Old Dominion News

Representatives of four organizations advocating stricter election laws testified last week in the third set of Congressional hearings on the proposed American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act.

"We are currently facing a crisis of voter confidence," testified Lisa Dixon, executive director of the Lawyers Democracy Fund. "The peaceful transfer of power, so foundational to our system of government, rests upon voters trusting that their votes were counted, and that the winner of the election actually won, even when the winner is not a voter’s preferred candidate."

After the hearing, the Republican National Lawyer's Association tweeted,  ‘Republicans are fighting for fair and honest elections where every eligible vote can be easily cast, securely held, and accurately counted. Today's @HouseAdmin hearing featured a robust discussion on measures to improve voter confidence.”

The four witnesses were Dixon; Thor Hearne, partner in the law firm True North LLC; Joe Burns, former Deputy Director of Election Operations at the New York State Board of Elections; and Scot Turner, a former member of the Georgia state House of Representatives.

The series of hearings has been conducted by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) chair of the Subcommittee on Elections of the House Committee on Administration.   The bill was first introduced by U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) as HR 8528 in July, 2022. That version went nowhere in the Democratic controlled 117th Congress. The committee has details on the 2022 version of the ACE Act on its website. No new bill under that name in the 118th Congress can be found on Congress.gov. Most likely the committee intends to write its own version of Davis’s bill.

“One thing that's become apparent from the hearings is that there's actually broad consensus on both sides of the aisle that some form of ID is appropriate and important,” Lee said.

U.S. Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) added, "Where state reforms increase voter confidence the most: that's in strengthening voter ID protections, improving list maintenance procedures, and improving transparency, which includes things like prohibiting private funding or private influence and... increasing observer access to every part of the election process."

Dixon’s statement addressed the issue.

"There are two aspects to establishing confidence in elections," she said “First, the election must actually be fair and free...Second, the election must appear fair and free."

The ACE Act, she said, would turn Washington, D.C. “into a model for election integrity protections and protecting voter confidence.”

The focus on the District of Columbia arose in part because constitutionally, state legislatures hold the final authority for determining their states’ federal election rules, but Congress and the President have authority over the District so Congress can write laws governing district elections.

The Washington D.C. city council alarmed U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), chairman of the full committee, when it passed a local law, the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022, allowing non-citizens to vote. The law survived a House resolution to override it in February when the Senate declined to go along. The two houses of Congress have joint authority to overturn D.C. laws.

“While non-citizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections,” this new right of foreigners to vote in local D.C. elections “would include embassy staff of countries like Russia and China after living in the country for just 30 days," Steil said. " I think this is a serious vulnerability to potentially nefarious foreign interference in our elections and raises some pretty series questions... It should be common sense that only Americans should be able to vote.” Burns agreed that non-citizen voting demeaned the votes of U.S. citizens".

U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), co-Chair of the House Election Integrity Caucus, was a participant as a guest member of the subcommittee.

“The Election Integrity Caucus, in our post-election autopsy report on the 2022 midterm elections found that states that made pandemic-era election law changes permanent suffered from a severe lack of election integrity,” she said. “For example, in California, legislators passed AB-37 making no-excuse balloting permanent. This led to delayed results and confusion as a result up to 16 Congressional elections were still undecided weeks after election day. Delays like these lead to uncertainty around our election process that ultimately undermines the public trust.”