Full Committee Hearing: “Clean Rolls, Secure Elections: Reviewing Voter List Maintenance Standards”
Committee on House Administration
2025-07-22
Loading video...
Source: Congress.gov
Summary
No summary available.
Participants
Transcript
M
Mr. J. Christian Adams
The Committee on House Administration will come to order. The title of today's hearing is Clean Voter Rolls, Secure Elections, Reviewing Voterless Maintenance Standards. I note that a quorum is present. Without objection, the chair may declare recess at any time. Also, without objection, the hearing record will remain open for five legislative days, so members may submit any materials they wish to be included therein. Thank you, Ranking Member Morelle, members of the Committee, and our witnesses. for appearing at today's hearing. Today, the Committee on House Administrations continues our oversight of federal elections. Voter list maintenance is crucial to election integrity. List maintenance adds new voters to roles and also removes ineligible voters. such as deceased, relocated, or duplicate registrants. Inaccurate voter rolls can open the door to election fraud and can hinder public confidence in our elections. In the current world of mail-in voting, live ballots can be sent based on inaccurate or out of date information. That's a risk. How do you mitigate that risk? For example, California has universal vote by mail, meaning they send every single registered voter in a state a ballot regardless of whether or not it was requested, which shows the significance of making sure the voter rolls are accurate. And it means that a live ballot can be sent to a resident's former address if the voter rolls were not properly updated. That would be a live ballot. It would be illegal for someone to vote that besides the eligible voter, but it would be difficult to determine that after that ballot would be illegally cast. But the responsibility of maintaining voter lists is largely fulfilled by states. In addition to state-specific regulations, federal laws, such as the National Voter Registration Act, or the NVRA, includes voterless maintenance requirements. As is currently written, the NVRA arguably has a low standard for compliance, a standard we're going to discuss today. So because of this, if states choose, they can largely avoid properly maintaining their voter rolls.
M
Mr. J. Christian Adams
Litigation has shown that judges consider minimal maintenance compliant with federal law. Lawsuits have alleged that states are failing to timely and effectively maintain their voter rolls. This year, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest asserting a federal government's interest in effective enforcement of the NVRA against Illinois. The DOJ there alleged that 34 counties in the state failed to disclose any data that would show Illinois conducted The state of Illinois failed to disclose any data that would show Illinois conducts voter list maintenance. Representative Mary Miller, I have a hunch, will have questions about that. The lack of transparency in voter list maintenance undermines both legal compliance and voter confidence. In addition to legal compliance, we will discuss today where states are obtaining data for proper voter list maintenance. States need access to accurate and timely data to effectively maintain their voter lists. Accurate data can be exchanged between states and the federal governments. Some states, such as Virginia, have entered into MOUs with neighboring states to exchange voter data. This type of information allows states to determine whether a voter is registered in another state and if they're removed upon registering in their new state. Also, as chairman of the Committee on House Administration, I've worked to ensure that only US citizens are voting in US elections. It's critical that states are utilizing federal citizenship verification resources that are available to them. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services recently announced enhancements to their citizenship verification system. The updated system allows states and local governments to access federal databases to verify voters' citizenship. In conclusion, list maintenance requires efficient, effective, and accurate access to data, as well as thorough and routine updates. Proper voter list maintenance protects the security of our elections, and I want to thank our witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to our discussion.
M
Mr. J. Christian Adams
Good morning. I thank you, Chairman Stile, and thank you certainly to our witnesses for being here this morning. For over 200 years, our republic has marched towards a fuller, freer system of governance, expanding access to the ballot for more and more Americans. But as we've seen time and time again, and the topic of today's hearing clearly indicates House Republicans seem to want to retreat from that important promise. States controlled by Republicans have recently engaged in systematic illegal voter purges. A Republican candidate in North Carolina sought to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters because he didn't like the outcome of the election. And this hearing comes on the heels of last week's news that the Department of Justice under Donald Trump is seeking voter registration lists of several states representing data on millions of Americans ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Sign up for free to see the full transcript
Accounts help us prevent bots from abusing our site. Accounts are free and will allow you to access the full transcript.