Talk about controversial.
Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) last week proposed a new bill — the “You Must Be Alive to Vote Act” (let’s call it YMBAVA).
YMBAVA’s intent is simple: “To require States to obtain information from Social Security Administration on deaths for purposes of voter registration list maintenance, and for other purposes.”
The bill comes amid charges by President Trump and others of voter fraud, especially that the ballots of deceased individuals were cast absentee in the 2020 presidential election.
“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 statement. “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.”
“My bill will prevent any funds from the U.S. Departments of Transportation or Education, 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,” Babin said.
Some allegations that dead people voted have been shot down. When Trump campaign officials last month alleged that four dead people from Newton County, Georgia, voted in the 2020 election, the county’s elections director, Jennifer Logan, told CNN the claim was “not true.” Logan said the person “was removed from (voter) rolls in 2003” when they passed away. “Logan noted that someone with the same name but spelled slightly differently did legally vote in the county this year,” CNN reported.
Still, Babin said the bill “sad to say is a necessary item that we must introduce in light of the fact that we still have a lot of problems with a lot of perception out there by half of America that we don’t have a open and transparent election process.”
“You would think it would be unnecessary to have a bill like this, I mean it goes without saying you should be alive before you get to vote.” But Babin said, without offering proof, that “We’ve uncovered some fraudulent plans to register a bunch of dead people to vote down in South Florida, and it’s the easiest thing in the world for these local counties to purge their voter list of deceased individuals. All they have to do is to go to the Social Security system and cross check against their deceased Social Security recipients on their list and then purge them off of the voter list,” he said in an interview with One America News (OAN).
“It’s just not happening. And so my bill would actually penalize these states and these counties from getting any kind of federal money from the Department of Transportation or the Department of Education if they do not do so on an annual basis. We would not, certainly not withhold funding from law enforcement agencies, but for transportation and education we most certainly would. And it’s something that has to be done,” he said.
“This is not a Republican bill this should be a bipartisan effort to make this election process a lot more transparent When we have the perception out there by so many millions of Americans — 74 million plus had voted for President Trump — to try to clean up our election process. It is absolutely inexcusable that we would have an election process in this country, where we have had a peaceful transfer of power between presidents and administrations for 240 plus years, and now all of a sudden, we have an enormous number of individuals in this country that don’t trust the election process. Not good,” Babin said.
The bill has eight co-sponsors so far.
“Everyone in this Congress — everyone in this country — should want an assurance that dead people are not voting. And we don’t have that assurance right now because so many of these voter lists have just not been updated, whether it’s intentional, and whether it’s laziness indolence are just, you know, nonchalance. We need to make sure that these voter lists are accurate and that deceased individuals are not on their voting.”
“This is just the tip of the iceberg for this, this past election,” he said. “We better get this right are the consequences to our free democratic republic will be dire.”