Greg Murphy Presses State Officials About Strategies To Safeguard State Elections Across The Country

2 days ago

During Tuesday’s House Administration Committee hearing, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) questioned Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose about ID regulations for state elections across the U.S.

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Transcript

00:00I yield back.

00:01I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Dr. Murphy, for five minutes for the purpose of questioning our witnesses.

00:07Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you all for coming today.

00:09I think everybody in this room wants free, fair, safe elections, so I think that's uniform.

00:16I think there's very much consensus about that.

00:19How that happens, I think there may be a little bit of disagreement.

00:21But this is why I think our House passed the SAVE Act that requires states to prove citizenship.

00:30Before registering an individual to vote and to remove non-citizens from existing voter rolls.

00:35You know, the question is, why do people fear that?

00:38Because here in Washington, D.C., they passed a law which had to be reversed.

00:42Or passed a rule or whatever they call it here in the county or the city that would have allowed people from the Chinese embassy to come and vote.

00:51In New York, they wanted non-citizens to be able to vote.

00:54So there is precedent in this country that has justified fear for being able to say, am I not coming on?

01:02Oh, hello.

01:03Do I need to speak louder?

01:05Okay, good.

01:05Anyway, long and short, there is, I think, justified fear for people saying, hey, we want non-citizens not to vote in our elections.

01:12Secretary Rose, in your testimony, you mentioned that Ohio requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID to vote,

01:18and your state requires driver's licenses and state IDs.

01:22Can you tell us how this has safeguarded the elections in Ohio?

01:26Thank you, sir.

01:27By just proving that people are who they say they are when they come to vote.

01:30And by the way, vast majority of Democrats and Republicans support this.

01:34Ohio provides a free ID if you don't have one.

01:37We even have a religious exemption for that very small minority that doesn't allow them to be photographed,

01:43and so they may not have a state ID.

01:45So we cover all the bases, and our state ID has an indication on it that says whether you're a citizen or not.

01:51Shockingly, I actually had to go to court last year and defend that because there was a group saying that we should give people a ballot

01:57even if they give us an ID that says non-citizen.

02:00Amazing.

02:01Ballot harvesting requires a lot of attention and for good reason—receives a lot of attention and for good reason.

02:07Fraudulent actions committed by third parties are a threat.

02:11Can you tell me what election security initiatives do you find to be the most effective in reducing fraud

02:17from these third-party collection of mail-in ballots?

02:20Well, Ohio recently outlawed the pre-populating of these forms by some of these third-party organizations

02:28because in many cases they were sending out pre-populated forms with inaccurate information on them,

02:33so now you have to fill the form out yourself.

02:35But we also have strict rules around the use of so-called drop boxes or secure receptacles,

02:41whereas only the voter may return their ballot.

02:44If you're returning somebody else's ballot, which Ohio law allows you to do for a family member or a disabled person,

02:51in those cases you just have to come inside and present it to the election officials.

02:54Do you have to present an ID if you bring in somebody else's ballot, a family member?

02:58No, but you do have to sign an affidavit that says that you've been designated by a disabled Ohioan

03:03to return their ballot, and that has, obviously, the power of law behind it.

03:07All right, thank you.

03:07Secretary Landry, in your testimony, you shared that your governor issued a directive

03:12requiring the Office of Motor Vehicles to share information on non-citizens

03:16who hold Louisiana driver's license or ID.

03:19How can illegal immigrants take advantage of automatic voter registration,

03:23particularly when they come in contact with a state DMV?

03:27In Louisiana, illegal immigrants are not allowed to get a driver's license.

03:32Only those here legally can get a driver's license,

03:35and we previously did not have access to that information.

03:39And Governor Landry, our governor now, ordered the DMV to provide that information to us,

03:46and it allows us to now audit our voter rolls to see if there are non-citizens on the voter rolls.

03:53But it's not enough.

03:55There's still information that we need,

03:58and getting access to the SAVE database will allow us to find even more people

04:03who may be on our rolls who are not citizens.

04:06You know, I've worked in some other countries during election periods,

04:10just playing doctor like I do sometimes,

04:13and just I think it's a good look for this country that we want voters to be citizens,

04:19and we want our elections to have integrity.

04:22Secretary McGrane, your office has been sued for removing college student identification cards

04:27from the approval list of voter IDs for voter registration.

04:31How did that happen?

04:32How did that—what happened there?

04:33We—Idaho, two years ago, updated its voter ID requirements to register to vote,

04:39and I think to the core, how did it happen, I'm not sure.

04:42Like was mentioned earlier—

04:43Did it affect turnout?

04:45It did not affect turnout.

04:46Actually, in this last election, overwhelmingly—so 98.1 percent of Idaho voters

04:51showed an Idaho driver's license or ID card when they voted.

04:54It doesn't—students as well use driver's licenses.

04:57Yeah, they drive.

04:58Yep.

Greg Murphy Presses State Officials About Strategies To Safeguard State Elections Across The Country

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