On Monday (July 10), House Republicans unveiled a bill seeking to protect election integrity nationwide while warning Americans to beware of potential Democratic deceitfulness around the bill.
Five GOP members of the Committee on House Administration (CHA) hosted a press conference at the renowned Marietta Diner near Atlanta, Georgia, to announce the American Confidence In Elections (ACE) Act, which they say will provide states with the resources they need to safeguard the integrity of their elections and restore voters’ confidence in the electoral process.
The bill also requires a photo ID to vote in federal elections, prohibits non-citizens, requires voter rolls to be maintained annually, and prohibits mailing unprocessed ballots to unprocessed rolls.
Republican Rep. Bryan Steil (Wis.), Chairman of the Committee chairman relayed that the ACE act would make it “easy to vote and hard to cheat,” giving states access to federal resources and ensuring they’re able to do things as “simple” as removing voters who’ve died from voters roles.
Steil described the act as a “commonsense legislation” that every American could “get behind.”
Steil sat down with co-sponsors from the committee, including members representing the district that includes Marietta, as well as others from Oklahoma, Florida, and Ohio, who echoed Steil’s sentiments on the bill’s importance and highlighted what their states had already done to fight voter fraud.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who represented the district where the Marietta is located, suggested the bill would incentivize states passing legislation similar to S.B. 202, a law Georgia passed in 2021.
However, the bill’s passage ignited a firestorm of criticism by Democrats, who called it “racist,” “voter-suppressive,” and “Jim Crow-2.0.”
Steil did not mince words when asked if the committee expects any opposition from Democrats following the debunked “voter suppression” narrative surrounding Georgia’s bill after the state’s record-breaking turnout for the 2022 midterms.
Instead, Steil highlighted that he didn’t “doubt that the left is going to attempt to attack, to mislead, to disguise the work that we’re doing [with voter legislation],” adding that it was vital that open hearings are held in Atlanta, Georgia and “across the country” not just Washington, D.C., “so people have the opportunity to read” and review the legislation.
