With fewer than four weeks until Election Day, House Democrats say the stakes are far greater than political power.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re at a real turning point and inflection point in this country, but it\u2019s up to us, each of us, to secure American democracy,\u201d Rochester Rep. Joe Morelle said.<\/p>\n
Morelle made the weighty claim during an election security hearing Wednesday in Queens.<\/p>\n
As the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, Morelle has held 16 similar hearings across the country in recent months \u2014 spearheading House Democrats\u2019 efforts to push back against President Donald Trump\u2019s proposed election reforms.<\/p>\n
The president has long claimed, without evidence, that voter fraud is rampant\u00a0\u2014 necessitating election reform.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe system we have today falls catastrophically short,\u201d he stressed during a July address to the nation.<\/p>\n
The White House says the president\u2019s efforts are common sense, while Democrats argue they are designed to disenfranchise voters and erode confidence in the American electoral system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only threat to the integrity of our elections, the only threat to our democracy, is Donald Trump himself,\u201d Queens Rep. Gregory Meeks said.<\/p>\n
During the Wednesday hearing Democratic members of Congress and local activists, including attorneys, talked through a number of what they say are ongoing and potential disruptions to the midterms \u2014 including the Trump administration\u2019s attempt to restrict mail in voting, which was derailed by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
They also warned of the possibility that armed federal officers might be deployed to the polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe threats to our democracy are real, but our election system is overwhelmingly safe and secure,\u201d said John Cusick of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With fewer than four weeks until Election Day, House Democrats say the stakes are far greater than political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[109,116,25,858,9,24,49,12,112,108,63,87,122,124,123,45797,27,200,58726],"class_list":["post-367467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-congress","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-state","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-shannon-ryan","tag-top-stories","tag-vod","tag-washington-d-c-bureau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}