'Modern-Day Voter Suppression': Mary Gay Scanlon Tears Into GOP Bill On Non-Citizen Voting

4 months ago

During a House Rules Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) spoke about a bill on non-citizen voting which is already illegal in federal elections.

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Transcript

00:00And with that, I would call on, I believe, Mrs. Scanlon from Pennsylvania.

00:04Thank you, Madam Chair.

00:08Okay, so we have a bill here which is

00:12pretending to protect our election systems from people who are not citizens

00:18voting in our federal elections, but let's be clear that that's not happening.

00:24It's already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and there is no evidence that

00:31non-citizens are voting in federal elections. No study backs this up.

00:37Including, in fact, to the contrary, the Cato Institute has put out a study that found that non-citizens don't vote illegally in

00:45detectable numbers. Sure, things happen everywhere,

00:49but this is not a real issue. Voter fraud is incredibly rare, and

00:54non-citizen voting is even more rare. So all this bill is going to do is

01:00disenfranchise American citizens. This bill repeats the GOP playbook for modern-day voter suppression,

01:07which we've already seen and rejected in my home state or Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and numerous other states.

01:13So by that, I mean when you implement strict voter ID requirements,

01:18which discriminate against

01:20eligible voters by limiting the forms of ID which the law will recognize for voting purposes.

01:25The classic example is the state that allows voters to vote if they have a hunting ID, but not a student ID.

01:32So we don't need to look too far for examples of restrictive ID.

01:37One of the primary forms of ID allowed by this bill is real ID, which as

01:42Chairman Stile noted, it does not in fact say that it shows citizenship, and in fact

01:49non-citizens can get real ID for in a number of different situations, and not all states indicate citizenship.

01:56So we're imposing yet another burden upon our states if they're going to have to go back and

02:02you know, add citizenship to their real ID

02:06issuance.

02:07But beyond that, again, something we're very familiar with in Pennsylvania is that people have not gotten real ID.

02:14It's estimated that only 20% of eligible

02:17Pennsylvanians will have real ID by the time it becomes mandatory in a year. Other states are similar.

02:24Kentucky, I think, is only around 30% because many states

02:28had

02:30large conservative factions who were afraid of real ID, who did not want it to be

02:37mandatory because they did not want there to be a national ID system.

02:41They did not want big government

02:44issuing national ID. So there's been very slow uptick, and it's kind of, I think as Mr. Morelli noted,

02:51it's a little bit odd that we have

02:54the House Republicans pushing additional requirements here upon our states and upon people who are resistant

03:00to Big Brother knowing everything about them.

03:03You know, we saw the privacy concerns, the low acceptance rate of real ID, and it's been around since

03:112005, and we still have less than half the people who could get it

03:16using it, shows that if you put an administrative burden on citizens to prove their citizenship

03:22in order to register to vote, if you don't make it easy for them to do that,

03:27you're going to reduce the number of registered voters,

03:29which is something that we had to address when we had strict voter ID rules in Pennsylvania, and we proved that

03:39600,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania were going to be

03:43disenfranchised because the forms of ID which had been accepted by the

03:48Republican legislature under that legislation

03:50were too restrictive, and we see a similar thing happening here. If this bill passes and it's implemented nationwide,

03:58Republicans will have taken away the vote from millions of eligible

04:03American voters, not to mention that it's going to place a significant financial and

04:10administrative burden on our state

04:12government, which are already struggling to keep up with the requirements for real ID and other other forms here.

04:21Do our Republican colleagues know this? Did they not do their homework when

04:26drafting this bill, or was the purpose of the bill not really to address this non-existent problem,

04:32but just to give an opportunity to talk about voter fraud that doesn't exist?

04:37So it's pushing lies

04:40about our elections. It's really

04:45problematic, and I just obviously can't support this bill because it goes contrary to all of the evidence and a lot of work that I've

04:52seen and participated in over the years.

04:55Ranking Member Morelli, Mr. Stile mentioned that real ID in and of itself doesn't indicate

05:00citizenship, and that not all states have such a marker. Has there been any testimony or any evidence before the committee

05:08which brings this bill to us about how many states do indicate citizenship?

05:13No, there's no requirement that real ID have citizenship on it. So even though it's cited as documentary evidence,

05:20it's only for those states who would require citizenship on real ID, but real ID does not, as the chairman

05:27indicated, does not have that requirement.

05:29I mean, here's the challenge is it's going to take an armful of documentary evidence and a lot of work now to register to vote.

05:37The barriers for married women who have a different name than is on their birth certificate,

05:43and even if they showed a birth certificate, their driver's license, they're going to have two different names.

05:47One is the name that they were given at birth. One is if they've changed their name. Those aren't going to agree.

05:52You're going to have to provide documentary.

05:54I mean, think about this, the steps that you'll need to take simply to register, which is your right as a U.S.

06:00citizen to vote in elections.

06:02But now you're going to have to go through more information than you'd have to do almost any other activity,

06:07and this is guaranteed by law. It really is shocking the amount of

06:14evidence will be necessary. And by the way,

06:16if you went to register to vote and you had a birth certificate and your married name, or I'm sorry,

06:23driver's license, your married name, and a birth certificate, a different name, and

06:27the poll worker knew you because they're in the same neighborhood, and so I'm going to let this person register to vote.

06:32They did that, they'd be guilty of a federal crime.

06:34They could face jail time. And by the way,

06:37it doesn't mean that you weren't a U.S. citizen. It just means they didn't compile the proper

06:41documentary evidence because they knew who you were. Is that what we want now? For poll workers

06:46who know you, who know you're a citizen, who lived down the street from you to be facing jail time because they didn't get the

06:52documentary evidence that they thought was, that the bill requires as evidence that you're a U.S. citizen. Boy, that's shocking to me.

07:00Well, it's shocking and it's chilling of probably one of our most fundamental

07:05American rights to have a say in who runs the country, who we get to vote for.

07:10So,

07:12thank you for your testimony. I would yield back.

'Modern-Day Voter Suppression': Mary Gay Scanlon Tears Into GOP Bill On Non-Citizen Voting

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