Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., told Newsmax on Thursday that passing the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act is "absolutely essential" for the integrity of elections in the United States.
On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and House Administration Committee held a joint hearing titled "American Confidence in Elections: The Path to Election Integrity in the District of Columbia." At the hearing, members, and witnesses highlighted how local elections suffer from a lack of election safeguards, outdated voter rolls and widespread ballot harvesting.
"We have an election system where we could dramatically enhance the integrity of our elections," Steil said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren."
"We continue to have states that refuse to use photo ID. We have the city of Washington, D.C., allowing noncitizens to vote. Imagine that — you could be a worker at the Russian Embassy and walk down and vote in our nation's capital. That's ridiculous. We need to end that."
"It's why we need to pass the ACE Act in the House to actually put forward substantive and meaningful voter integrity laws," he continued. "We have an opportunity to make sure that states are cleaning up their voter rolls. Right now far too few states are actually removing people when they pass away.
"In particular, we're giving states the tools to work with the Social Security Administration, so that when somebody passes away, they can be removed from the voter rolls. When should they be removed from the voter rolls? When you pass away, that's a darn good time to be taken off the list."
Steil said that the House hearing was held this week because the idea of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections "is so ridiculous ... people don't even believe it's true."
"The City Council and the mayor signed a law allowing noncitizens to vote in municipal elections here in the nation's capital," he said. "We need to put an end to that. It's why we wrote, in the ACE Act, we're ending the ability of noncitizens to vote in American elections.
"And, of all places, Washington, D.C., where we have countless people who work at embassies, countries that are hostile to the United States of America, who would be eligible to vote in the 2024 election," he said.
"I'm telling you, you would think that this is common sense stuff, but we had a hearing on this and the Democrats defended the fact that they believe that noncitizens should be able to vote in elections," he continued. "I'm telling you, I didn't think we were going to get the pushback we did, but they are coming.
"They want to run these elections in a way that's absolutely ridiculous ... But, time and time again, Democrats in Washington, D.C., continue to have radical positions. It's all the more reason why moving forward on election integrity bills like the ACE Act, which we're introducing in just a few weeks, is so absolutely essential to become law."
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