Senator Hyde-Smith
“Protecting the rights of voters and election integrity should be a bipartisan process, not a partisan talking point,” Senator says.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Rules Committee held a hearing titled “Emerging Threats to Election Administration.” During the hearing, Mississippi U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith stressed the need for bipartisan cooperation to guarantee voter confidence in the integrity of the federal election process.
“Public trust in our government depends on ensuring our elections are conducted fairly and without compromise from any source. Protecting the rights of voters and election integrity should be a bipartisan process, not a partisan talking point,” Hyde-Smith said. “I am just hopeful that we can capture some of that Kentucky spirit here in the U.S. Senate and learn to pursue legislation that can bring us together and achieve overwhelming support, just as you did in Kentucky, rather than one-sided partisan measures that only further divide our body.”
While some of the testimonies and questioning at the hearing focused on advocating passage of the Democrats’ Freedom to Vote Act (S.2747), Hyde-Smith questioned Kentucky Secretary of State Michael G. Adams on the successful enactment of Voter ID and election reform laws despite political divisions.
In 2020, Secretary Adams achieved legislative passage of Photo ID to Vote. The Kentucky General Assembly passed and the Governor signed House Bill 574, the most significant reform of Kentucky’s election system since 1891.
“Last year, 3 months after being sworn in, I asked our legislature to grant me, a Republican, and our Democratic governor, joint emergency powers to alter election procedures, as necessary, to ensure public safety in the pandemic, without sacrificing voter access or ballot integrity. We made absentee balloting more available and extended in-person voting well beyond the one election day Kentucky had from 1891 through 2019,” Adams said.
Mississippi has had Voter ID in place since 2014.
Last week, both Mississippi Senators Roger Wicker and Hyde-Smith voted against proceeding to the partisan Freedom to Vote Act (S.2747). Hyde-Smith stated that it would supersede Mississippi’s own Voter ID law, force federal mandates on all aspects of voting, and establish a public financing scheme for congressional elections, among other things.
“Here we go again. Like their first two attempts this year, Senate Democrats are making another run at so-called reforms that would be rotten for Mississippi and rotten for the nation,” Senator Hyde-Smith said. “This latest Democrat power grab is dressed up as a ‘compromise,’ but it’s just more of the same bad liberal power grab to skew elections in their favor by imposing federal mandates on every aspect of the electoral process.”
Hyde-Smith argued that protecting the rights of voters and election integrity should be a bipartisan process, not a repeated one-sided plan that makes elections less secure.
Anne Summerhays
