Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006
FEDERAL ELECTION INTEGRITY ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - September 20, 2006)
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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Mr. Speaker, there is something we can all agree on in this Chamber and that is that only Americans get to vote, and they only get to vote once. But what we are talking about in this bill is disenfranchising many of those Americans. It is already a felony for a non-American to vote.
Now, when this bill was introduced, the committee made it part of Immigration August. We had hearings around the country, and what we found out was that the issue of so-called illegal aliens voting basically does not occur.
As the League of Women Voters has said, the voter fraud addressed by this bill is a rare problem, and the witness in New Mexico said she had never seen it in her entire professional career. And if you think about it, it makes sense. Illegal aliens are sneaking across the border for a job, not to vote.
We also got testimony that the impact of this will disproportionately affect poor people and African Americans. In fact, in a Milwaukee study, they found that 78 percent of the African American men aged 18 to 24 had no driver's license. Why? Because they are too poor to have a car and they do not have a license.
In New Mexico, we heard from Mr. Yahzee, a Navajo, who told us that the Navajos basically do not have this ID and they cannot get it either because they do not have birth certificates, they do not have electricity, they do not have phones. They do not have the document, but they are the original Americans. They were the code talkers. They are entitled to vote, but under this bill they would not be able to vote. I do not know about this poll, but I think if you ask 81 percent of Americans whether the Navajo should not be allowed to vote, they would say, well, of course not.
Now, recently there was a measure put into place to have Medicaid recipients have a photo ID, and we had to repeal that rule. And you know why? Because we would have had to see old people evicted from nursing homes because they could not come up with that photo ID. Well, I tell you, if you cannot come up with a photo ID to save your life, you are not going to be able to come up with a photo ID to vote either. That must be why the AARP is against this measure.
So why is this before us today? We have no evidence there is a problem. We have ample evidence in the testimony that this will disenfranchise many Americans.
I must say that the Republican Party is doing this throughout the United States. This is the measure to disenfranchise African Americans, Native Americans. It is wrong and we will not stand for it.
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