Trump pushes for voting changes; Republicans in Congress will try to carry them out

ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans plan to move quickly to overhaul U.S. voting procedures, seeing control of the White House and both chambers of Congress as an opportunity to push through long-sought changes that include requirements voter identification and proof of citizenship.

They say the measures are necessary to restore public confidence in the election, an erosion that Democrats say has been fueled by false claims by President-elect Donald Trump and his allies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In the new year, Republicans will be under pressure to heed Trump’s wishes to change the way elections are run in the United States, something he continues to promote despite his victory in November.

The main legislation Republicans hope to push will be versions of the Confidence in American Elections Act and the American Voter Eligibility Act, said Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Administration Committee, who handles legislation related to elections. The proposals are known as the ACE and SAVE laws, respectively.

“As we look ahead to the new year with a unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not just out of the Committee, but across the House floor and into law,” Steil said in an interview. “We need to improve Americans’ confidence in elections.”

Republicans are likely to face opposition from Democrats and have little room to maneuver with their narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress. Steil said he hopes “some reforms and adjustments” will be made to the original proposals and that Democrats will work with Republicans to refine and ultimately support them.

Democrats want to make it easier to vote

Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the committee’s top Democrat, said there is an opportunity for bipartisan agreement on some issues, but noted that the GOP’s two previous bills went too far.

“Our vision and the Republicans’ vision are very different at this point,” Morelle said. “Over the last two years, they’ve spent most of their time really restricting people’s rights to access the ballot, and that’s happening at the state and federal levels. And both the SAVE Act and the ACE Act do that, they make it harder for people to vote.”

Morelle said he wants to see both parties support allocating dedicated federal funding for election offices. He also sees other bipartisan opportunities around limiting foreign money in U.S. elections and possibly imposing a voter ID requirement if certain safeguards are put in place to protect voters.

Democrats say some state laws are too restrictive because they limit the types of IDs acceptable for voting, making the process difficult for college students or those who lack a permanent address.

Morelle said he was disappointed by claims made by Republicans in this year’s campaigns about widespread noncitizen voting, which is extremely rare, and noted how those claims virtually evaporated once Trump won. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and can cause those who do so to face felony charges and deportation.

“There hasn’t been a word about this since Election Day,” Morelle said. “It’s an Election Day miracle that suddenly what they had described for an inordinate amount of time as a rampant problem, an epidemic problem, didn’t exist at all.”

Republicans: Current voter registration is based on “honor system”

Before the November elections, House Republicans pushed the SAVE Act, which passed the House in July but stalled in the Democratic-controlled Senate. That law requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and includes potential penalties for election officials who do not confirm eligibility.

Republicans say the current process is based on what they call an honor system, with loopholes that have allowed noncitizens to register and vote in past elections. While noncitizen voting has occurred, research and reviews of state cases have shown that it is rare and typically results from errors rather than an intentional effort to influence an election.

Under the current system, those seeking to register are asked to provide their state driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. Some states require a complete Social Security number.

Republicans say the voter registration process is not strict enough because, in many states, people can be added to voter rolls even if they do not provide this information, and that some noncitizens can receive Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses. They think the current requirement that anyone who fills out a voter registration form sign under oath that they are a United States citizen is not enough.

They want to force states to reject any voter registration application for which proof of citizenship is not provided. Republicans say that could include a driver’s license that complies with the REAL ID law, which sets standards for issuing identification documents, or a passport or birth certificate.

A state identifies non-citizens with periodic audits

In Georgia, a perennial battleground state in presidential elections, election officials said they have not encountered any problems verifying the citizenship status of its nearly 7.3 million registered voters. They conducted an audit in 2022 that identified 1,634 people who attempted to register but whose U.S. citizen status could not be verified in a federal database.

In a second audit, conducted this year, local court records were used to identify people who said they could not serve as jurors because they were not U.S. citizens. Of the 20 people identified, six were investigated for illegal voting, although one of those cases was closed because the person had already died.

“What we’ve done by conducting those audits is give voters confidence that there are no noncitizens voting in Georgia,” said Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of government. “And when society is highly polarized, it is necessary to increase trust. Trust is the gold standard.”

Raffensperger, a Republican who supports voter ID requirements and proof of citizenship requirements, attributes the accuracy of voter rolls to the state’s early adoption of the REAL ID law and use of automatic voter registration. The latter is something he hopes more Republicans will consider, as he argued it has allowed Georgia election officials to use the motor vehicle agency’s process to verify citizenship and track people who move to or within the state. .

“It needs to be done right because we’re talking about people’s invaluable right to vote,” Raffensperger said.

States as laboratories for electoral reforms

If Congress approves any changes, election officials across the country will have to implement them.

Raffensperger and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said it would be a mistake to hold the country’s election on a single day, something Trump has said he would like to see, because it would eliminate early voting. and would limit access to mail-in ballots. Both methods are extremely popular with voters. In Georgia, 71% of people who voted in November cast their ballots in person before Election Day.

Both said they hoped lawmakers would look at what works well in their states and build on those successes.

“We have demonstrated time and time again in our states that our elections are secure and accurate,” Benson said.