By Kathrine Alderman Riverbend News
At a meeting of Congress on Wednesday, Dec. 2, Brian Babin of the House of Representatives introduced the "You Must Be Alive To Vote Act of 2020."
As much as that title might sound a little silly, it's something that actually makes sense to address. Even though it might be evident that someone dead can't physically vote, what this bill is really addressing is voter fraud.
Sometimes, to commit voter fraud, an individual will register to vote under a deceased person's name. If they are able to pull the registration off, then they are effectively able to vote twice, or even more—once for them and once for however many deceased individuals they registered to vote.
The reason this bill is being introduced is to hopefully eliminate this form of voter fraud by requiring every state to "obtain information from the Social Security Administration on deaths for the purpose of voter registration list maintenance, and for other purposes." This means that every state will have to check their list of voters against the information provided by Social Security on deaths. The hope is that this will eliminate all of the registered voters who aren't actually alive to vote.
"The right to vote is one of the most vital pillars of our democracy, the foundations of which are election integrity and confidence in our democratic processes," Babin said in a press release on the subject. "The ease with which someone is able to steal the ballot of a deceased person and cast an illegitimate vote should disturb, alarm, and outrage every American citizen, no matter what side of the aisle they sit on. To protect our democratic process and Americans' faith in our elections, we must ensure that deceased individuals are not allowed to remain on state voter rolls."
The way they are going about trying to enact this bill is by making an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. It will read, in short, that the Commissioner of Social Security will, at the request of a state, enter into an agreement with that state to match data in records of the Social Security Administration and the official list of eligible voters of that state, with safeguards to assure they maintain the confidentiality of any information given.
It will also add that each state has to certify, every calendar year, to the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Transportation that the state has an agreement with the Social Security Administration to share death information. If they don't do this, each calendar year the state fails to certify the Secretaries of Education and Transportation may not make any Federal funds available to the state, any county within the state or any resident of the state.
"My bill will prevent any funds from the U.S. Departments of Transportation or Education," Babin said in the same release, "with the exception of those going toward law enforcement agency grants, from going to counties of any state that do not annually check their voter lists against the Social Security Administration's most recent death records in order to purge them of any individuals found to be deceased. All elected officials, from your local city council member to your U.S. President, have an obligation to obey the law and prevent fraud in our elections, and Congress should not be awarding taxpayer dollars to any counties or states that refuse to do the job they swore to do."
If the bill is enacted, it will take effect one year after the date of enactment. The most recent action regarding the bill was to submit it to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit on Thursday, Dec. 3. As the bill was very recently introduced, there is no date set for when the House or Senate will vote on it.