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 the 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, 1325 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.
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.
You can start calling in now.
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, 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 at 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.