Federal Election Integrity Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I'm sorry that after the wonderful bipartisanship on the last vote today I have to rise in opposition to H.R. 512.

When I heard the gentlelady talking about the analogy to a football referee having a conflict with a team playing, I was reminded of the game I saw this last weekend where unfortunately my alma mater, Notre Dame, didn't do too well against a Pac-10 team with Pac-10 referees. As a matter of fact, there was one case where it was clear that the fullback for Stanford didn't even come close to making a first down, and yet with some myopic vision, they were given a first down. But I would not suggest there was a conflict there. The way we played, we would have lost anyway.

I would just say that we should proceed with great caution before depriving any individual State official or non-State official of their full rights as citizens to participate in the electoral process. Unfortunately, I feel the majority has preceded with H.R. 512 without adequate justification. The bill does prohibit the chief State election administrator from taking an active role in a political campaign of any Federal office.

And while this bill places significant restrictions on the ability of secretaries of State to participate in the political process, it does so, in my judgment, without producing any justification why such a drastic action is warranted. Restricting secretaries of State from their First Amendment right to speak without any history of abuse is a dangerous precedent this House should not undertake.

I notice that in the bill before us, we have exceptions. That is, if the secretary of State is himself or herself running for Federal office, they continue to be the secretary of State and the chief election officer. The analogy that was drawn between this situation and a Federal judge is an inept analogy because, I believe, under the canons of ethics a Federal judge cannot run for another Federal office while still occupying the position of Federal judge. Also, if an immediate family member is running for Federal office, the election officer of the State is not prohibited.

It would seem to me that if you are going to argue for this bill on the basis of a conflict of interest, why do you exempt the greatest conflict of interest that there would be? That is, if the election officer is running for a Federal office, she is allowed to do so and continue to be the chief election officer. If one of her immediate family members is running, she--or he--is allowed to continue to participate fully in all of that election process.

Now, if, in fact, the concern of the majority is that there is a conflict of interest, it is interesting that what most people would consider to be the greatest example of a conflict of interest is not covered here. Now I will listen to the majority as they tell us why that happens. Perhaps it is what we call that difficult truth. The Constitution might come into play here. But I would just wonder why, if they are going to say this is absolutely necessary and that any of us vote against it must want conflicts of interest, must wish that we have this cloud over our elections to exist, why those situations which would seem to be the greatest opportunity for that concern are specifically exempted under the terms of this bill.

We can all agree that if someone is breaking the law and abusing their power to try to skew elections, they should be prosecuted accordingly. If, for instance, someone is standing outside a polling place with a billy club in his hand and is making threatening gestures to people as they come before him, have to pass by him to vote, and this person has had a record of saying that ``crackers' babies ought to be killed'' and stands on the street corner condemning racially mixed couples, but yet we have a Justice Department which says that that doesn't violate any laws.

Maybe I would be a little more concerned about the bill before us if I found any evidence whatsoever of the other side being concerned about the New Black Panther Party standing there all dressed in black with a billy club as people come forward, and one of the two individuals is known as someone who has made those kinds of threats against somebody else merely because they are of another race.

Now if we want to bring that forward, I think we could get a strong vote of support here. But we can't even get a hearing on that. We haven't heard a thing from our Judiciary Committee. It's more important to bring Steve Colbert to testify before our committee, for him to remain in character. Maybe we ought to bring one of those New Black Panthers to our committee and have him in character, as he was on the day of election. Maybe then we would be getting down to our concern for equal treatment of each and every voter in America.

But when you have a Justice Department which decides they are not going to treat people equally based on their race, as was testified to last week, last Friday at the same time on the same day as Mr. Colbert was gracing us with his presence in our Judiciary Committee, and where we had this rush, this tremendous rush of cameras to cover him, yet we have very little coverage of the amazingly cogent testimony about terrible decisions that were made in the Justice Department in the voting rights section of the Civil Rights Division. That ought to be what we take our time discussing here.

I'm not trying to denigrate the gentlelady's efforts here. I understand her sincerity in this bill. We have a dispute over whether this bill is the proper response to the situation she sees. But I find it very, very interesting that we can find time to bring comedians to Washington, D.C., to testify before committees, but we can't find the time with the committees of jurisdiction to investigate what appears to be an absolute disgrace with respect to the protection of individuals.

I would just ask this question: If instead of the New Black Panther Party you had had there, you had had the New Klux Klan party dressed in white robes with billy clubs, standing in front of a voting place with both blacks and whites coming in, whether we would not have raised our voices in protest against that and demanded that the full extent of the law be brought against those people.

But, no, we find ourselves too busy doing other things, too busy doing other things, bringing comedians to Washington, DC and forgetting about something taking place at that exact moment, where a career attorney in the Justice Department, who has been banished to some hinterland--I don't mean to say that. That might be someone's State that someone here represents. I apologize--who has been sent a way from main Justice and the basic responsibility he has had for protecting the rights of citizens and their votes, where he has testified, and yet we couldn't spend the time to pay attention to him, nor have we scheduled any hearings whatsoever in this Congress. Something is wrong.

So I don't in any way suggest the gentlelady had anything to do with that or that this bill interferes with it. I am trying to show the contrast of what I happen to think is an immediate problem, as opposed to the potential problem that the gentlelady here has spoken about.

It is an immediate problem when you have a situation with people with billy clubs standing in front of a voting poll with a reputation for having talked about the fact that people need to kill babies for the very reason that they happen to be of another race. That ought to outrage Americans. It ought to outrage every one of us here, and it ought to outrage everybody at the Justice Department, but thus far it has not.

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