Constitution Caucus

Floor Speech

CONSTITUTION CAUCUS -- (House of Representatives - September 27, 2007)

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Ms. FOXX. Thank you so much. I appreciate the leadership that the three of you have given to this issue tonight and appreciate the opportunity to be involved with this discussion. I'm so pleased to be a part of the Constitution Caucus and am glad that we have the opportunities that we have to bring up issues as they relate to the Constitution and to provide an alternative. And we've had lots and lots of opportunities in this session of the Congress so far.

I appreciate your mentioning voting rights for the citizens of D.C. I think that that bill having passed out of the House has to be one of the worst things that's happened in this House in a long time because it's so clearly unconstitutional. And I think, again, that it's up to us constantly to be reminding the people of this country and the people of this body that we take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that is our primary responsibility. And when Members of this House don't follow their oath, then it's important for us to talk about it.

I am opposed to H.R. 811 for many reasons. I support its main goal, which is to create a paper trail. I think having a verifiable record of how a person voted is important. But this bill is extraordinarily flawed. Number one, it creates several new mandates on States before the 2008 election. It forces States to meet totally unrealistic time lines that cannot be met. It's an example, again, I think, of the arrogance of this body in this session. I think that one of the things the Framers of the Constitution and the Founders of this country feared so much was too much control by the Federal Government.

And what we are seeing happening in this session of the Congress is more and more control being taken over by the Federal Government, and more and more decisions being pushed into Washington, as opposed to being pushed into the State, or being left at the State and local levels. And my colleagues have talked a little bit about that as it relates to different States have given some historical background on how things have been done in the past. But I think, again, it's important that we acknowledge that our government governs best that governs least. And the more decisions that we leave at the local and State levels, the better off this country's going to be. And if we know that, we know by numbers too. We don't even have to try to prove it from a philosophical level.

Twenty-seven States, including North Carolina, that I represent, have already implemented their own paper trail system, and another 13 are currently considering legislation. We should allow the States to do this and do it the way they need to be doing it. I have heard nothing but negative comments about this bill. Nobody has contacted me asking me to support it. And many groups that have a vested interest in this issue have contacted us. Most of us have been contacted by the Election Technology Council, and they've said that it would take 54 months for proper research development and implementation on machinery requirements to get this bill into effect, and there's only going to be 15 months.

We've had problems since 2000 in terms of verifying various elections in this country. This bill would be a nightmare if it were to pass, because the local election boards would have great difficulty with implementing it, and it would call into question all kinds of elections, I fear, and create chaos at the local level. We don't need that. The feeling of the American people right now toward Congress is, their opinion of us is the lowest it's ever been. And we don't need to be doing things to give them an even lower opinion of ourselves. What we need to do is get out of the way and not engage ourselves in activities that we have no business being engaged in. This is not something that we need to do from a point of view of the Constitution. It is something that should be left at the local level. It is not something that we need to do in terms of financing. It's going to be a very, very expensive proposition. We do not need to be adding to the deficit. We don't need to be doing any more Federal spending than is absolutely necessary. And we need to show the American people that we don't think that we should be running everything out of the District of Columbia when we have State and local officials perfectly capable, much more capable than we are to do this. We don't need to take away the ability of the locals to determine their needs.

And, again, I want to thank my colleagues for starting this conversation here tonight and getting it going to explain to people why many of us are concerned about H.R. 811. Even though we want verifiable evidence of a person's vote, this is not the right way to go, and we need to look for alternatives to this.

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