House Administration Republicans headed to Atlanta to unveil their sprawling new election security package — two years after outcry over the state’s electoral law caused major corporations to flee.
The House Administration Committee unveiled the legislation at a dinner in Marietta, Georgia, and held a field hearing in Atlanta on the eve of the MLB All-Star Game in Seattle.
Two years ago, the MLB yanked its All-Star Game from the Atlanta Braves stadium after Georgia enacted an electoral law that Democrats, including President Biden, deemed “Jim Crow 2.0.”
House Administration Chair Brian Steil, R-Wis., called the new legislation the “most conservative election bill considered in the House in more than 20 years.”
The committee will flag down the bill on Wednesday — and it’s not yet clear whether it will be voted on by a full House before the August recess.
House Administration Republicans head to Atlanta to unveil their sprawling new election security package — two years after major corporations fled amid outcry over the state’s election law
The 224-page package contains nearly 50 self-contained bills. It would, in part, give state and local election officials access to the Social Security death roll to help them get the names of the deceased off the voter rolls.
Administrator Ranking Member Joseph Morelle, DN.Y., scoffed at the bill, saying Republicans had called the hearing to “discuss conspiracy theories about hypothetical election security.”
“We took the circus on the road. You might ask, why are we here in Georgia? The answer is simple: we are here because Joe Biden won the election in 2020 and Donald Trump lost. There was no widespread fraud in Georgia.”
The legislation would push states to adopt election security measures similar to Georgia’s — requiring voter ID, conducting post-election audits and other checks on voter eligibility. If they did, they could qualify for more election funding through federally funded HAVA Election Security grants.
Under the package, Congress would take charge of Washington, D.C.’s election administration — requiring the city to require voter ID and ban non-citizens from voting.
“They wanted to let everyone in — foreigners, illegals, anyone living in the District of Columbia, including foreigners, diplomats, and that shouldn’t happen. So there won’t be any illegal aliens voting,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who was referred to the committee and wrote a bill banning non-citizen voting.
“The false stories from the president and the false stories from the left seeped into awakened boardrooms,” said House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil.
Congress has jurisdiction over DC laws.
The package also targets voter rolls that Republicans say contain masses of dead residents and would end unsolicited mailing of ballots to all voters, whether they requested it or not.
The legislation is unlikely to go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate — Steil also acknowledged that.
“Rest assured, there will be people who will go against this common sense legislation,” the chairman told reporters at a news conference. “Two years ago, here in the state of Georgia, we saw people flinching with false stories.”
Republicans portrayed Georgia’s legislation as a model for other states – claiming that companies had pre-emptively given in to public outcry by moving their company out of Georgia and publicly opposing the law.
“The false stories from the president and the false stories from the left seeped into awakened boardrooms,” Steil said.
Other Georgia-based companies such as Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola issued statements at the time denouncing the Georgia law. The PGA was under pressure to pull its Masters tournament out of Augusta, but ultimately failed to do so.
“I think everyone realized it was all partisan political rhetoric. And that, that it has actually worked well,” Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk told DailyMail.com of the outcry over the state bill.
“Nobody can really articulate a reason to be against it.”
Loudermilk and other conservative Republicans in Georgia are still urging the state to swap out touch screen voting machines and go back to paper ballots.
Another provision of the Republican-led bill would prohibit agencies like the IRS from asking nonprofits for their donor lists — a provision that proponents say could prevent the IRS from targeting conservative organizations.
And another part will focus on closing a loophole that Republicans say allows foreign agents to influence elections.
Noncitizens already cannot contribute to candidates, campaigns or super-PACs, but they can contribute to 501(c)(4) groups – tax-exempt groups that can advocate for general issues or support state voting initiatives.
It comes after a report from the conservative group Americans for Public Trust showed how Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss used his two nonprofits — the Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund — to pump $475 million “into the arena of the American politics and discourse’.
Since the 2020 election, Georgia, Iowa, Florida and Texas have introduced new election security measures such as restricting drop boxes and tightening voter identification requirements, while California, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Washington have rolled back certain voting requirements.
Georgian law standardized voting hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It required two Saturdays of early voting instead of one and made two Sundays optional for early voting. It continued to allow absentee voting without reason, but requires state-issued ID to request a vote. The bill also banned political groups from distributing water and food to voters waiting in line at the polls and shortened the second round of the election from 9 weeks to 4 weeks.
It also limited ballot boxes, requiring them to be placed in early voting locations and available only when the district was open.
After that law was passed, about 56.9% of registered voters showed up to vote in the 2022 midterm elections — about the same percentage as four years earlier in the last midterm election. In total, more people than ever voted, but the percentage remained the same due to population growth.
Turnout in Georgia is higher than the national average of 52%.