After failing twice to pass a federal elections takeover, liberals in Washington, D.C., have launched their most recent effort with a revamp of H.R. 4. The new legislation combines the worst of its two predecessors.
Most importantly, the bill makes voter ID laws all but irrelevant. Under H.R. 4, even in states such as Georgia that have passed commonsense voter ID laws, any voter can just say they are who they claim to be and cast their ballot. Although 80% of Americans support voter ID, Stacey Abrams, President Joe Biden, and their allies keep trying to eliminate it.
Voter ID laws instill confidence in our elections, have been proven in several studies not to affect turnout, and, in Georgia, replace a subjective signature match system criticized by both Republicans and Democrats with objective photo ID verification.
The new law will also make it virtually impossible to prevent illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from voting. The legislation says that noncitizens can be prevented from registering to vote only if a government agency has documentary evidence that the registrant is not a U.S. citizen, flipping the burden of proof from the applicant to the election worker. Current Georgia law requires proof of citizenship through a driver’s license or a passport, for example — a simple but important election security check. Ensuring that only citizens vote in our elections is another widely popular election integrity measure. The proposal by Senate Democrats would undermine citizen-only voting anyway.
Removing these commonsense election integrity measures will undermine confidence in our elections and leave election workers to take the brunt of the fallout.
H.R. 4 contains a provision, which should be of bipartisan concern, allowing absentee ballots to be returned by email. Foreign nation-state actors are interested in interfering in our elections, and returning ballots by email raises vital security concerns. I am disappointed but not surprised that Senate Democrats would put election security on the back burner simply because they seem to prefer mail voting over in-person voting.
In addition, the legislation includes liberal wish list election items that would burden election officials and undermine confidence in elections. The legislation requires same-day registration for federal elections, creating a two-tier system where voters will be eligible for federal elections but not for state elections on the same ballot. Local election officials will have to sort out the mess.
H.R. 4 sets election deadlines that require county election officials to count ballots long after Election Day and even after the deadline to certify elections in Georgia. The bill extends the absentee ballot deadline to seven days after the Election Day deadline and mandates seven more days to cure absentee ballots, pushing both windows past the county certification deadline in Georgia, which is 5 p.m. on the Monday after Election Day. Election workers will be counting ballots for weeks after Election Day, effectively turning every election into New York- and California-style weekslong counting fiascoes.
The federal takeover also features new laws turning every state into a vote-by-mail state flooded with unrequested and unsecured absentee ballots. If a voter requests an absentee ballot once, H.R. 4 requires election officials to continue sending absentee ballots in every subsequent election, even if the ballots don’t get returned.
To add insult to injury, the bill prohibits removing voter records from voter rolls when election mail is returned as undeliverable. As a result, even when election officials know an address is obsolete, they’ll be required to send absentee ballots anyway. Voter confidence plummets when voters receive an absentee ballot that is not addressed to them. With H.R. 4, Senate Democrats are essentially mandating steps to undermine confidence in our elections.
H.R. 4 spells disaster for the local officials who actually run the elections. Not only will Georgia’s counties have to print millions of unwanted absentee ballots for every election, but it is Georgia’s local election officials who will be left holding the bag when elections are flooded with ballots sent to empty lots or individuals who have long since moved.
Confidence in America’s elections will deteriorate. The chaotic and contradictory rules, the flood of extraneous absentee ballots, and the vulnerabilities brought into the process by H.R. 4 will undermine the integrity of elections across the country.
H.R. 4 must be stopped. Instead of learning the mistakes of their previous failed attempts at a federal elections takeover, Washington, D.C., liberals have pursued those same misguided policies. If this bill passes, it will be the election workers and the very integrity of America’s election system that suffer most.
Brad Raffensperger is Georgia’s secretary of state.
