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.
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