WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Bryan Steil (WI-01), Ranking Member on the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, Committee on House Administration Ranking Member Rodney Davis (IL-13), and Rep. Barry Loudermilk (GA-11) slammed President Biden for his false claims about election integrity across the country, specifically in Georgia, as states have seen recording-breaking early voter turnout this election, and demanded he retract false election fraud claims.
In the letter, the members write:
We are writing to express our concerns with your false claims about election integrity legislation across the country. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you have even gone as far as to say states, like Georgia, have implemented “Jim Crow 2.0” or “Jim Crow in the 21st Century”. Further, you made specific claims about the early voting provisions in Georgia’s Election Integrity Act that earned you four Pinocchio’s from the Washington Post.[2] It is now without question that those statements have no basis in fact. In the interest of ensuring American voters may have confidence in elections processes and outcomes, we demand you immediately cease spreading election misinformation, rescind your previous statements, and apologize to the American public.
Your party has made repeated and unsuccessful efforts to ram bills of questionable constitutionality through Congress that would nationalize our elections and centralize their administration in Washington, D.C. The Constitution clearly reserves to the states the primary role in determining election law and administering federal elections in this country, preserving to the Congress a federal fail-safe applicable only in extreme circumstances, none of which are applicable here.[3] Your statements ignore Georgia’s sovereign interest in upholding its constitutional duty to maintain accurate elections, as confirmed last year by the United States Supreme Court in a major decision against the Democratic National Committee.
Further, your claims of voter suppression have turned out to be completely inaccurate. As you may know, Georgia has seen record-breaking early voter turnout this election, a key factor under the ever-important Voting Rights Act of 1965 for determining whether untoward, malicious activity is occurring in elections. As of Monday, October 24, 2022, over 837,000 people had already voted in Georgia, the highest early voter turnout to date in state history.[5] In fact, the number of Georgians who have voted early has outpaced the 2018 midterms and is at pace to exceed voter turnout for the 2020 Presidential election, both of which also saw record turnout.[6] The surge in early voting has not been contained just to the general election: Georgia also saw record turnout in the primary election earlier this year. The high turnout numbers stand in stark contrast to the statements that you and others, like election denier and current gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, had predicted when the law was put into place.
Republicans believe every eligible American voter who wants to cast a ballot must be able to do so and that those ballots must be counted according to law. Our system must make it is easy to vote but hard to cheat. Georgia shows that when common-sense election integrity provisions are put in place, people respond positively because they know their vote will be counted accurately. Every state should follow Georgia’s example to take steps to build faith in our elections. Instead of attacking key election integrity provisions, making unsubstantiated claims, and undermining the public’s trust, we urge you to work with us to ensure Americans’ confidence in our elections.
We look forward to your apology to the people of the State of Georgia.
To read the full text of the letter, click here.
