Unidentified witness tells House Administration Committee motor-voter raised registration but flagged voter-roll quality concerns
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Summary
An unidentified witness with decades of election-law experience told the House Administration Committee that the National Voter Registration Act ("motor voter") increased registrations but introduced administrative trade-offs that can harm the quality of voter rolls; he urged bipartisan cooperation to address accuracy and public confidence.
An unidentified witness who said he has spent "50 years working on election-related law" told the House Administration Committee that the National Voter Registration Act, commonly called "motor voter," increased the number of registered voters but also introduced administrative trade-offs that can weaken voter-roll quality.
The witness told the committee that important election reforms "have been supported by a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats" in the past and cited the Voting Rights Act and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as historically bipartisan achievements. He contrasted that history with his view that the motor-voter law passed along partisan lines.
On the substance of voter-registration policy, the witness said motor-voter "invited into the registration business a whole variety of locations where it was secondary to their principal purpose," meaning offices without primary election-administration duties must pass registration information on to election authorities. He warned this can create transmission errors and what he called "2% problems," an example he used to illustrate administrative inaccuracy.
"If you have bad voter lists, then you have bad voting processes," he said, arguing that elections depend on accurate registration lists as their "spine." The witness added that while motor-voter likely increased the number of people registered, "I'm not so sure you can be sure what its impact is on the actual voter turnout."
Addressing concerns about noncitizen voting, the witness said he had "no knowledge of any significant number of nonresident aliens or illegal aliens... voting," but acknowledged public concern and that such occurrences likely "occasionally occur." He emphasized that whether the concern is a perception or a reality, the effect on public confidence makes list quality important.
He closed by urging renewed bipartisan cooperation and by offering two core goals for any election system: "1, that the winner wins, the person with the most votes wins, and 2, that rational supporters of the loser believe the winner won." The transcript provided no formal motions or votes on these points.
No committee action or votes are recorded in the supplied transcript excerpt; the remarks are presented as testimony for the committee to consider in future policy work.