Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006

FEDERAL ELECTION INTEGRITY ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - September 20, 2006)
Ms. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, while this bill is entitled the Federal Election Integrity Act, that is highly deceptive. Make no mistake; there is no integrity in trying to deny thousands of legal voters their right to vote.

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Voting is a sacred right. A right that, unfortunately, seems to be under attack in this Congress. It was barely two months ago that this body voted on a bipartisan basis to reauthorize crucial provisions of the Voting Rights Act--the nation's most effective mechanism for protecting minority voting rights. But now, as we debate H.R. 4844, that vote seems disingenuous. H.R. 4844 is a misguided approach that would add unnecessary obstacles to the voting process. Congress should not be in the practice of disenfranchising voters under the guise of protecting the right to vote. Unfortunately, that's precisely what this bill would do.

This legislation is quite likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court. As recently as yesterday, state photo ID laws were found to be unconstitutional. This is because photo ID laws disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, people with disabilities, rural voters, students, the homeless, low-income people, and frequent movers.

Many of our constituents would be at risk of not being able to vote because they do not have the time, money or ability to obtain their birth certificates or their passports. And let us not forget the hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims, now dispersed across the country, who lost their birth certificates in the muddy waters left by the hurricane.

Since consideration of this bill began, many of our colleagues have shared their own personal stories of not being able to obtain their birth certificates, or being turned away at the voting booth. The same is true for one of my constituents in Sacramento who contacted me because he was experiencing difficulty proving he was an American citizen. Adopted as a child by a member of the Armed Forces, the crux of the problem centered around the fact that his adopted father was born in the south and did not have a birth certificate. If this legislation were in place, my constituent may have been turned away at the polls. That is unforgivable and it is unconstitutional. I am sure this is just one example of many.

What's even more alarming is that we are debating a bill that seeks to rectify a problem that hardly exists. Worse still, there are already laws on the books to address this very issue. Instead of just enforcing those laws, this bill is an attempt to scare voters by inferring that illegal immigrants and others in our country are misrepresenting their identity when they go to vote. The truth is that there is little proof of that.

What we do have proof of are the problems with our voting system. That's what Congress should be working on now. We need to be working on laws that ensure that our voting machines are not susceptible to tampering and that those machines have a paper trail--laws that ensure every vote is counted.

That is what my constituents are writing to me in the hundreds about. They are distrustful of the voting machines and with good reason. Just last week, a professor at Princeton hacked into a Diebold e-voting machine. Clearly our voting machines are vulnerable to malicious attacks and potential voter fraud.

Rather than address these serious concerns before a major election, this Congress has decided to take up a bill that seeks to limit the rights of legal voters. Congress must work on ways to encourage voter participation, not create undue obstacles to vote. I urge Members to vote against this denial of voting rights.

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