Jerry Nadler slammed paper ballots as ‘extremely susceptible to fraud’ in 2004

A recently unearthed video clip shows House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler — who last week took President Trump to task for slamming Michigan’s mail-in ballot push — railing against the use of paper ballots during a Congressional hearing in 2004.

The C-SPAN clip comes from a House Judiciary Committee hearing on potential voting irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election. During the hearing, members of the public were permitted to ask questions of lawmakers and panelists.

In the video, a woman who described herself as a freelance journalist who focused on voting issues argued in favor of abandoning voting machines, saying a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found hand-counted paper ballots to be “among the most reliable” ways to vote.

Then-Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) yielded the floor to Nadler (D-NY), who disagreed.

“I just, as a very experienced practical politician from New York, feel constrained to observe that in my experience in New York, paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud,” the veteran House Democrat said. “And at least with the old clunky voting machines that we have in New York, the deliberate fraud is way down compared to paper.”

The woman who posed the question pushed back on Nadler’s assessment, arguing that miscounts could be discovered by paper ballot, whereas they could not be with those machines.

Nadler suggested using an “optical scan with paper,” which refers to paper ballots which would be scanned electronically to count the votes.

“I want a paper trail, I want paper somewhere, but pure paper with no machines? I can show you experience which would make your head spin,” he concluded.

Last week, however, Nadler tweeted a message slamming Trump’s stance on Michigan sending out applications for absentee ballots, writing “there’s nothing rogue about encouraging Americans to participate in elections — you’re just worried that they won’t vote for you.”

On Wednesday morning, Nadler responded to the video after Eric Trump tweeted it out.

“Eric! So good to hear from you, I had forgotten all about you but hope you are doing okay,” Nadler’s tweet read, “Love the video of me talking about the need for a paper trail to ensure voting integrity. Mail-in or absentee ballots are a paper trail used by, among others, our men and women in uniform.”