WASHINGTON — House Republicans unveiled election legislation Monday that they say will make elections more secure, fulfilling a campaign promise that Democrats immediately criticized as being based on denial by former President Donald Trump.
The House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, chose the city of Atlanta as the backdrop to introduce the bill and hold a hearing, as they intervene in a battle over access to the ballot box that has been been largely developed at the state level. level in recent years.
The committee chose Atlanta as a nod to Georgia’s 2021 voting law that added additional ID requirements for mail-in ballots, limited ballot boxes and prohibited people from bringing food and water to voters waiting in line, among other changes. . The bill sparked a Justice Department lawsuit and national controversy, including Major League Baseball’s decision to pull the Atlanta All-Star Game.
Critics said the Georgia law would make it harder to vote and would disproportionately disenfranchise people of color. On Monday, the sponsor of the new House Republican bill, Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican, said it was a false narrative because voter turnout increased between 2020 and 2022. A analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that while overall voter turnout increased, so did the gap between white and non-white turnout. Nonwhite voter turnout dropped between the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, the Brennan Center found.
The House GOP bill makes certain federal changes to help states with election administration, including requiring the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to provide states with access to voter data , free of charge, so they can remove non-citizens and deceased people. of the voter lists. It would also reform the REAL ID Act to require people’s citizenship status to be printed on identification documents like driver’s licenses to verify citizenship status at the polls. The bill also seeks to discourage states from allowing non-citizens to vote in state and local elections by reducing their eligibility for Help America Vote Act grants.
“This legislation is the most substantive and conservative election integrity legislation to come before the House in more than a generation,” Steil said.
Lawmakers also took advantage of Congressional control of Washington, DC, to propose a series of changes to the city’s election bill, seeking to make it an example of effective election management. The new legislation would establish photo identification requirements, signature verification for mail-in ballots, a ban on same-day voter registration and mail-in ballots to anyone other than the person requesting them in the nation’s capital. The bill would also repeal the city’s new law that allows non-citizens to vote in local elections.
New York Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the committee, criticized Republicans for holding up Georgia’s SB 202 voting law as a model, saying it was only enacted because former President Trump lost the state of Georgia in 2020.
“The origins of the Big Lie of SB 202 mirror the origins of the Big Lie of the ACE Act of the majority. And the damaging effects of SB 202 on Georgia voters will be imposed on all Americans if the ACE Act is enacted nationally,” he said.
Other sections of the bill make it easier for politically involved nonprofits to keep their donor lists private and remove some campaign finance regulations.
Even if it passes the House, the GOP election legislation will almost certainly go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Democrats have also struggled to pass their own version of voting rights legislation that they say would expand voter access in the face of a filibuster by Senate Republicans.
