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Nevada’s Failed Mass Mail-In Ballot Experiment Should Have Been A Case Study, Not A Blueprint

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You would think that with all the new technology nowadays our voting and election process would be reliable and effective. That is not the case in Nevada, where it took a lawsuit to force a Clark County election official to clean up the voter rolls.

What should have been a one-time failed experiment of automatically mailing a ballot to every active registered voter in 2020 is now the norm. The automatic mass mailing of ballots sounds nice. The reality is that it sent ballots to strip clubs, casinos, and bars.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (of which I am president) photographed hundreds of commercial addresses listed as residences on the Nevada voter roll. Some of these addresses included a Sonic Drive-In, the Las Vegas Airport, a 7-Eleven gas station, vacant lots, Binion’s casino, and the Larry Flynt Hustler club.

We delivered this information, including pictures of the locations where it appeared people did not live, to Clark County Registrar of Voters Lorena Portillo. All we wanted her to do was investigate these addresses and, if her office found that no one lived at these addresses, make corrections to the voter roll before the 2024 presidential election ballots hit the mail.

We waited for a response, but weeks of crickets from Clark County forced us to file a lawsuit. As a direct result of this litigation, Clark County investigated and made corrections to the voter roll — ensuring mail ballots will not be sent to commercial addresses where no one lives. (Read more from “Nevada’s Failed Mass Mail-In Ballot Experiment Should Have Been A Case Study, Not A Blueprint” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Political Prisoner: Judge Sentences Defiant Tina Peters to 9 Years

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By Reuters. A former Colorado county clerk convicted of illegally tampering with voting machines was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday after repeating Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election at her court hearing.

Tina Peters was convicted at trial of seven counts of engaging in a security breach for opening Mesa County, Colorado’s election computers to Trump allies searching for evidence of fraud.

Judge Matthew Barrett sharply rebuked Tina Peters for her lack of remorse, calling her a “charlatan” who abused her position and betrayed her oath of office.

“You are no hero,” Barrett said. “You abused your position and you’re a charlatan who used, and is still using, your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

The sentencing was held just weeks before the Nov. 5 presidential election between former president Trump, a Republican, and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. (Read more from “Political Prisoner: Judge Sentences Defiant Tina Peters to 9 Years” HERE)

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Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years

By AP News. . .Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity. . .

At trial, prosecutors said Peters, a Republican, was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the presidential election results.

A one-time hero to election deniers, Peters has been unapologetic about what happened.

Before being sentenced, Peters insisted that everything she did to try to unroot what she believed was fraud was for the greater good.

“I’ve never done anything with malice to break the law. I’ve only wanted to serve the people of Mesa County,” she told the court. (Read more from “Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Democrats Sue to Block State Rule Requiring Ballot Hand-Counts on Election Day

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The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Monday sued the Georgia Election Board to block it from mandating a new rule that requires counties to hand-count ballots cast at polling places in the 2024 presidential election.

The DNC argues – without providing evidence – the proposal will generate chaos and in turn enable “bad-faith actors to claim that fraud has affected election results” asking a state court to declare the rule unlawful and stop it from going into effect.

Backed by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, the lawsuit alleges the hand-counting rule conflicts with state law and the board overstepped its authority when it approved it.

The rule change, approved on a 3-2 vote by allies of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, requires poll workers to hand count ballots to ensure they match the totals counted by machines. . .

The complainants further argued delays caused by the hand-counting would “introduce opportunities for bad-faith actors to claim that fraud has affected election results – a result that would undermine public confidence in the results and in the election of Democratic candidates specifically.” (Read more from “Democrats Sue to Block State Rule Requiring Ballot Hand-Counts on Election Day” HERE)

Georgia Election Board Approves Rule to Hand-Count Ballots Night of Election

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The Georgia State Election Board voted 3-2 on Friday to require counties to hand-count all ballots, in addition to machine tallies, in the 2024 election.

The decision, driven by the board’s Republican majority, means that ballots in Georgia will be hand-counted by election workers the night of Nov. 5 in addition to the normal machine tallies that take place. The move was celebrated by allies of former President Donald Trump, who believe that the changes will help alleviate concerns of voter fraud the former president raised four years ago in relation to President Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the Peach State.

“GREAT NEWS!” former Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington said, praising the passage of the resolution. “HAND COUNT at precinct level to ensure the totals match with the machines … This is a HUGE win and was opposed by the Fake News, the Left, and Raffensperger.”

The decision also sparked some criticism from election officials and democracy advocates who fear it will cause delays, errors, and increased costs for the state. In the 2020 election, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced six days after Election Day that there would be a statewide hand recount, and the results were not certified until Nov. 20.

Opponents argue that the hand count could take weeks or months, leading to uncertainty in the presidential race. Ethan Compton, an elections supervisor, emphasized that it is too late to adopt such changes, stating, “The election has begun.” (Read more from “Georgia Election Board Approves Rule to Hand-Count Ballots Night of Election” HERE)

Arizona Supreme Court Rules 98,000 People Whose Citizenship Is Unconfirmed Can Vote in Pivotal Election

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Nearly 98,000 people whose U.S. citizenship has not been confirmed will be allowed to vote in the upcoming state and local elections, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The ruling came after a “coding oversight” in state software prompted the swing state’s Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to insist that he would send out ballots to those affected anyway.

The database error called into question the citizenship status of 100,000 registered Arizona voters, affecting individuals who obtained their driver’s licenses before October 1996, and subsequently received duplicates before registering to vote after 2004.

Fontes and Stephen Richer, the Republican Maricopa County recorder, disagreed on what status the voters should hold following the “coding oversight.”

“This was discovered not because somebody was voting illegally and not because somebody was attempting to vote illegally, as far as we can tell,” Fontes said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. “And this was basic voter roll maintenance, and it showed us that there is this issue.” (Read more from “Arizona Supreme Court Rules 98,000 People Whose Citizenship Is Unconfirmed Can Vote in Pivotal Election” HERE)

Arizona Officials Suddenly Discover 97,000 Registered Voters May Not Have Provided Proof of Citizenship After All

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This week, Arizona officials announced that nearly 100,000 registered voters may not be able to vote in state and local elections this November after they may not have provided proof of U.S. citizenship as required by state law.

The apparent “flaw” in the voter registration process in Arizona was discovered last week, Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer said in lengthy X post on Tuesday, even though it had been around for decades.

The issue involves a complicated nexus of state and federal law and rules governing an Arizona driver’s license.

Arizona has a unique system by which prospective voters in federal elections may register using a federal form that does not require documented proof of citizenship. Documentation is required, however, for those casting ballots in state and local elections.

Since 1996, those wishing to obtain a standard Arizona driver’s license have had to show proof of U.S. citizenship. Green-card holders are given an alternate license. (Read more from “Arizona Officials Suddenly Discover 97,000 Registered Voters May Not Have Provided Proof of Citizenship After All” HERE)

Pennsylvania Motor Voter System Will Be Audited for Noncitizen Voters

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Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro got mixed reviews in September 2023 when he announced Pennsylvania had implemented automatic voter registration for “eligible Commonwealth residents obtaining driver’s licenses and ID cards at Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) driver and photo license centers.”

Before Shapiro switched to automatic voter registration, anyone getting a driver’s license was given the option to register to vote. But now all applying for driver’s licenses are automatically registered and must opt out if they don’t want to be — or cannot be — registered to vote.

Opponents of the move worried that people who are not eligible to vote, such as those who are not citizens of the United States, would not opt out and would be registered anyway.

In Pennsylvania, at least 628,234 noncitizens had a state driver’s license or a non-driver’s license photo identification, according to a Right-to-Know request response obtained by Heather Honey, executive director of the Election Research Institute and co-founder of Verity Vote.

Now an investigation has been announced to look at how the state is keeping illegal voters from registering in the process of getting a driver’s license.

(Read more from “Pennsylvania Motor Voter System Will Be Audited for Noncitizen Voters” HERE)

Georgia’s Secretary of State May Be Prosecuting Voter Crimes He Helped Create

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In September 2020, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger held a press conference to announce that 1,000 Georgia voters in “about a hundred counties” would be investigated for double voting during the June 9 combined presidential and state primary election. He pledged to prosecute the offenders. Yet this is an issue, and a scandal, he arguably caused.

The issues he described in that press conference first came to light in Long County, Georgia, a small South Georgia county with a little more than 12,500 voters, where Probate Judge Bobby Smith lost his 2020 primary race by only nine votes. Because of the irregularities Smith saw in the race, he retained Atlanta election lawyer Jake Evans to assist him in challenging that election. (I was brought in to serve as an expert witness in the case.)

When Evans heard a voter in the county had claimed he voted twice in the election, he called to interview him, and I was a witness to the call. Hamilton Evans (no relation to Jake Evans) candidly admitted he had voted twice “just to see if they’d let me.” He then reported his double vote to the county sheriff to warn him of the issue.

After the call, I found Evans on the “numbered list of voters,” a list of the voters in the order they entered each precinct. He and 13 other voters appeared again in the early and absentee voter data, bringing the total number to 14 matches. That was the first time in nearly 40 years of working with voter data that I had ever seen hard evidence of double voting. If such problems arose in sleepy little Long County, it’s easy to imagine the potential chaos in big counties like Fulton. . .

To understand what happened, we need to revisit the events that transpired during Covid lockdowns. Raffensperger announced on March 24, 2020, that he would be “mailing absentee ballot request forms to every Georgia voter,” putting the number of those applications at 6.9 million. (Read more from “Georgia’s Secretary of State May Be Prosecuting Voter Crimes He Helped Create” HERE)

Dems Lay Groundwork to Prosecute, Sue, and Threaten Swing-State Officials Into Certifying Elections

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After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a handful of congressional Democrats objected to certifying his electoral victory. But, after some local election officials withheld votes to certify the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden over concerns about that election’s administration, Democrats launched an intimidation campaign to force those officials to fall in line. Wielding prosecutions and threats of lawsuits, their message is clear: rubber-stamp election results or else.

Last week, for example, election meddler Marc Elias threatened Republican officials in a post on X, implying that, should they not certify election results, he will sue them.

“In 2020, Trump tried to overturn the election. My team and I beat him in court 60+ times,” Elias posted on X. “In 2022, Republicans in several counties refused to certify. We sued and won. Here is my message to the GOP: If you try to subvert the election in 2024, you will be sued and you will lose.”

But it’s not just Elias who has weaponized the law to target election officials who dare to question the process or outcome of an election. Some of the most egregious examples are happening in key swing states. . .

The Georgia State Election Board ruled in a 3-2 vote last week that county election board members are entitled to a “reasonable inquiry” into election discrepancies before they certify the results of an election. The rule clarifies that county board members are responsible for certifying an election “after reasonable inquiry that the tabulation and canvassing of the election are complete and accurate and that the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election.” (Read more from “Dems Lay Groundwork to Prosecute, Sue, and Threaten Swing-State Officials Into Certifying Elections” HERE)

A Majority of Likely Voters Believe the 2024 Election Will Be Tainted by Cheating, Survey Finds

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A majority of voters are concerned that the 2024 election will be marred by cheating, a new survey released by Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute finds.

Sixty-two percent of “Likely Voters” are “concerned that cheating will affect the outcome of the 2024 election, including 37% who are Very Concerned,” the survey found. When broken down among presidential preference, 83 percent of voters who claimed they voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 are “at least somewhat concerned that cheating will affect the outcome of the 2024 election,” the survey found. Forty-two percent of voters who said they supported President Joe Biden in the last election cycle expressed the same concern.

Concerns about the security of mail-in ballots were also raised in the survey. Twenty-two percent of Republicans surveyed as well as 18 percent of both Democrats and participating “voters not affiliated with either major party, [said] they either received more than one official ballot in the mail or received a ballot for someone who does not live at their address in 2020.” The share of voters who said they received “multiple mail-in ballots in 2020 is higher (20%) among voters” in swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to the survey.

The survey was conducted amongst 2,466 likely voters nationally and “5,605 likely voters in the battleground states” of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The survey was conducted via phone and online between July 5 – 12.

“The fact that more than 60% of likely voters are concerned about election integrity should be a massive wake-up call to all those who refuse to admit that potential cheating in elections is a major problem,” Editorial Director of The Heartland Institute Chris Talgo said. (Read more from “A Majority of Likely Voters Believe the 2024 Election Will Be Tainted by Cheating, Survey Finds” HERE)