeatedly in this hearing. If you look at 
it, I for one think cleansing voter rolls to prevent dead 
people from voting is not a bad idea. If you start decomposing 
it, the record is going to be open. I am going to provide 
something without objection that really breaks down these bills 
to say maybe some are going outside of the lanes, but not 361. 
These are games that are being played.
    I have got an article here that, without objection, I would 
like to submit to where fundraising on aspects of the Georgia 
bill that never made its way into law--I do not even know if 
there was a serious amendment ever considered.
    [The article appears as a submission for the record.]
    Senator Tillis. It looks like a lot of people are creating 
a lot of noise at the expense of identifying legitimate areas 
where we feel like voters do not have the right to vote. I 
believe in North Carolina characterizing my laws, a law that I 
ratified, a law that was passed by an almost 70 percent vote in 
a majority Democrat State--in fact, Republicans are third 
behind unaffiliateds. Almost 70 percent supporting voter ID 
laws and integrity laws. I think that the Georgia law has more 
to do with election integrity than voter suppression, and I 
hope that we can get to a point to find the real offenders, 
weed them out, but not necessarily have these circular 
discussions where I am sure fundraising emails will go out and 
people will be talking about protecting voter integrity, but 
they are not getting anything done.
    Speaker Pro Tem Jones and the rest of the witnesses, thank 
you for being here today.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Speaker Jones. Thank you.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator. Thanks to everyone for 
participating in this. Yes, ``Jim Crow 2021'' is a provocative 
title. It certainly raised the interest level in this 
Committee. The participation today is an indication of that. I 
think this is a serious issue. I am glad that Professor 
Anderson was with us. Though she may not have had as many 
questions as others, she put it in a historic context. There 
was a time in our history when people were boldly stating what 
their intentions were with efforts at voter suppression. Not so 
often now. Yet we have to be honest and take a hard look--
Senator Tillis stepped out--measures like a North Carolina law 
that required strict voter ID and limited early voting, which a 
Federal court found, and I quote, ``Targeted African Americans 
with almost surgical precision'' and determined that the State 
legislature ``Enacted the law with discriminatory intent.'' 
That is not from the 19th century nor even the 20th century. It 
is modern times.
    Measures like a Texas law implemented mere hours after the 
Shelby County decision, a law that was ultimately determined to 
violate the U.S. Constitution by a Federal court because it 
wrongfully discriminated against the State's Black and Latino 
voters.
    Here is what troubled me, and I tried to say it at the 
outset. It appeared that the people who ran the elections in 
Georgia in 2020 were willing to stand up to the President of 
the United States when he personally called Secretary of State 
Raffensperger and in a veiled threat suggested he might be 
guilty of a crime if he did not set out to find the votes 
necessary to make Donald Trump the winner in Georgia. He 
resisted that effort.
    I respected him very much for it. I think it took a lot of 
fortitude on his part, particularly as an elected Republican. I 
understand he was criticized by many Republicans in Georgia, 
many of the same Republicans who then went into legislative 
session and passed this bill and in the process stripped him of 
authority which he had before. He paid a price for standing up 
and saying that.
    The troubling thing that has never been answered, asked 
over and over and never answered: What was the incidence of 
voter fraud in Georgia that caused that legislature to come in 
and change so many versions of the voting law after 2020 and 
after the special election in 2021? There was not any instance 
of voter fraud.
    The Senator from North Carolina raised the question of dead 
people voting. How often does that occur? President Donald 
Trump said to Raffensperger, ``We think there are 5,000 dead 
people who voted on the rolls in 2020.'' Raffensperger's reply: 
``There were two, Mr. President. They were wrong. They never 
should have done it.'' Two out of nearly 5 million votes. It 
defies logic to think that we are in a position now where we 
are changing the laws of a State after it has produced record 
turnouts and after there is so little fraud and still the 
efforts are being made to make a substantial change.
    Do I understand Senator Blackburn is online?
    Senator Blackburn. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I had to leave the 
hearing and come back. So, yes, I am available now.
    Chair Durbin. Senator, we were just concluding the hearing, 
but I want to give you your chance, so take your 5 minutes, 
please.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you. I appreciate that.
    I want to say thank you to our witnesses because they have 
been incredibly patient with us today, because this is such an 
important hearing from us. I am one of those that served on an 
election commission before I was in elective office. I did that 
in my county. I know how incredibly important it is to make it 
possible for everyone to vote.
    Mr. Gardner, I appreciated your comments on how your focus 
is on making it easy for people to vote while still making 
those votes safe. I believe everybody should have their 
opportunity to vote.
    I have a pickup truck, and for about 25 years, the license 
plate on that pickup truck said, ``Vote,'' because it was a way 
for me to send that message to everybody registered to vote.
    I will say it has been a little bit distressing to me today 
listening to this hearing--I got into the room for a few 
minutes--to hear the premise of this hearing as if there is 
some assault on the right to vote in this country. We know that 
we have had record voter turnout, and my colleagues across the 
aisle know that we have had record voter turnout in recent 
years. This is--to say that it is Jim Crow laws, in my opinion, 
that is not a valid premise. I find it unfortunate that there 
are some who have continued to push that and push it on the 
State of Georgia.
    I think we have to look at the lead-up to this and the 
things that have been said. Look at the Washington Post and 
their comments about President Biden when he falsely claimed 
that Georgia's recent voting reform law, and I am quoting, 
``Ends voting hours early so working people cannot cast their 
vote after their shift is over.''
    President Biden went on to describe Georgia's election law 
as ``Jim Crow in the 21st century,'' which appears to be the 
inspiration for this hearing. The problem is, as we have 
discussed several times, the Washington Post gave President 
Biden's remarks on this issue four Pinocchios. In other words, 
they say that was a lie.
    ``One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early 
voting access for most counties.'' That is the Georgia Public 
Radio report on the Georgia voting laws.
    ``For most counties you will have an extra weekend day, and 
your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer.'' In 
actuality, the Georgia voting law that President Biden claimed 
ended early voting actually did the exact opposite. It expanded 
these voting opportunities.
    Unfortunately, President Biden's repeating of the lie had 
rapid real-world consequences. You look at this with Major 
League Baseball. This repeated lie caused the All Star Game in 
Atlanta to die. I would have loved to have asked Senator 
Warnock, and probably will, how he will answer to his 
constituents for the loss of that game.
    Ms. Abrams, I do have a question that I wanted to come to 
you on. When you have heard the comments, the repeated 
falsehood from the President that this is something that would 
hamper voting rights and the comments about the Georgia law, 
does this hurt or help your cause for access for voting to more 
individuals?
    Ms. Abrams. With all due respect, Senator, to the 
Washington Post, I actually disagree with their 
characterization. For early in-person voting, 78 percent of 
counties already had more than the 8 hours of early voting. 
What S.B. 202 did was codify 9 to 5:00----
    Senator Blackburn. I do not mean to interrupt, but thank 
you, thank you for that, because I do have another question I 
want to go to Ms. Jones on. As I mentioned, I have served on a 
voter--an election commission, and my question for 
Representative Jones is about the voter rolls and the updating 
of the voter rolls.
    We took this as a very serious responsibility and worked 
hard at updating voter rolls. When you talk about the 
legislation that is being pushed, they would disallow counties 
to update their rolls. Therefore, mail-out ballots would go to 
people, as we saw in 2020, that no longer live in an area or 
people, individuals, that are deceased. People saw hundreds of 
these on social media.
    Talk with me about how this process of going through and 
cleaning up these rolls adds and underpins the accuracy and the 
integrity in the elections.
    Speaker Jones. Thank you, Senator. It is incredibly 
important to have--so that you can have integrity in elections 
that the voter rolls are not only cleaned up, but that there is 
also some security on the back end, because we did have voters 
receive multiple absentee ballot requests for previous 
occupants of their home or their apartment. That is why we also 
put the reasonable requirement in absentee ballots that they 
list their driver's license number or their free voter ID, and 
there are other provisions if they do not--if they are one of 
the 2 or 3 percent of Georgians who do not have that. The two 
go together so that every--we want every voter to cast a vote, 
and we want every legitimate vote to count.
    Senator Blackburn. That is imperative in preserving the 
one-person, one-vote rule, is making certain that the rolls are 
correct so that only people who currently live in an area are 
able to vote in that State or in that county for those 
elections, so that you eliminate a lot of the voter fraud.
    Voter laws should make the elections more secure, and they 
should make it more difficult to cheat. That is how we preserve 
the integrity in the election system. Everyone entitled to vote 
should be able to vote.
    Secretary Gardner, I do have a question. I am going to 
submit----
    Chair Durbin. Senator, if you could--Senator----
    Senator Blackburn [continuing]. this to you. I am going to 
submit--yes, sir?
    Chair Durbin. I am sorry.
    Senator Blackburn. I am going to submit my question to 
Secretary Gardner because you have been generous with your 
time, and the hearing has run very long.
    Senator Blackburn. Mr. Chairman, thank you for letting me 
get a couple of questions in.
    Chair Durbin. Thank you, Senator Blackburn, and Mr. Gardner 
will receive the question. I hope anyone who does receive a 
question our witnesses will respond in a timely fashion.
    I want to thank the witnesses. This has been a 4-hour 
hearing, which is unusual in the Senate Judiciary Committee and 
is evidence of the interest in this issue, as we expected. It 
is clear that we have work to do. The question is whether we 
will do something in a bipartisan way to restore the Voting 
Rights Act. We have been disappointed in recent years that the 
bipartisanship is gone. Perhaps, as hope springs eternal, we 
can rekindle it.
    I want to thank everyone for participating, and I hope that 
moving forward we can stand together in defense of our 
democracy. I want to explore with others in this Congress how 
we can do our part to protect the most fundamental right as 
Americans.
    This hearing will stand adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:01 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
    [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]


     [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]