Election integrity law heads to full House

Republicans advanced a key election integrity bill to the full House three days ago, by rejecting several water-down amendments. The bill also has referrals to several other Committees, including Ways and Means. But yesterday’s markup session in House Administration was probably the most important obstacle it has passed thus far.

What’s in the election integrity bill

The American Confidence in Elections Act, or ACE Act, runs to 220 pages.

Election integrity (called election administration integrity) constitutes one of six Titles in the Act. But Title IV, Election Security, is an integral part of election integrity.

This bill summary explains the bill in simpler terms.

It addresses the way most States run elections and even such things as electronic poll books. As an Officer of Election, your editor uses electronic poll books frequently. They have proved a nearly invaluable aid in allowing two or more OOEs to process, quickly and efficiently, voters queuing up around a building (or around a block!) to vote in a hotly contested election. No more need voters divide themselves between, say, the A-Ks and the L-Zs. But this imposes an additional security requirement – which this bill addresses.

An Elections Assistance Commission already exists, and this bill would establish that as the lead federal agency for election administration. In addition, the bill addresses such questions as: mail-in ballots, signature verification, voter list maintenance, access for election observers, timely counting and reporting of results, standards for recruitment of OOEs, certification and testing of voting machines, post-election audits, and a chain of custody for ballots and equipment.

One thing that OOEs will appreciate right away, is that their wages will no longer count toward income. Likewise, local registrars will no longer need to issue Forms 1099 or W-2 to OOEs.

Citizenship, identification, and other requirements

The bill’s author struck directly at the administration, in that his bill repeals Executive Order 14019. This EO called for several federal agencies to promote voter registration in the several States. Under the ACE Act, that’s for Congress, not the executive branch, to do.

Other obvious election integrity safeguards include:

• Disallowing federal funding of federal elections (for Presidential Electors, Senators, and Representatives) unless States draw up plans to restrict “ballot harvesting” and the transmission, by persons other than United States Postal Service employees, of mail-in ballots.
• Take recommendations for how to handle the death of a candidate for President or Vice-President.
• Require that all who vote in federal elections, must be U.S. citizens. (The bill also provides for separate ballots so that non-citizens may vote in State or local elections held that day.)
• Share information relevant to knowing when a voter on a list has died or moved.
• Require REAL ID compliant identification papers to show positively if the holder is a citizen.
• End any private funding of election administration. The bill aims this squarely at Mark Zuckerburg, head of Meta (Facebook, Instagram), and his infamous “Zuckerbucks.”

The D.C. showcase

By far the most thoroughgoing provision in the election integrity title is to make an example of the District of Columbia. Article I Section 8 Clause 17a makes Congress the effective “exclusive legislat[ure]” for that District. Accordingly, the ACE Act explicitly enacts a raft of election integrity measures the author would like all States to enact. This will require voter ID for voting in person or requesting an absentee ballot, and require annual voter roll maintenance. And it will expressly forbid:

• Same-day voter registration,
• Ballot harvesting,
• Mailing ballots out, except only to voters who request them, and
• Voting by non-citizens.

Furthermore, it will require:

• Access by election observers or “poll watchers,”
• Signature verification and dating,
• A deadline for receipt of ballots (except military or overseas ballots) by close of polls,
• Reporting of unofficial results no later than 10:00 a.m. the next day,
• Publishing of numbers of ballots received,
• Bipartisanship in election administration,
• Counting of provisional ballots cast at the correct precinct only, and
• Post-election audits of all elections, before the election contest deadline.

As an OOE, your editor can attest that many States do not do things this way. Virginia, for example, allows same-day registration, and does count provisional ballots cast at the wrong precinct. This new election integrity bill would forbid that.

Other titles in the election integrity bill

Title II is very short. It “directs” the General Accounting Office to study how better to enable absent uniformed service members to vote.

Title III repeals some campaign finance and “coordination” limits, and raises other limits and reporting thresholds. It also forbids the Securities and Exchange Commission to involve itself in election regulation in any way, shape or form.

Title IV, Election Security, concerns itself, not with the physical security of voting machines, but with cybersecurity. In other words, this Title concerns attempts to “hack” election results.

Title V gives the “Sense of Congress” that State legislatures, and not Congress, have the power to redraw Congressional districts. Sadly, it says nothing about repealing the Voting Rights Act, which contains all remaining explicit discriminatory treatment of certain States – especially in the South – including a requirement that these States submit any change in election procedures to the Congress.

Title VI addresses directly another explosive controversy. It explicitly “terminates” the Disinformation Governance Board – better known as the Ministry of Truth.

The House Administration Committee furnished this “infographic” on the elements of their election integrity bill.

History of the bill

Less than a year ago, Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), then the Ranking Member on the House Administration Committee, introduced an earlier version of this bill. He also defended that version in an op-ed in The Hill.Naturally that went nowhere.

Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), now the Chairman of House Administration, introduced the present bill on July 10. He called it “the most conservative election integrity bill to be seriously considered in the House in over 20 years.” The Committee then held a field hearing at 2:30 p.m. the next day – in Atlanta, Georgia. That choice could not have been more apt, considering the infamous Suitcase Incident and the continued practice of hiring OOEs from a temporary help placement agency that a habitual candidate for Governor financed.

Democrats howled with outrage from the start. “Anti-American!” cried Rep. Joe Morello (D-N.Y.), the present Ranking Member.

This legislation is designed to appease extremist election deniers who have spent the last four years attacking our democracy. It would restrict the fundamental right to vote especially for voters of color, jeopardize the security of our elections, burden local election administrators, and bring more dark money into our electoral process — opening the door to corruption.

That last part rings especially hollow, considering his preference for “Zuckerbucks.”

A bill to violate every concept of election integrity

In any case, during Full Markup, Rep. Morelle offered his “Freedom to Vote Act” as a substitute.

Of this bill, the less said the better, except that it includes every item on a Democratic wish list. The bill restricts any action to challenge its constitutionality to the United States District Court and Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (and the Supreme Court). It also, among other things:

• Includes an explicit Motor Voter provision for all States,
• Makes Election Day a federal holiday,
• Provides for voter registration over the Internet,
• Requires a State to offer to treat a voter registration application as an application to receive an absentee ballot,
• Additionally requires a state to treat an absentee ballot request as a standing request,
• Requires every State to allow and provide for same-day registration,
• Lowers the federal voting age to 16,
• Requires early voting to begin at a minimum of 15 days before Election Day,
• Requires all States to locate election precincts within an easy walk from a bus, subway, or other public transit stop,
• Orders States to provide early voting polling places on college campuses,
• Makes mail-in ballots available to all registered voters, regardless of identification or lack thereof,
• Establishes what it calls a “due process” for signature verification,
• Requires two trained witnesses to reject a discrepant ballot signature, and
• Sets a deadline for receipt of absentee ballots of seven days after the election, so long as said absentee ballot is postmarked on or before Election Day.

Markup results

Fortunately Mr. Morelle’s substitute bill never saw the light of day. But Democrats on the House Administration Committee offered fifty amendments to Mr. Steil’s bill. The Committee voted 8-4 to reject all but one. Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) sought to require a GAO study of how well States can hold special House elections if a mass casualty event were to kill several Members or render them unable to serve. (Governors can always appoint new Senators, under the Constitution, so the Senate need not worry.)

Mr. Morelle even offered an amendment to recognize officially that Joe Biden “won” the Election of 2020. Most of the other amendments the Democrats offered were attempts to introduce elements of Mr. Morelle’s substitute bill. But Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.) tried to strike everything from Title I setting new voting procedures for the District of Columbia. That is consistent with Democrats’ perennial desire to:

• Recognize the entire District as the fifty-first State of the Union, complete with its own legislature and voting House and Senate delegations, or failing that:
• Carve out a new fifty-first State consisting of every apartment block, housing project, or other residential building in the District. Federal buildings and private office buildings on Constitution and Independence Avenues, for example, would remain in the Federal District.

In fact, Rep. Sewell made this preposterous claim:

If elections in Washington, D.C., lack integrity, it is not because of fraud or insecure election procedures. It is because half a million D.C. residents are being denied full voting representation in Congress.

At best, a double-entendre – and at worst, incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.

What next?

Evidently this election integrity bill will go to the full House, unless any of the many other Committees to which the House referred the bill want to weigh in. (The House Committee on Rules always passes a special rule governing floor debate on every bill.) This bill will likely pass – but stall in the Senate. Even if it passes that body, this President will veto it. Because it strikes at the heart of every strategy and tactic the Democrats used to “win” the Election of 2020 and probably “win” the Arizona governor’s race. Not one thing the Democrats did, other than the usual get-out-the-vote efforts, would remain lawful under this bill.

But this bill does not go far enough. Electronic voting machines are eminently hackable. Why not simply eliminate them? As CNAV said once before: France votes on paper, so why can’t we?

The Democratic Party, and its members who hold elected office today, all have but one goal. And that is: to ensure that they win all the elections that matter, all the time. Their public policy recommendations, in this and every other subject area, are outrageously preposterous. Furthermore, their insistent mischaracterization of America as a “democracy” gives away their game, even if nothing else did. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Ours is a republic, which defines itself by respect for the rule of law.