Several U.S. states and cities have embraced the president’s policy of a wide-open southern border, which has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to flood in. Not only are they treated better than U.S. citizens in many cases, receiving taxpayer funded housing, food, education, and health care, they have also contributed to an increase of violent crimes including harassment, rape, theft, and murder — not to mention the escalation in threats from people on the terror watchlist. But these harsh realities didn’t stop Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D) from addressing them as “newcomers” in a recent announcement.
In order to justify spending $45.9 million on illegal immigrants, he used the “newcomers” to help excuse the complete irrationality of the circumstances. As Denver is overwhelmed by immigrants, the multi-million package is meant to “fully fund programs … for 2024 and avoid worst-case scenarios projected by the city,” Fox News reported. But notably, the $45.9 million comes “in addition to $44 million in spending already secured for the program through previous budget moves,” which means illegals in this city are now receiving just shy of $90 million.
In a literal sense, taxpayers are a major source of this money. But in a metaphorical sense, American citizens are also paying through programs and services they have not willingly sacrificed. Johnston’s package, for instance, resulted in an $8.4 million cut from the city’s police department, which hurts public safety. The immense spending on illegal immigrants, which went from $2 million to $15 million in Denver between August and December of last year alone, requires budget cuts. And what do budget cuts often result in? People losing their jobs.
Johnston’s office said “it will avoid layoffs or furloughs of employees,” but that doesn’t seem like a promise worth banking on — especially considering the skyrocketing demands of the illegal immigrants. Countless stories have emerged from the border, proving that once the migrants get an inch, they take a mile. And if previous headlines of immigrants murdering young college students, squatting in occupied homes, and overrunning public facilities doesn’t labor the point of their persistence, then perhaps current headlines will.
On Tuesday, “Hundreds of illegal immigrants swarmed New York City’s City Hall … to demand more aid from the city as well as work permits,” The Post Millennial wrote. They also objected to being moved out of luxury hotels, where they were staying for free, to local shelters. Now they want more money? According to Bloomberg, the Big Apple has already “spent $1.45 billion in fiscal 2023 on migrant costs,” and they “expect to spend a combined $9.1 billion housing migrants in fiscal years 2024 and 2025.” But evidently, that’s not enough.
America needs to take the reins. Imagine an illegal immigrant claiming to live in your home, but when you report it to the police, you are the one arrested. Well, we don’t have to imagine, since that’s what happened to a 47-year-old woman in Queens. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh explained the woman was “dragged away from her own home — in handcuffs — because someone claims to have a lease for her property.” Walsh said the squatter couldn’t “show the lease to anyone, including the police and the media. But because he claimed he had “been living there for around a month, they arrest the woman.”
These stories are prompting some lawmakers to act, as evidenced by a new bill proposed by Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) to “stop illegal aliens from squatting in U.S. homes.” The Safeguarding Homes from Illegal Entry, Living, and Dwelling Act (SHIELD Act) comes in response to Leonel Moreno, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, who posted a video on social media “explaining how to take advantage of squatting laws in the U.S.” And according to The Daily Signal, Moreno’s videos led to an uptick in illegals squatting in New York and Pennsylvania homes.
As Meuser explained, the SHIELD Act would ensure that “if an illegal were to claim squatter rights and enter an individual’s home illegally without any rental paperwork or legitimate lease, they can be arrested and deported and prohibited from ever entering the United States again.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project also warned how election integrity efforts have been compromised by the border crisis. On Monday, they highlighted a flyer found posted throughout Mexico “encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for President Joe Biden in the 2024 election.” The page read, “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” And even though federal law prohibits non-U.S. citizens from voting in federal elections, organizations are desperately trying to take advantage of the millions of new crossers.
As the Oversight Project emphasized on X, “Election integrity is under assault.” Now, they continued, “You do not need documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. You can vote if you simply swear you are eligible,” and the flyer in question “obviously seeks to prey on unsophisticated illegals and encourages them to illegally vote.” This is all pretty frustrating information. But as overwhelming as this issue has grown to be, it’s not where we give up.
Instead, when reading of all the horrible things happening, we have to understand that this is not a matter of getting frustrated and walking away, but of standing for truth and for what’s right. And every Christian can stand for what is right, even within this messy, hostile, divisive arena. Indeed, we are called to take our voices into the public square. Ephesians 5:11 states, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” And so, that is what we will do, even now. Especially now.
A black Chicago woman in a MAGA hat rips Mayor Brandon Johnson for prioritizing illegals over citizens as he asks for $70 million more to care for the “newcomers.” Meanwhile, a recall petition for Mayor Johnson is gathering serious momentum. pic.twitter.com/J7N3J9PX7b
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2024-04-19 14:34:442024-04-20 04:24:31Leftist Immigration Policies Waste Billions of Dollars and Undermine Election Integrity
“There is perhaps no greater endeavor that is more fundamental for the perseveration of our Republic than preserving the integrity of our elections,” writes Jody Hice, senior vice president at Family Research Council. “If the voice of the people is heard, and their resolve enacted, both in policy and representation, there is hope for a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” This is a part of the former congressman’s new book, “Sacred Trust,” where he tackles an issue that has become increasingly important to American voters: Election integrity.
In his book, Hice outlines the fundamental necessity of having election integrity. As a former member of Congress, he has seen this issue from the inside out, and watched as it rose to the prominence it has today. In comments to The Washington Stand, he shared that election integrity “was not a topic that was on my radar when I went to Congress.” But Hice explained that during the COVID pandemic, the Democrats started pushing for “a federal takeover of elections.”
As a Georgia native, Hice became engaged in the fight once these arguments from the Left began to target his own state. He recalled how Democrats accused Georgia’s 2021 election integrity bill of suppressing minority voters and other claims that made it seem Georgia lacked integrity in the election process. “Well, I grew up in Georgia and I knew these things were not real. So, I started pushing back,” he remarked.
Hice’s journey led him to become a spokesperson within the realm of election integrity as Democrats fought to change voter laws “from ballot harvesting to taking away voter ID, one thing after another,” he detailed. “All of which, in my mind, disintegrated election integrity.” But what stood out to him over the years of engaging in this fight, especially after the process of writing his book, is how the “topic is taboo” — specifically for Republicans. “When a Republican raises a red flag that elections have been or could be compromised, we are called ‘election deniers.’ We are called ‘threats to democracy’ just for raising the issue, let alone addressing it publicly,” he emphasized. However, he added, “Democrats have challenged elections forever, and there’s no problem.”
In many ways, it was an emotional “hurdle” Hice said he had to jump “to deal with the reality of the political environment on a topic such as this.” But despite the task of navigating through the hypocrisy, “these are issues that have to be addressed,” he stressed.
In the book, Hice recounts how he is thankful he had the opportunity to share his experiences while in Congress, as well as other aspects of his life such as his time as a pastor, and how it all related to the topic of election integrity. He explained to TWS that the book’s title, “Sacred Trust,” is “indeed” what election integrity is. “The right for the people to vote, to be a self-determining populace in regard to who’s going to represent them, and what kind of policies we’re going to tolerate, be it on the state, local, or federal level, is a sacred trust that must be protected,” he said.
Although, what Hice wanted to make clear is that addressing the problem is only half the battle. “The topic itself is not just exposing problems but trying to offer some solutions.” On a recent episode of FRC’s Outstanding podcast, he went even further: “We need a divine work of God in this country. We need the good hand of God to be poured out upon this land. We need a spiritual awakening, and without the aid and the help, the intervention of Almighty God, we cannot, I don’t believe, fix this by political means alone.”
Hice elaborated on this theme at an FRC event Wednesday night featuring his book. “Church leaders across the board have to engage what’s happening in our country,” he underscored. For Hice, the reason America is “in the mess we are in right now is because the church and the faith leaders … [from] different denominations [have] just been silent [and] sitting on the sidelines.” He elaborated that too many in the church have believed “the lie [of] separation of church and state,” or they’ve become too concerned over losing members or overstepping boundaries.
However, the “truth of the matter is,” he continued, “our system of governance does not work without involvement of the people. And furthermore, when you’re talking limited government, which is what our Constitution is all about, it is impossible to have limited government if you don’t have people capable of self-governing their own lives.” And, as Hice emphasized, self-governance “comes by religion and morality,” which the Founding Fathers said were “‘indispensable supports,’ because without those two things, all the rest of it collapses.”
Ultimately, Hice stated, “the role of pastors [and] faith community [is] to bring … an understanding of God, accountability to God, and that all of us will stand before Him” one day. He added, “There is such a thing as right and wrong, [and] all these things are the very legs upon which limited government rests. And … what we are seeing is the more God is removed from our culture, the more problems we have, and the bigger government gets. Christian leaders have to engage.”
Hice concluded by pointing out that believers have a great responsibility to be good stewards of their role in the political arena, since election integrity is “among the highest issues” for American voters. “If we lose that in a constitutional republic … then we lose everything,” he remarked, noting that elections are ultimately about what the people want. “At the end of the day, it’s not about who won an election. It’s about whether or not the voice of the people was heard and accurately portrayed.”
SPEAKER JOHNSON: “The states are prohibited from asking someone if they’re a citizen. The House Republicans are introducing a bill that will require proof of citizenship to vote.” pic.twitter.com/tnhgoYoDks
A simple message to the GOP: play to win. 1. Make Election Day a National Holiday 2. Single-Day Voting 3. Paper Ballots 4. Government-issued voter ID to match the voter file 5. English as the sole language that appears on a ballot pic.twitter.com/Kaf5J9yhg0
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2024-04-13 06:04:042024-04-13 07:57:02Hice: Election Integrity Is a ‘Sacred Trust That Must Be Protected’
A staggering percentage of Americans do not trust our electoral system. A system meant to be a voice for the people and of the people, has left many skeptical of its trustworthiness.
Former Congressman and FRC Action’s vice president Jody Hice, joins host Joseph Backholm for a discussion on election integrity. Jody shares his story going from hometown pastor to the center of the political arena. In his new book, “Sacred Trust: Election Integrity and the Will of the People“, he emphasizes that if the voice of the people is lost at the ballot box, our Republic will be lost as well. Integrity must rule the day and surpass partisan strategies and yearnings.
Listen now to hear his story and personal experience with the topic of election integrity.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2024-04-03 06:58:382024-04-03 08:09:35PODCAST: Jody Hice on Election Integrity
Republicans are walking a tightrope heading into the 2024 election.
They must show their base that they are fighting hard on the issue of election integrity, which many conservatives believe cost former President Donald Trump his 2020 re-election bid.
Simultaneously, they must operate in the reality that they now live in the world of ballot harvesting and drop-boxes.
That dichotomy is why the Republican National Committee (RNC) told the Daily Caller they are committed to prioritizing election integrity efforts between now and November. They are waging lawsuits on issues ranging from ballot access to voting rules. Yet the party is also heavily pushing its “Bank Your Vote” initiative, encouraging Republicans to vote early.
Other elements of the party seem more resigned to playing by Democrats’ rules rather than trying to change them. The Caller also reached out to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which the RNC said is helping bankroll the party’s legal fights.
After sending the Daily Caller a link to an Axios article about get out the vote efforts, and then ignoring multiple follow-up requests for an interview about election integrity, NRCC spokesperson Will Reinert sent the Caller the following: “We’ve complained about your coverage several times to editors, so to tell you the truth, we really don’t care to engage on pieces we don’t care about to help you guys out.”
A prominent conservative pundit read the Reinert email and told the Daily Caller, “‘pieces we don’t care about’ is the giveaway. They’re mailing it in on election prep, in other words.”
Election integrity is, however, an issue Republican voters care deeply about: coming out of the last presidential election, nearly two-thirds of Republicans and Trump voters said they had little faith votes were counted accurately, according to one poll.
In 2020, a number of election laws were changed, and others were straight up ignored, in key states due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona, voters had expanded access to methods of voting including ballot drop-boxes, mail-in voting and early voting thanks to Democratic Party legal efforts led by Marc Elias.
Elias is a high-powered attorney who has played a leading role in hundreds of lawsuits seeking to make it easier to vote and undo Republican efforts to make elections more secure.
A Daily Caller review of current election laws found that the situation on the ground remains dire for election integrity hawks. A number of key battleground states, including those that delivered Biden the presidency, are still slated to use many of the election procedures in 2024 that outraged Republicans in 2020.
At least seven are slated to deploy ballot drop-boxes. Nearly all are likely to have no-excuse absentee voting. Five are on track to have more than two weeks of early voting, and Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina will mail out absentee ballots more than six weeks before election day.
“As we’ve talked about, the damage done by Democrats to change laws during COVID was unprecedented. There’s still a lot of work to do, not everything is where we want to be right now. But that’s why we’re scaling up this massive program and filing all this litigation because we’re actively trying to fix it up,” an RNC official told the Daily Caller. “We understand that there are still issues, especially in swing states with key stuff we need to fix. That’s why this exists.”
There is still time for some of these laws to change before election day, but the clock is ticking for Republicans to make inroads toward changing them.
After media outlets began calling the election for President Joe Biden in 2020, Republicans across the spectrum of the party concluded that those changes to how America votes played at least some role in his loss. Certain conservatives will tell you it was the single biggest factor in President Joe Biden’s victory.
Tucker on the 2020 election: “It was 100% stolen. Are you joking? They completely change the way people vote right before the election on the basis of COVID? And then you censor the information people are allowed to get?”pic.twitter.com/PHzBP9Jruz
With eight months to go, Republicans are mobilizing operatives across the country and spending millions of dollars to avoid a lawfare wipeout akin to what they suffered in 2020 — but the climb is uphill, and progress has been marginal.
Now, heading into 2024, some conservatives find themselves concerned about the state of the election and whether the party is doing enough to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.
“I have no idea what the Republicans are doing. But I can tell you what we did in 2020 when we were watching the Republicans stay on the sidelines,” Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True The Vote, told the Daily Caller.
I’ve seem no evidence that the Trump campaign and RNC are more prepared for 2024 hijinks than they were in 2020. (Remember it was ME going on about ballot harvesting and being ignored.)
But I’m not fake religious guy.
You go to the election with the guy on the ballot.
The Daily Caller began its investigation into Republicans’ election integrity efforts at the beginning of 2024, conducting an interview with members of the RNC’s election integrity staff in the beginning of February.
Since the interview, new leadership has taken over at the RNC and the Trump campaign has merged with the organization and made several staff shakeups.
National Review reported that the election integrity department had been a part of widespread layoffs that saw dozens of RNC staffers cast aside. However, an RNC official with direct knowledge told the Caller that reports the election integrity staff were asked to re-apply for their jobs was false. A source with the Trump campaign confirmed the same reality, stating that the staffers had not been let go.
Christina Bobb, a former Trump administration staffer who went on to be Trump’s attorney and a One America News Network anchor, has been appointed as the RNC’s election integrity senior counsel, a source told the Daily Caller. The Trump campaign source said the previous election integrity staff at the RNC would be sitting down with Bobb in the future.
When it comes to election integrity, the RNC and its partners are working, but they are playing catch up to Democrats’ nearly 40-year head start. The RNC was subjected to a consent decree in 1982 after a Democratic National Committee (DNC) lawsuit, neutering the party’s ability to engage in election integrity lawsuits until the decree was lifted in 2018.
The DNC sued the RNC in the 1980s, alleging that the party had sought to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws. The consent decree largely limited how the RNC could participate in election lawsuits.
“Early voting and GOTV effort is like the Space Race or the Arms Race of the Cold War. We defeated the Russians essentially by spending them into oblivion,” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA, told the Daily Caller. “The Democrats are spending us into oblivion. They are miles ahead. They’ve already landed on the moon a few times and we haven’t even gotten the ship off the ground.”
The RNC told the Daily Caller that the party first dove into the election integrity sphere in 2022. It was the first time the RNC had the opportunity to work with other campaign committees, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the NRCC. The effort was “loose,” a member of the RNC’s election integrity department told the Daily Caller.
The party did not offer clarification on the timeline of its election integrity efforts prior to 2022 after the Daily Caller followed up.
Following the 2022 election, then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel moved to make the RNC’s election integrity efforts an actual department of the party. That allowed the operation to pull resources from all departments such as communications, politics and legal.
Now, in addition to its legal department, the RNC has three election integrity counsels based at its headquarters and 13 election integrity counsels in key states including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“These counsels work around the clock to identify and act on opportunities for election integrity litigation, in addition to coordinating with local law firms and stakeholders in their respective states,” Josh Helton, an RNC election integrity official, told the Daily Caller.
By the end of February, the RNC told the Daily Caller that it planned to have deputy election integrity directors in each of the 13 states where it has an election integrity counsel. Regional directors will also join the election integrity effort to oversee a specific geographic territory and oversee how the party liaised with stakeholders in the area.
In addition to the legal counsels, the RNC has “boots on the ground” as a part of their “recruitment training and shifting of poll workers and poll watchers.”
“These are folks that are going to be in those in those polling locations and they’re going to be our eyes and ears on the ground. That will be reporting back to our our election day headquarters, which happens all during early voting and Election Day,” Helton told the Daily Caller.
“Where we have volunteer and paid attorneys they are going to be taking in those calls triaging the information that comes in and taking the appropriate action,” Helton continued.
With 79 election integrity lawsuits filed in 23 states ahead of the 2024 election, the RNC told the Daily Caller that it has plans to reach at least 100. The party is also in “constant contact” with all 56 Republican state and territory parties to collaborate on election integrity litigation — even transferring money to them as needed, the RNC told the Daily Caller.
“The RNC from what I’ve seen, is is an intervener you know, it’s liberal groups that file these lawsuits. In some some of these cases, the RNC is intervening to try to help defend the state statute. That’s basically what’s going on all across the country,” Hans Von Spakovsky, the manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, told the Daily Caller. Von Spakovsky added that he thought the state of election integrity was in a better position than 2020, and does not expect a repeat of 2024.
Others disagreed.
“From what I have seen and what I haven’t, we definitely are,” conservative attorney and pundit Kurt Schlicter said about whether he thought the GOP would end up in a similar situation to 2020.
“And I would love to be wrong. I hear ‘we’ve filed 78 lawsuits’ that’s like saying if I’m a commander, ‘oh I’ve fired 78 shells,’” Schlicter added.
“They should be getting insurance. They should be filing lawsuits, and getting injunctions in place to make sure that all the state legislatures, election rules are being followed strictly. And that they’re not being waived because of COVID or Chinese flu or Chinese pneumonia or whatever the next bullshit pandemic is going to be,” Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and founder of the Article 3 Project, told the Daily Caller.
“You need to get injunctions early so the Democrats can’t change the rules at the last minute. If they change the rules, they’ll be in contempt of court,” Davis continued.
Count Marc Elias himself among those who are skeptical of Republican efforts. For years, dating back to 2009, Elias was the lawyer for the Democratic party. Elias is most prominently known for his work during the 2020 presidential election cycle, when he spearheaded the Democratic Party’s efforts to expand voting access and loosen election integrity provisions.
“It seems nearly certain that Republicans at all levels will continue to file frivolous post-election lawsuits and will suffer similar results in 2024,” Elias wrote in a recent report.
Ahead of the election, Elias has begun to track his own and other “pro-voting” suits. Over the last year, Elias and other “pro-voting” lawsuits saw 83 victories for voters across 26 states, according to his report.
According to Elias’ report, Republican and their election integrity forces prevailed a mere 20% of the time in 2022 and 27% of the time in 2023. The same report noted that there were 51 “pro-voting” lawsuits in 2023 to just 22 election integrity lawsuits.
Despite the improvement, Elias has predicted that Republicans will once again watch the rug be pulled out from underneath them and suffer the same fate as 2020.
For their part, the RNC dismissed Elias’ claims that 2024 will be a repeat of 2020.
The Daily Caller provided the RNC with the same report and cited specific stats from it, asking for a response to Elias’ data which portrays Republicans as behind in its legal fight. The RNC dismissed Elias’ report and concerns entirely.
“We don’t put much stock into how Elias tracks lawsuits,” an RNC spokesperson told the Daily Caller.
Results have been mixed so far for the RNC — the organization sent the Caller a list of 17 “selected litigation wins” from 2022 until now. Some were significant, such as protecting New Hampshire’s voter ID requirement or banning expanded ballot harvesting in Arizona. In Florida, the RNC strengthened Florida’s voter ID requirements.
But others were cases still in progress, or only resulted in marginal changes unlikely to significantly affect the election.
There are notable instances were Republican lawfare has failed. In 2020, ballot curing was a key issue in Pennsylvania. The state secretary of state’s office issued guidance right before election day telling counties they could inform voters of improperly filled out absentee ballots, allowing them to turn in a provisional ballot on election day to ensure they got counted.
But a number of Republican-leaning counties ignored this guidance, believing it to be a violation of state law. The Trump campaign sued after the election to discount the cured ballots from Democratic-leaning counties, but lost at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 7-0.
Republicans, including the RNC, have since sued again to overturn the ballot curing rules. But those efforts culminated last year with a state judge dismissing the RNC’s lawsuit, leaving in place the patchwork set of ballot curing policies from county to county.
The RNC’s election integrity blitz has also seemingly left party allies, as well as most voters, in the dark.
“The first thing I look for is a chain of command. I’m just a military guy. Who is the person whose lapels I grab, look in the eye and say, what is going on? And there isn’t one, to my knowledge,” Schlicter said. “I don’t see the kind of coordinated planned operation that I would look for that would memorialize best practices.”
McDaniel sat down at the end of February with the head of the RNC’s election integrity project for her podcast “Real America.”
The RNC’s Election Integrity Twitter account tweeted out a clip of the podcast to its less than 2,000 followers. The pair talked about the GOP’s efforts to make elections “FAST – Fair, Accurate, Secure, and Transparent” ahead of November.
By the party’s own measures of success, the interview was a failure — because hardly anyone actually saw it. Just over 12,000 people viewed the video where McDaniel touted their efforts to recruit poll watchers, use volunteer lawyers and the building of a war room.
Just 37 social media users liked the tweet. The podcast currently has 1,200 views on YouTube. Comments are turned off on the video.
“When I go and speak to folks around the country, a lot of folks after I do my presentation, they said ‘we didn’t know the RNC was doing all that. We had no idea.’ If people don’t know, if the tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, like if people don’t know how hard the RNC and the NRSC and NRCC are fighting to secure these elections, we’re not gonna accomplish one of our primary goals, which is to restore that faith and confidence in the electoral process,” Helton said.
The RNC isn’t working alone. It’s partnering with the NRCC and the NRSC to equally fund the election integrity operation.
After the NRCC ignored multiple interview requests from the Caller to talk about this issue, the Caller told Reinert his initial one-sentence response with an Axios link was some of the “laziest shit [I’d] ever seen,” prompting Reinert’s reply that the organization doesn’t care about this election integrity story.
Jack Pandol, NRCC communications director, followed up with the Daily Caller about the interaction with Reinert, telling the outlet that the parties were making a historic committee investment, funding the RNC’s election integrity program and “getting better at it than the Democrats.”
Pandol added that the NRCC’s legal teams are in regular communication with the RNC and NRSC as they work “jointly on the project.”
During the NRCC’s brief interaction with the Daily Caller, Pandol noted that the party’s legal team was in regular communication with the RNC. Despite the frequent conversation, however, the NRCC was unable to explain which election integrity organizations have been in communication with the RNC to work on litigation ahead of the election.
“I have no idea what local groups have or haven’t heard from the RNC, I’m not a spokesman for them so I’d suggest you talk to them about it,” Pandol told the Daily Caller.
The NRSC, the other arm of Republicans election integrity effort, painted a more candid picture about the party’s coordination with other election integrity focused groups.
“We’re getting our ass kicked in that realm. Excuse my language but like, the Dems have the Arabella, that whole network. They have so much more money than us. You haven’t seen an equivalent on our side,” a member of the NRSC election integrity effort told the Caller.
“RITE has been involved somewhat. You see a funding discrepancy across the board, not just with legal right-wing. They have more money than we do. That’s kind of the problem,” they added.
Outside of the official party apparatus, independent organizations focused on election integrity are bustling.
Some, such as Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), have had the opportunity to work hand-in-hand with the RNC in a battle for election integrity.
“The main thing that we see is, first of all, wherever Marc Elias has been active and running, everywhere he is, the ecosystem of the election integrity world is there to meet him and confront him,” Derek Lyons, the president of RITE, told the Daily Caller. Because of how the election integrity ecosystem has confronted Elias, Lyons told the Daily Caller that the democratic lawyer has not had much success.
It is evident from dozens of operatives working on election integrity within the Republican sphere that there is no Marc Elias of the right. The effort appears more balkanized than that of the Democrats, for better or worse.
RITE is currently involved in 17 states such as Colorado, Ohio, Montana, Kansas and Florida where the organization is working to protect drop box safe guards, mail-in ballot rules, signature matching, voter identification and ballot harvesting rules, the organization told the Daily Caller.
In New York, Georgia, Arizona and Vermont, the group is going “on offense” and trying to enact laws around citizenship requirements, no-excuse absentee voting, invalid signature matching and double voting.
Other election integrity organizations are non-partisan, which prohibits them from working with political organizations such as the RNC. But for the Public Legal Interest Foundation (PLIF), the group finds its non-partisan nature more beneficial than if it was to work with the GOP.
“When Republicans file cases, they run into a buzzsaw,” J. Christian Adams, the president of PLIF, told the Daily Caller.
“To go on offense, you really needed to do it last year. And instead of suing on behalf of Republicans, we’re suing on behalf of a county election official who has to accept the balance,” he continued.
“You see the difference? Because if you bring a case under the brand Republican versus I’m just this poor schlub, who has to make a decision, the courts are more likely to rule in favor of the poor schlub than they are in favor of a Republican Party,” Adams added.
But within what the RNC described as a “robust” ecosystem, some groups have felt abandoned. True the Vote, one of the many nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations working within the election integrity sphere, noted that they had no clue what the GOP was doing legally ahead of the election.
“We just won a huge legal victory in Georgia against Stacey Abrams. That’s a great example of a place that the RNC or NRCC or so many that claim that they’re supportive of election integrity, could have made some kind of an overture. We fought that alone for three years and I think speaks to the distance,” Engelbrecht told the Daily Caller.
“They’re going to do what they’re going to do. We’re here on the ground, seeing things fall apart and knowing that action needs to be taken and we just are assuming that we’ll do what we can and pray that others join in the fight,” she continued.
The RNC noted to the Daily Caller that the party never heard from True the Vote regarding any possible assistance in its legal battle.
“One thing you want to avoid is doing duplicative work. So if like there’s one group, that is you know, deep in the trenches on specific Georgia litigation, maybe that frees us up to get really into a court battle in Arizona, so on and so forth,” the RNC told the Daily Caller, adding that the party has to be very careful with how it works with and communicates with nonprofits.
True the Vote later told the Daily Caller that they cannot reach out to the RNC because of their nonpartisan nature, but expressed optimism that the party would engage in their litigation in the future.
“True the Vote is very happy to hear about the RNC’s election integrity efforts. Must be a stealth campaign,” Engelbrecht hit back.
The landscape could shift with former President Donald Trump securing the GOP nomination for 2024 and integrating his campaign with the RNC.
“Securing our elections is a top priority,” Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign senior adviser told the Daily Caller in a statement. “Across the country, we will be aggressive in addressing issues related to the way elections are conducted because we must restore the integrity of the election process and Republican voters’ trust in the system. Otherwise, we risk losing future elections and losing our country.
With the new leadership in place, some organizations previously snubbed out of partnership have already seen improvement. Turning Point Action, a 501(c)4 partner of Turning Point USA, is one of those groups that has felt an increase of optimism as it has begun its “Chase the Vote” effort.
“Before with the old leadership, we heard nothing. There was no willingness or coordination to work with us.” Kolvet told the Caller. “With the new leadership we are very hopeful. We are very optimistic, there is a new vibe.”
Still, no centralized agenda seems to exist. And in the meantime, some Republicans are focused not on overturning Democrats’ election rules, but simply beating them at their own game.
To some degree, that includes the RNC itself, which is putting major juice behind its “Bank Your Vote” initiative encouraging conservatives to vote early in 2024.
Turning Point Action’s “Chase the Vote” initiative focuses on getting in touch with voters who have received mail-in ballots and encouraging them to fill it out and cast their vote. The initiative currently focuses on Arizona and Wisconsin where the organization plans to hire hundreds of full-time staffers devoted to the effort, Kolvet told the Daily Caller.
“Our ultimate goal is, I don’t think that we’re looking to set a blanket regime of election laws across the country. I don’t think that that’s realistic. We as conservatives and Republicans have a very strong belief that elections are to be left to the states to make up their minds on how to run those,” Helton said.
Regardless, time remains, and the parties leading the effort are remaining optimistic about their chances.
“You asked the question, are we in this position where we’re going to be told it’s too late to challenge things, like again in 2020. Hopefully not,” Lyons told the Daily Caller.
🚨New RNC Co-Chair @LaraLeaTrump says Republicans will start registering voters at MASSIVE events like the NRA Convention, UFC Fights, the Daytona 500 and Country Music Concerts pic.twitter.com/lVk9Guf46H
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2024-03-15 04:52:582024-03-17 07:41:13‘They Are Miles Ahead’: Despite ‘Election Integrity’ Hype, GOP Could Be Walking Into 2024 Legal Buzzsaw
One of the most important states in the 2024 presidential election has a loophole in its election procedures that could allow non-citizens to cast federal election ballots, experts told the Daily Caller.
Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes crafted the state’s Election Procedures Manual (EPM) to permit individuals whose citizenship cannot be verified to register as a “federal-only” voter and cast ballots in upcoming elections.
READ THE MANUAL:
“An otherwise eligible registrant who does not submit DPOC (proof of citizenship) and whose U.S. citizenship cannot be verified via AZMVD records or other record in the statewide voter registration database is registered as a ‘federal-only’ voter. A ‘federal-only’ voter is eligible to vote solely in races for federal office in Arizona (including the Presidential Preference Election (PPE)),” the EPM says on page three of its first chapter.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller he believes Arizona’s two-tiered voter registration system could enable illegal migrants to vote in the upcoming elections.
“I think it’s absolutely a possibility because if you aren’t requiring proof of citizenship, you’re simply going on people’s word that oh yeah I’m a U.S. citizen, you’re going to get aliens who register and who vote,” von Spakovsky told the Caller.
“The Justice Department, they don’t prosecute these cases, even though it’s a felony under federal law for an alien to register and vote,” he continued. “Aliens have an incentive, a voter registration card, which you get when you register, that’s a gateway for getting other kinds of ID.”
He referenced the I-9 form employers are mandated by the federal government to fill out and the fact that it allows individuals to use a voter registration card to establish their identity.
Ken Cuccinelli, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative (ETI) expressed similar concerns in a statement to the Caller.
“Adrian Fontes could have used his elections procedures manual to help close the decade-old loophole regarding non-citizen voting in Arizona elections. Instead, he made it even worse — allowing non-citizens and individuals who have failed to prove their U.S. citizenship to vote in the Presidential Preference Election in 2024,” Cuccinelli said.
“Meaning, the same illegal aliens who have flooded across our open border at unprecedented levels in recent years could help decide the winner of the state’s Republican presidential primary in March. Because the manual is exempt from legislative review, we should expect nothing less from the most radical, far-left administration in the history of Arizona state government.”
The EPM cites the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, a case brought by left-wing organizations challenging Arizona’s law requiring verification of citizenship in order to register to vote. The justices ruled in a 7-2 decision that the National Voter Registration Act preempted Arizona’s citizenship verification law, leading to the creation of the state’s two-tiered voting system.
“The National Voter Registration Act requires that States ‘accept and use’ voter registration forms created by the federal government. The federal form has a question about citizenship, but it only requires that a voter applicant swear under penalty of perjury that he is a citizen. It does not require the person to provide any documentary proof. Arizona law does require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The Supreme Court has held that, for federal races, Arizona is required to accept the federal voter registration form and cannot impose any additional requirements, such as asking for proof of citizenship,” America First Legal (AFL) Senior Counsel James Rogers told the Caller.
“For state and local races, however, Arizona still has the power to require proof of citizenship. The result is that, in Arizona, voters have two options for registering to vote. Their first option is to fill out the state voter registration form, provide proof of citizenship, and then be able to cast a vote in federal, state, and local races. Their second option is that they can fill out the federal form, avoid providing proof of citizenship, and then only be able to cast a vote in federal races. This bifurcated system is unique to Arizona. More than 20,000 voters in Arizona have chosen to submit federal-only forms. These 20,000 people have thus avoided the requirement to prove their citizenship, but also given up the chance to vote in state or local races. It would be interesting to understand why these people have chosen to file federal-only forms, but it does not appear that anyone has ever investigated why,” he added.
Individuals will be registered as “federal only” voters if they submit a federal voter registration form and do not have the documentation required for verifying citizenship. Without verifying citizenship, a person cannot become registered for Arizona’s state-level elections.
If the County Recorder conducts a background check and cannot verify the registrant’s citizenship, the registrant “is entitled to be registered as a ‘federal-only’ voter based on the registrant’s sworn statement on the registration form that the registrant is a U.S. citizen. An otherwise valid voter registration form submitted to the County Recorder, but without accompanying DPOC, shall be accepted, entered into the database, and registered for federal elections,” the EPM states on page eight.
If the Arizona Department of Transportation, Motor Vehicle Department (AZMVD) records do not show the individual has a non-citizen authorized presence designation, such as an “F-Type” driver’s license, the person will be registered if they submit a sworn statement.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes approved Fontes’ new EPM for Arizona’s elections in December. The EPM was last updated in 2019 when Hobbs was secretary of state and contained similar provisions about the “federal-only” voters.
In the 2022 midterm elections, Hobbs defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake 50.3% to 49.7%, a margin of roughly 17,000 votes. Fontes became secretary of state after winning 52.4% to 47.6% over Republican candidate Mark Finchem in the most recent midterm elections.
In the 2020 presidential election, President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump 49.36% to 49.06% in Arizona, a roughly 10,000 vote margin.
Trump is expected to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee and run against Biden again in the November election. General election polls conducted in December show Trump leading Biden in the state, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Arizona’s illegal immigrant population peaked at an estimated 560,000 in 2008 before dropping by approximately 230,000 due to legislative measures designed to crack down on illegal migration, the Arizona Republic reported. The Migration Policy Institute estimated Arizona’s undocumented population to be 273,000 based on 2019 data.
An average of more than 1,300 migrants are crossing the state’s border each day as the Biden administration oversees record numbers of illegal migrants entering the U.S., NBC News reported in August.
Hobbs deployed the state’s national guard to the border in December to assist with stopping human trafficking and fentanyl smuggling after she requested reinforcements from the Biden administration and did not receive assistance. The federal government temporarily closed the Lukeville, Arizona, port of entry in December because of the illegal immigration surge and re-opened it in January, the Arizona Republic reported.
Border Patrol apprehended an estimated 18,900 migrants during the week of Dec. 8, the Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona, section chief said. Border Patrol agents from across the country were brought in to help process migrants “virtually” crossing Arizona’s border due to the migration spike, the Daily Caller News Foundation first reported.
Encounters at the southern border topped 2 million over the past two fiscal years, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data shows.
“Non-citizens should not be registering and voting in American elections, period. Laws that require proof of citizenship to register and vote protect the integrity of elections. Unfortunately, liberal politicians and left-wing activists routinely attack the laws and safeguards that help states identify and stop non-citizen voting,” Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told the Caller.
The Daily Caller reached out to Fontes’ office to ask for clarity on the loophole and whether or not it would enable non-citizens to vote in Arizona. They did not respond.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2024-02-03 10:47:012024-02-03 10:51:00Arizona Election Law May Enable Non-Citizens To Vote In 2024 Presidential Election, Experts Warn
Katie Hobbs’ office threatened Mohave County Supervisors with arrest and prosecution if they failed to certify the results of their elections before the state deadline.
Kori Lorick, the State Elections Director and Hobbs’ top deputy, sent multiple emails to the Board warning them of consequences, including the “disenfranchisement of voters.”
Mohave was one of several GOP-led counties in Arizona that asked for more time before certifying results to examine election integrity issues.
Democratic Arizona Secretary of State and Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs’ top deputy threatened the Mohave County Board of Supervisors with prosecution if it didn’t certify her election results before a Monday deadline, according to emails and documents reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Arizona State Elections Director Kori Lorick wrote several letters and emails to members of the board, warning them of criminal charges if the refused to certify the results in time. The letters included threats of lawsuits against the members for “nonfeasance,” as well, per the emails.
“The Secretary of State did contact our County and cited A.R.S. Section 16-1010 as a statute that could be used to prosecute [the board] if they did not certify the election,” said Matt Smith, the Mohave County Attorney, to the DCNF. The statute is an Arizona felony statute regarding election officials who “fail to perform their duties” under the law; as a Class 6 felony, upon conviction, it could result in up to two years’ imprisonment.
“The threat of legal action, including personally, came from the Arizona State Elections Director [Kori Lorick],” said the board’s chair-elect, Supervisor Travis Linginfelter. While previous reporting noted that the board’s members were warned of prosecution by their counsel, the board’s members have now stated that the threats came from Lorick, who reports to Hobbs, as well.
“Our office will take all legal action necessary to ensure that Arizona’s voters have their votes counted, including referring the individual supervisors who vote not to certify for criminal enforcement under A.R.S. 16-1010,” Lorick wrote in an email to the board obtained by the DCNF. Governor-elect Hobbs has neither resigned as Secretary of State nor recused herself from election oversight and certification.
Hobbs was elected governor of Arizona on Nov. 8 to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, defeating the Republican candidate Kari Lake, who has now sought to contest the election results. Republicans also lost Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, where Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly defeated Republican investor Blake Masters to win a full six-year term.
Lorick’s threat of prosecution was one of several efforts made by Hobbs’ team to force Mohave County to certify its election results before the Nov. 28 state deadline. Republican members of the board, like in other counties in the state, had sought to hold public hearings regarding the validity of voting machines used in their precincts, over concerns that they were not properly approved by the Secretary of State’s office.
Lorick also sent a letter to the board warning that their voters could be “disenfranchised” if they did not certify by the deadline. The letter, obtained exclusively by the DCNF from Lingenfelter, states that the board “has a non-discretionary duty to canvass the returns of the election,” and that a failure to do so “will only serve to disenfranchise that county’s voters,” mirroring her warnings to other GOP-led counties that their votes “may be excluded” from the final tallies, thereby affecting results.
Mohave County was one of several counties seeking more time to review election integrity issues, though it is the only county whose elected representatives are known to have been threatened with arrest. Cochise County, another GOP-led county in the state that has not certified its results, is currently the subject of a lawsuit by Hobbs’ office, though none of their members have reported criminal prosecution.
The Mohave County board eventually certified the results of the election on Monday, Nov. 28, before the deadline expired, though the threat of individual legal consequences for members may have altered their willingness to delay certification, like Cochise. During the video broadcast of the canvas meeting of the board, Supervisor and Chair Ron Gould mentioned that the actions were “under duress.”
The legislative certification of election results is a routine process that occurs in jurisdictions across the country, with legislators mostly having the ability to raise objections to results during the certification process. The most notable such challenge occurred in the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, when Republican lawmakers and supporters of then-President Donald Trump raised objections to returns of Electoral College votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.
In Pennsylvania, Luzerne County’s Board of Elections has declined to certify the returns of ballots. The county faced widespread paper shortage issues on Election Day and was the subject of a court case, which was covered exclusively by the DCNF.
Unlike Mohave’s board, however, members of Congress are constitutionally protected from arrest for political actions made in session under the “speech and debate clause” of the Constitution, which has analogous provisions in most state constitutions for their legislators. Smith told the DCNF that no such provision exists under Arizona law for the board.
Hobbs’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
Americans are less likely to trust the fairness and accuracy of an election if results take “days or weeks” to be counted, according to a new poll.
When asked if results that took “days or weeks” to tabulated were more or less trustworthy, 33.9% of respondents said that it is “much less likely,” and 20.9% said that it is “somewhat less likely,” according to the Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action poll. Across party lines, 62.7% of Republicans, 27% of independents, and 10.4% of Democrats said that they were “much less likely” to trust results that took “days or weeks” to tabulate.
“The majority of Americans are now skeptical about the outcomes of elections, which creates a fundamental problem that—if left unchecked—could undermine our entire democracy,” President of the Convention of States Mark Meckler said in a statement.
Many states experienced delays in ballot tabulation following the 2022 midterm elections, as election centers struggled to count votes that were received in the mail following Election Day. Arizona, California, Maine, Alaska, Nevada and Colorado continued to count ballots over a week past the midterm elections, as many of the states allowed mail in ballots, postmarked by election day, to arrive by Nov. 15.
Arizonans have no Faith & Trust in our Elections.
Our Election Officials are incompetent (…or worse) They have failed us.
The Fake News ignores our Fake Elections and expect us to just “move on.”
We won’t.
America will NOT survive if we don’t demand Election Reform NOW.
However, when asked about election fairness and accuracy, the majority of respondents at least somewhat trusted election results. Of 1,084 respondents, 21.9% of respondents said that they “strongly distrust” election results, with 17.9% saying they “somewhat distrust” them, according to the poll.
Before the midterm elections, election integrity was a leading priority for voters, according to Rasmussen Reports. Of likely voters, 84% would be a major issue in the midterm elections.
“The answer does not lie in Washington, DC, this problem can and must be fixed close to home. State legislatures need to make strengthening election integrity priority number one, and governors need to focus on vigorous enforcement. Until we get the problem under control, this needs to be treated as the state-by-state emergency that it is,” Meckler continued.
The poll was conducted from Nov. 16 to Nov. 20 with a margin of error of 2.9%.
BREAKING REPORT: Louisiana Democrats – Former Amite Police Chief Jerry Trabona and current Councilman Kris Hart Busted in VOTE BUYING SCHEME – Sentenced to 12 months in Prison..
.@charliekirk11: "Maricopa County yesterday then unanimously certified this election despite anywhere between, we do not know, 20,000 to 100,000 people that were disenfranchised. MINIMUM."
There's no question that voter suppression affected the outcome of this election. pic.twitter.com/sghWAVjsDK
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-11-30 14:43:462022-12-02 08:32:58POLL: Most Americans Trust Elections Less If Results Take ‘Days Or Weeks’
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on September 20, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “Critical American Elections.”
Sixteen years ago, in 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform issued a report that proposed a uniform system of requiring a photo ID in order to vote in U.S. elections. The report also pointed out that widespread absentee voting makes vote fraud more likely. Voter files contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, and deceased voters, a fact easily exploited using absentee ballots to commit fraud. Citizens who vote absentee are more susceptible to pressure and intimidation. And vote-buying schemes are far easier when citizens vote by mail.
Who was behind the Carter-Baker Commission? Donald Trump? No. The Commission’s two ranking members were former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James Baker III, a Republican. Other Democrats on the Commission were former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton. It was a truly bipartisan commission that made what seemed at the time to be common sense proposals.
How things have changed. Some of the Commission’s members, Jimmy Carter among them, came out last year to disavow the Commission’s work. And despite surveys showing that Americans overwhelmingly support measures to ensure election integrity—a recent Rasmussen survey found that 80 percent of Americans support a voter ID requirement—Democratic leaders across the board oppose such measures in the strongest terms.
Here, for instance, is President Biden speaking recently in Philadelphia, condemning the idea of voter IDs: “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Sadly but predicably, he went on to suggest that requiring voter IDs would mean returning people to slavery.
But the fact is that the U.S. is an outlier among the world’s democracies in not requiring voter ID. Of the 47 countries in Europe today, 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote. The odd man out is the United Kingdom, in which Northern Ireland and many localities require voter IDs, but the requirement is not nationwide. The British Parliament, however, is considering a nationwide requirement, so very soon all 47 European countries will likely have adopted this common-sense policy.
When it comes to absentee voting, we Americans, accustomed as we are to very loose rules, are often shocked to learn that 35 of the 47 European countries—including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—don’t allow absentee voting for citizens living in country. Another ten European countries—including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain—allow absentee voting, but require voters to show up in person and present a photo ID to pick up their ballots. It isn’t like in the U.S., where a person can say he’s going to be out of town and have a ballot mailed to him.
England used to have absentee voting rules similar to ours in the U.S. But in 2004, in the city of Birmingham, officials uncovered a massive vote fraud scheme in the city council races. The six winning Labor candidates had fraudulently acquired about 40,000 absentee votes, mainly from Muslim areas of the city. As a result, England ended the practice of mailing out absentee ballots and required voters to pick up their ballots in person with a photo ID.
Up until 1975, France also had loose absentee voting rules. But when massive vote fraud was discovered on the island of Corsica—where hundreds of thousands of dead people were found to be voting and even larger-scale vote-buying operations were occurring—France banned absentee voting altogether.
On the topic of buying votes, I should point out that we in the U.S. did not always have secret ballots. It wasn’t until 1880 that the first state adopted the secret ballot, and the last state to adopt it was South Carolina in 1950. Perhaps surprisingly, when secret ballots were adopted, the percentage of people voting fell by about twelve percent. Why was that? Prior to the adoption of the secret ballot, lots of people would get paid for voting. In those days, people voted by placing pieces of colored paper in the ballot box, with different colors representing different parties. Party officials would be present to observe what color paper each voter put into the box, and depending on the color, the voter would often get paid. Secret ballots put an end to this practice.
France learned in 1975 that the use of absentee ballots led to the same practice—it allowed third parties to know how people voted and pay them for voting a certain way. This same problem is now proliferating in the U.S. in the form of “ballot harvesting,” the increasingly common practice where party functionaries distribute and collect ballots.
Defenders of our current voting rules point out that in lieu of absentee voting, some European countries allow “proxy voting,” whereby one person can designate another to vote for him. And while it is true that eight of the 47 European countries allow proxy voting—meaning that 39 do not—there are strict requirements. In five of the eight countries—Belgium, England, Monaco, Poland, and Sweden—proxy voting is limited to those with a disability or an illness or who are out of the country. In Poland, it also requires the approval of the local mayor, and in Monaco the approval of the general secretariat. In France and the Netherlands, proxy voting has to be arranged through a notary public. Switzerland is the only country in Europe with a relatively liberal proxy voting policy, requiring only a signature match.
How about our neighbors, Canada and Mexico? Canada requires a photo ID to vote. If a voter shows up at the polls without an ID, he is allowed to vote only if he declares who he is in writing and if there is someone working at the polling station who can personally verify his identity.
Mexico has had a long history of election fraud. Partly because its leaders were concerned about a drop in foreign investment if it wasn’t perceived to be a legitimate democracy, Mexico recently instituted strict reforms. Voters must present a biometric ID—an ID with not only a photo, but also a thumb print. Voters also have indelible ink applied to their thumbs, preventing them from voting more than once. And absentee voting is prohibited, even for people living outside the country.
Those who oppose election integrity reform here in the U.S. often condemn it as a means of “voter suppression.” But in Mexico, the percent of people voting rose from 59 percent before the reforms to 68 percent after. It turned out that Mexicans were more, not less, likely to vote when they had confidence that their votes mattered.
H.R. 1, the radical bill Democratic Party leaders have been pushing to adopt this year, would prohibit states from requiring voter ID and require states to allow permanent mail-in voting. And mail-in voting, I hardly need to point out, is even worse, in terms of vote fraud, than absentee voting. With absentee voting, a person at least has to request a ballot. With mail-in voting—as we saw in too many places in the 2020 election—ballots are simply mailed out to everyone. With loose absentee voting rules, a country is making itself vulnerable to vote fraud. With mail-in voting, a country is almost begging for vote fraud.
If the rhetoric we hear from the Left today is correct—if voter ID requirements and restrictions on absentee (or even mail-in) voting are un-democratic—then so are the countries of Europe and the rest of the developed world. But this is utter nonsense.
Those opposing common sense measures to ensure integrity in U.S. elections—measures such as those recommended by the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission in 2005—are not motivated by a concern for democracy, but by partisan interests.
John R. Lott, Jr., is founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from UCLA and has held research or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Yale University, and Rice University. He served in the Trump administration as Senior Advisor for Research and Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he studied vote fraud. He has written for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times, and is the author of ten books, including More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.
A week into the fiasco over Georgia’s election law, most Americans want to know: just who are these woke CEOs listening to? Not to their shareholders, who can’t make a profit when their companies alienate half of the country. Not to lawyers or legislators, who could set them straight on what the policy actually does. And certainly not to U.S. consumers, who are sending a resounding message that they’re done with businesses who can’t check their radicalism at the door long enough to read a 98-page piece of legislation.
“It’s insanity,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) agreed on “Washington Watch.” Like most people, he can’t believe that Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta, and so many others would put the solvency of their companies on the line to make a political point that — it turns out — isn’t even true! When even MSNBC is telling Joe Biden he “needs to keep it honest,” the Democratic Party has reached a low even the liberal media can’t believe. And yet the White House and its field marshals in Hollywood and Atlanta created such a ridiculous narrative about this law that people like Willie Geist are going on the most radical news outlet in the country and insisting it’s impossible to “square the president’s argument.”
“[D]oesn’t it seem that a lot of people jumped the gun?” Joe Scarborough asked in follow-up. They moved the MLB All-Star Game “before actually either reading the bill or understanding how the bill lined up with New Jersey laws, with New York laws, with laws all across the nation,” he said. Then, astounding even more viewers, he took aim at the lynchpin of the Left’s whole argument. “…When you line this bill up with what the laws were before the pandemic and what the laws are in states like New York, it is not Jim Crow 2.0.”
And what’s happened in the meantime? Countless shoppers are walking away from major U.S. brands because the Left’s dishonesty “whipped up a controversy that left millions of people grossly misinformed, frightened voters, mired major corporations in high-stakes public relations frenzies, distracted the political discourse, and furthered the country’s divisions,” the Federalist’s Emily Jashinsky argues. A new survey just released today found that three-quarters of Americans think corporations should stay out of politics. Another 64 percent of them said they’d be less likely to support those who don’t. And this is a poll, incidentally, that talked to more Democrats (34 percent) than Republicans (31 percent)!
Americans of all stripes are fed up. Once they understand what the Georgia law really does, NRO’s Alexandra Desanctis points out, “a majority — again including a majority of Democrats and non-white Americans — also supported the law’s regulations as applied to ballot dropboxes. Almost 80 percent of those surveyed — including a majority of Democrats and non-white Americans — said they support the law’s ID requirement for absentee voting.” The same was true, she explains, about MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s unilateral decision to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta. “A slim majority said they supported MLB’s decision to move the game at first, but after learning more about the specifics of Georgia’s law, a majority said they were ‘less supportive’ of MLB’s decision.”
As for this loud minority deterring other states from following Georgia’s lead — well, the Left was wrong about that too. An astounding 361 election integrity bills have been introduced in 47 states across the nation this year — and that includes a 43 percent increase since February. If Joe Biden and his party were hoping to scare off other states, they might want to try a different strategy.
“I lay the blame [for this uproar] clearly on these corporations who do not have a backbone. They don’t have the guts to stand up and just accept the truth. They are so afraid of what this Left-wing mob could do to them that they’re alienating their very own customers,” Loudermilk fumed. When Major League Baseball pulled out of Georgia, who do you think they’re going to hurt, he asked? “Well, they’re not going to hurt the other big corporations based there. They’re going to hurt the guy who sells hot dogs at the stadium. They’re going to hurt the server at the restaurant who’s not going to get this business.”
A handful of days ago, he talked with some of those business owners who were trying to come back from the brink after the pandemic. “These are businesses that thrive on having these conventions and sporting events. They were all excited about the All-Star Game.” They wondered if this was the one thing — the catalyst — that could bring their businesses back from poverty. “We met last week,” Loudermilk remembered, “and they were concerned about Major League Baseball. But around the table, everyone said, ‘You know, we don’t [think] that baseball would go to that extreme, because none of this is true.’ And here they go. They’re going off the deep end. It’s unbelievable.”
And of course, these same corporations — whether we’re talking about Delta or others — repeatedly come to these same state leaders looking for special subsidies or tax breaks. Major League Baseball has anti-trust immunity that they’ve enjoyed since 1922. They all look to government — and specifically free-market Republicans — to protect them but now bite the hand that feeds them.
“The last day of the legislative session was the day that Coca-Cola came out and made their announcement [against the election reforms],” Barry explained. “Obviously, the CEO never did read the bill. He just took Stacey Abrams and Nancy Pelosi and the extreme Left’s talking points and came out with this asinine statement that had no truth to it whatsoever.” And the irony, he says, is that when Delta publicly opposed it, the legislature was considering — that day — whether to renew the special tax breaks the airline gets for being based in Atlanta. “How brazen it was for the CEO [to do that], knowing that this [could] cost them millions and millions of dollars… They have totally lost all sense of morality to start with. And I think they’ve totally lost their minds as well.”
Liberals may be brazen now, but Republicans from the Senate on down are sending a message that if corporations want to fuel the crazy policies of the Left, then they need to rely on someone else to protect them from the high taxes and regulations Democrats want to force on them. “You can’t placate to the far-Left mob — especially when they come out and they lie,” Loudermilk shook his head, “and then expect us to… support you the way that we have in the past when you’re just going to turn around and stab Americans — not Republican politicians — but stab Americans in the back.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2021-04-08 07:10:572021-10-07 20:30:30VIDEO: Coke Gets a Kick in the Can from Consumers
