Norton Statement on Joint Oversight and House Administration Committee Hearing on Election Integrity in D.C.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said today’s joint House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and Committee on House Administration anti-home rule hearing, purporting to be about election integrity in D.C., demonstrated the Republican commitment to reducing access to voting in D.C. and the country. In the hearing, Republicans argued in support of their upcoming American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act, which would make it more difficult to vote and administer elections in the District of Columbia.
“Today’s hearing demonstrated the Republican commitment to making voting as difficult as possible for D.C. residents,” Norton said. “It is ironic that Republicans in Congress, who do not represent D.C., are abusing their undemocratic power over D.C. in an attempt to make voting more difficult in a jurisdiction that is already denied voting representation in Congress. While I will work to defeat their bill, today’s hearing was the latest form of the wide-ranging anti-home rule attacks D.C. continues to suffer at the hands of Republicans in Congress.”
The American Confidence in Elections: District of Columbia Election Integrity and Voter Confidence Act would, assuming it is the same language as Republicans used in their failed attempts in the last Congress, among other things, require photo identification or Social Security number to vote, require photos in poll books, prohibit same-day registration, prohibit automatically mailing ballots to voters, require ballot drop boxes to be located within a D.C. government building and monitored through 24-hour remote or electronic surveillance, require the removal of names from voting rolls, prohibit, with limited exceptions, a person from collecting a mail ballot completed by another person, require mail ballots to be received by the close of the polls, require election results to be announced by 10 a.m. the day after the election, prohibit non-citizens from voting, give partisan poll watchers virtually unfettered access to polling sites and permit them to challenge ballots and tabulations, and allow the public to observe the testing of election equipment.
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