Moved to washington in 1995. I started working in television news. The went out and sat in on hearings. I was walking up and down and seeing all these government buildings and thought, what do these people do all day . I felt the more i engaged in government, the more conservative i became. I felt government was not doing a whole lot. I think government should be there for the poor. I think it should be there as a framework for how we conduct business and a structure for society. When you read the constitution, that is what the Founding Fathers had in mind, i believe. I do not think government is there to prop us all up, because then there would not be a safety net left for the people in life who really need it. The disabled, people who fall on hard times and need a little help along the way, but i feel as though government now has grown too much beyond what our Founding Fathers wanted it to be. By the people, for the people. It is a framework, in my opinion, for how we live our life a
I think alicia raises two important points. The first is the last, the one, the unintended consequences of changes in election procedures. We almost always get what we think were going to get but then theres always Something Else that follows on. And one is, the behavior of voters with an expectation, particularly in an era of egovernment. Why shouldnt my records and ballots be available where ever i choose to go . The second thing, and military installations if you want to improve the child halls, the general always makes the food better. One of the things i think is interesting with Election Officials is how many of us vote on election day. How many of us experience that line, that q. And the answer is, most of us vote absentee because of that responsibility. So one of the things ive tried to do over the years is ideal in advance to ago and i stand in line and i learned a lot. I learnt a lot by listening to people, but that may be something as a professional goal for each of us is ex
Allow their employees to be able to help out as poll workers on election day and then to have sufficient training. Your report also talked about importance of access the information in languages other than english, including outlets in other languages, outreach to nonenglish media outlets, bilingual poll workers. I know weve made some effort in minnesota with voters with asian and Pacific Islander groups, and why our efforts so important . Want to stress, that the broader theme that the commission struck, and i think its well within its charge, is improving the Voter Experience for language minority voters to go to the polls and to find that theres nobody there to help them who can speak the language successfully. It is simply not consistent with our been the kind of experience to all of our voters, that all of our voters deserve. And as we pointed out, there is support by federal law, this congress has tendered to these voters and the statutes that provide for this protection are not
Eeon Homeland Security will be in order. Without objection the chair is authorized todeclare the committee in recess at any point. Good morning. Free and Fair Elections are the bedrock of our democracy. R as we learned just over 18 months ago democracy is not something we can take for granted. We must defend it fiercely and protect the institutions that uphold it. So i commend chairman thompson for allowing this important hearing on the threats to our election. But i would first eligible to vote in 2006 election offices across the country were in the process of facing infrastructure to defend against the greatest threat to elections in recent history, the notorious hanging chad. Social media was new and largely a way for Young College kids to connect. Our adversaries have not figured out how to weapon eyes are freedom of speech or technological ingenuity. Notion that a large crowd would descend upon the capital, disrupt the peaceful transfer of power would have been beyond anyones wild
National counsel to the romney for president campaigns and i wont get into it, but he has had a profound effect in our electoral system. You changed america, not in a way that i liked but amazing with what you did. And we would ask each of our witnesses to limit their statements to five minutes and additional statements. Without objection, additional remarks, without objection, will be read into the record. Senator schumer, senator roberts, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity testifying today with my cochair. We discussed in advance how we would organize it so im going to open with some general considerations identified in the report that we asked our readers to keep in mind as we laid out our recommendations and the best practices we identified. And then im going to illustrate the approach we took by talking about the signature issue, the issue most associated with the commission and that is the problem of long lines at the polls. There are a number of other issues