House Administration hearing spotlights gaps in voter-roll maintenance, debates federal fixes

The House Committee on House Administration convened a hearing titled “Clean Voter Rolls, Secure Elections, Reviewing Voter List Maintenance Standards,” focusing on how states update and verify voter registration rolls and whether federal law provides adequate standards and enforcement.

At the hearing Chairman Bryan Steil, chairman of the Committee on House Administration, emphasized the risks of inaccurate rolls in an era of widespread mail voting and said federal and state resources should be used to verify voter eligibility. “List maintenance requires efficient, effective, and accurate access to data, routine updates,” Steil said in his opening remarks, noting recent improvements to federal citizenship-verification systems and Department of Justice activity in states including Illinois.

The hearing brought sharply different views about the cause of roll inaccuracies and the right federal response. Representative Joseph Morelle, the committee’s ranking member, said that some state-led removals have amounted to illegal purges that disproportionately harm eligible voters. “Clear evidence shows that voter deregistration efforts in Republican-led states has stripped thousands of Americans of the right to vote without due process,” Morelle said, urging protections for voters facing mass challenges.

Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told the committee federal courts have interpreted Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to require only a minimal “effort” by states. “If you have a program and you’re doing anything, you satisfied what Congress tried to do,” Adams said, arguing courts have allowed what he described as ineffective programs to meet the statute’s standard. Adams and other witnesses recommended Congress set clearer, stronger statutory requirements for list maintenance and broaden reporting and enforcement tools.

Justin Riemer, a former Virginia elections official, said the NVRA’s reliance on Postal Service National Change of Address (NCOA) data and a multi-step confirmation process has left sizable gaps. “The NCOA data does not have enough… The best way is states to talk to each other, and to share that information,” Riemer testified, calling for greater interstate data exchange, use of commercially available data, and a reconsideration of the NVRA’s 90-day pre-election blackout that limits certain list-maintenance activities.

Witnesses and members cited several data points and state examples during the hearing. Adams described findings of duplicate and apparently deceased registrants in Maine (roughly 18,000 apparently deceased registrants, about 1,500 intrastate duplicates and roughly 900 interstate duplicates in his organization’s report) and said courts in the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits have adopted narrow readings of the NVRA’s “reasonable effort” standard. Riemer described a Virginia comparison that turned up roughly 10,000 deceased registrants that had remained on the rolls until his office examined Social Security death data.

Multiple members and witnesses urged greater transparency. Adams noted that public access to list-maintenance records — a transparency goal of the NVRA — is uneven across jurisdictions and that some states erect barriers to public auditing of maintenance activity. Ranking Member Morelle and others highlighted a recent Department of Justice statement of interest in litigation concerning Illinois, where the DOJ said 34 counties reported no list-maintenance removals in the data the state provided, a figure the committee discussed as evidence of insufficient statewide programs.

Personal testimony at the hearing illustrated how errors affect individual voters. Mary Kay Hailing, a registered voter from Wake County, North Carolina and one of the hearing witnesses, described receiving a postcard after the 2024 election that said her registration was “incomplete.” Hailing said she spent more than an hour trying to find her record online, visited the Wake County Board of Elections to correct the problem and later learned she was among more than 200,000 North Carolinians whose registrations were challenged in litigation. “You should be able to register and not worry about this,” Hailing said.

Committee members discussed specific statutory fixes and administrative changes. Suggestions included: clarifying NVRA compliance standards; allowing states to treat a new in-state registration as a request to cancel a prior out-of-state registration; shortening or exempting certain removals from the 90-day pre-election blackout; expanding automated data sharing between states and with federal databases; and permitting wider use of commercial data sources to improve matches. Several members emphasized that any reforms must avoid removing eligible voters while also addressing ineligible registrations.

The hearing closed with Committee leadership asking witnesses to respond in writing to additional questions. No formal legislative action was taken at the hearing; members said they would use the record and follow-up questions to consider statutory changes or oversight actions.