During a House Administration Committee hearing on Tuesday, Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams claimed that Michigan had 25,000 deceased people in its voter rolls for decades.
00:00The President yields back without objection. All other members' opening statements will be made part of the hearing record if they're submitted to the committee clerk by 5 p.m. today. Today we have a one witness panel. First, we have Christian Adams, who's president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Next, we have Justin Reimer, who is president and CEO of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections and partner at First Street Law. And finally, we have Mary Kay Haling, a voter in the state of North Carolina.
00:29We appreciate all of you being here with us today, and we look forward to your testimony. I'll now recognize you, Mr. Adams, for five minutes for the purpose of giving your opening statement.
00:38Thank you, Chairman Stile, Ranking Member Morelli, members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to testify. Here's a question Congress might ponder. What does Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act mean when it requires that states must, quote,
00:52conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters, unquote.
01:02According to federal courts, unfortunately, now it means next to nothing. That isn't what Congress intended in 1993.
01:09Courts have unfortunately interpreted the language passed by this Congress to find the mere existence of a list maintenance program is what matters,
01:18not the program's effectiveness. Panels of the Sixth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reach these conclusions.
01:27In Florida, Broward County allowed non-citizens to vote and deferred the removal of ineligible registrants for years out of sheer incompetence.
01:36The list maintenance requirements in the N.V.A.R.A. are gutted, particularly now in the Sixth and Eleventh.
01:43It is ironic, since the N.V.A.R.A. owes its very existence to these same list maintenance obligations.
01:51Senator Bob Dole's compromise list maintenance amendment in 1993 broke a filibuster that would have otherwise doomed the bill,
02:00just as previous versions of N.V.A.R.A. died by filibuster before 1993.
02:07The Republicans made a deal to let the N.V.A.R.A. through in exchange for meaningful list maintenance standards.
02:16But the Eleventh Circuit generally held that if an election official makes an effort to clean voter rolls,
02:21no matter how shoddy, it's acceptable, and that best practices are not required under the N.V.A.R.A.
02:28The proof is decidedly not in the N.V.A.R.A. pudding.
02:34The Sixth Circuit has followed the Eleventh Circuit.
02:36There, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had over 25,000 dead registrants on the active rolls.
02:44A significant number of them had been registered decades after death. Decades.
02:49In litigation, however, the Sixth Circuit interpreted the language that Congress passed requiring a reasonable effort to mean this.
02:56Quote, a program that makes a rational and sensible attempt to remove dead registrants.
03:02A state need not, however, go to extravagant or excessive lengths in creating and maintaining such a program. Unquote.
03:09Notice the court never says successful or effective.
03:12Results don't matter.
03:14The proof is not in the pudding.
03:16I do not believe this is what Congress intended.
03:19I do not believe Republicans would have dropped their filibuster with this limp maintenance standard.
03:26A mere rational attempt?
03:28Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson gets an A for effort from the court, but she deserved an F for outcome.
03:35Tens of thousands of dead registrants on active rolls?
03:40Never mind if someone's registered multiple times.
03:42Never mind if a registration record is missing the date of birth.
03:46None of this matters under these court rulings.
03:48Only whether a state makes a rational effort.
03:51Results don't matter.
03:53This standard is not what the Republicans dropped a filibuster for in 1993.
03:59Congress can fix this.
04:00Many of the problems with American voter rolls occur at the point of registration, often by third-party groups.
04:06The voter may never know their record is botched because they can still vote, but then something changes.
04:11They move.
04:12They change their name.
04:13They get married, and the process creates a duplicate registration because the original mistake impairs a record match.
04:21It can even be triplicate.
04:23I've seen duplications reach six active registrations for a single voter in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Rashawn Slade.
04:31You can see all of his simultaneous registrations in the appendix to my written testimony.
04:37Some news.
04:38In Maine, we just found roughly 18,000 apparently deceased registrants, nearly 1,500 examples of intrastate duplicates,
04:47another 900 examples of interstate duplicates.
04:51The Public Interest Legal Foundation issued a detailed finding on this report on this date of this month.
04:57Ironically, Maine passed a statute to fine the Public Interest Legal Foundation if we spoke about what we found on the voter rolls, including to you in Congress.
05:06The First Circuit struck down these speech penalties in a case that we brought under the NVRA.
05:12Ranking Member Morelli, even in New York, you find people that I described in my written testimony registered multiple times, including one record we have right here.
05:22That means you're mailing extra campaign literature.
05:25You're wasting money on your campaign because of the state of the voter rolls.
05:29Finally, one way to improve list maintenance is for states to use commercial credit data to clean voter rolls, and I'm happy to answer your questions.
