Congressional Dish: CD192: Democracy Upgrade Stalled (2025)

Mar 15, 2019

Things often don’t go according to plan. In this episode,featuring a feverish and frustrated Jen Briney, learn about theshamefully rushed process employed by the Democrats to pass theirtop priority bill, H.R. 1, through the House ofRepresentatives.

Executive Producer: Anonymous from Washington

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Bill Outline: HR 1 For The People Act of 2019

Govtrack -Full Text

Official title: “To expand American’s access tothe ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, andstrengthen ethics rules for public servants, and for otherpurposes.”

Short Title: For the People Act of 2019

Sponsor: Rep. John Sarbanes (MD-3)

First co-sponsor: Nancy Pelosi

Referred to 10 committees:

  • House Administration
  • House Intelligence (Permanent Select)
  • House Judiciary
  • House Oversight and Government Reform
  • House Science, Space, and Technology
  • House Education and the Workforce
  • House Ways and Means
  • House Financial Services
  • House Ethics
  • House Homeland Security

Division A: Voting

TITLE I: ELECTION ACCESS

Subtitle A: Voter Registration Modernization “VoterRegistration Modernization Act of 2019"

Part 1: Promoting Internet Registration

Sec. 1001: Every State Has to Allow Us ToRegister to Vote Online

  • Requires every State to allow residents to register to voteonline and be given an online receipt of their completed voterregistration application
  • Signatures can be electronic as long as the individual has asignature on file with a State agency, including the DMV.
    • People who don’t have signatures on file can submit handwrittensignatures through digital means or sign in person on ElectionDay.
    • Signatures will be required on Election Day for people whoregistered to vote online and have not previously voted in aFederal election in that state.

Sec. 1002: Every State Has To Allow Us To Update OurRegistration Online

  • States must allow registered voters to update theirregistrations online too

Sec. 1003: Voter Information Online Instead Of RegularMail

  • Tells states to include a space for voters to submit an emailaddress and get voting information via email instead of usingregular mail (we may need that to be “in addition to”)
  • Prohibits our emails from being given to anyone who is outsidethe government.
  • The State will have to provide people who opted for emails, atleast 7 days before the election, online information including thename and address of the voter’s polling place, that polling place’shours, and which IDs the voter may need to vote at that pollingplace.

Sec. 1004: 'Valid Voter Registration' FormDefinition

  • Defines what is a “valid voter registration form”: The form isaccurate and the online applicant provided a signature.

Sec. 1005: Effective Date: January 1, 2020.

Part 2: Automatic Voter Registration “Automatic VoterRegistration Act of 2019"

Sec. 1012: Automatic Registration of EligibleVoters

  • Every State will have to create and operate a system forautomatically registering everyone eligible to vote “for Federaloffice in the State”.
  • The States will have 15 days to register a person to vote aftergetting updated voter information from another agency.

Sec. 1015: "Voter Protection and Security in AutomaticRegistration"

  • Declining automatic registration can’t be used as evidence “Inany State or Federal law enforcement proceeding"
  • States will have to keep records of all changes to voterrecords, including removals and updates, for 2 years and make thoseavailable for public inspection.
  • Gives the Director of the National Institute of Standards andTechnology the power to write the rules for how States can usevoter information to deem a person ineligible and to write privacyand security standards for voter registration information
  • Voter registration information “shall not be used forcommercial purposes.”

Sec. 1016: Corrections to Voter Information Can BeDone on Election Day

  • Voters in all States would be able to update their address,name, or political party affiliation in person on Election Day, andthey could vote using the corrected information using a regularballot, not a provisional ballot.

Sec. 1017: The Federal Government Will Pay to Make TheChanges

  • Authorizes $500 million for 2019, available until it’sgone.

Sec. 1021: Effective Date - January 1, 2021

Part 3: Same Day Voter Registration

Sec. 1031: Voters Can Register At the Polling Place OnElection Day

  • System would have to be in place by November 2020

Part 4: Conditions on Removal on Basis of InterstateCross-Checks

Sec. 1041: Requirements To Use Cross Check To RemoveVoters

  • Prohibits States from using interstate crosscheck systems toremove people from voter rules until the State receives the voter’sfull name, including their middle name, date of birth, and last 4digits of their social security numbers and if the State hasdocumentation verifying the voter is no longer a resident of theState.
  • Interstate cross checks can not be used to remove voters fromrolls within six months of an election
  • Effective date: Six months after enactment

Part 7: Prohibiting Interference with VoterRegistration

Sec. 1071: Fines and Prison For Interference in VoterRegistration

  • People who prevent another person from registering to vote, orattempt to prevent another person from registering, “shall befined” or imprisoned for up to five years, or both.
  • Effective date: Elections on or after enactment

Subtitle B: Access to Voting for Individuals WithDisabilities

Subtitle C: Prohibiting Voter Caging

Sec. 1201: Prohibits Removal of Names Based Solely onCaging Lists

  • State/local election officials will not be allowed to deny avoter registration if the decision is based on a voter cagingdocument, an unverified match list, or an error on a registrationthat is not material to the citizen’s eligibility to vote.
  • Challenges to voter registration by non-election officials willonly be allowed if the person has personal knowledge documented inwriting and subject to an attestation under penalty ofperjury.
  • Penalties for knowingly challenging the eligibility of someoneelse’s voter registration with the intent to disqualify that personis punishable by a fine and/or one year in prison for eachviolation.

Subtitle D : Prohibiting Deceptive Practices andPreventing Voter Intimidation - “Deceptive Practices and VoterIntimidation Prevention Act of 2019"

Sec. 1302: Prohibits Lying To Prevent People FromVoting

  • Makes it illegal to communicate by any means false informationregarding the time and place of an election, the voter’sregistration status or eligibility, or criminal penalties forvoting within 60 days of an election if the communication has theintent of preventing another person from voting.
  • Makes it illegal, within 60 days of an election, to communicateby any means false information regarding an endorsement by a personor political party that didn’t actually happen.
  • Penalties: A fine of up to $100,000, five years in prison, orboth. The penalties are the same for attempts to lie to people toprevent them from voting.

Subtitle E: Democracy Restoration - “DemocracyRestoration Act of 2019"

Sec. 1402: Voting Rights Extend to Ex-Cons

  • “The right of an individual who is a citizen of the UnitedStates to vote in any election for Federal office shall not bedenied or abridged because that individual has been convicted of acriminal offense unless such individual is serving a felonysentence in a correctional institution or facility at the time ofthe election."

Sec. 1408: Effective for any election held afterenactment

Subtitle F: Promoting Accuracy, Integrity, and SecurityThrough Verified Permanent Paper Ballot - “Voter Confidence andIncreased Accessibility Act of 2019”

Sec. 1502: Requires Paper Ballots for All FederalElections

  • Requires all voting systems to use individual paper ballotsthat are verified by the voter before their vote is cast which“shall be counted by hand or read by an optical characterrecognition device or other counting device”
  • The paper ballots must be preserved as the official ballots andwill be counted by hand for recounts and audits
  • If there is a difference between the electronic vote count andthe hand count of paper ballots, the hand count of paper ballotswill be the final count.

Subtitle H: Early Voting

Sec. 1611: Every State Must Allow Early Voting for 15Days

  • Every State will be required to allow citizens to vote inFederal elections during the 15 days preceding the election, withpolls open for at least 4 hours per day except on Sundays.
  • Effective Date: Elections after January 1, 2020

Subtitle I: Voting by Mail

Sec. 1621: Vote By Mail National Standards

  • States can’t count absentee ballots until they match thesignature on the ballot to the signature on the State’s officiallist of registered voters
  • States must provide ballots and voting materials at least 2weeks before the election
  • Effective date: Elections held on or after January 1, 2020

Subtitle J: Absent Uniformed Services Voters andOverseas Voters

Subtitle K: Poll Worker Recruitment andTraining

Sec. 1801: Federal Employees As Poll Workers

  • Employees of Federal agencies will be allowed to be excusedfrom work for up to 6 days in order to work in polling places onElection Day and for training.

Subtitle L: Enhancement of Enforcement

Subtitle M: Federal Election Integrity

Sec. 1821: Head of Elections Can’t Campaign forElections They Oversee

  • It will be illegal for a chief State election administrationofficial to take part in a political campaign “with respect to anyelection for Federal office over which such official hassupervisory authority”

Subtitle N: Promoting Voter Access Through ElectionAdministration Improvements

Sec. 1902: Notification for Polling Place Changes

  • States must notify voters at least seven days in advance if theState has changed their polling place to somewhere other than wherethey last voted
  • Effective January 1, 2020

Sec. 1903: Election Day Holiday

  • The Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2020 and eacheven-numbered year after that will be treated as a legal publicholiday
  • Encourages, but does not require, the private sector to givetheir workers the day off for elections

Sec. 1904: Sworn Written Statements to Meet IDRequirements

  • If a State requires an ID to vote, a person may vote if theyprovide, in person, a sworn written statement signed under penaltyof perjury attesting to their identity and that they are eligibleto vote, unless they are first time voters in the State.
  • Effective for elections occurring on or after enactment

Sec. 1905: Postage Free Ballots

  • Absentee ballots will not require postage
  • The Post Office will be reimbursed by States for the lostrevenue
TITLE II: ELECTION INTEGRITY

Subtitle E: Redistricting Reform - “Redistricting ReformAct of 2019”

Sec. 2402: Independent Commissions forRedistricting

  • Congressional redistricting must be done by an independentredistricting commission established in the State or by a plandevelopment and enacted into law by a 3 judge court of the USDistrict Court for the District of Columbia

Sec. 2411: Creating the Independent RedistrictingCommissions

  • The Commissions will be made up of 15 members from the“selection pool” (see Sec. 2412)
    • 5 members will be selected randomly from the 12 belonging tothe political party with the most registered voters in theState
    • 5 members will be selected randomly from the 12 belonging tothe political party with the second most registered voters in theState
    • 5 members will be selected randomly from the 12 who are notaffiliated with the two largest political parties
  • The Chair must be a member of the group that is not affiliatedwith the largest two parties in the State and will be selected viaa majority vote of the commission
  • The State can not finalize a redistricting plan unless the plangets a vote from someone in each of the three membership categoriesand it passes with a majority of the commission voting yes.
  • Contractors for the commission can be required to provide theirpolitical contribution history

Sec. 2412: Eligibility for the Independent Commission“Selection Pool”

  • To qualify, the individual must...
    • Be registered to vote
    • Either be with the same political party or with no politicalparty for the previous 3 years
    • Submits an application including a declaration of theirpolitical party, if they belong to one, and a commitment toimpartiality.
  • An individual is disqualified if the individual or an immediatefamily member within the 5 years preceding their appointment...
    • Holds public office or is a candidate for public office
    • Serves as an officer of a political party or as a politicalparty consultant
    • Is a registered lobbyist
    • Is an employee of an elected public official, a contractor withthe legislature of a State, or a donor who gives more than $20,000to candidates for public offices.
  • The selection pool will have 36 individuals made up of...
    • 12 individuals affiliated with the political party with thelargest percentage of registered voters in the State
    • 12 individuals affiliated with the political party with thesecond largest percentage of registered voters in the State
    • 12 individuals who are not affiliated with either of the twolargest political parties
  • The selection pool must be approved by the State’s SelectCommittee on Redistricting
    • Inaction is a rejection of the selection pool

Sec. 2413: Criteria for New Districts

  • Districts must be created using this criteria in this order:
    1. Districts must comply with the Constitution, including therequirement that the equalize total population
    2. Districts must comply with the Voting Rights Act and allFederal laws
    3. Districts can’t be drawn in a way that dilutes the ability forminority communities to elect candidates
    4. Districts must minimize the division of neighborhoods,counties, municipalities, and school districts “to the extentpracticable”
  • Districts may not be drawn to favor or disfavor any politicalparty
  • The commission may not consider the political party affiliationor voting history of the district’s population or the resident ofany member of the House of Representatives when drawing thedistrict maps
  • All meetings must be held in public, must take comments intoconsideration and they must publish information, including videoarchives, about their meetings on a public website

Sec. 2431: Authorizes payments to States of $150,000per district to help pay for the redistricting process

Subtitle F: Saving Voters from Voter Purging -“StopAutomatically Voiding Eligible Voters Off Their Enlisted Rolls inStates Act” - “Save Voters Act”

Sec. 2502: Restricting Voter Roll Purges

  • States can’t use the failure of a voter to vote or the voter’sfailure to respond to a notice as the basis for removing their namefrom the voter rolls
TITLE III: ELECTION SECURITY

Subtitle A: Financial Support for ElectionInfrastructure

Part 1: Voting System Security Improvement Gains Part 2: Grantsfor Risk-Limiting Audits of Results of Elections Part 3: ElectionInfrastructure Innovation Grant Program

Subtitle B: Security Measures

Subtitle C: Enhancing Protections for United StatedDemocratic Institutions

Subtitle D : Promoting Cybersecurity ThroughImprovements in Election Administration

Subtitle E: Preventing Election Hacking

Division B: Campaign Finance

TITLE IV: CAMPAIGN FINANCE TRANSPARENCY

Subtitle B: DISCLOSE Act - “Democracy Is Strengthened byCasting Light on Spending in Elections Act”

Part 1: Regulation of Certain Political Spending

Sec. 4101: Foreign Owned Corporations Count as“Foreign Nationals”

  • Makes it illegal for a corporation, LLC, or partnership whichis more than 5% owned by a foreign government or 20% owned byforeign individual to directly or indirectly make a contribution inconnection with a Federal, State, or local election or acontribution to a political party.
  • It’s also illegal for Americans to accept or solicit acontribution from “foreign nationals” (amends 52 U.S.C30121(b))
  • Effective 180 days after enactment, regardless of ifregulations are done

Part 2: Reporting of Campaign-Related Disbursements

Sec. 4111: Corporations Must Report Donations

  • Any corporation, LLC, or tax exempt organization (other than501(c)3 “charities”) that make campaign contributions totaling morethan $10,000 in the 2 year election cycle must file a statementcontaining the name of the donating organization, the businessaddress, a list of that business or corporations’ controllingowners, and the name/address of the person who received eachdonation of more than $1,000.
  • If the corporation, LLC, or tax exempt organization pays for apublic communication, they must report the name of any candidateidentified and whether the communication was in support oropposition to that candidate.

Subtitle C: Honest Ads - “Honest Ads Act”

Sec. 4205: Disclosure of Sources of Online PoliticalAds

  • Extends political ad disclosure laws to internet and otherdigital communication

Sec. 4207: Disclosures Must Be Clear

  • Ads must include a statement telling us the name of the personwho paid for the communication in a way that is not difficult toread or hear

Sec. 4208: Public Record of Online Political Ads *Requires online platforms to create and make available online forpublic inspection a complete record of requests to purchasepolitical advertisements if they purchase more than $500 worth inone calendar year

Subtitle D : Stand by Every Ad - “Stand By Every AdAct"

Subtitle E: Secret Money Transparency

Sec. 4401: IRS Can Investigate Dark Money GroupsAgain

  • Repeals the restriction enacted by the 115th Congress on theIRS that prevented them from making sure tax exempt organizationsaren’t using their funds for political expenditures

Subtitle F: Shareholder Right-to-Know

Sec. 4501: SEC Can Enforce Shareholder DisclosureLaws

  • Repeals the restriction enacted by the 115th Congress on theSecurities and Exchange Commission that prevented them fromenforcing laws related to corporations informing shareholders aboutthe corporations political activity.

Subtitle G: Disclosure of Political Spending byGovernment Contractors

Sec. 4601: Contractors Can Be Forced to DiscloseDonations

  • Repeals the restriction enacted by the 115th Congress thatprevented requiring government contractors to report theirpolitical spending

Subtitle H: Limitation and Disclosure Requirements forPresidential Inaugural Committees - “Presidential InauguralCommittee Oversight Act"

TITLE V: CAMPAIGN FINANCE EMPOWERMENT

Subtitle B: Congressional Elections - “Government By thePeople Act of 2019”

Part 1: My Voice Voucher Pilot Program

Sec. 5101: Voucher Pilot Program

  • The Federal Election Commission will create an pilot programand select 3 states to operate it

Sec. 5102: Pilot Program Details

  • State’s will provided individuals who request one a “My VoiceVoucher" worth $25
  • Individuals can give their voucher dollars, in $5 increments,to qualified candidates for Congress.

Part 2: Small Dollar Financing of Congressional ElectionCampaigns

Sec. 5111: 6x Matching of Small Dollar Donations

  • Payments will be 600% of the amount of small dollarcontributions received by the candidate during the Small DollarDemocracy qualifying period
    • Small dollar contribution is between $1 and $200
  • Limit: The total amount of payments made to a candidate may notbe more than 50% of the average of the “20 greatest amounts ofdisbursements made by the authorized committees of any winningcandidate for the office of Representatives in, or Delegate orResident Commissioner to, the Congress during the most recentelection cycle, rounded to the nearest $100,000.”
    • Candidates can get an additional payment of up to $500,000during the period between 60 days and 14 days before the election,which doesn’t count towards the total limit.
  • Candidates are eligible if they can get 1,000 people to make asmall dollar contribution and if the candidate can raise at least$50,000.
  • Eligible candidates can’t take more than $1,000 total from anyindividual.
  • Eligible candidates can’t use more than $50,000 in personalfunds.
  • Will be funded by a “Freedomof Influence Fund"

Sec. 5112: Coordination with Parties

Sec. 5114: Effective starting in 2024 elections

Subtitle C: Presidential Elections - “Empower Act of2019"

Part 1: Primary Elections Part 2: General Elections Part 3:Effective Date

Subtitle D : Personal Use Services as AuthorizedCampaign Expenditures - “Help America Run Act”

TITLE VI: CAMPAIGN FINANCE OVERSIGHT

Subtitle A: Restoring Integrity to America’sElections

Sec. 6002: Changes to FEC make up

Subtitle B: Stopping Super PAC-CandidateCoordination

Division C: Ethics

TITLE VII: ETHICAL STANDARDS

Subtitle B: Foreign Agents Registration

Sec. 7101: New Department of Justice InvestigationUnit

  • Will be dedicated to enforcing the Foreign Agents RegistrationAct

Subtitle C: Lobbying Disclosure Reform

Sec. 7201: Expands Definition of “Lobbyist”

  • To include people who provide “legislative, political, andstrategic counseling services, research, and other background work”as lobbyists in terms of disclosure requirements
  • Effective upon enactment

Subtitle D : Recusal of PresidentialAppointees

Sec. 7301: Recusal of Appointees

  • Any officer or employee appointed by the President must recusethemselves from any matter involving the President who appointedthe officer or employee or that President’s spouse.
TITLE VIII: ETHICS REFORMS FOR THE PRESIDENT, VICE PRESIDENT, ANDFEDERAL OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES

Subtitle A: Executive Branch Conflict ofInterest

Sec. 8002: Prohibits Private Sector Payments forEntering Government

  • Private companies can’t provide bonus payments, pensions,retirement, group life/health/accident insurance, profit-sharing,stock bonus, or other payments contingent on accepting a positionin the U.S. Government.

Sec. 8003: Slowing the Revolving Door

  • Executive Branch employees can’t use their government positionto “participate in a particular matter” if they know a company theyworked for in the last two years has a financial interest.
  • Penalty: Fine and/or 1 year in prison.
  • Penalty for willful violation: Fine and/or up to 5 years inprison
  • Civil penalties: The greater of $100,000 per violation or theamount the person received or was offered for conducting theviolation

Sec. 8004: Waiting Period For Procurement Officers ToWork for Contractors

  • A former official responsible for a government contract can notaccept payments from any division, affiliate, or subcontractor ofthe chosen contractor for 2 years after awarding the contract.
  • A government employee can not award a contract to his or herformer employer for 2 years after they leave the company.

Sec. 8005: Lobbying Job Waiting Period

  • Senior level Executive Branch employees have to wait 2 yearsbefore they can be paid to influence their former colleagues

Subtitle B: Presidential Conflicts ofInterest

Subtitle C: White House Ethics Transparency

Subtitle D : Executive Branch EthicsEnforcement

Subtitle E: Conflicts for PoliticalFundraising

Sec. 8042: Disclosure of Certain Types ofContributions

  • People who are nominated to high level Executive Branch officeswill have to disclose their contributions to politicalorganizations, 501(c)4’s, and 501(c)6’s.

Subtitle F: Transition Team Ethics

Subtitle G: Ethics Pledge for Senior Executive BranchEmployees

TITLE IX: CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS REFORM

Subtitle A: Requiring members of Congress to ReimburseTreasury for Amounts Paid as Settlements and Awards UnderCongressional Accountability Act of 1995

Subtitle B: Conflicts of Interest

Sec. 9101: Members Can’t Be on For-Profit Boards ofDirectors

  • Changes the House Rules so that members of the House ofRepresentatives will not be allowed to serve on the board of "anyfor-profit entity" while serving in the House ofRepresentatives.

Sec. 9103: Prohibition Above Can Be Changed via House Rules

Subtitle C: Campaign Finance and Lobbying Disclosure -“Connecting Lobbying and Electeds for Accountability and ReformAct” “CLEAR Act"

Sec. 9202: Separate Reports for Lobbyist Donations

  • Report submitted by political campaigns will have to reportwhich donations are made by registered lobbyists in a separatestatement (amends 52 U.S.C. 30104(b))

Sec. 9203: Effective 90 Days After Enactment

Subtitle D : Access to Congressionally MandatedReports

Sec. 9303: Online Portal for Congressionally MandatedReports

  • Portal will create, within one year of enactment, an onlineportal providing free public digital access to all congressionallymandated reports
  • Reports will be available within 30 days of their submission toCongress
TITLE X: PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE PRESIDENTIAL TAXTRANSPARENCY

Sec. 10001: Presidential and Vice Presidential Tax ReturnDisclosure

  • Requires candidates for President and Vice President to submittheir tax returns for the last 10 taxable years to the FederalElection Commission within 15 days of declaring theircandidacy
  • The chairman of the Federal Election Commission must make thecandidates’ tax returns, with personal information redacted,publicly available
  • Effective upon enactment

Additional Reading

Resources

Sound Clip Sources

Short Film: Unbreaking America: A NEW Short Film about Solving the CorruptionCrisis, RepresentUs, YouTube, February 27, 2019.
Full Committee Markup: H.R. 1, The For the People Act of 2019, Committee on HouseAdministration, February 26, 2019.
Hearing: Forthe People: Our American Democracy, Committee on HouseAdministration, February 14, 2019.

Witnesses:

  • Chiraag Bains - Director of Legal Strategies at Demos
  • Wendy Weiser - Director of the Democracy Program at the BrennenCenter for Justice at the NYU School of Law
  • Fred Wertheimer -President of Democracy 21
  • Kym Wyman - Secretary of State of Washington
  • Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, Senior at Dodge City High School inKansas and plaintiff in LULAC & Rangel-Lopez v. Cox
  • Peter Earle - Wisconsin Civil Rights Trial Lawyer
  • Brandon Jessup - Data Science and Information SystemsProfessional and Executive Director at Michigan Forward
  • David Keating - President at the Institute for Free Speech
Hearing: Full Committee Hearing on the "Strengthening Ethics Rules for theExecutive Branch", Committee on Oversight and Reform, February6, 2019.

Witnesses:

  • Scott Amey - General Counsel, Project on GovernmentOversight
  • Karen Hobert Flynn - President of Common Cause
  • Rudy Mehrbani - Spitzer Fellow and Senior Counsel, BrennenCenter for Justice
  • Walter Schaub Jr - Senior Advisor, Citizens for Responsibilityand Ethics in Washington
  • Bradley Smith - Chairman at the Institute for Free Speech

Sound Clips:

  • 17:30 Rep. Elijah Cummings (D - MD)Title eight includes a bill that I introduced called the executivebranch ethics reform act. It would, it would ban senior officialsfrom accepting "golden parachute" payments from private sectoremployers in exchange for their government service. This would haveprevented Gary Cohn from receiving more than $100 million inaccelerated payments from Goldman Sachs while leading the Trumpadministration's efforts to slash corporate taxes.

  • 19:00 Cummings Title eight also wouldmake clear that Congress expects the president to divest hisbusiness holdings just as every single president since Jimmy Carterhas done and place them in an independent and truly blindtrust.

  • 28:00 Rep. Jim Jordan (R - OH) In 2013we learned that the IRS targeted conservative for their politicalbeliefs during the 2012 election cycle systematically for asustained period of time. They went after people for theirconservative beliefs, plan in place, targeted people. They did it.The gross abuse of power would have continued, if not for theefforts of this committee. 2014 the Obama Administration doubleddown and attempted to use the IRS rule making process to gut theability of social welfare organizations to participate in publicdebate. Congress has so far prevented this regulation from goinginto effect, but HR 1 would change that.

  • 28:30 Jordan Furthermore, this billwould roll back another critical victory for privacy and freespeech secured just last summer following efforts by this committeeand others, the IRS changed its policy as it relates to schedule Binformation. Schedule B contains personal information like names,addresses, and the amounts donated to nonprofit entities. Eventhough this information is supposed to remain private under currentlaw, states and federal government have leaked these personaldetails in the past. In changing its policies, the IRS noted thatthere had been at least 14 breaches resulting in the unauthorizeddisclosure of schedule B information just since 2010. The resultwas everyday Americans receiving death threats and mail containingwhite powder. All because someone disagreed with what they believeand who they gave their hard earned money to.

  • 59:00 Walter Schaub HR 1 addresses bigpayouts to incoming officials. These golden parachutes raiseconcerns about an employee appointees loyalty to a former employer.When former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew left Wall Street to jointhe State Department, he received a large bonus in his employmentagreement. Let him keep that bonus specifically because he landedat a high level government job.

  • 1:04:00 Bradley Smith Subtitle B oftitle six is called Stopping Super PAC and candidate coordination.The sponsors and drafters are either being intentionallydisingenuous here or are they simply do not understand what hasbeen put into their own legislation. Nothing in subtitle B, nothinglimits. It's reached a super PACs. It applies to every union tradeassociation, advocacy group and unincorporated association in thecountry. It applies to planned parenthood and right to life, to theNAACP and the ACLU to the national federation of IndependentBusiness and to the Brady Campaign for gun safety. It even appliesto individual citizens who seek to participate in publicdiscussion. Nothing. This cannot be said often enough limits it tosuper PACs through the interplay of its definitions of coordinationand coordinated spenders. The laws treatment, uh, traditionaltreatment of coordinated spending as a contribution to a candidateand current contribution limits in the law. Subtitle be, willactually have the effect of banning, not limiting, but actuallybanning a great deal of speech that was legal even before theSupreme Court's decision in citizens United versus FEC and Buckleyv Vallejo.

  • 1:39:00 Smith I would only add that Ithink that the disclosure provisions are often worse than peoplethink because they're defining as political activity things thathave never been defined as political before. And you run the riskof a regulation swallowing up the entire, uh, discourse in whichpublic, uh, engages. So I would only say that I think theprovisions are worse than people think and that they're oftenhidden through the complex interrelationship of differentpositions. Well, one, one example would be if an organization, uh,for example, were to hire somebody who had previously been anintern, a paid intern for a member of Congress, that organizationwould then be prohibited from making any communications that weredeemed to promote a tax support or oppose a that candidate. Andthat vague term could apply to almost anything praising thecandidate for introducing a bill, uh, criticizing the congressmanfor opposing a bill, whatever it might be.JordanWow. That put the whole consultantbusiness in this town out of business, it seems to me.Smith It's not just the consulting business. Oh,of course. It puts out of business all of the interest groups andall of the civic groups that people belong to.

  • 1:43:00 Cummings One year ago todaywhen my mother's dying bed at 92 years old, former sharecropper,her last words were, do not let them take our votes away from us.They had fought, she had fought and seen people harmed and beaten,trying to vote. Talk about inalienable rights. Voting is crucial,and I don't give a damn how you look at it. There are efforts tostop people from voting. That's not right. This is not Russia. Thisis the United States of America, and I will fight until the deathto make sure every citizen, whether they're Green party, whetherthey're Freedom Party, whether they're Democrat, whether you'reRepublican, whoever has that right to vote.

  • 1:46:00 Karen HobertFlynnElection day registration is a perfect antidoteto a purge so that you can show up on election day. If you see thatthere's a problem, then you can register to vote and vote on thatday.

  • 2:19:00 Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R - ND)North Dakota is the only state in the country without voterregistration. We have voting. We have counties that voteexclusively by mail, and we currently have no excuse, absenteeballot, absentee voting. We have, we allow felons to voteimmediately upon release from prison. Um, our poll workers arealmost exclusively volunteers across the entire state. So in short,we have the, the best and easiest vote voting, voting booth accessin the entire country, and we are incredibly proud of that.

  • 2:23:00 Armstrong North, we, and thismight be a little change, but it's really important to the votersin North Dakota. So we, uh, we start our absentee or early votingprocess, I think for military deployed overseas, it says early asAugust. And we have, as I said, no excuse absentee ballots. Butwhat we require is that our ballots are postmarked the day beforethe election. And in North Dakota, we really, really try to makesure the election is over on election day. Um, north Dakotans don'tunderstand how an election can change by 12, 13, 14,000 votes inthe two to three weeks after an election day. Now I'm not in thebusiness and telling people in California or somewhere else how todo their voting laws, but that just is something that is notappropriate here. And this would require ballots to be postmarkedup until election day, correct? That's correct.

  • 2:24:00 Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) Iwish Mr. Meadows were still here because I'm delighted that he'sthinking of stepping into the small donor matching system that hasproposed an HR 1. Because when you step into that system, you stepinto a system that is owned by the people. This is why it's in thebill because the public is tired of feeling like their elections,their system, their government, their democracy is owned by specialinterests, big corporations, Wall Street, oil and gas industry,super PACs, lobbyists, everybody. But then this is the power move.They want to own their democracy again.

  • 2:27:00 Sarbanes Somebody said, whyare we hooking all these things together? Voting ethics, campaignfinance, because the people have told us, if you just do one andyou don't do the others were still frozen out. The system is stillrigged. You fix the voting stuff, but if you go to Washington andnobody's behaving themselves, that doesn't solve the problem or youfix the ethics part, but we're still, the system is still owned bythe big money in the special interests because they're the onesthat are underwriting the campaigns. Then we're still left out. Thesystem is still rigged. You got to do all of these things togetherto reset the democracy in a place where it respects the averagecitizen out there. Who right now is sitting in their kitchen,they're looking at the TV screen there. They're hearing aboutbillionaires and super PACs who are making decisions insideconference rooms somewhere on K Street that affect their lives andall they're saying is we want back in. We're tired of sitting outhere with our nose is pressed against the window looking in on thedemocracy that we have no impact on. That's why we're linking allof these things together to reset the table. So the specialinterests aren't the ones that are calling the shots.

  • 2:29:00 Sarbanes The provisions oftransparency in this bill are targeted to mega donors who give morethan $10,000 who right now are hidden behind this Russian doll kindof structure where you can't see who it is, who's behind thecurtain, who's putting all this money into campaigns. The publicwants to know that that's reasonable.

  • 2:38:00 Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) AndI'm deeply troubled at what appears to be a Russian engagementthrough 501(c)(4)s in this country, whether it's the NRA or, um,other, uh, nonprofits that are created for the express purpose herein the United States to lobby on behalf of Russia as it related tothe Magnitsky Act. Um, so right now there is no limitation on howmuch money can be contributed by a foreign government entity to a501(c)(4). Is that correct? Hobert Flynn I believethat is, yes. Speier And there is no disclosurerequired as well. Is that correct? Hobert Flynn Ibelieve that's right. Speier So in yourestimation, would it be prudent for us to one, limit the amount ofcontributions that a foreign individual can make to a 501(c)(4),and two, that all of that be subject to disclosure? HobertFlynn Yeah, I think, I think it would be very important.Um, you know, there are limits. There are bans on foreign nationalsgiving money in campaign contributions, and I think we should belooking at those kinds of limits for, um, and it's certainlydisclosure for, um, contributions to 501(c)(4)s.

  • 2:56:00 Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-OH) You hearso much attack on political action committees, PACs, Mr. Smith, ormaybe you'd be best one to answer this. I don't know, maybe I don'twant us to answer it. Where do political action committees gettheir money? Smith Political action committees gettheir money from individuals. Traditional PACs do. Now Super PACSas they're called, can take money from corporations and unions, butthey are not able to contribute directly to candidates. Sort ofcoordinate anything with candidates. Gibbs Iappreciate that. Uh, make the point. Um, because I, I got attackedbecause I take political action money, but it comes from businessesin my district. A lot of it, it comes from associations. You know,everybody has somebody lobbying for them in DC. I mean, if you're,if you're a member, of a retirement association, any organization,you've got a lobbyist here.

  • 2:57:00 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-NY) Let's play a game, let's play a lightening roundgame. I'm going to be the bad guy, which I'm sure half the roomwould agree with anyway. And um, and I want to get away with asmuch bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advancemy interest even if that means putting, uh, putting my interestsahead of the American people. So, um, Mrs Holbert Flynn. Oh, and bythe way, I have listed all of you as my co conspirators, so you'regoing to help me legally get away with all of this. So Mrs HerbertFlynn, I want to run, if I want to run a campaign that is entirelyfunded by corporate political action committees, is that, is thereanything that legally prevents me from doing that? HobertFlynn No. Ocasio-Cortez Okay. So there'snothing stopping me from being entirely funded by corporate PACs,say from the fossil fuel industry, the healthcare industry, bigPharma. I'm entirely 100% lobbyists PAC funded. Okay. So let's see.I'm a really, really bad guy and let's see, I've have someskeletons in my closet that I need to cover it up so that I can getelected. Um, Mr. Smith, is it true that you wrote this article,this opinion piece for the Washington Post entitled These Paymentsto Women Were Unseemly? That doesn't mean they were illegal.Smith Well, I can't see the piece but I wrote apiece or that headline in the post's so I assume that's right.Ocasio-Cortez Okay, great. So green-light for hushmoney, I can do all sorts of terrible things. It's totally legalright now for me to pay people off and that is considered speech.That money is considered speech. So I use my special interest, darkmoney funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off andget elected. So now I'm elected, now I'm in, I've got the power todraft, lobby and shape the laws that govern the United States ofAmerica. Fabulous. Now is there any hard limit that I have, perhapsMrs Herbert Flynn? Is there any hard limit that I have in terms ofwhat legislation I'm allowed to touch? Are there any limits on thelaws that I can write or influence? Especially if I'm a based onthe special interest funds that I accepted to finance my campaignand get me elected in the first place. HerbertFlynn There's no limit. Ocasio-Cortez Sothere's none. So I can be totally funded by oil and gas that can betotally funded by big Pharma come in. Right. Big Pharma laws andthere's no limits to that whatsoever. HerbertFlynn That's right. Ocasio-Cortez Okay,so awesome. Now, uh, now Mr Mehrabani, the last thing I want to dois get rich with as little work possible. That's really what I'mtrying to do as the bad guy. Right? So is there anything preventingme from holding stocks say in an oil or gas company and thenwriting laws to deregulate that that industry and cause you know,that could potentially cause the stock value to soar and accrue alot of money in that time, Rudy Mehrbani You coulddo that. Ocasio-Cortez So I could do that. I coulddo that. Now with the way our current laws are set up. Yes?Mehrbani Yes. Ocasio-Cortez Okay,great. Okay. So my last question is, or one of my last questions, Iguess I'd say is, is it possible that any elements of this storyapply to our current government in our current public servantsright now? Mehrbani Yes.Ocasio-Cortez So we have a system that isfundamentally broken. We have these influences existing in thisbody, which means that these influences are here in this committeeshaping the questions that are being asked of you all right now.Would you say that that's correct, Mr Mehrbani or Mr Shaub?Mehrbani Yes. Ocasio-CortezAlright. So one last thing, Mr Shaub, in relation to congressionaloversight that we have, the limits that are placed on me as acongress woman compared to the executive branch and compared tosay, the president of the United States, would you say thatCongress has the same sort of standard of accountability? Arethere, is there more teeth in that regulation in Congress on thepresident? Or would you say it's about even or more so on thefederal? Schaub Um, in terms of laws that apply tothe president, there's just almost no laws at all that applied tothe president. Ocasio-Cortez So I'm being held andevery person in this body is being held to a higher ethicalstandard than the president of the United States.Schaub That's right. Cause or some committeeethics committee rules that apply to you.Ocasio-Cortez And it's already super legal aswe've seen for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it's even easier forthe president of the United States to be one, I would assume.Schaub That's right.Ocasio-Cortez Thank you very much.

  • 3:04:00 Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) Uh, andwhen we think about what we're dealing with, with respect to acampaign finance, uh, are you familiar with doxing?Smith In the sense of outing people online thatyou're referring to? Yes, generally. Roy So forexample, are you familiar with a Twitter account called every Trumpdonor, which tweeted out one by one, the names, hometowns,occupations, employers, the people who contribute as little as $200to the president's campaign, each tweet, following a particularformula. My point being in the question for you is, when we talkabout campaign disclosures, are we aware of the negative impactsthat you have on forcing American citizens and exercising theirfree speech to have that information be disclosed? Whether that'sgood policy or not might be debatable, but is there, are therenegative consequences to that with respect to free speech givenyou're an expert on free speech? Smith There are,and there are definitely studies that have shown that disclosuredoes tend to decrease participation. Now, that doesn't mean as youpoint out that it's not worth it, but it certainly has costs. Andso we have to be careful on how broad we would let that disclosurebecome.

  • 3:11:00 Scott Amey The law is createdthat has cooling off periods. And so there's no cooling off periodof one year or two year or a permanent bans. HR 1 would move a lotof those to two years I think, which would be beneficial. Andthere's even disagreement in our community whether one year or two,you know, what is the appropriate time to kind of cool off so thatyour contacts aren't there. But this is also something thatPresident Trump brought up when he was a candidate. He talkedabout, uh, I think it was Boeing at the time, but he went on recordsaying that people who give contracts should never be able to workfor that defense contractor. This isn't a bipartisan, this is abipartisan issue. This is something we can resolve. The laws arealready on the books. We just need some extensions in some tweakingof those to improve them and allow people to cool off and not beable to provide a competitive advantage to their new employer orfavor them as they're in office and they're walking out the door.Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) And so you do believethat extending this cooling off period and strengthening theseprohibitions would protect the integrity of the process and helpedto reign in these flagrant abuses. Amey 100% inone of the nice things with HR 1 is there is an extension of acooling off period for people coming into government service.Currently it exists and it's uh, it's one year. This will move itto two and I think that's a probably better place to be in. Youshouldn't be handling issues that involve your former employer orclients. Pressley One final question. How mightthese cozy relationships between government officials and corporateleaders or private contractors help to boost profits for theseprison and detention centers? Amey Well, certainlythey go with a lot of information, uh, when, when they go over tothe private sector. But it also allows them to get back into theirformer office and within their former agency and call on them.Access as, as you were just pointing out, access is everything inthis town. And so if you can get your phone calls answered, if youcan get emails read, if you get meetings at that point, that can,not only with members of Congress, but with agency heads that candetermine who gets contracts. I mean, it does trickle down from thetop and we need to make sure that we prevent as many like actualand also appearances of conflicts of interest as we can.

  • 3:17:00 Rep. Carol D. Miller (R-WV)What impact would the passage of this legislation have on thosegroups that are not political but may put out policy orientedcommunications? Smith It would be very curious andI've given a number of examples in the written testimony. I justsay that I should add to this of course that the bill includespersonal liability for officers and directors of some of theseorganizations. So you need to almost have to be crazy to let yourorganization get anywhere close to this promote support attackopposed standard. And again, what does that mean as I suggested?Well, you know, again, uh, government union might take out an admaybe in a month, right? Or three weeks from now saying don't letpresident Trump, we shouldn't have to pay because he wants his wallin Mexico, you know, so, so tell them to reopen the government. Isthat an attack on president Trump? I think that's the kind of thingthat, that folks would not know and would make people very hesitantto run that kind of ad. Miller So it is a personalrisk as well. Smith Yes. Yes. Not only risk. Plusit would be a risk, by the way, as well, to the tax status of someof the organizations involved in many of these organizations mighthave some type of tax status. 501(c)(3) organizations would have tobe very careful because if they engage in speech that is nowdefined as political speech, 501(c)(3) organizations can't engagein political speech. They would jeopardize their tax exempt status.So that's another reason that these organizations would stay farclear of commenting on any kind of public issue.

Video: H.R. 1: A DemocratPolitical Power Grab, Senator Mitch McConnell, YouTube, January30, 2019.
Video: VideoTweeted by Senator Mitch McConnell, January 29, 2019.
Hearing: Full Committee Hearing on the "For the People Act of 2019",House Committee on the Judiciary, January 29, 2019.

Witnesses:

  • Christian Adams- President and General Counsel, Public InterestLegal Foundation
  • Vanita Gupta - President and Chief Executive Officer,Leadership Conference one Civil and Human Rights
  • Sherrilyn Ifill - President and Director-Counsel, NAACP LegalDefense and Educational Fund
  • Adav Noti - Chief of Staff, Campaign Legal Center
  • Sarah Tubervillie - Director of the Constitution Project,Project on Government Oversight
  • Hans von Spakovsky - Senior Legal Fellow at the HeritageFoundation

Sound Clips:

  • 10:45 Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) Theofficial title of this bill is The For The People Act. This billthough is not for the people. It's not for everyday citizens. Thisbill siphons power from state legislatures, local elected officialsand voters, and seeds, power to Washington lawmakers, unelectedfederal judges and lawyers. This bill is in particular for theunelected elites. It's for the people who don't answer directly tothe voters. Contrary to it's name, this bill takes power away fromthe people and it does this by violating the constitution, bytrampling over both the spirit and the letter of our mostfundamental laws.

  • 32:00 Sherrilyn Ifill Well before themidterm election, in fact, Georgia officials began placingadditional burdens on voters, particularly black and Latino voters,by closing precincts and purging. Over half a million people fromthe voter rolls the voter purge, which removed 107,000 people,simply because they did not vote in previous elections and respondto a mailing was overseen by the Republican candidate for governorBrian Kemp, who was also the secretary of state. LDF and a chorusof others called on him to recuse himself from participating in theelection. But he refused.

  • 1:08:00 Ifill I think, I think theproblem we have is that you know, when we begin talking about thepowers between the federal and the state government as it relatesto elections, it is of course critical that we look to theconstitution and that we look to the articles of the constitutionthat govern elections. But what we have left out of theconversation at least to this moment is the reordering of therelationship between the federal and state government that camewith the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and the14th and 15th amendments in particular. The 14th amendmentguaranteeing equal protection of laws under, the 15th Amendmentprohibiting the denial of the right to vote based on race. Nationalorigin includes enforcement clauses that gives this body, theUnited States Congress, the power to enforce the rights that arearticulated in those amendments to the constitution. And it isthose amendments to the constitution that provided this body theright, for example, to pass laws like the Voting Rights Act of 1965for which all the same arguments that are being made today aboutthe power of the states, about interference, about what the federalgovernment is allowed to do and not allowed to do were raised andovercome. So the federal government actually does have the powerwhen there is evidence and when they are enforcing the rights underthe 14th and 15th, amendments to actually, your word would beinterfere, but to engage robustly, in the protection of the votingrights of racial minorities.

  • 1:15:00 Vanita Gupta There are over13,000 election jurisdictions in our country, and elections can berun in a multitude of ways, but it is clear that Congress has theauthority to make sure that civil rights are not violated in thecourse of running these elections. And that there are, there areequitable national standards to guide how this has done. And thatis exactly what HR 1 does.

  • 1:26:00 Ifill Let me use as anexample. Texas has voter I.D. law from your own state the voterI.D. law that Texas imposed after the Shelby decision as a voterI.D. law that they had attempted to get pre-clearance prior to theShelby decision and pre-clearance was denied, in other words theywere not allowed to make that law, become real because of thepre-clearance requirement. After Shelby, the Attorney General,decided that they were going to move forward with that law. It wasimposed. We sued. We challenged that law and we won. But in thethree years that it took us to litigate that case during that timeTexas elected a United States senator in 2014. All 36 members ofthe Texas delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives, thegovernor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, thecomptroller, various statewide commissioners, four justices of theTexas Supreme Court. Candidates for special election in the stateSenate State Boards of Education 16 state senators all 150 membersof the statehouse over 175 state court trial judges and over 75district attorneys. We proved at trial that more than half amillion eligible voters were disenfranchised by the I.D. law. Wewere ultimately successful in challenging but it was too late forthose elections and this was a scheme that had been deniedpre-clearance. This is the kind of thing that undermines confidencein our electoral system and that threatens our democracy. Whatexcuse can we have as a nation for disenfranchising over half amillion voters from all of the elections I just described.

  • 1:35:00 Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) Whereare the states, Ms. Ifill, that have most of the states that haveprohibitions on people having the APP for you to vote if they'vecommitted a felony? Ifill Well, they have been allover the country, but certainly there was a concentration in thesouth. As you may know, some of the history of these laws emanated,at the turn of the 19th century, I guess the turn of the 20thcentury, after southern states received back their power, they passnew constitutions. This is after the civil war and afterreconstruction around 1900 and we saw the expansion of ex felonvoting restrictions in state constitutions during that period, whenthere was a very robust effort to try and disenfranchise, at thatpoint, newly freed slaves who had been free for severaldecades.

  • 2:05:00 Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) Itcontains a provision where federal tax dollars from hardworkingmiddle class families and single mothers would be lining thepockets of politicians to pay for nasty TV ads and robo calls andpaying for politicians, personal childcare and healthcare. Underthis bill, it's estimated that at least $3.9 billion of taxpayerdollars would line the pockets of house congressional candidatesbased on estimates from Bloomberg and an estimated $6.25 billionwith line the pockets of presidential candidates based on theformula in this bill and the 2016 election, for a total of $10.1billion of taxpayer dollars. To me, this is an outrageous,outrageous use of taxpayer dollars.

  • 2:23:00 Hans Von Spakovsky Thisprovision of HR 1 says that if a commission is not established, orif it doesn't adopt a plan, then, the redistricting lines forCongress will be drawn up by a three judge federal court. Now,yeah, the courts get involved, federal courts get involved andredistricting, but they only get involved when there has been aviolation of the voting rights act because there's beendiscrimination in drawing the lines or because the equal protectiondoctrine of the 14th amendment, one person, one vote, has beenviolated because the districts aren't equal enough and that'sappropriate. And courts do that. But this bill would give thejudicial branch the ability to draw up lines when there's, there'sbeen no such violation. And so they're, in essence, you're taking apower of the constitution gives to the legislative branch andyou're giving it to the judicial branch.

  • 2:52:00 Gupta Well, our recourse usedto be that changes in local voting patterns would be reported tothe Justice Department and there would be recourse for the JusticeDepartment to ensure that racial discrimination was not animatingthese changes and preventing people from exercising theirfranchise. As we said, in 2013, the United States supreme courtgutted that key tool of the voting rights act. And it is why HR 1is such an important, uh, act in order to restore the voting rightsact and to restore the ability of the Justice Department andfederal courts to actually prevent these kinds of nefarious actionsfrom taking place before elections. Uh, litigation is crucial andgroups that have risen to the challenge to, to file section twocases, but they are time intensive and they occur after electionsafter people have already been disenfranchised and can take yearsto come to adjudication during which elections are taking place.And so that is why, uh, it is incumbent and unnecessary forCongress to restore the provisions of the voting rights act.Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) So HR 1 will help protectthe rights of my American citizens to vote before the election.Gupta HR 1, yes, expresses a commitment torestoring the voting rights act, and, uh, and that is what we hopeto achieve in this congress. It is HR 1 also contains a slew ofprotections that have become proxies for racial discriminationaround list maintenance and unwarranted voter purging. Hr 1 seeksto remedy those so that, uh, so that people can have their rightsguaranteed before elections take place.

  • 3:25:00 Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) AndI have to tell you after that, being in Congress for six years, uh,I have come to find that there are so many issues that uh, myrepublican colleagues and I agree on and that the American peopleagree that we've reached consensus on it and that ranges fromreducing gun violence to addressing climate change, to findinghealthcare solutions. But my constituents ask and people Iencounter across the country always ask, if we've reached consensuswhere 90% of Americans think we should have background checks.Majority of Americans believe that climate change is happening. 90%of Americans think we should have the Dream Act. Why can't you guyseven vote on these issues? And I've concluded that it's the dirtymaps and the dirty money. It is rigged gerrymandered maps wherepoliticians from both parties protect their friends and the statusquo and it's the outside unlimited nontransparent money, whereRepublican colleagues have told me, I am with you on this issue-and I've had someone say this to me - I am afraid about how I'mgoing to be scored, meaning that these outside groups, we'll givescores based on how you vote and if you're not with them, they'llprimary you with more money in an unlimited way. And then that'spoisoning our politics and preventing us from reachingconsensus.

  • 3:27:00 Swalwell I want to start withMiss Ifill, and if it's OK I want to call you Professor Ifillbecause I don't know if you remember you were my civil procedureprofessor at the University of Maryland. You wouldn't remember me Iremember you. I was not a standout student at all but Miss Ifillaccording to your testimony Section 5 of the Voting Rights Actwould have prevented some of the voter suppression schemes that wehave encountered over the past five years. And I was hoping youcould articulate some of those schemes today.Ifill Yeah just a few of them. Earlier I spokeabout Texas's voter I.D. law, an I.D. law that had been deniedpre-clearance prior to the Shelby decision. Two hours after theShelby decision the attorney general of Texas tweeted out hisintention to resuscitate that law which he did. And we spent threeyears litigating it. We ultimately prevailed, but in the ensuingthree years there were elections for all kinds of offices a lawthat clearly could not have survived pre-clearance. Just in 2018 wewere on the ground in Georgia on election day doing electionprotection work in Grady County, the polling place had been changedtwo weeks prior to the election. A notice had been placed in a verysmall community newspaper but otherwise there was not real noticeprovided to the community and so people arrived at the old pollingplace and community residents had to spend the day standing outsidethe old polling place directing people to the place of the newpolling place that had not been properly identified Under Section5, the moving of a polling place is the kind of thing that you hadto submit to pre-clearance and have it approved by the JusticeDepartment before it could be implemented. Now there are a numberof people that day who could drive to the new polling place butthere were a number of people who had just taken off work and had alimited amount of time to vote and could not drive to the newpolling place and so went back to work and were unable toparticipate in the political process. Those are just two smallexamples - well, one big and one small - but both consequential ofthe kinds of changes that would very easily have been averted andthe problems that would have been averted had Section 5 been inplace wouldn't have required litigation would have simply requireda review by the Department of Justice and an opportunity for thecommunity to resist that change or at least be informed of thatchange in a timely way.

  • 3:28:30 Swalwell As I understand it,and correct me if I'm wrong, if a candidate contacts a donor andtells the donor that there's ABC Super PAC working on my behalf,that candidate can solicit a contribution up to the maximum thatcandidate could receive federally. So I think it's $2,700 today.But I, as I understand it, there's no disclosure requirement bythat candidate that they made that ask. And of course there's noway to know if the donor made the contribution or not because ofthe lack of transparency. Is that something that you think maybe weshould address? Is having the candidates affirmatively, you know,tell the public that they've made requests for Super PAC a help?Adav Noti That's correct, congressman, but I wouldgo farther than that. Candidates should not be soliciting for SuperPACs. Period. Swalwell Agreed. But the FEC allowsthat today. Noti Currently the FEC allows that.The FEC probably has the authority to put an end to it. Congresscertainly has the authority to put an end to it as animplementation of citizens United. But if it's going to behappening, yes, the public should certainly be aware. Um, and, andjournalists and law enforcement should be aware that that ishappening.

  • 3:45:00 Gupta There is a reason whyvoters in red and blue states in 2018 voted for independent tocreate independent redistricting commissions around the country. Ithink people are fed up with the king that the parties can owntheir voters. And in fact, voters want to be able to choose theirpoliticians, not have politicians choose their voters. In 2015, theUnited States supreme court decided that it was perfectlyconsistent with the constitution to make sure that legislatorsweren't drawing their own lines. We stand unique in the world forallowing that kind of thing to happen. Gerrymandering is a uniquelyAmerican phenomenon and yet HR 1 really goes a long way to preventintentional manipulation of district lines for partisan advantage.And it goes through a very carefully calibrated and describedprocess of having five Democrats, five Republicans, fiveIndependents , all randomly chosen from a pool of applicants, siton an independent commission. There's specific criteria about how adistrict lines would get drawn in a plan would need majoritysupport to be enacted, including the backing of at least oneDemocrat, one Republican, and one independent.

  • 4:03:00 Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA)Just one year ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, uh, said thatour congressional lines were palpably gerrymandered, palpablyunconstitutional. And so I'm a little baffled again by my colleagueon the other side of the aisle from Pennsylvania who found that tobe a troubling decision. It was a constitutionally based decision,uh, and I frankly wouldn't be here if it weren't for that supremecourt decision, which rectified a 13 to five, delegation inPennsylvania, to a nine, nine matching our voter registration.

  • 4:07:00 Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell(D-FL) Florida was one of the states that requiredpre-clearance before the Shelby county decision. Can you provide uswith an example of a change to the voting laws in Florida that wereenacted since the decision and what sort of impact it's had there?Gupta Thank you, Congresswoman. There have been asignificant number of poll site closures in the State of Florida,which have created a lot of issues around long lines andaccessibility of poll sites. These kinds of changes, as I said,they seem minor because they happen in different places and they'resmall in, in uh, you know, just closing up poll site doesn't seemlike it would, would rise to some kind of nefarious effort, buttaken collectively, the Justice Department was unable to have anyclear indication of what was happening with a number of poll sitesbeing closed locally. And that's the kind of thing where thosekinds of changes would have been pre-cleared or not by the JusticeDepartment to prevent racial discrimination. There are any numberof these kinds of minor and major changes that Florida has madesince the Shelby County decision that have not been detected by theJustice Department as a result of the Shelby county decision. Andthese are the things that ultimately corrode people's confidence inthe government and in elections and make people decide to opt outof voting all together is when they feel like their vote won't becounted or that the system is so rigged against them that there isno kind of accountability for the kinds of these local changes andsubtle, more subtle changes that are getting made in previouslypre-cleared jurisdictions.

  • 4:09:00 Ifill As I understand it, inFlorida, for example, formerly incarcerated persons can contributeto campaigns, which means a wealthy former felon like JeffreyEpstein, who's been in the news very much, can and does contributelarge sums of money to political campaigns. I'm not sure why wewould regard someone who had served their time for a crime thatthey had committed and been convicted of voting. Why we wouldconsider that more pernicious than the ability to contribute tocampaigns. We live in an American system of justice in which onceyou have paid your debt to society, you should be restored as acitizen. That means that you should be able to get a driver'slicense. That means that you should be able to get a job. Thatmeans that you shouldn't be banned by the misuse of criminalbackgrounds checks from being able to do a job. And it also meansthat you ought to be able to cloak yourself in the ultimateexpression of citizenship in a democracy, which is the ability tocast a ballot and vote. So I don't see the making a distinction interms of the crime. Our criminal justice system should ensure thatsomeone is released only when we feel confident that that person isno longer a threat to society. And if our criminal justice systemhas made that determination, then it seems to me it's entirelyappropriate for that person to return. And also receive thefranchise along with their other citizenship rights.

  • 4:14:00 Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) Let mejust kind of remind you about black and brown people who simplywanted to exercise the right to vote were many of them were thevictims of hangings, beatings, burnings, bombings, dismemberments,disfigurements, all for wanting to exercise their basic right tovote. And then when America became more sophisticated, we move fromphysical harming to poll tax and literacy tests. Questions like howmany bubbles are on a bar soap or how many feathers on a duck. Wefarther in the greatest country in the world did everything that wecould, those who were in decision making positions to humiliate, toembarrass, to disenfranchise, how long will we have to still as wesit here in 2019 continue to have to defend a person's right tocast their vote. The good men who made the decision and women withthe voter's rights act of 1965 didn't do so because there wasn't aproblem. And when we talk about that was old and that's in thepast. No, that was in my lifetime. And it was actually in thelifetime of several of the members who sit here on this panel. Theydid so because there was a significant problem, particularly insouthern states for which I am a representative of one of them. Andso if we're serious about America being the greatest country in theworld, then we all should play a role in making it easier for ourcitizens, regardless of their race, their sexual orientation, theirgender, to exercise that basic. Right.

  • 4:15:00 Gupta Independentredistricting commissions exists right now. For example, inCalifornia, Arizona, Colorado. Uh, we heard from members ofCongress in Pennsylvania talk about the ruling that declare thatthe way that Pennsylvania was drawing district lines was tantamountto unlawful gerrymandering. They will now also have an independentcommission. A number of states in November, just this pastNovember, red states, blue states actually created independentredistricting commissions out of a recognition that voters frankly,are fed up with, with unlawful gerrymandering. These redistrictingcommissions, they've been authorized by the Supreme Court that the,which, as I said, decided that it is perfectly okay for, for, um,legislators to make sure that they are participating in the, in thedrawing of their boundary lines. And in places like California,Arizona, and Colorado, that have had these commissions for a while,we have seen, improvements and representation and competitivenessof elections and in voter trust. And so this is why theseprovisions in HR 1 are so important.

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Congressional Dish: CD192: Democracy Upgrade Stalled (2025)
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