In the case of a second conviction, as you pointed out, a person could be fined up to $25,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.

Now that should be, if there can be a deterrent, perhaps even too strong a one. I doubt that there are very many people who are so involved with another individual's election that they would take the chance or the risk of these severe penalties. So it seems in light of these very harsh penalties and our history with regard to registration fraud that the likelihood of abuses being engendered by H.R. 5400 is extremely remote.

In Louisiana now, to point out the use of the first type of election fraud, there have been 20 election officials who have pleaded guilty to voting fictitious persons or to other types of fraud. The Federal judge involved has really not invoked anything a severe penalty on them. I think he has been chastising them, fining them lightly, and sentencing them to 30 days in halfway houses.

With respect to your commitment to a vigorous prosecution of fraudulent registration, I would like to point out that section 10 of the bill requires you, the Attorney General or your successors, to report periodically on the status of potential violations referred and how they are handled.

Do you agree that with a piece of legislation with such severe penalties in it, that if fraud by election officials is discovered, and it can be, and has been, and will be again, that the Federal judges will be more severe in their treatment of those persons who cheat or engage in fraudulent activity?

Attorney General BELL. I don't know if I can speak for the Federal judges or not. I used to be one myself. It is pretty hard to know in advance what they are going to do. Certainly the standard of punishment in this bill ought to make the Federal judges more serious about purifying our election process.

I have had the same experience you have had, Mr. Chairman, over the period of 25 years that most fraud I have seen is committed by election officials.

Now under this bill it is true that somebody could use the same driver's license and register at more than one polling place. They might register at five. But when the day came to put his or her name on the voter registration list, this would be detected. It seems farfetched to me to think that anybody might do that.

I have seen one election 1 year ago in Georgia where somebody organized a roving band, taking them from polling place to polling place. I do not think that could happen under this bill.

I think that any fraudulent operation under this bill will be minimal. That would be my judgment about it.

There is one thing in section 10 that I want to demur to that I did not personally read when this came over to the Justice Department. I understand my people agreed to it. But I do not think you ought to get into a position on having to report to the Election Commission on a case every 30 days. That is a little often. If we were to report on all our cases every 30 days, we would have to double the size of the Justice Department just to be reporting.

I think it is good to report those to them within 60 days as to what we are doing and then some periodic report after that. I have

told the Vice President's representative this morning that I would like to get relieved from that 30-day reporting requirement, though. Chairman THOMPSON. We will certainly give that some thought. Attorney General BELL. That is just an aside. I do not want to discuss that this morning. That is a detail.

Chairman THOMPSON. Then, too, of course, as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States you certainly would have the authority to issue instructions to your Federal district attorneys to watch out for fraud and to prosecute. They have a great deal to say in the whole process, including the sentencing most times.

Attorney General BELL. We could do as we have done in the antitrust field now. We have put out a set of sentencing guidelines where we are asking for sentences of a substantial nature in these cases where all the U.S. attorneys could take that same position wherever they are in the 94 offices over the country to try to get serious about election fraud.

Chairman THOMPSON. Thank you.

Mr. Cleveland?

Mr. CLEVELAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one question.

You say in your statement, when you address the problem of lower levels of participation in national elections, that there is strong evidence that legal barriers to voter registration are also a significant source of the problem.

I just wondered if there were studies that your people have made, or studies to which you had access, to substantiate that statement? If so, what were the studies?

Attorney General BELL. I am told by my staff that there are studies that indicate that and we will be glad to file those studies with the committee. In fact, we will do that today.

Mr. CLEVELAND. Thank you.

Chairman THOMPSON. Mr. Davis?

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Bell, I have two questions. First of all, in the enforcement area, of course, I come from one of those States that is now under the Voting Rights Act and we have experienced great difficulties every time we have tried to reapportion, the State legislature or city or county council have come to the Justice Department. It has ended up that we have had to wait the entire length of time under the 90 days to get a report back from Justice.

Is there any inclination right now under your leadership in the Justice Department to maybe create a more vigorous staff, a larger staff, and put more people into the voter act activities that would cover all areas of the voter participation in the States that would be covered?

Attorney General BELL. This law will be administered by the Federal Election Commission. But you are speaking to the Voting Rights Act that covers the Southern States.

Mr. DAVIS. That is right, sir.

Attorney General BELL. The record of the Justice Department has been very poor, in my judgment, in ruling on submissions. Mr. DAVIS. I am glad you said that.

Attorney General BELL. I have known this and have tried to do something about it. As a Federal judge, I have had to participate in setting aside elections and enjoining elections simply because we could not hear from the Justice Department. In many instances they would not take a position which is the same as not approving

it.

I am working on that. But this covers Federal general elections and it does not put the Federal Election Commission in charge of the city elections in Charleston, for example.

Mr. DAVIS. The other question I would ask is what would be the safeguards under this bill, in your opinion, or what would be the procedures as to absentee voting where you have a situation, say, the chairman has referred to Louisiana, they have a law down there where you can walk in on specific days prior to the general elections, you walk into a specific place and vote. You vote absentee if it is your intention to be out of town on the day of the election. Will this bill go so far as to cover absentee voting where you can walk in and say I have not registered but I do not plan to be here November 2, 1976 and therefore I would like to vote?

Attorney General BELL. It does not. I do not know how things go in South Carolina, but in Georgia one of the greatest election frauds you can have is have a lot of people who used to live in a rural area who move to the city and they vote in both places.

Absentee ballots often control elections in rural areas. The political machine is built up on that basis, but this has nothing to do with absentee ballots.

Mr. DAVIS. Will this bill go to the extent of a person who knew they were going to be out of town and wanted to vote and what would be your suggestion in that area where they could go in and cast an absentee ballot?

Chairman THOMPSON. The right of an absentee ballot is predicated on the person being registered. In the process of applying for an absentee ballot, a determination would have to be made as to whether or not that person is registered and if not, the registration could be achieved then and there and the affidavit taken and any fraud in the absentee ballot would be noted.

Mr. DAVIS. That is what I am wondering. If we are going to universal registration, at the present time I am in favor of the concept but I am wondering if we are going to disenfranchise those. The bill doesn't address itself to absentees, but only to election day itself.

Attorney General BELL. I think you have made a good point because in some States the cutoff date for registration would be a long time before the date that you could get an absentee ballot. So there is a hiatus in this law.

Mr. DAVIS. In South Carolina it is 30 days. You can get an absentee ballot 30 days before the election.

Attorney General BELL. It would not be a problem in your State. Mr. DAVIS. It would because you can take it after the 30-day period, but you cannot register after the 30-day period.

Attorney General BELL. The cutoff for registration ought not to be any greater a period than the day you can get an absentee ballot if you wanted to treat absentee voters fairly compared to the people who are going to register on election day.

Mr. DAVIS. We can deal with this specific matter in markup, but I wanted to get the Attorney General's opinion.

Chairman THOMPSON. I think we can. The national average of shutoff of registration of voters is 30 days. To apply to this as an amendment so that there would be the coincidence in time, I think would be the fairest way to do it.

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman THOMPSON. Mr. Panetta?

Mr. PANETTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Attorney General, what section now at the Justice Department enforces laws dealing with voter fraud?

Attorney General BELL. The Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division handles the prosecutions. Of course, the Voting Rights Act is enforced in the Civil Rights Division.

Mr. PANETTA. With regard to fraud, do you have any idea how many actions the Justice Department has brought following Federal elections?

Attorney General BELL. Mr. Donsanto knows the answer to this question.

Mr. DONSANTO. Mr. Congressman, we presently have a series of prosecutions underway in New Orleans. We have just recently initiated a grand jury investigation in Illinois. We presently have a grand jury investigation involving this sort of thing underway in Tennessee and another one in Virginia.

We have been endeavoring lately to increase our vigilance in this area. We have been getting increased cooperation from the U.S. attorneys who have in turn become aware of this problem and the public participation in bringing these matters to our attention.

I might also add that recent decisions of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of United States versus Anderson has expanded our jurisdiction as far as our ability to reach cases involving vote fraud that do not entail an ability on our part to prove that it affected a Federal election.

We also have two provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, one which is fairly old which is 42 U.S.C. 1973 I.C. which makes it a 5year felony to provide false information concerning voter registration to qualify to vote in any election in which a Federal candidate is on the ballot.

Just last session the Congress enacted an amendment to that particular provision which now makes it a specific Federal crime subject to a 5-year felony to vote twice. These added implements in our arsenal of statutes that we can use to address this sort of thing have been greatly welcomed. We have a series of cases in Louisiana. They are under indictment right now.

Mr. PANETTA. How big is your present staff right now? Mr. DONSANTO. We have 20 lawyers who are available to handle election matters. I am the election specialist.

Mr. PANETTA. Would you anticipate having to expand that staff, Mr. Attorney General, if the open registration is enacted?

Attorney General BELL. Not greatly under this legislation because I do not anticipate there will be that much fraud committed by individuals. If we do, we will expand it.

We have two sections there that I have been keeping an eye on because they are doing great work, the Public Integrity Section which is going to make our system more responsible and the other is the Office of Professional Responsibilities which is looking after the misdeeds of people within the Justice Department.

Those are both new offices. Attorney General Levi created them within the past year.

Mr. DONSANTO. Mr. Panetta, I might add one more thing, if I can. We in the Public Integrity Section work through the U.S. attorneys. There are very highly staffed offices out there, 94 of them, and the usual manner in which one of these cases is handled is that we will work with the U.S. attorney staff and they will prosecute the cases and we will come down and lend them technical assistance and help give them experience in this sort of field as the need arises.

Mr. PANETTA. Let me ask just a couple more questions.

In line with that, as I read section 10 of the bill, it deals with violations, that the violations are referred through the Federal Election Commission and in this instance I would take it the FEC almost operates as a clearinghouse for violations.

Is that a section you have looked at closely and something that you support or would you prefer to have direct enforcement by the Justice Department?

Attorney General BELL. We have direct enforcement under these other statutes and under this one, too. They say the way they read the bill, the drafters say you can do it either way. We can do it under other statutes anyway.

Mr. PANETTA. One last point-as a method of discouraging fraud in systems like income tax and spending disclosure laws and what have you, we have what are called random audits which are conducted. I am wondering if the Justice Department might think it may be in order to have random audits of registration following an election as a method of indicating to the country that we are on top of this and it might help eliminate the fear of fraud?

Attorney General BELL. I would be glad to see that done, but I think it ought to be done by the Federal Elections Commission, not by us.

Mr. PANETTA. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman THOMPSON. Just to comment, I think that voter registration is analogous to our Federal income tax laws where there is a presumption of honest compliance in filling them out. It is a painful process as we all know, particularly at this time of the year. But experience has shown that the people think twice before they cheat on their Federal income tax returns where the penalties would not be nearly so severe as they are here.

Attorney General BELL. People think twice before they sign an affidavit, also.

Chairman THOMPSON. Yes.

Mr. Wiggins?

The Chair will respectfully ask the members to confine themselves to 5 minutes and then we will try to get back. We have a great number of members here this morning.