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Voting Rights and Election Security

The bedrock of American democracy is our right to vote in fair and open elections, which are followed by a peaceful transfer of power.

Zoe takes her oath of office seriously; she carries a copy of the U.S. Constitution wherever she goes, and she refers to its words regularly. She did so when she served as a House Manager in the 2020 impeachment trial of Donald Trump, when she became the first woman in U.S. history to present a presidential case to the Senate and the only Member of Congress to have participated in all modern impeachment proceedings.

As the former Chair of the Committee on House Administration, Zoe helped oversee U.S. federal elections to ensure everyone's vote gets counted equally and, as a member of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, she helped investigate the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Zoe has been a longtime leader on pro-democracy initiatives that keep power in the hands of people – not special interests. She wants to get money out of politics, supports government transparency measures, and works to prevent abuses of power.

For the People, Against Money in Politics, For the Freedom to Vote

Zoe shepherded H.R. 1, the For the People Act, through the legislative process in the 116th and 117th Congresses, culminating with its House passage twice. The sweeping package of pro-democracy and anticorruption reforms would put power back in the hands of the American people by limiting the dominance of big money in politics, making it easier – not harder – to vote, and helping to ensureuri at politicians actually serve the public interest. Included in this effort are measures to:

  • Improve access to voting (like automatic voter registration);

  • Promote integrity in elections (by prohibiting voter roll purges, safeguarding against discriminatory voter ID laws, and ending partisan gerrymandering);

  • Ensure election security (by enhancing federal support for voter system security and increasing oversight over election vendors);

  • Guarantee campaign finance disclosures;

  • Empower citizens (through a multiple matching system for small donations);

  • Fortify ethics law (by expanding conflict-of-interest law and divestment requirements, preventing Members of Congress from serving on corporate boards, and requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns); and

  • Improve greater ethics enforcement (by overhauling the Office of Government Ethics, closing registration loopholes for lobbyists and foreign agents, ensuring watchdogs have sufficient resources to enforce the law and creating a code of ethics for the Supreme Court).

Zoe also helped lead House Democrats in passing the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act in January 2022. This bill, which combined the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, ensures every eligible American can cast their ballot freely and without interference.

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Voting
Safeguarding Democracy & Preventing Another January 6th Attack

On January 6, 2021, there was a violent attack with the intent to block the transfer of power, and Zoe has been leading efforts to prevent another coup attempt. In the 117th Congress, Zoe served on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which investigated the multifaceted effort by ex-President Trump to keep power contrary to the 2020 election results. The Select Committee held a series of public hearings and issued a public report unveiling the facts behind the unlawful scheme and legislative recommendations to shield our country from future insurrections. You can read the Select Committee's final report here.

Along with her colleague on the Select Committee, former Rep. Liz Cheney, Zoe led the House in passing the bipartisan Presidential Election Reform Act, legislation to update and reform the Electoral Count Act so that future presidential candidates cannot attempt to steal a presidential election or interfere with Congress' duty to tally the electoral votes. The legislation also made clear that the Vice President's role in counting electoral votes is merely ceremonial.

Zoe also compiled a nearly-2,000 page review listing public social media posts from Members of the U.S. House of Representatives who were sworn-in to office in January 2021 and who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She noted when posting this review that "like former President Trump, any elected Member of Congress who aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack seriously threatened our democratic government."

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Jan. 6 Select Committee

Curbing Corruption, Stopping Election Interference

After the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Congress put laws into place to protect our democracy. In 2020, it was clear that further measures were needed. Zoe joined other House committee chairs in introducing the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a landmark package of reforms to strengthen checks and balances, prevent the types of presidential abuses we saw during the Trump Administration, and require campaign finance transparency.

Zoe also took action after the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia interfered in America's 2016 Presidential election. Zoe led two key efforts to protect the security and integrity of our nation's elections following that attack: the Securing America's Federal Elections (SAFE) Act and the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act.

Plus, in 2020, when then-President Trump and the Postmaster General made operational changes that degraded services, delayed the mail, and threatened to disenfranchise voters, Zoe spoke out, signed onto legislation, and wrote letters to protect the postal service and the role it would play in upcoming elections.

To learn more about Zoe's work on voting rights and election security, please click on the news links below:

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