Laurel Lee Asks State Secretaries About ‘Additional Safeguards’ They've Put In Place To Protect Elections

5 days ago

During Tuesday’s House Administration Committee hearing, Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) questioned Secretaries of State about placing safeguards on elections.

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00:00Thank you. I'll begin our questions today, followed by the ranking member. I now recognize myself for the purpose of questioning our witnesses.

00:09Secretary Allen, I'll start with you and follow up on your testimony that related to your efforts to have accurate and contemporary voter roles.

00:19Under your leadership, the Alabama Voter Integrity Database System entered into a memorandum of understanding with my home state of Florida through 2027.

00:28Can you share with us what that is and why it is so crucial to have states communicate with each other about voter rolls?

00:35Yes, ma'am. Thank you. It is vitally important that states talk to each other, and we have been so very, very proud of these memorandums of understanding,

00:44not only with the state of Florida, but with Georgia and Tennessee and Mississippi and Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and most recently, Texas.

00:52Those are vitally important to have a bilateral agreement to where we can get our IT departments to talk to each other

00:59to make sure that we do not have anyone that is double registered in both states, and we are very, very proud of this effort.

01:08We have exchanged data with a number of states so far, and we found over 40,000 individuals that were double registered in other states as well as Alabama.

01:18And tell us what sort of adjudication process occurs when you do identify somebody who appears to be registered in more than one location.

01:25So we get that information, and we send out to the counties, to the different boards of registrars,

01:33where that person was last registered in Alabama, and they send out correspondence to this person to let them know

01:39that there may be some question about their voter registration, and if they indeed have moved to another state

01:46state, to call them back, or to correspond with them, and to remove themselves from the Alabama voter file.

01:53If they do not correspond with us, there's a time period for the, in conjunction with the NVRA,

01:59that places them on a pathway to removal.

02:02So we don't remove them instantly, we put them on a pathway in case they do not call the state of Alabama to remove themselves.

02:09And Secretary Landry, Louisiana recently enacted safeguards for mail-in ballot returns via third-party collection.

02:16Can you share with us how these safeguards reduce fraud in third-party ballot collections?

02:20Sure, certainly.

02:23We passed some legislation last year that closed loopholes regarding ballot harvesting,

02:30and in addition to prohibiting individuals from picking up multiple ballots,

02:36we also now prohibit delivery by any method, where one individual is delivering multiple ballots.

02:43So if you're not a family member, you can only deliver one ballot, whether it's to the registrar

02:47or voter's office, or to a post office box.

02:52Have these additional safeguards reduced voting via absentee ballot?

02:57They have not.

02:58And in your opinion, did these measures unduly burden absentee voters in Louisiana?

03:03They do not.

03:04In fact, we had a lawsuit regarding one of our new laws, and the plaintiffs, after the most recent election,

03:12moved to dismiss the lawsuit, and in the motion they mentioned that they were unable to find a single plaintiff

03:19who was impacted by the legislation, in spite of their thinking that they would.

03:23They couldn't find anyone.

03:25So we think they're just common sense measures, and they protect our most vulnerable voters.

03:33Secretary LaRose, Ohio, much like my home state, implemented pre-processing for mail-in ballots,

03:39which you mentioned in your testimony.

03:40We attribute rapid processing of absentee ballots as a crucial part of calling election results in a timely manner.

03:47Will you explain to us how early processing of ballots increases confidence in elections in Ohio?

03:53Yeah, thank you, Chairwoman.

03:54As soon as an absentee ballot arrives back at a county board of elections, it can be opened by a bipartisan team,

04:00a Democrat and Republican sitting there, slicing it open, checking the name, date of birth, last floor of the social,

04:06state driver's license, and verifying the signature against the signature on file in the database.

04:10At that point, they can flatten it out, and let's not over, you know, trivialize that.

04:15They have to be flattened out to go through the machine.

04:17Sometimes that takes some time to do.

04:19They flatten those ballots out, and they're ready to scan so that on election night, at 7.30 p.m. precisely,

04:25the very first ballots counted are those early votes and absentee votes, because they're all processed and ready to go.

04:30And tell us, if you would, around what time was Ohio able to call the race for the presidency on election night?

04:37It was in the 10 p.m. hour, and we were at 90 percent reported by 11 p.m.

04:44However, that last 10 percent took us until about 3 a.m. because we had a few counties that needed some help.

04:48But before everybody went home for the night, we had every vote counted, every election day vote counted and reported.

04:54Thank you, Secretary LaRose.

04:56I now recognize Ranking Member Sewell for five minutes for the purpose of questioning our witnesses.

Laurel Lee Asks State Secretaries About ‘Additional Safeguards’ They've Put In Place To Protect Elections

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