🔰Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's Question Line at Hearing on Voter Suppression in Minority Communities

This is the gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, is recognized for five minutes. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you to all of our witnesses here today testifying on such a profoundly important issue. I think that one of the largest threats that we face in our country today is the unmitigated assault on our democracy, and that starts with the assault on particularly African American and black voters in our country. Last year, this committee launched investigations into state actions that limit the ability of Americans to vote, including in the state of Georgia. I want to talk about Georgia. The Georgia Secretary of State reportedly purged more than half a million voters from the rolls, blocked thousands of new registrations and closed polling places, all while he was a candidate for governor. The documents that this committee received confirmed many of those efforts, and for example, in September 2017, the press reported that efforts to challenge voter registrations, quote, may have violated federal law. In fact, Mr. Kemp, that candidate, responded to this by congratulating his campaign team, writing, quote, good work. This story is so complex, folks will not make it all the way through it. Ms. Johnson Blanco, your organization has been active in Georgia. What is your view of the voter roll purges in that state? Yes, we've been very active in Georgia. Georgia keeps us very busy and fighting back against voting discrimination. And to answer your question, that one of the things that Georgia did that I think speaks to the impact of the purges are related to is that with the exact match law that Georgia had, it points to how something that the Supreme Court, when it found the Voting Rights Act constitutional pointed to, which is the repeated efforts at suppression. The exact match law was first a procedure by the Secretary of State, and when we won the litigation against that, the legislature passed it into law. And then we had to bring two more lawsuits to fight against it. And now we have a third lawsuit because the exact match law still applies to those who are naturalized citizens. So they're not only aggressively removing voters from the rolls, but also preventing voters from getting on the rolls. I'm curious, what do you think of a top election officer in the state of Georgia congratulating his team over these reports? It's, you know, I'm speechless, right? Because, I mean, that's one of the things that we confront, where we have those who are, when those who are charged with carrying out our voting laws are also running for office and abusing that, that's a problem. And so it's just out in the open we have here. In fact, it's so out in the open that this committee's investigation also shows that as Georgia Secretary of State, Mr. Kemp, he worked with the White House and the Kansas Secretary of State, Chris Kobach, with noted ties to white supremacist organizations and individuals, financial ties and organizational ties. They serve together to produce and promote the president's failed voter fraud commission. So let's talk about this voter fraud. The president's allegation that there's mass fraud in the United States. They put together a commission and it was forced to disband because they had so little evidence. Their own commission had to be disbanded. So Ms. John Simblanco, what is the connection between the false claims of voter fraud pushed by this administration and his allies and the voter suppression efforts in Georgia and elsewhere that you've observed? I think the false narrative of voter fraud is used to pass laws that what happened in effect that keep eligible voters from being able to vote. And these laws disproportionately impact minority voters. Courts time and time again, in striking down the laws, show that they disproportionately impact minority voters. And in fact, the Fourth Circuit, in striking down North Carolina's voter ID law, we all know that it said it was targeted with surgical precision at minority voters. But the court also said it imposes cures for problems that don't exist. And if I may, how are all of these efforts that we're seeing today any different from what we fought against in the civil rights movement several decades ago? I think we're seeing an updated version of what we fought against. One of the things that was really striking for me when I was working on the record that did show voter discrimination when the Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act is the focus on the implementation. We had a commission in the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act who was a congressman from Alabama who had to take a literacy test. His literacy test was who was the first president of the United States. That was not the same test that was applied to African Americans, as you heard Ms. Nass say. And so we have laws that are seemingly neutral on their face, but in their implementation, the courts have shown again and again, including the Wisconsin voter ID law, that they disproportionately impact minority voters. Thank you very much. The lady yields back and without objection, the statement of