House Admin Hearing Tomorrow on Voter Registration List Maintenance

Tomorrow at 11:00 AM, the Committee on House Administration is holding an important hearing on "State Voter Registration List Maintenance."  RNLA sent a letter in support of accurate voter registration lists to the Committee today:

While many issues divide along party lines, the need for accurate voter registration lists enjoys bipartisan support . . . . President Barack Obama’s Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) strongly endorsed state voter registration list maintenance as a way to both help election officials and make the process smoother for voters. In our response to the PCEA’s report, we agreed, pointing out that accurate voter registration lists are essential to ensuring the integrity of election processes and results. 

While there is bipartisan support for the concept of accurate voter registration lists, much work remains to be done in the states. As election administration expert and former state election official Don Palmer testified last month before the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity: 

A series of national level commissions have pointed out the wide scope of the problem concerning the inaccuracies of the voting rolls, and the negative impact on election administration and voter confidence. They have also pointed out the vulnerability of our system to voter fraud and irregularities that result from the inability to maintain accurate voter rolls. 

Maintaining accurate voter registration lists requires resources and consistent effort by local election officials and any assistance or insight that House Administration could provide would be indispensible. Again, thank you for using the Committee’s valuable time and expertise to examine state voter registration list maintenance . . . .

The witnesses are Indiana Secretary of State and current National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) President Connie Lawson and Dale Ho, Director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU.  RNLA will be live-tweeting the hearing tomorrow, which will be live-streamed on the Committee website.

Washington Post Says Presidents Obama and Carter are "Voter Suppressors" and Against "Civil Rights"

In an editorial entitled “Voter suppression is the civil rights issue of this era,” The Washington Post tried to liken Republicans and President Trump’s bipartisan Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity as somehow tied to efforts to protect “confederate statues” and anti-civil rights Jim Crow laws.  The obvious problem with this is it was Southern Democrats who put up these statues and enacted the Jim Crow laws.  

The less obvious problem is a living Democrat President and a living Democrat President's Commission not only disagree with the examples they cite as “voter suppression” but support them.  First is President Obama whose Presidential Commission on Election Administration called for voter lists to “come as close as possible to creating an accurate database of all eligible voters.”  The Post considers this effort to remove ineligible names from the voter rolls “purging.”  The Post further calls for "[pushing back hard against" this activity, and therefore the recommendations of President Obama's Commission, and says "this should be a paramount cause for [civil rights in] the Trump era.”  In other words, President Obama's Commission (which was co-chaired by his campaign lawyer and White House Counsel, Bob Bauer) is a vote suppressor and anti-civil rights because of its support for accurate voter rolls. 

Another item The Post demands “[p]ushing back hard against [are] those who . . . demand forms of voter ID that many Americans don’t possess . . . this should be a paramount cause for [civil rights in] the Trump era. “  Well, Jimmy Carter not only accepted a report that called for voter ID, he co-chaired the effort. 

With their support of list maintenance and voter ID, President Obama's Commission and President Carter are, according to The Washington Post’s logic, “vote suppressors” and opposed to civil rights.  This is ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as The Post's attempts to tie reasonable bipartisan efforts to ensure the integrity of the election to statues of Confederate generals.  Shame on The Post.  

The Left’s Crusade Against Honest Elections

In this week’s Daily Caller Op-Ed, Michael Thielen, RNLA Executive Director, highlighted how the extreme left and many Democrats are against verifiably honest elections in America. His piece explains how left-wing ideologues have written "articles"--what tantamount to opinion pieces--and passes them off as news articles. The piece goes on to praise, the too often vilified, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and his efforts to ensure more honest elections in Kansas.

Secretary Kobach has been a leader in the effort to clean up voting lists as the head of the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck program, one of two interstate voter registration data sharing programs endorsed by the PCEA [President Obama's Presidential Commission on Election Administration].  Crosscheck “identifies possible duplicate registrations among states, and . . . provides evidence of possible double votes,“ and it is used by such deep blue Democrat states as Massachusetts and New York. . . . 

Clean and accurate voter registration rolls are an important election integrity protection with broad, bipartisan support among the public and election officials, which you would never know by listening to the radical liberals who oppose basic election integrity protections. Secretary Kobach has led an effort by the majority of Secretaries of State across the country to clean up voter rolls and clean voter registration rolls are exactly what terrifies Berman, as he writes that the commission will “make policy recommendations at the federal and state level, which could include support for suppressive policies like . . . voter-rolls purges.”. . .

The left recycles the same talking points, again and again, about how efforts to prohibit non-citizens and illegal aliens from voting is somehow wrong. They are--after all--not American citizens, nor entitled to a vote.

The irony that is lost on [left media, like the NYT's author Ari] Berman is that every illegal alien vote disenfranchises a U.S. citizen voting legally. . . The reality is Berman is attempting the very thing he accuses Kobach of seeking: partisan advantage in voting laws.  The difference is that Kobach seeks to disenfranchise illegal voters, while Berman’s policies allow disenfranchisement of legal voters. . . .  

However, the left perpetuated this point because non-citizens vote Democrat in elections. Reported studies have confirmed this point.

The Democrats are so scared of losing a fallacious talking point to appeal to their liberal base that they don’t even want to allow a study on issues of wide bipartisan support, such a voter registration list accuracy and maintenance, for fear of what other important issues the commission may investigate. . . .The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets are providing a vehicle for the radical liberals now controlling the Democratic Party to disseminate their anti-election integrity message. The sensational rhetoric and fact-free war is unfortunate in what should be a common goal for all Americans: open, fair and honest elections.

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity's purpose is to look into systemic problems plaguing the current system. However, preemptively attacking those who a part of the commission is not productive and really is just the left's ongoing saga to attack any effort to improve the system or make an election fair, open, and honest. The fact is the left can do better. The left should do better.

The Left's Poor History on Election Commissions

The left and their allies in the media regularly deny the existence of vote fraud and call any effort to investigate the problem “racist.”  They are even calling President’s Trump upcoming commission invalid or a waste of time. 

I guess they are at least being consistent this time and maybe even more honest.  Usually they wait until after they agree with a bipartisan commission's recommendations to start calling things racist. 

Let’s take the last national commission on voting, President Obama's Presidential Commission on Election Administration.  This commission was led by Mitt Romney’s campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg and President Obama’s campaign lawyer Bob Bauer.  As RNLA Board Member Joanne Young addresses in her article entitled: “Why Trump’s Call to Investigate Vote Fraud Is Valid:”

The irony was that at the same time Obama’s lawyer, Bob Bauer, was leading the bipartisan commission, his own firm was suing the state of Virginia, calling the efforts to clean up voter rolls racist and purging.

It goes further. Obama nominated Myrna Perez to be on the Election Assistance Commission. Perez was an adamant opponent of voter list maintenance, declaring such efforts “purging.”

This is why it’s tough to even talk about vote fraud. Any efforts, even those with bipartisan support, are bitterly opposed by liberal activists.  It also happen to the voting commission before that:

A primary recommendation of the 2005 bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform (the “Carter-Baker Commission”) was to require voter ID. This commission was led by Jimmy Carter, former president and noted liberal, and James Baker, secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush.

Yet, liberals oppose any efforts to enact commonsense voter ID laws, opposing them in legislatures and in the courts. Voter ID laws, which protect the integrity of the vote and thus our democracy for all citizens, are called racist and mechanisms of voter suppression.

Republicans are dedicated to improving our election process and President Trump deserves credit for the commission on vote fraud.  Democrats will likely object to the commission even if the Democrat members of the commission agree.  Hopefully the Trump Commission's recommendations will be taken seriously regardless of the reaction of those on the left who always disagree.  

SOTU: Obama Says Make Voting Easier, Rest of the Year He Works to Make It Harder

We agree with the President’s words at the State of the Union regarding voting:

We've got to make voting easier, not harder, and modernize it for the way we live now. 

However, his words are not backed up by his actions.  For example, the President’s own Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) recognized the need for clean voter rolls.  We wholeheartedly agree with this as we wrote in our official response:

RNLA generally agrees with the analysis and recommendations to reform states’ voter registration processes. Enhancing the integrity of the rolls through the use of technology and interstate and intrastate data sharing, and holding states accountable for compliance with federal law will result in significant improvements to our voter rolls that will ensure reliable rosters for Election Day, thereby ensuring a smoother voting process.

Yet instead of working on these proposals, President Obama and leading Democrats such as Hillary Clinton have called for mandatory registration.  Mandatory registration guarantees inaccurate voting rolls which will ensure a more chaotic voting process.  We wish President Obama, Secretary Clinton, liberal groups, and others would work on the areas of bipartisan agreement to move forward to make voting easier, not harder through practices such as mandatory registration (which does not increase turnout).  

If President Obama truly wanted to improve the voting process he would push for other recommendations of the PCEA:

RNLA strongly agrees with the PCEA’s recommendations that states transition from paper to electronic poll books. Electronic poll books speed up the check-in process because election workers can search a field by typing in the voter’s name rather than flipping through hundreds of paper pages. They also result in a more accurate roster of those who have checked in and voted at the polling place. The ability to, in real time, accurately identify those voters checking-in, including those who have already voted, will help to combat fraud and abuse.

Instead of pushing for this sort of modernization, President Obama has wasted Presidential capital on this topic in areas such as mandatory voting, which would force a poll tax on those who chose not to vote.  While we hope the President is sincere in his desire to make voting easier and to “modernize” the process, we would like to see some action in support of these sorts of proposals instead of harmful campaign rhetoric on mandatory voting and registration.  

Liberal Groups Seek to Water Down Online Voter Registration

  

One of the success stories of bipartisan cooperation in election administration policy has been states’ adoption of online voter registration. While there are holdouts, generally speaking, there has been a consensus it is a good government reform that saves taxpayer dollars, increases the integrity of the voter rolls, and makes it easier for people to register to vote or update their registration record.

One of the reasons why Republicans have been willing to back online voter registration in several states was the fact that the application verification process is tied to the state’s DMV database. Typically how the process works is an applicant will visit a state’s secure website and enter in various identifiers such as social security number info, Driver’s License number, Date of Birth, and other information. The information provided by the voter is bounced against the DMV database which confirms that the various fields of data entered in by the applicant match the record on file with DMV. That person can then complete an application to register to vote or update his/her information.

RNLA’s report on the PCEA commission’s recommendations endorsed online voter registration, albeit with the caveat, that any application portal be tied to another official database. RNLA’s PCEA paper notes:

States that have successfully implemented online registration have designed the system so that an individual applying online must provide information such as a Driver’s License number, date of birth, social security number information, other unique personal identifying information that is matched and verified electronically against state’s DMV records. The registration and DMV databases communicate with each other and ultimately inform the registration official that the applicant provided information on the application that matches information in the DMV database. Online applications should only be an option for those that can provide such matching information.

Well, RNLA saw the handwriting on the wall and knew that liberals would be working to water down online voter registration. There are now grumblings among liberal groups that online voter registration is somehow discriminatory. Lloyd Leonard writing at the national League of Women Voters’ blog argues that states with online registration are “imposing a restrictive ID requirement on voter registration online.” Going further he says, “These circumstances raise concerns about voter discrimination, plain and simple.”

The reason Leonard says is that most states require a Driver’s License or at least some record with the state DMV to participate, ignoring the fact that the existing paper based registration still exists for those individuals not in the DMV system. Some states like Virginia allow a convenience feature to a voter not in DMV’s database to complete the application online, print it and mail it in.

In its PCEA report, RNLA explains the importance of tethering online voter registration to an official state database. RNLA even leaves open the possibility of a state database other than DMV providing such a security feature but makes clear you need an extra step to prove identity when an individual is registering to vote online. Liberals are now trying to remove that important anti-fraud safeguard and in doing so risk spoiling the bipartisan consensus on this issue. This is an important issue to watch at the state level. Are states going to start watering down online registration and remove its protections against fraud?

Eric Holder’s Disgraceful Voting Legacy

There is a big distinction between White House Counsel and Attorney General.  The Attorney General is supposed to be the country’s lawyer while the White House Counsel is the President’s lawyer.  Yet, Eric Holder was more political than the White House Counsel.  Actually, he was more like a political party counsel.  Three quick examples. 

1. In the New Black Panther case, Holder overruled a career DOJ Attorney (who formerly headed a state ACLU chapter) to stop a conviction against two people clearly trying to intimidate voters.  While Holder and Democrats have never been able to find  a documented case of intimidation by Republicans (since it’s non-existent), , they let these perpetrators off.
   
2. The Presidential Commission on Election Administration came out strongly in favor of interstate voter registration list maintenance and cleaning up the voter rolls.  This committee was co-chaired by President Obama’s campaign lawyer and former White House Counsel Bob Bauer.  Yet the Department of Justice under Holder had previously announced that they would not enforce laws regarding cleaning up the voter rolls with one of his deputies going so far as to state in a DOJ meeting: “We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law.”
   
3. Holder again overruled career DOJ attorneys to file a purely political challenge to appease the far left on South Carolina Voter ID.  Not only did the Department of Justice lose the case but they lost so badly they had to pay legal fees, with American taxpayers footing the bill for Holder’s ideological crusade. 

Holder regularly overruled career appointees (who by the way were often Democrats) to make political decisions.  He was so political even the Obama campaign lawyer disagrees with him.  A shameful history for a US Attorney General without even going into his record on non-voting matters or voting related matters such as the IRS targeting scandal.  

Part 1: Stop Increasing the Burdens on Local Election Officials

On a non-partisan basis, election officials are angry for the increasing burdens that are being placed on them.  Typical was the reaction yesterday from local election officials in Virginia:  

Election officials’ complaint is familiar. “We do more and more with less,” said VRAV [Voter Registrars Association of Virginia] President Lisa Wooten. “I would hate to see a terrible election happen to any of us.”

Nationwide Democrats have not only opposed funding the needs of election officials  but instead have advocated expensive and burdensome ideas such as increasing early voting which does nothing to increase turnout (more on that tomorrow).  As RNLA wrote in its response to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (emphasis added):

If nothing else, the post-mortem of the 2012 General Election revealed the need to focus on the basics of Election Day administration. As the PCEA pointed out repeatedly, the long-lines were typically a result of management problems which can be solved with proper planning and resource allocation and upgrades to our voter registration system. Anything that distracts from the main focus of absentee voting for those who need it, the close of registration books, and the monumental task of preparing for Election Day is simply that, a distraction. Local election officials have finite resources and are already stressed to the breaking point with juggling poll worker training, press inquiries, programming and testing voting equipment, and the other planning that needs to take place on the eve of an election. Being required to administer a robust early voting program is simply going to draw resources and attention away from those preparations.

The time has come to focus on helping election officials and to make their jobs easier.  On a bipartisan basis election officials would agree.  

Reasonable Democrats are Tiring of Left-Wing Democrat Voter Fraud Antics

Recently, Obama’s Presidential Commission on Election Administration came out in favor of programs such as the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC to help fight vote fraud and improve registration.  While the commission was co-chaired by Obama’s own lawyer, Bob Bauer, many Democrats and liberals in the election field have fought implementation of ERIC despite its wide bipartisan support. 

Examples of this are one of the Democrats nominee for the Election Assistance Commission, Myrna Perez, and another is the current California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.  Bowen’s views are so extreme that even the left-leaning Pew Charitable Trusts is attacking her:

[ERIC’s] goal is to identify voters who have moved between states, and ensure they are re-registered quickly.  Pew, Becker said later, has invited Bowen's office to six Pew-sponsored meetings since January 2011 to discuss ways to improve elections, including ERIC. Pew received no response to most of the invitations, including for a meeting later this month in San Francisco, he said.

"Not having California being part of a really important data exchange...hurts the other states and I think it hurts California, too," Judd Choate, Colorado's director of elections and ERIC's chairman, testified.

The leading California Democrat to replace Bowen who is term-limited, has also refused to support ERIC.  In the very blue state of California, most voters have had enough of these efforts to promote vote fraud and hurt ALL legal voters.  It is part of the reason that Republican Nominee for Secretary of State Pete Peterson is leading in the polls. 

The views of far left Democrats in the election field and their allies such as the Brennan Center are too extreme for even Democrat voters and President Obama’s own lawyer.  Hopefully, victories by Republicans in states like California will serve to wake up national mainstream Democrats to stop nominating and funding pro-vote fraud candidates and groups.  

EAC's Bad Apple

Lost in all the news yesterday was the White House announcement of the Republican Commissioner Nominees for the Election Assistance Commission(EAC).  Congratulations to Mr. Masterson and Ms. McCormick.  Now the EAC has four nominees for a full commission. 

However, one of these nominees sticks out as not just unqualified, but an incredible partisan without any interest in improving our election process.  That nominee is Myrna Perez. 

Ms. Perez is such an extremist that she has taken positions in opposition to the President’s own Commission on Election Administration (PCEA).  PCEA came out in favor of “list maintenance,” or keeping accurate and up to date voter rolls.  Perez regularly calls such good election practices “list purging” that happens “probably every day.”  Fear mongering important bipartisan efforts such as list maintenance to aid the Democrat Party is wrong for anyone 

involved in elections, let alone a national commission on elections.  

Another purpose of the EAC is to collect accurate information on elections.  Ms. Perez has been caught in rampant exaggerations in the past and is quite frankly not reliable. 

Most damming, she has never worked as an election official.  Her background is built on working for vote-fraud denier and pro-Democrat party groups like the Brennan Center.  Contrast that with the Republican nominees, who have spent their careers working in a non-partisan fashion for open fair and honest elections. 

To be clear, RNLA’s opposition to Perez is not based on her being a Democrat.  We do not oppose her fellow Democrat nominee.  We oppose her because she is an unqualified partisan extremist.

If the President is serious about the EAC, then he should immediately withdraw Perez’s nomination.  

Executive Summary of the RNLA Response to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration

The Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) issues this report to offer its perspective on the recent report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) outlining recommendations to improve election administration in the United States. RNLA agrees with many of the Commission’s recommendations, particularly its identification of deficiencies in our voter registration system as a significant contributor to Election Day problems such as long lines at the polls. The PCEA’s recommendations to reform voter registration are good ones and, if states adopted them, the reforms should greatly improve citizens’ voting experience. RNLA offers other suggestions in addition to adopting many of the PCEA’s recommendations. Taken in tandem, these recommendations will result in a secure and voter-friendly voter registration system that provides alternatives to same-day voter registration while avoiding the management issues which historically attend the combining of two functions on Election Day – voting and registration. RNLA also welcomes most of PCEA’s recommendations to improve polling place management, including leveraging technology through the use of electronic poll books and ID card bar code/magnetic stripe scanners. RNLA also appreciates the PCEA pointing out the need for continued improvements to the voting experience for our military and overseas voters and generally agrees with PCEA’s recommendations in this area. Finally, RNLA agrees that the current voting equipment testing and certification system is inadequate and needs reform. We recommend a move away from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) certification process in favor of voluntary consensus standards.

While RNLA agrees with a majority of PCEA’s recommendations, we caution against the Commission’s recommendation that states embrace expanded early voting as a solution to the systemic election administration problems identified in its report. The experience from recent elections demonstrates that early voting does not solve the problem of long lines. It is also expensive, distracts from Election Day preparations, and diminishes the importance of Election Day. Most Americans continue to prefer to vote alongside their neighbors and fellow citizens at the polls on Election Day so reform needs to start there. Accordingly, states should instead invest their limited time and resources fixing the problems at the polling place and ensuring a smoother absentee voting process for those who use it out of necessity, not convenience.

Throughout this document, RNLA offers state and local election officials additional suggestions that will improve election administration. This report also outlines additional policy reasons why states should adopt certain PCEA recommendations. In some places RNLA urges states to use caution or establish minimum safeguards when implementing certain reforms, particularly for online voter registration. RNLA’s additional recommendations from those included in the PCEA report include the following:

State and local election officials should do the following to improve the voter registration process:

Ø  Amend their laws so there are fewer restrictions in sharing voter registration, voter history and Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) data with other states to improve the accuracy of the voter rolls and prevent double-voting.

Ø  States unable to participate in multi-state data-sharing agreements should negotiate one-on-one programs to share data with individual states, particularly neighboring states or voting jurisdiction adjacent to their border.

Ø  Adopt intrastate data-sharing, including vital statistics information and work with their DMVs, public assistance agencies and other state agencies to obtain additional data to perform voter registration list maintenance.

Ø  Upgrade statewide voter registration databases and explore public-private partnerships for list maintenance.

Ø  Utilize the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Database to ensure only citizens are able to register and remain on the voter rolls and to prevent the removal of citizens from the voter rolls who may have been mistakenly identified as non-citizens.

Ø  Adopt RNLA’s recommended best practices outlined in this report when implementing online voter registration.

States should do the following to improve Election Day and polling place management:

Ø  Utilize ID card bar code/magnetic stripe scanners with electronic poll books to speed check-in process and improve accuracy of voter history data. 

Ø  Develop technology to display voter photographs on electronic poll books to improve the integrity of the check-in process.

Ø  Engage in public-private partnerships to recruit additional poll workers.

Ø  Utilize technology such as online training to better prepare poll workers for Election Day.

Ø  Manage precinct sizes by timely re-precincting, ensuring a manageable number of voters are assigned to polling places and avoid co-locating polling places when possible.

Recommendations to improve the voting experience for our military and overseas voters:

Ø  Simplify and streamline the registration and absentee voting application process for our overseas and military voters, including the use of the Federal Postcard Application (FPCA) and the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB).

Ø  States need to improve their online offerings to our military and overseas voters by placing a higher priority on improving their websites to better explain the voting process to our overseas and military voters.

Ø  Eliminate waiver provision for 45-day ballot mailing deadline to overseas and military voting and require express mail for any ballots mailed late.

Ø  Vigorous enforcement of our federal and state overseas and military voting laws.

Improve the testing and certification procedures for voting equipment:

Ø  Transition from the federal EAC voting equipment certification regimen towards adoption of voluntary consensus standards similar to those used in other manufacturing industries. 

Co-Chair Bauer’s Firm Doesn’t Follow his Commission’s Recommendations on Elections

Today, the Co-Chairs of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on their recent report recommending improvements to voting in the United States. Among the key recommendations made by the Co-Chairs, Democrat Bob Bauer and Republican Ben Ginsberg, was to expand interstate data sharing agreements for voter registration list maintenance. Particularly, the Commission recommends that “[s]uch projects should strive to improve the accuracy of voter registration records, enhance the ability to detect ineligible voting and prosecute voter fraud, reduce administrative costs, and increase registration rates.”

The Republican National Lawyers Association strongly endorses the bipartisan PCEA’s recommendations to expand the interstate sharing of voter registration data for the reasons outlined in its report. RNLA President Craig Burkhardt stated the following:

Based on Democrats’ response to states’ past efforts to remove non-resident voters from the rolls, it is unclear if those on the left will embrace the commonsense proposal for interstate data-sharing. The answer is probably no if recent history is any indicator. Just last October in Virginia, Mr. Bauer’s law partners representing the state Democratic Party sued Virginia unsuccessfully to stop its lawful removal of non-resident, out-of-state voters from its rolls. In its Complaint the DPVA specifically targeted Crosscheck, one of the very programs PCEA endorses, as a Republican-hatched program that is “purportedly designed to prevent voting fraud but that ha[s] the effect of suppressing voter turn-out among the poor, the elderly, and minorities – many of whom are Democratic.” The judge summarily rejected the Democrats’ arguments claiming voter suppression stating they had “not presented any evidence” that the program would disenfranchise any voters. This is just one of many examples of Democrats’ cynical use of hysterics for political purposes to demonize states’ list maintenance practices that the PCEA now recommends.

Both Democrats and Republicans should strongly support the PCEA’s recommendation for interstate voter registration data. Unfortunately, RNLA fears this issue will become the Democrats’ next Photo ID: a relatively non-controversial reform recommended by a bipartisan commission (there the Carter-Baker Commission) that Democrats find valuable to politicize as a Republican plot to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

As the PCEA notes, these programs have several benefits including detecting illegal double-voting, increasing registration rates, and reducing administrative costs. RNLA calls on Democrats to support these proposals and stop playing politics with commonsense reforms that have now been heartily endorsed by President Obama’s Commission on Election Administration.

RNLA is currently preparing a report that will review the PCEA’s proposals and provide additional recommendations for reform. The report will be released in the coming weeks.