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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding, and I appreciate the privilege to address you here on the floor of the House with regard to integrity in the ballot system.
I will say as a compliment to Mr. Holt, he and I have had a number of conversations about integrity in the electoral process. We share concern that the electoral process here in America have the highest level of integrity. I, for one, actually sat in my chair for all but a couple of 37 days following the election of the year 2000 watching television, scooting around and surfing the Internet, chasing down the rabbit trails. I was on the telephone. At the time I was the chairman of the Senate State Government Committee in Iowa, and I didn't want Iowa to become a Florida.
As I educated myself, it was a crash course in the electoral process. I found fraud in elections in a number of States, at least solid newspaper and journalistic reports of fraud, and I became convinced that it was scattered throughout this country. And the pattern is hard to follow, but the conclusion I drew was if this country ever loses its faith in our electoral system, this constitutional republic will collapse due to a lack of faith of the people.
So integrity in the electoral process is important. I would rather lose an election than lose the integrity of the electoral process.
I come to this floor today to oppose this bill, however, because this is Tax Day, 2008, election year 2008, and we are watching the Presidential debates unfold and soon we will hear the congressional debates light up. To try to jump on this horse in the middle of this fast current of stream that we have racing toward an election, I think is a bridge too far for us to be able to get there without further damaging the integrity, rather than improving it.
I would urge this House to step back, take a look, take a deep breath, and come together with some legislation that would provide, of course, for a paper audit trail, which I support, but one that does so in a reasoned fashion, not in the middle of an election year, not something that's designed to patch some of the flaws that came with the Help America Vote Act, but something that's well thought out, something that's bipartisan, something that's reasoned, something that's cautious, and something that will preserve the integrity of the electoral system that we have. And that's why I come to the floor, Mr. Speaker, for that purpose.
And I support the position taken by the ranking member from Michigan and my colleagues, although I intend to continue to work with Mr. Holt. Another point that I would make is that we do have a disagreement in our viewpoint, and that is that I think we should, at the very last resort, impose obligations on the States. The States have run this electoral process. The Federal Government has a minimal involvement.
And so my view is, if the States have integrity, we have to be very careful because the voters within the States will be determining the next leader in the free world. I think the number was just 527 votes in Florida made the difference on who the leader of the free world was in the year 2000. That integrity is important. We must hold it together.
But I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill at this time.
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