Sec. 142. Statement of congressional authority; findings
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Congress finds that it has the authority to establish the terms and conditions for the administration of elections for public office in the District of Columbia— pursuant to article I, section 8, clause 17 of the Constitution of the United States, which grants Congress the exclusive power to enact legislation with respect to the seat of the government of the United States; with recognition of the Residence Act of 1790, which Congress passed pursuant to the above authority and which established the City of Washington in the District of Columbia as the seat of the government of the United States; pursuant to article I, section 8, clause 18 of the Constitution of the United States, which grants Congress the authority to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution its enumerated powers; and under other enumerated powers granted to Congress.
Congress finds the following: Voter identification requirements in the District of Columbia are some of the weakest in the country. Currently, voters in the District of Columbia are required only to provide proof of residence the first time they vote and are never asked to provide anything again. In the 2012 general election, the District of Columbia was wholly unprepared for early voters. Several polling locations featured only one or two voting machines. As a result, some voters waited in line for hours while others waited for hours only to be turned away as the polls closed.
Following the 2012 general election, the executive director of the D.C. Board of Elections testified that missteps had taken place during the election. Voters complained that some precincts were not accessible for the disabled, while poorly trained employees ran sites elsewhere in the District. In other cases, voters were provided with ballots that were not correct for their addresses, allowing them to vote in races in other wards. In the District of Columbia’s 2014 April Democratic primary, voters had to wait several hours after polls closed before receiving meaningful election returns because of problems with voting machines that led to an unusually lengthy and chaotic tabulation process.
In the aftermath of that primary, while the District of Columbia originally blamed a handful of voting machines for late election results, the executive director later clarified that the issue came from a broad computer network failure. As a result, on election night, ballots did not begin to be counted until 10:00 p.m. The executive director said on election night, polling officials never really did determine the problem... All this occurred despite record low turnout for the primary.
Before the 2014 midterm election, the executive director stated that he hoped that ballot counting would be done before midnight but could not offer any promises based on the District of Columbia’s previous history. Following the 2014 midterm election, the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor performed an audit of the election and found the following: 23 of 89 precincts visited did not have the minimum number of poll workers designated in city election procedures. In total, 168 workers did not come to work as scheduled, and others that were not trained to perform certain functions had to take on new jobs. 37 of the 89 precincts inspected featured polling places not fully accessible to disabled voters.
Some issues included missing or inoperable doorbells to alert poll workers that a wheelchair-bound voter needed assistance, as well as a lack of accessible parking spaces and entrances. 57 of the 89 precincts featured election and non-election equipment issues affecting a wide range of the Election Day technology — including paper ballot readers, electronic poll books and touch-screen voting machines. In 2016, the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor released a report titled The District of Columbia Voter File:
Compliance with Law and Best Practices , which included the following: In 2015, the Board of Elections, as required under District law, sent out written notices to 260,000 inactive voters through the U.S. Postal Service in an attempt to maintain accurate voter registration rolls. 38,179, or almost 15 percent of those postcards, were returned as undeliverable. The Office of the Auditor took a sample of thirty-three decedents who had died between January of 2011 and December of 2014.
The audit found that all of the thirty-three decedents were still on the District’s voter registration rolls. The District of Columbia is a member of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). According to ERIC, 13,651 voters were registered in the District of Columbia and another jurisdiction. The D.C. Board of Elections contacted every voter with a duplicate registration. 6,000 voters confirmed they now resided outside the District of Columbia and the other 7,651 or 56 percent of voters with a duplicate registration did not respond.
The District of Columbia allows for same-day registration and automatic voter registration. In 2018, the District of Columbia implemented an Automatic Voter Registration program through the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Now, any DMV application automatically serves as an application to register to vote or update registration records, unless the applicant affirmatively opts out of this registration option. In 2020, voting in the District of Columbia for the June primary election was fraught with problems.
Some voters waited in line for hours, and thousands of voters who requested absentee mail-in ballots never received them. As a result, the District of Columbia allowed voters that never received their absentee ballot to cast their ballots via unsecured email. During the Committee on House Administration and Committee on Oversight and Accountability joint hearing titled American Confidence in Elections: The Path to Election Integrity in the District of Columbia , witnesses called by Republicans and Democrats both agreed that casting a ballot via unsecured email raised serious security and voter identification concerns.
In 2020, the District of Columbia Board of Elections mailed every registered voter a ballot for the general election. Voters were still permitted to vote in-person. The Board mailed 421,791 ballots, and 48,018 of them were undeliverable, more than eleven percent. This is a rate more than eight times higher than the national average. Even after mailing every registered voter a ballot in the 2020 general election, the District of Columbia had lower voter turnout rates than States like Florida, Ohio, and Georgia.
In 2020, the District of Columbia reported a roughly 64 percent turnout while Florida reported 77 percent, Ohio reported roughly 74 percent, and Georgia reported 66 percent. In 2022, the District of Columbia Board of Elections mailed every registered voter a ballot for the midterm primary election. Voters were still allowed to vote in person. The Board mailed 402,323 ballots, and 65,398 ballots, or about 16 percent, were undeliverable. This is an increase of 17,380 in undeliverable ballots between the 2020 general election and the 2022 primary election.
In 2022, the District of Columbia Board of Elections mailed every registered voter a ballot for the November general election. Voters were still allowed to vote in person. The Board mailed 508,543 ballots, and 87,921 were undeliverable. The rate of undeliverable ballots mailed out for the general election in 2022 was 17 percent, an increase of about six basis points from the 2020 election. In addition, the District of Columbia mailed over 500 voters an incorrect ballot. At the time of the 2022 election, the COVID–19 pandemic was largely over, allowing voters to vote in person without issue, unlike during the 2020 election.
Despite mailing every registered voter a ballot in the 2022 midterm election, the District of Columbia had far lower voter turnout rates than States like Florida, Georgia, and Ohio. In 2022, the District of Columbia reported roughly 40 percent turnout while Florida reported 54 percent, Ohio reported 52 percent, and Georgia reported roughly 57 percent. The Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022 allows noncitizen green-card holders and illegal aliens to cast a ballot in local races, as long as the non-citizen voter is at least eighteen years of age and has resided in the District of Columbia for thirty days.
The law will take effect in 2024. Estimates as to the number of non-citizens of voting age living in the District of Columbia range from 21,000 to 42,000, potentially half of whom are illegal aliens. Even according to the low estimates, there are more than enough non-citizens of voting age living in the District of Columbia to impact election outcomes in some wards. On February 9, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives, by a vote of 260 to 162, passed H.J. Res. 24, disapproving the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022 under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act.