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And joining us now to talk about Campaign 2024 and election integrity is Hans von Spockowski.
He is Initiative Manager and Senior Legal Fellow for Election Law Reform at the Heritage Foundation.
Welcome to the program.
Mamie, thanks for having me.
So it's been four years since the 2020 election.
To what degree do you think that elections are more accurate and secure?
Generally, overall, we're in better shape than we were in 2020.
And one of the good things that came out of that election was it made a lot of state legislators realize that there were vulnerabilities in the system they ought to fix.
And so there were a series of reforms passed in many states.
And a number of states improved the security and integrity of their election process.
No, about 43 million people have voted already for early either mail-in or in person.
Do you support that?
Do you support the ability for there to be early voting?
I support the ability of early voting.
I just think it shouldn't extend too far before the election.
So how much?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the maximum ought to be about two weeks.
Polling actually shows that a majority of Americans agree with that.
They like early voting.
They don't think it should happen two months before the election, before debates have occurred, before some of the news that sometimes comes out right before Election Day.
So yeah, early voting is not a problem.
Are there states two months before?
Well, the longest is about 45 days.
That's about a month and a half.
Yeah, about a month and a half.
I caution people about voting through the mail.
Yeah, that's a very convenient way to vote.
But given the fact that just about a month and a half ago, the two leading organizations for election officials in the country, bipartisans, the National Association of Secretaries of State, National Association of State Election Directors, they actually wrote a joint letter to the Postal Service complaining about the mishandling of absentee ballots, election-related mail, during the primary season.
And their biggest complaint was delays in the delivery of the mail such that absentee ballots got in too late to be counted.
So what I would urge people to do is, if you want to vote before the election, vote early in person.
You know, that's the best way of guaranteeing your vote is going to count.
If you have to vote with an absentee ballot because you're too physically disabled to make it in, be sure you do it very early and check with election officials before Election Day to make sure they've actually received it.
And do you think that it should be counted based on the postmark or based on when it's received?
No, I think it's a mistake for states to allow ballots to come in after Election Day.
The rule traditionally always was the absentee ballot has to be in the hands of election officials on Election Day.
I think there are many good, wise policy reasons to keep that rule in place.
Now, the Heritage Foundation has a website with a database set up.
It's called a sampling of recent election fraud cases from across the United States, and it's got some numbers here.
For instance, 1,561 proven instances of voter fraud, 1,325 criminal convictions, there's civil penalties.
Explain these numbers, explain the data behind them based over what time period and how many votes.
That's about 20 years.
But remember, it's not a comprehensive list.
You know, it's a sampling of cases.
Oftentimes, prosecutions aren't necessarily reported if it's a local county DA doing that.
And it's hard to keep track of what's happening in the 3,000 counties across the country.
So this includes local as well as state and federal?
That's right.
Now, we don't put a case into the database unless it is a proven case.
So there's no, he said, she said claims in there.
It's only if someone has been convicted in a court of law, a judge has ordered a new election, or perhaps there's been an official finding, as you may recall, happened in 2018 in North Carolina when the State Board of Elections there overturned a congressional race because of absentee ballot fraud.
But remember, this also doesn't catch cases where prosecutors don't prosecute.
And I can cite you many instances, including my own personal experience as an election official at a county level, of criminal referrals to DAs that they just didn't do anything about.
And if you'd like to join our conversation with our guest, Hans von Spikowski of the Heritage Foundation, you can do that.
Our lines are Republicans 202748-8001, Democrats 202748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
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To what extent do you think non-citizen voting is taking place, and what evidence can you cite?
We don't know the extent of the problem.
We do know there are various surveys that have been done in which individuals admit that they are not a citizen and that they are registered to vote or have been voting.
Just recently, a number of states have been checking finally their DMV records.
So these are individuals who self-identified as the fact that they were not U.S. citizens when they went to get a driver's license.
Texas has removed about 6,500.
Virginia, about 6,300.
Over the weekend, Iowa reported about 2,000 suspected aliens on the voter rolls.
Alabama, over 3,000.
So the numbers, after a while, start building up.
In Virginia, actually, since 2014, they've removed about 11,000 aliens from the voter rolls.
Now, folks may think that's not a large number in a state with several million registered voters.
But keep in mind in Virginia, for example, within the last decade and a half, they've had two Attorney General's races decided by less than 1,000 votes.
And just a couple of years ago, control of the state House came down to one race because the two parties were evenly divided and it was a tied election.
Well, let's talk about that Virginia case.
This is from the Justice Department.
It says that the DOJ sues Virginia for violating federal law's prohibition on systematic efforts to remove voters within 90 days of an election.
Now, these are voters that are being removed on suspected that they are non-citizens.
And what the federal law states is that it's too close to an election and people can't appeal that decision or prove that they are, in fact, eligible to vote in time to vote.
What's your take on that?
That's not correct.
First of all, the court in that case is misinterpreting that federal law.
It's the National Voter Registration Act, which I was responsible for enforcing when I worked at the Justice Department.
That 90-day provision applies to individuals who were eligible to register when they registered.
How can you then take them off the rolls if they become ineligible?
The judge is misapplying it because it does not apply to an alien who was never eligible, not only not eligible to register in the first place, but in fact, by registering to vote, that individual was committing a felony under federal law.
And the idea that someone would not be able to vote if, for example, the state made a mistake.
And remember, these are individuals who self-identified as not being U.S. citizens when they went to get their driver's license.
Under the provisional balloting requirement of the Help America Vote Act, if you show up at a polling place, it doesn't matter whether what the reason is that you've been deleted from the voter registration roll.
If you show up and you assert that you are an eligible voter and that you were registered to vote, they have to provide you with a provisional ballot.
You vote it, and after Election Day, election officials then investigate.
And if they've made a mistake, your ballot gets counted.
So there is an opportunity for individuals to correct a mistake, and they still will be able to vote.
They won't be disenfranchised.
But the point here is, judge made an error.
That 90-day provision does not apply to aliens.
All right.
And let's talk to callers now.
Jim is up first, a Democrat in Illinois.
Good morning, Jim.
Yes, good morning.
I just have a question.
Do you believe the 2020 election was legit Biden winning?
Well, that election is over with.
Joe Biden was declared the winner.
There's no point now in going back to that.
My concern is the upcoming election and future elections and making sure that every voter, I don't care which party they affiliate with, who's eligible is able to vote and that their votes are not voided, for example, by people who are not U.S. citizens registering and voting.
I mean, I think given that you are very concerned with election integrity, to say the 2020 vote was fair and free and the results were accurate, are you not able to say that?
I'm saying that the election was decided.
There were problems.
There were problems in some states that I don't think were properly taken care of.
But overall, the election went through the way it was supposed to, and we had a winner.
And anyone who goes back now arguing about that, you are wasting your time.
What you should be concerned with is making sure that our current laws and regulations are the best that they can be to make sure every eligible individual is able to vote and do so in an honest election.
Gordon in Chesapeake, Virginia, Republican, good morning.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'd like to get a comment from your guest on the recent Pennsylvania ruling where they are no longer, at least I believe they're no longer verifying signatures on mail-in ballots.
Well, actually, I'm not sure that's correct.
They are supposed to be verifying signatures, and the court there, the state Supreme Court also said that people have to comply with both the signature requirement and the date requirement on absentee ballots.
I should mention something that just happened, which is that one of the counties there, Lancaster County, just reported last week that they had gotten over 2,000 very suspicious voter registrations, which they believe were fraudulent, and that's something they are investigating, which is a good thing that they caught it.
But I worry about incidents like that.
Here is James in Atlanta, Independent.
Hi, James.
Hey, I agree.
We shouldn't go back to former elections.
We should look forward.
One of the things former President Trump has said is if he loses this election, it means the election was rigged.
I wanted to get your thoughts on that.
I'm sorry.
The question is, what was it?
That former President Trump had said, if he loses, then the election was rigged.
And he wants your thoughts.
Well, my thoughts are that I will wait and see what happens on Election Day and look at the evidence that comes out over whether or not there are problems and whether any claims of problems, whether there's credible evidence to support them.
And let's talk to Bob in Procterville, Ohio, Republican.
Good morning.
Morning.
My name is Bob, and I'm a Republican, but generally I vote for the person based on what I feel their policies are and not so much the rhetoric that I hear in the campaigns.
And, you know, regardless of who you're voting for, what I would wish we could have in this day and age is that each candidate be responsible to talk about what they want to do only and not what the other person wants to do so we can stop this name-calling.
Because I think the name-calling, whether it's true or not, influences people without any proof of what they're saying is even true.
But I like your show, but I see I hear a lot of callers that are calling and they're just so biased.
You know, my goal for America is we all come together, we unite our differences and work it out.
We give in.
Let's get a reaction, Bob.
Oh, look, I agree with that.
I mean, I think I would like to see candidates dealing with substantive issues.
You know, what are their solutions to the many problems we face?
What are they going to do about it?
But look, folks, folks who hope that we're not going to have the kind of attacks and name-calling.
Unfortunately, that's been going on since we became a country.
If you look at the early presidential elections in this country and the kind of attacks that were being mounted by Jefferson, Adams, and many other candidates on each other, our election today sometimes seem clean in comparison to that.
So we have a long history of it.
It's unfortunate.
And I wish, in fact, we could really stick to the issues.
And that's the way campaigns were waged.
But it's never really happened that way.
I'm not sure it ever will.
Here's a Democrat in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Gene, you're on.
Oh, yes.
I was calling because there's so much heretic, all this stuff going on.
I've never seen it all days of my life.
They're just fighting against each other.
It's not right.
God, I don't like this ugly.
I look at how they're just calling, like you said, name each other.
If you're going to represent someone, they need to learn how to represent it right.
People get confused.
They don't know who the hell because there's so much stuff going on.
I never seen nothing like it all days in my life.
And I pray, I pray to God that God will get the right one to fit in there.
And that's all I got to say.
Hans, there's a video going around social media about somebody opening up ballots in Pennsylvania and ripping them up.
That it is not true.
It is fabricated.
Our intelligence agencies have said that this is from Russia.
Senator JD Vance was asked about it on CBS, and he essentially dismissed taking action against Russia for that, saying, quote, that's what they do.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, he's right about that's what they do.
I mean, the Russians, since the Cold War, have done whatever they can to interfere in our elections.
There are many instances of that happening during that time, even during the Reagan elections.
The difference is that today, technology makes that even easier if and when we can actually find and indict individuals for that, as happened recently.
As you know, the Justice Department recently filed indictments against several Russians who were masquerading as Belgian bankers.
If we can indict them and go after them, fine.
But the problem is when you have hackers working in places like China and Russia, unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do about it.
And here is Frank in Chatham, New Jersey, Republican.
Yes, good morning, Mimi.
Thank you.
Thank you, Hans, for having the facts on the matter with the voter rolls there in Virginia.
The media can just switch one word like they planted in there, suspected, which changes the whole outlook.
So I'm glad that you pointed that out.
And then I do agree with a lot of the calls this morning that we do have to unite as a country, all Americans, but it's very difficult when one party is calling another candidate Hitler and that he's a con man and a crook when there's no facts behind that because they've been investigating for 10 years.
He would be in jail already, but he's not.
So I just appreciate the facts coming out, and I wish everybody would do more due diligence.
Thank you, Hans.
Thank you.
Well, my rash to that is to, I'm tired of hearing this word fascist, okay?
It is an insult to the people who actually suffered under real fascism, like my mother, who grew up in Nazi Germany.
Okay.
And if you want to disagree with a candidate on the issues, if you think what they're proposing is really bad, that's fine.
But those kind of labels are historically wrong.
They're historically inaccurate.
And frankly, I think they're actually kind of insulting to the intelligence of the American public.
And I frankly wish that that kind of thing would stop.
What's your reaction to General Kelly's remarks that Trump was praising Hitler and saying positive things about him?
Well, I frankly don't believe that.
There's been a lot of things that have come out from people who they all come out at the last moment, all of a sudden now, right before the election, and there's no way to actually verify or confirm or check any of that.
That's a hard to believe.
Recently on this program, we had Ken Block, who was hired to investigate voter fraud claims for the Trump administration.
He wrote a book about it, and here is a portion, and then I'll get your response.
Huck, there's reporting this morning in the Washington Times that the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxson is asking the Homeland Security Department to verify the citizenship status of more than 450,000 names on the state's voter roll saying that while the vast majority are likely eligible to vote, he wants to weed out those who aren't.
How difficult is that type of request?
It's incredibly difficult.
The only database that potentially could be used to help identify someone who's not here legally is owned by the Department of Homeland Security.
But you still have a problem with names and dates of birth and how do you know for sure that it's the same person.
It's very challenging to identify a unique individual in a database of names and dates of birth.
I have yet to see any hard evidence that there are lots of votes being cast by people not here legally.
I think that the Attorney General is engaging in some political theater.
And look, there's nothing illegal about engaging in political theater.
However, when that theater causes people to seriously doubt the outcome of elections, that's where we have to sort of take a step backwards and soberly look at what the claims are.
Well, he's right about that.
It's very difficult to verify citizenship of registered voters.
That's in fact why Texas and Florida have both sued the Department of Homeland Security because DHS is refusing a requirement of federal law.
Federal law says they have to provide access to their database to state officials and they're not doing it.
The biggest issue here, this could all be resolved easily if states were allowed to put in requirements to provide proof of citizenship when you register to vote.
As you know, there was a federal bill to do that recently, debated in Congress, the SAVE Act, and on a party-line basis, it was stopped.
It passed the House.
There's no way it'll get a vote in the Senate.
And that would easily solve this problem.
And what are the ways that you can prove that you're a citizen?
Well, for example, a number of years ago, Kansas proposed a statute on this.
They had a dozen different ways to do it.
Everything from passports to birth certificates to school records.
There were a whole series of documents you could use to do it.
A school record will show that you're a citizen?
Certain kinds of school records, yes.
And then they put in an administrative grandfather clause at the end so that you could get, if you needed, an administrative hearing if you were unable to meet any of the many different ways to do it.
It's no different from the fact that in many states now you have to show an ID to vote.
That's a good requirement.
And all the claims that were made that ID requirements would prevent people from voting have been disproven.
It's not true.
And the same would happen with requiring proof of citizenship.
Here's Rose, who's calling from Herndon, Virginia, Independent Line.
Hi, Rose.
And live now to Georgia, where Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump is being interviewed at the inaugural National Faith Summit.
You're watching live 2024 campaign coverage here on C-SPAN.
To introduce my former boss, the man who is the champion of people of faith, President Donald J. Trump.
And I'm proud to be an American.
Wearing these dynamics to me.
And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land.
From the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of Tennessee.
From Detroit down to Houston and New York to LA.
Where there's pride in every American heart, and it's time we stand and say that I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land.
God bless the USA.
And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.