The House Administration and Oversight & Accountability committees held a joint hearing on D.C. elections Wednesday and the city’s attorney general didn’t like the tone of the proceedings.
Throughout the three-and-a-half-hour hearing, GOP lawmakers asked D.C. Board of Elections Executive Director Monica Evans about the value of mail-in ballots, same-day registration, noncitizen voting, and whether the District should impose a photo identification requirement for voting. The changes would be made through the American Confidence in Elections Act, legislation backed by House Republicans.
Evans countered GOP arguments saying it was her job to execute the will of the city’s elections and not offer an opinion about them and stated, generally, the District’s election processes and laws were within legal bounds. Democratic members of the committees repeatedly criticized their GOP colleagues for their lack of support for D.C. statehood, and their lethargic approach to voter suppression nationally, and questioned their commitment to democracy in light of their reluctance to probe the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Schwalb said the hearing was unnecessary and unfair to District residents.
“Today, congressional Republicans are again kicking the District of Columbia like a political football, this time to advance a nationwide agenda for voter suppression,” the attorney general said. “It is yet another example of cynical political theatre meant only to further a political agenda that has nothing to do with elections in Washington, D.C.”
Schwalb labeled the efforts of GOP lawmakers as “hypocritical” due to many in the party “decrying federal government overreach, but there is absolutely no evidence of irregularities or fraud here in local D.C. elections.”
“It is particularly outrageous that congressional Republicans would attempt to make it more difficult for Washingtonians to vote given that we are already deprived of the fundamental democratic right that all other Americans enjoy — the right to voting representation in Congress,” he said. “The solution to continued congressional interference is simple and clear: D.C. must become a state. I call on all of my counterparts in local, state, and federal government to join in the fight for Washingtonians’ basic civil rights, voting rights, and right to govern themselves.”
