Original Ballots must have a physical form that allows voting choices to be examined and properly interpreted by the naked eye.
Ballots must have features designed to prevent counterfeiting.
An auditable system for tracking the status of all ballots must be implemented and maintained in the State of origin. The total number of printed ballots must equal the sum of the number of cast ballots, spoiled ballots, and unvoted ballots.
Ballot tabulation must be conducted by two independent and unrelated systems. The difference in totals between the two systems must be less than one half the margin of victory or 0.1% of the vote total, whichever is less. Tabulating machines must only tabulate and not modify ballots in any way, or be connected to the internet.
Before the results of an election can be certified, the ballot counts must be reconciled with the voter records. The margin of uncertainty must be less than one half the margin of victory or 0.1% of the vote total, whichever is less.
Lists of qualified electors must be purged of unqualified persons 180 days before an election. Voter Rolls should be vetted and compared with available government records to identify duplicate or ineligible registrations.
Laws and regulations governing an election may not be changed for 180 days prior to that election.
All election records should be retained and preserved for not less than 22 months.
Voter identification for provisional ballots must be verified, with information provided by the voter, prior to that ballot being counted.REGARDING JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS TO COUNT ELECTORAL BALLOTS
HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Ms. Jackson Lee. Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the House Committees on the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committee; Ranking Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, and the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus, I rise today to offer thoughts and reflections on the congressional responsibility to bear witness to the counting of electoral votes to determine formally the persons elected President and Vice President of the United States and on the campaign and election that brought us to this day.
The outcome of that count is not in doubt and has not been since November 7, 2020, when it became clear that Democratic candidates Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris had won the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona to become the 46th President and 59th Vice-President of the United States, earning 306 electoral votes, 36 more than the 270 needed for election.
The results in those states, as well as every other state that chose presidential electors on November 3, 2020, has been certified and wherever necessary upheld against legal challenge by the courts in the affected states.
On December 14, 2020, presidential electors met in their respective state capitols to cast their votes for President and Vice-President, with the documentary and video evidence clearly demonstrating that the Biden/Harris ticket was the clear and unassailable choice of the Electoral College.
The counting of the electors’ ballot today will ratify the outcome that has been foretold for months and only those with the most conspiratorial mindset and the willing suspension of disbelief, like the current occupant of the White House and his band of acolytes consisting of 140 Members of the House and 12 U.S. senators, could persist in the delusion that the vox populi, the voice of the people, has not spoken clearly and definitively.
Madam Speaker, the Biden/Harris ticket won the national popular vote going away, by more than 7 million votes, 81.3 million to 74.2 million.
Their victory was so sweeping that it won the majority of states, including five states won four years ago by the loser, including Georgia, which a Democratic candidate had not won since 1992, and Arizona, which last voted Democratic in 1996.
This day is not like its counterpart of 2001, when the determination of the winner hung in the balance on the outcome of the contest in Florida, where 537 votes out of 5.82 million votes cast separated the candidates and the U.S. Supreme Court halted the vote recount ordered by the Supreme Court of Florida, thus leaving reasonable persons to question who was the true winner of that state’s decisive 25 electoral votes.
This day is not like 2005, where the outcome hinged on the 18 electoral votes of Ohio, and where state officials refused to count provisional ballots and engaged in other tactics alleged to be taken to suppress the votes of racial minorities.
And certainly this day is not like 2017, when Congress met to count the electoral votes cast in the state’s first American presidential election in which the U.S. Intelligence Community had confirmed was the subject of cyberattacks and other subversive activities of entities allied with the Government of Russia that were undertaken for the express purpose of influencing the outcome to secure the election of its preferred candidate, Donald Trump, who it should be added, openly invited a hostile foreign power to launch cyberattacks against his political opponent.
Another important distinction involving the 2016 election is that it was the first presidential election held since the Supreme Court issued the notorious decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which neutered the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act and adversely affected the ability of hundreds of thousands of persons to cast a ballot and have their vote counted.
In contrast, American voters in 2020 were forewarned and forearmed against Russian interference, propaganda, and disinformation and with no backing but with the active resistance of the Chief Executive, the governments of the United States and the individual states took active measures to ensure the security and integrity of election systems against fraud and undue interference.
This effort was so successful that the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee, consisting of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), U.S. Election Assistance Commission, National Association of Secretaries of State, and the National Association of State Election Directors, issued the following statement on November 12, 2020:
The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.
When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
Even United States Attorney General William P. Barr, the most politically biased person, to hold that office, publicly acknowledged that although U.S. attorneys and FBI agents had followed up on specific complaints and information they had received, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
Under the laws of every state, the Trump Campaign was entitled to bring legal challenges to the administration of the election in any state where it felt aggrieved, and it took ample advantage of these opportunities, bringing scores of lawsuits alleging “wide-spread fraud,” requesting recounts, or demanding that votes cast for the Democratic candidate be thrown out or simply not counted.
These legal challenges were met with colossal failure, the Trump Campaign suffering stinging defeats in more than 65 cases; its lone success came in Pennsylvania where a court granted its request to allow monitors to observe ballot tabulation from a distance of six rather than 10 feet away .
Which brings us to this day, when die-hard followers of the current occupant of the White House, a group I call the “Lost Cause Caucus,” now seek to revive and press forward with the discredited and rejected claims of the Trump Campaign that the elections in the states that were key to bringing about his resounding defeat were “rigged” or “fraudulent” or the result of some vague conspiracy by the “Deep State.”
Madam Speaker, this is utter nonsense; which I show by examining the challenge to the electors from Pennsylvania, where like Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, Trump pitched his flag and made his grand stand.
Over 6.9 million Pennsylvanians voted in that election, with over 2.6 million of those voters using mail-in or absentee ballots; Vice President Biden received 3,459,923 votes, easily beating Trump, by 81,660 votes.
Vice-President Biden’s vote margin was twice as large as was Trump’s when he won the state in an upset in 2016.
Madam Speaker, it is not difficult to understand why so many Pennsylvanians voted in 2019, and by mail in unprecedented numbers.
In 2019, with broad and bipartisan support, the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted Act 77 of 2019, which made several important updates and improvements to Pennsylvania’s Election Code, Act of Oct. 31, 2019 (P.L. 552, No. 77), 2019 Pa. Legis. Serv. 2019–77 (S.B. 421) (West) (“Act 77”).
Among these were provisions that, for the first time, offered the option of mail-in voting to
