‘Reforms Are Needed’: GOP Senator’s Election Bill Requires Faster Counting, Bipartisan Observation
Saying reform is needed to “protect the integrity” of America’s elections, a U.S. senator introduced a bill Tuesday that would ban ballot harvesting, require an expedited tabulation of early votes, and require more oversight by both parties of polls and vote-counting.
The bill by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) would amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which was passed after the contentious Bush-Gore election of 2000.
Hawley’s bill is known as the Protect Election Integrity Act of 2020. It would pull federal funding from states who don’t follow the bill’s requirements.
The bill, if it became law, would:
- Ban ballot harvesting, a method that involves a third party collecting and delivering ballots. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 10 states “allow a family member to return a ballot for a voter,” and 26 states “allow the voter to designate someone to return their ballot for them.” Thirteen states “are silent on the issue,” NCSL said in an online analysis. The bill would allow family members and caregivers to deliver ballots.
- Require campaigns to allow “at least 2 appointed campaign representatives per campaign” at polling places and sites where ballots are counted.
- Require that mail-in and absentee ballots “be counted and recorded immediately upon receipt.” Results could not be disclosed until polls close on Election Day.
- Require that ballot counting begin and not stop “for any reason except imminent emergency, until all ballots are counted.”
- Require “round-the-clock video surveillance monitoring of absentee ballot drop boxes.”
The disparity in state election laws has been in the spotlight since Election Day, when Florida counted its early votes that night, allowing a winner to be declared by the media. Florida law allows mailed ballots to be open prior to Election Day; Pennsylvania law does not.
“The debacle of the 2020 election has made clear that serious reforms are needed to protect the integrity of our elections,” Hawley said in a statement. “The American people deserve transparency – that means banning ballot harvesting, empowering poll watchers, and taking steps to ensure that all legally cast ballots are accounted for. The confusion and controversy of this past week is not acceptable, Congress must take action.”
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Samuel Corum/Stringer
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
