Submission of Proposed Statutory Changes under Title 52 from NCEIT
(Recommendations in bold red below)
Below are the common names and the subjects of each statute, and questions that election integrity leaders should consider and answer. You can click the links to go through the statutes to each section.
Chapter 201: Voting accessibility and the handicapped
Chapter 203: UOCAVA (Uniformed Overseas and Civilians Absentee Voting Act)
· What are your suggestions regarding improving the voting process for deployed military personnel and their families, including strengthening the integrity of the process?
**Allow states the discretion to require that all UOCAVA-authorized ballots be received by no later than the time for poll closure on the date of each federal election.
**Require all UOCAVA voters to provide an image of their active U.S. passport biographic data page or passport card as a requirement to register as a U.S. voter while living or working abroad. Expired passports or passport cards should no longer be valid for requesting an absentee ballot or for electronic voting purposes.
**Allow states to make public disclosure of the list of all UOCAVA-authorized registrants. Rewrite paragraph (e) (6) (B) to read: “(B)Privacy protections.
To the extent practicable, the procedures established under subsection (a)(6) shall ensure that each state’s statutorily protected personal information about the absent uniformed services voter or overseas voter who requests or is sent a voter registration application or absentee ballot application under such subsection is protected throughout the process of making such request or being sent such application.”
· What are your suggestions regarding improving the voting process for US citizens (civilians) who live outside the United States, including strengthening the integrity of overseas civilians voting in US elections?
**Clarify that the overseas civilian registrant is required to establish an official legal address in a territorial jurisdiction of the United States; and that the official legal address must be the most recent residential address for that registrant prior to departing the United States, or the official legal address of the registrant’s immediate family. Proof of the registrant’s official legal address in the United States may be required to fulfill state mandated UOCAVA voting authorization.
Chapter 205: NVRA (National Voter Registration Act)
· What are your suggestions regarding improving the voter registration system under the NVRA, including ensuring that only US citizens register to vote, issues re DMV, registration of noncitizens by DMV, voter ID for registration and voting, types of IDs that verify citizenship, use of drivers license data to NGOs, etc?
**Establish a statutory requirement that all registered voters (including those already on state voter lists) must provide proof of U.S. citizenship to the local board of elections on or before November 3, 2026 in order to vote in any future federal election.
· What are your suggestions regarding improving the list maintenance provisions of NVRA, including making certain that noncitizens are not on the voter rolls, and other key issues of list maintenance, such as blackout periods, removal of void registrations, streamlining / updating removals of bad registrations, etc.?
**Require all states modify their federal Voter Registration form to include the following disclaimer in the affidavit at the bottom of the page near the signature, “I certify the above address is my legal residence for voting purposes and I hereby revoke all prior registrations in this or any other state in which I may be registered to vote.”
** Authorize state and county boards of election to accept and take action on citizen-submitted evidence of invalid voter registration entries on the state voter list, so long as the methods and procedures for submission are uniformly administered and do not violate other provisions of the NVRA.
**Require that states perform, at least semi-annually, a review of the statewide voter list and that all ineligible registrants are removed. Allows states to use USPS change of address directory as indication of an address change that triggers correspondence from an election board to ascertain possible changes in residential address for voting purposes. Authorize states to remove registrants who have not voted for two consecutive federal elections and who have failed to respond to written or electronic correspondence from the board of elections in that jurisdiction after a period of 90 days.
**Clarify that the 90-day blackout period immediately preceding each election is only for routine, systematic voter list maintenance. This blackout period does not exclude registrant removal for reasons of death, felony conviction, determination of non-citizen status, elimination of a duplicate registration, or other disqualifying criterion for an individual registrant that may be discovered during the blackout period.
Chapter 207: Federal Election Records
· What records should be included in this chapter of Title 52 to strengthen the integrity of every state’s elections?
**Chapter 207 does not enumerate the election records required for 22 month retention. All records should be retained a minimum of 24 months. The specific records for retention should be enumerated. They should include but not be limited to: Cast Vote Records (CVRs) from each tabulation machine (retained for a period of 24 months). Voted ballots of all types (retained for 24 months). Rejected or disqualified voted ballots (retain for 24 months). Poll books or E-Poll Books in digital format (retained for 24 months). Poll tapes or other artifacts printed from tabulation machines (retained for 24 months). Transmittal documents (including ballot envelopes and affidavits) used by voters to receive a ballot for an election (retained for 24 months). Proof of citizenship documents (imaged and retained for each voter list registrant). Proof of address for each registrant (imaged and retained for each voter list registrant). Tabulation Machine configuration logs and transaction logs (retained for 24 months). Voted lists from each election (24 months). Official election certification logs for each jusrisdiction (retained for 24 months). Official reports and internal working documents for each election board (retain for 24 months). Voter History files (Updated after each election and retained permanently by the state). Voter Registration Lists (Updated at least monthly and retained permanently with change logs).
· What suggestions do you have regarding private right of action to obtain the election records, access to and costs of election records, and suggested punishments and penalties for deletion, destruction, denial of access to election records?
Chapter 209: HAVA (Help America Vote Act)
· What suggestions do you have on the following subjects:
o Voting technology:
§ Standards – voluntary vs mandatory
§ Prohibition- should certain voting systems be banned, such as touchscreen, ballot marking devices, QR codes, etc.
§ certification process for voting equipment
§ citizen oversight of technology
§ testing of voting systems pre-election
§ standards for software
§ security measures for voting technology
§ Non-technology / manual verification of technological procedures
**Require EAC to prepare a federal standards document that prescribes the voter registration business application, system edits and procedural controls for state Moter Vehicle departments to employ in registering voters and verifying their citizenship status and identity. This standards document should be as detailed and enforceable as in the many standards documents currently being used to define federal systems and procedures for state Child Support Enforcement, WIC, Child Care, Adoption & Foster Care, etc. Empower EAC to inspect and monitor compliance with the federal Voter Registration standards document.
**Require EAC to prepare and administer a federal standards document that prescribes a federally compliant statewide election management system, to include system edits and procedural controls for state election boards to use in managing voter registration and all aspects of information management and reporting across the election enterprise for the state. Provide federal funding assistance for states who agree to implement a compliant election management system within two years. Fund and staff EAC to oversee the program and empower EAC to inspect and certify state systems for compliance. (Require that the election management system be capable of compiling and reporting all statewide election results within 12 hours of poll closure.)
**Clearly establish in the next edition of Voluntary Voter System Guidelines (VVSG) for election tabulation machines the requirement for processing hand-marked paper ballots and adjudicating those ballots that are unreadable or improperly marked.
**Clearly establish in the next edition of VVSG the requirement to produce in .csv or other common format all cast vote records (CVRs) that were transacted on that tabulator, and to scramble the CVRs in batches for voter de-identification purposes.
**Establish a standard for election technology transparency that requires, at minimum, public or partisan access and participation in logic and accuracy testing of election machines, supervised poll observer access to election machines during testing and during all election operations, and a federal rule for each state to require third party escrow of the source code for all software and firmware that runs on election machines (subject to supervised annual inspection by state election authorities).
** Require that states conduct Logic & Accuracy (L&A) testing of all electronic election equipment certified for use in that state, prior to its use in each election. Further require each election jurisdiction to prepare test scripts and ballots for L&A Testing that rigorously and thoroughly evaluates the equipment’s readiness for use in the next scheduled election.
**Establish a future VVSG requirement that election machine tabulation must be completed without connection to a data sharing network and that the machine is not equipped with modems or similar devices for data sharing purposes, aside from standard media drives from which election tabulation results and other records may be electronically retrieved at the culmination of an election.
** Under VVSG provisions- Prohibit use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems that fail auditability under HAVA Title III due to QR code encoded formats.
o EAC – structure and citizen involvement, primacy in elections, eliminate CISA role in elections,
**Clearly establish the EAC is responsible for prescribing and administering election security measures. Staff and fund EAC to perform monitoring of election operations, eliminating CISA and its affiliated agencies and non-profits from all election-related roles other than intrusion detection and prevention at the national level.
o Verification of voter applications, identity, residency and citizenship
**Require all voters provide proof of citizenship. Require states to track each registrant’s citizenship status verification on the state’s voter registration list no later than November 1, 2025. Do not grandfather this requirement for pre-existing registrants. Require all existing registrants to provide proof of citizenship status as well as the HAVA-required Driver’s License number or SSN-4 as a precondition of voting in the November 3, 2026 federal election.
o Citizenship data accessibility for election officials to compare to voter rolls
§ DMVs at state level
**Require that state motor vehicle agencies share citizenship status, name, birthdate and driver’s license / SSN-4 data with their state election officials for list maintenance purposes.
§ Other interstate databases
§ Federal databases available and requirements for use / verification of citizenship status
**Require that DHS make the SAVE database available to each state’s election officials for purposes of name and birthdate data matching look-up of legal non-citizens.
o Other election administration issues
§ Registration of voters without their consent
§ Sending ballots to voters without their consent
§ Deadline for return of ballots
**Allow states to require UOCAVA-authorized ballots be returned no later than closure of the polls in each statewide election.
§ USPS issues and proposed solutions
§ Use of all-mail voting
**Require each state to provide a process for secure, in-person voting in all federal elections.
§ Chain of custody of ballots
§ Transparency / citizen observers
§ Parity of poll workers and officials between political parties
§ Certification of election results – standards
§ Post-election audits- standards
**Require EAC to establish best practices to be followed by the respective states in completing audits of their voter registration lists, their election procedures, their election machines and technology, and their election results. These audit best practices should be published by August 2025 and updated at least annually. State audits should be conducted at least biennially by an agency of the state independent of the election board and staff with the results made public within 30 days following the audit.
§ other
What other federal statutes provide standards and guidelines for development of technology in the non-election context, that might be useful for establishing election, voting, technology and administration standards?
**The original Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) was Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-347 (Title III); December 17, 2002). It was later updated in the E-Government Act of 2002. Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (Public Law 113-283; December 18, 2014). A serious re-look of FISMA is necessary to separate CISA from the ability to intrude and influence future elections. CISA ought only to have authority to monitor and report on cybersecurity threats and intrusions that are election related. DHS and CISA must be kept outside the firewalls of election operations.
Other thoughts, ideas, suggestions to strengthen election integrity by modernizing and upgrading federal law?
PLEASE RETURN YOUR RESPONSE TO THESE QUESTIONS NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, NOV. 15, 2024 TO: MEGAN@ONLYCITIZENSVOTECOALITION.COM – INCLUDE YOUR NAME, EMAIL, STATE, CELL #
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