Raffensperger Applauds Congress for Taking Up Four of His Five-step Plan for National Election Integrity

July 14th, 2023

Atlanta – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger applauded passage of HR 4563, the “American Confidence in Elections Act” (ACE Act) by the Committee of Administration of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday night.

The ACE Act was approved 8-4 along a party line vote with Republicans supporting and Democrats opposed to common sense election reforms, including measures proposed by Secretary Raffensperger in a letter sent to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this spring. ACE incorporated four out of five proposals from Raffensperger, including strengthening voter ID provisions, preventing non-citizen voting, strengthening list maintenance, and banning ballot harvesting. Secretary Raffensperger hopes that Congress will continue to evaluate additional list maintenance proposals, specifically ending the 90-day federal blackout period for conducting list maintenance.

“The ACE Act is substantially based on Georgia law, and how my office administers elections,” said Raffensperger. “Georgia’s elections should serve as a model of security, accessibility, and accuracy for the rest of the nation.”

Following the 2022 midterm elections, the University of Georgia released the Georgia Post-Election Survey, which showed that 99% of Georgia Voters reported no issues casting a ballot, with 92.2% saying that SB202 either didn’t affect or made it easier to vote. During the hearing, this survey was entered into the Congressional Record.

“Congress finally recognizes that casting a ballot in Georgia is easy and more secure than ever before,” said Raffensperger. “We implemented election reform two years ago, and saw record-breaking turnout and extremely high levels of voter trust in the outcomes and satisfaction with the voting process. Georgia elections work.”

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Georgia is recognized as a national leader in elections. It was the first state in the country to implement the trifecta of automatic voter registration, at least 17 days of early voting (which has been called the “gold standard”), and no-excuse absentee voting. Georgia continues to set records for voter turnout and election participation, seeing the largest increase in average turnout of any other state in the 2018 midterm election and record turnout in 2020, and 2022. 2022 achieved the largest single day of in-person early voting turnout in Georgia midterm history utilizing Georgia’s secure, paper ballot voting system. Most recently, Georgia ranked #1 for Election Integrity by the Heritage Foundation, a top ranking for Voter Accessibility by the Center for Election Innovation & Research, and tied for number one in Election Administration by the Bipartisan Policy Center.