RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen states: “In my 25 years in Washington, DC, Rep. Rodney Davis is the best leader of the House Administration Committee. And it is a good thing, as the Committee’s work has never been more important.”
Rep. Davis understands that election law changes should be bipartisan and we need to stop partisan attacks such as claims that Russia stole the election. As Davis explains in an op-ed entitled "Pelosi’s partisanship (and misinformation) threaten America's elections":
One of the greatest threats to our election security is partisanship. Let me explain.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted something that I found concerning. Her tweet simply said, “American elections should be decided by the American people, not by the Russian Government. Retweet if you agree!”. . .
This is what we’ve been hearing for almost four years now from Democrats and from certain media outlets. It’s false. The Committee on House Administration, on which I serve as ranking member, has oversight into federal elections. This oversight allows us to review election policy and hold hearings with key election stakeholders, like our hearing last week with voting machine vendor CEOs, election administrators, and election security experts.
During our hearings, we heard what we already knew – there is no evidence that any votes were changed, nor any vote-tallying machines were hacked by any foreign agent. You read that right – Russia did not alter votes in the 2016 election.
That’s not to say that Russia did not make several attempts to interfere in our elections, but they did so by using social media as a platform. They also attempted to infiltrate centralized online voter registration databases, electronic lists kept by state, county, and local election administrators that contains voter data.
One of the worst Democrat tactics is the push for “ballot harvesting.” As Rep. Davis states:
Democrats also attempted to sneak in provisions to nationalize ballot harvesting, meaning a political operative would be able to come to your home, collect your absentee ballot, and turn it into the polling location for you. Who’s to say that operative even makes it to the polling location if they find out you’re voting against someone they support? We saw this occur in North Carolina’s 9th District when a political operative illegally harvested ballots to help rig an election, which resulted in the state calling for a new election. Not only is ballot harvesting a voting process that’s ripe for fraud, but it’s also pointless if an absentee ballot already has prepaid postage.
Though some additional absentee voting may be needed to respond to the unique challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, overly broad vote by mail is a bad idea. California’s mostly vote by mail election on Super Tuesday was a disaster As Rep. Davis noted:
"Today, we learned that California’s push for a vote-by-mail system did not decrease in-person wait times for voters, even though many California voters were automatically mailed a ballot. Californians also have the option to participate in ballot harvesting, where volunteers pick up a ballot from the voter's home, then deposit those ballots to an election authority. Despite these methods that were designed to create greater access to voting, California citizens still reported hour-long wait times to cast a ballot - with lines so long that Bernie Sanders' campaign filed an emergency injunction to keep polls open an extra 2 hours." Davis said, "Many voters still want to participate in in-person voting, and we need to ensure streamlined processes are provided by administrators on the front end, like maintaining efficient voter rolls and extensive training of poll workers, to reduce long lines and guarantee secure and efficient voting."
Thank you, Rep. Davis, for your leadership and fighting for fair elections for all. RNLA will be hosting a Zoom meeting with Rep. Davis as a guest this Friday at 1 p.m. More details here.