WASHINGTON – Committee on House Administration Ranking Member Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) submits his opening statement for the record at today's hearing. His written statement lists multiple bills he has introduced to combat foreign election misinformation and help people safely vote across the country. Despite Davis' willingness to work together, Democrats continue to hold political messaging hearings -- 28 days before the election -- rather than work with him over the last two years to solve the issues at hand.

Davis' written statement mentions the following bills:

H.R. 4736, the Honest Elections Act to prevent foreign actors from meddling in our nation's elections by targeting them on their own soil. Davis introduced this bill last October.

H.R. 7905, the Emergency Assistance for Safe Elections Act, or the EASE Act, to help election administrators address issues they are facing because of the pandemic, such as combatting the poll worker shortage and providing safe polling locations.

H.R. 8285, the Election Fraud Prevention Act, which Davis introduced with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), would amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to prohibit payments to states that permit ballot harvesting by third-party organizations.

Davis' statement submitted for the record:

I want to first apologize for being unable to attend in person, but I have constituent meetings that conflict with today's hearing. I was only told a week ago about this hearing taking place during a district work period and was unable to rearrange my district schedule. It's unfortunate this committee wasn't able to hold this hearing, or any other hearing, during the last two weeks Congress was in session.

But this committee constantly seems to be behind the eight ball. We're having this hearing 28 days out from Election Day and last week the House once again passed sweeping election reforms without having any hearing at all.

Heroes 2.0 Act passed last week with 71 pages of election administration changes that, if law, administrators across the country would be required to implement in less than 30 days and after more than a million people have already voted in this country. If we would have had any kind of hearing on Heroes 2.0, I guarantee we would have had election administrators telling us that not only should the federal government not be mandating these kinds of changes, but that, given the timeframe, it would be impossible for them to implement. Unfortunately, we didn't have a hearing and very few people who actually run elections have been invited by the majority to weigh in on any of the election changes they continue to push.

Despite this, I've stood willing and ready to work with any member of this committee in a bipartisan way to address many of the issues being raised in testimony today and the issues we know election administrators are facing because of the pandemic.

In October 2019, I introduced the Honest Elections Act to prevent foreign actors from meddling in our nation's elections by targeting them on their own soil. H.R. 4736 would update existing election laws, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The bill also adopts a modern, common-sense approach for disclosing who has paid for online political ads, increases monitoring of spending by foreign nationals in elections, bans ballot harvesting, and prohibits the Election Assistance Commission funds from going to states allowing non-citizen voting. Unfortunately, it's almost a year later and the majority on this committee has shown zero interest in working together on this issue.

Since the pandemic began in March, this committee has held just three hearings focused on election administration and marked up not one single election-related bill. During one of the most challenging cycles for our election administrators, this is unacceptable.

In July, I introduced H.R. 7905, the Emergency Assistance for Safe Elections Act, or the EASE Act, to help election administrators address issues they are facing because of the pandemic. The EASE Act would help election administrators recruit poll workers and ensure voters, if they choose, can vote safely in person. This bill would help states update their voter rolls as required by federal law. Helping states administer elections during these unprecedented times should not be a partisan issue and I would think these are provisions that my Democrat colleagues could get behind and work together on.

Lastly, I recently joined our Democrat colleague, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, in introducing a bill to ban ballot harvesting. Rep. Gabbard and I are setting politics aside and protecting the integrity of our elections by working together to ban a practice that we know is ripe for fraud. As Rep. Gabbard puts it, our bill "makes sure that third-party, special interest groups don't get between voters and the ballot box."

There are plenty of issues that we could work on together to protect the integrity of our elections, as Rep. Gabbard and I have done, but unfortunately, this committee has politicized election policy from the day Democrats took back the House and have done everything they can to nationalize our elections.

Gridlock doesn't help anyone and it's certainly not what our constituents sent us here to do. I continue to stand ready and willing to work with my Democrat counterparts on legislation to protect our Democracy.