[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13602]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION DAY

  (Mr. HONDA asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HONDA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support the 226 million 
Americans who are eligible to vote and to recognize September 27 as 
National Voter Registration Day.
  However, this year is different. With the recent attacks on our 
democracy, unscrupulous actors seek to gain access to confidential and 
sensitive information and distort the outcome of elections.
  In Arizona, the secretary of state just took offline its voter 
registration database because of credible threats to its system. In 
Illinois, 15 million records were recently exposed and nearly 200,000 
accessed by hackers. The Russian Government hacked the Democratic 
Party's emails and files in an attempt to distort our elections.
  Our elections should be free of foreign influence. As the 
representative for Silicon Valley, I value technology in our democracy. 
That is why I introduced legislation to declare our election technology 
as critical infrastructure, so we can give local and State officials 
the Federal resources they need to protect our votes and the purity of 
our democracy.
  On this National Voter Registration Day, too much is on the line for 
us not to act.

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