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Nov. 13, 2024 - Epoch Times
22:38
How to Restore Trust in the US Election Process: Hans von Spakovsky
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The biggest problem across the country is that we have an honor system for registering.
So states are not doing anything to verify that you actually are a U.S. citizen.
Virginia, for example, recently started checking its voter registration rules by checking other state databases like DMV, driver's license records.
And they discovered that there were individuals who, when they went to get their driver's license, produced documentation showing they were not U.S. citizens, but they were also on the voter registration list.
Hans von Spakowsky is a former member of the Federal Election Commission and a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
He's also the head of the think tank's Election Law Reform Initiative.
Half the states allow third-party strangers to come to your house and offer to pick up and deliver your absentee ballot.
That's a mistake.
There are a lot of absentee ballot fraud cases.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Hans von Spakovsky, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Thanks for having me.
Since the 2020 election, there's been a lot of attempts at bolstering election integrity across a number of states.
I want to get a sense from you of how that's gone.
What I would tell people is that overall we are in better shape in the 24 election than we were in 2020.
And the reason for that is that one of the only really good things to come out of the 2020 election was it finally made a lot of state legislators realize that there were vulnerabilities in the system.
I mean, I've been talking about this for years, but the attitude of a lot of state legislators was, well, I got elected, so there must not be a problem.
So there were a lot of reform packages proposed and passed right after the 2020 election.
Georgia became famous for its huge reform package to the point where the All Stars game announced it was leaving.
But they passed some terrific reforms and multiple other states did also.
So some states Have not improved things.
California and New York probably being, you know, big examples of that.
But a majority of the states actually have made things better.
I mean, the ones that are most interesting perhaps are the swing states.
Correct, right.
So maybe, could we go through them?
Sure.
Well, as you know, Georgia was a big bone of contention after the last election.
They passed a big reform package.
Probably one of the most useful and best things they did was, everyone knows, we've now really increased the amount of absentee ballot use in this country.
In the 2020 election, it was 43 percent of the electorate.
That was a 20 percent increase over the prior election.
It's huge.
So Georgia passed a law that extended its voter ID requirement.
It had a good one for in-person voting, but it didn't apply to absentee ballots.
So they've extended that to absentee ballots.
Texas did something similar.
Another very common reform that about two dozen states passed, including most of the battleground states, It was a ban on private funding, Zuck Bucks, that was funneled almost exclusively to where?
Big urban cities, big urban democratic strongholds like Philadelphia.
I don't think any political party, I don't care whether it's Republicans or Democrats, should be able to use government offices To give them an advantage.
And so two-thirds of the states pretty much have banned also private funding, which I think is a good thing.
If I recall, right, this was basically, you know, money to bolster the activity of existing operations.
Is that it?
Or may create new offices?
Well, yes, but the liberal group that was putting the money in was putting all kinds of conditions on it.
In fact, I think it was Green Bay, Wisconsin, after the election, through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, all these internal communications came out in which the clerk, who was supposed to be running elections, she actually resigned prior to the election because who was supposed to be running elections, she actually resigned prior to the election because she said that this liberal group that had given them all this money had put one of their activists into her office who basically had taken over the election
And it was clearly intended to do one thing, not help everybody vote, but to help one particular political party.
Well, you mentioned the voter ID update on voter ID requirements.
This is for the benefit of our Canadian viewers, especially, where in Canada voter ID is a requirement.
And it seems odd to many people, perhaps outside of the U.S., that this is such an issue of contention.
Could you just kind of flesh that out a little bit?
Yeah, and it shouldn't be.
In fact, you know, the EU, European Union, sends observers to all our elections, and whenever I brief them prior to an election, they're always astounded.
That's the fact that every state in the United States does not require an ID. Like I said, two of the biggest states, New York and California, you don't need an ID to vote.
You know, there's been this whole claim of voter suppression.
If you require an ID, people aren't going to be able to vote.
We've had voter ID laws now in place in a number of states for a decade and a half.
And all of the turnout data shows that all of those claims are completely untrue.
I see.
So you've tested this empirically.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
There's numerous studies that have looked at states with ID laws in place, like Georgia, comparing them to states with no ID, like California and New York.
And all the studies conclude that requiring an ID does not prevent anyone from voting.
In fact, if you look at places like Georgia that has a requirement for a government-issued photo ID, they in many elections have had a higher turnout than either New York or California.
Which have no ID. Isn't there a new law in California that expressly prevents the use of it?
So is that real?
It is.
What happened was one of the towns One of the cities in California said, we really want to require an ID when people vote.
So they passed a city ordinance that said if you voted in this particular town, you had to show an ID. The legislature immediately passed a state law forbidding Any and all jurisdictions in California from requiring an ID to vote and Governor Newsom immediately signed it.
That is actually an example of the leadership of a political party being out of touch with its constituency.
Whether you need an ID to vote is a matter of state law.
Probably about two-thirds of the states have some form of an ID requirement.
You know this, John.
Americans disagree on many issues.
There's deep divide.
On one thing, they don't disagree, and that's voter ID. The latest polling I've seen on this shows that 81% of Americans think that's a common-sense requirement, one that states should have.
And that's a majority requirement.
It doesn't matter whether they're Democrats or Republicans or Independents.
It doesn't matter whether they're black or white or Asian or Hispanic.
They all think this is a good idea.
North Carolina finally got an ID law in place after a huge long fight over it.
Pennsylvania is a little bit better.
No, they don't have an ID law, but Pennsylvania actually was one of the states that banned private funding.
Of election offices, which is a good thing.
Ohio has made a number of improvements.
Wisconsin's a little bit better.
One of the few states that's gone backwards in terms of battleground states, unfortunately, is Michigan.
Michigan passed a law.
They actually had a voter ID law in place, and they passed a law gutting it and getting rid of it in large measure.
And when you're talking about better or worse, you're talking about purely in terms of voter ID or overall?
Overall.
Okay.
And what are your measures here?
Well, in fact, the Heritage Foundation, where I work, we launched an integrity, basically scorecard, an election integrity scorecard in December of 2021.
And we grade every state based on 50.
Different criteria.
So it's everything from whether or not you require an ID to vote for both in-person and absentee ballot, but also what do you do to clean up Your voter rolls.
Make sure they stay accurate.
How do you put measures in place to take people off who have died or, for example, have moved out of state?
That's a key measurement of a state.
As you know, that's been a matter of controversy just lately because a number of states have actually taken aliens, noncitizens, off the voter rolls.
They're now being sued by the Biden-Harris Justice Department for taking aliens off the voter rolls.
Well, yeah, so maybe explain to me that situation, because it might not be clear how they got on the voter rolls in the first place and just what this whole process looks like.
When you register to vote, there's a question on the form you fill out asking you whether or not you're a U.S. citizen.
And unfortunately, states aren't really verifying that.
So if you are a non-citizen but you say, yes, I am a citizen, you'll get registered to vote.
So it could just be by mistake?
It could be by mistake, but it could also be intentional.
Sure.
The result of that is that Virginia, for example, They recently started checking its voter registration rules by checking other state databases like DMV, driver's license records.
And they discovered that there were individuals who, when they went to get their driver's license, produced documentation showing they were not U.S. citizens.
They were also on the voter registration list, and so Virginia took about 6,300 aliens off the rolls.
Texas found about 6,500 aliens on the rolls.
I'm sure people look at that and say, well, okay, that's maybe a small number.
They're both big states, but Take Virginia, right?
In Virginia, where they took 6,300 aliens off the rolls.
In the last 15, 16 years, Virginia has had two statewide attorney general races decided by less than 1,000 votes.
So it could make a difference in a close election.
Hans, we're going to take a quick break right now, and we'll be right back.
And we're back with Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
What is the reality about non-citizen voting?
There's a ton of chatter about this.
How does Heritage understand this?
Look, the biggest problem across the country is that we have an honor system for registering.
So states are not doing anything to verify that you actually are a U.S. citizen.
And there's an unfortunate political party divide on this, which there shouldn't be.
As you know, there was a bill proposed in Congress, the SAVE Act, Which would require states to get proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
Republicans even tried attaching it to the continuing resolution to keep the government running.
Unfortunately, that came down to a party-line vote with one side in favor of this and the other side saying, no, we don't want to verify citizenship.
Again, I actually think that's an area where the leadership of that particular political party, if they talk to their constituents, they would find that it doesn't matter whether people are Democrats or Republicans, they do not want noncitizens voting in our elections.
Well, and there's another dimension to this, come to think of it, because when it comes to the census, right?
Of course, census counts everybody that's in the country.
But as I understand, you know, congressional redistricting happens based on not the number of citizens, but the overall number of people.
That have been counted in each place.
So what is the impact of that on voting?
That is a real problem.
Apportionment happens every ten years after the census.
Based on the total population of each state, the Census Bureau determines how many members of the U.S. House each state has.
And because it's based on total population, if a state has a very large population of aliens, whether they're here legally or illegally, They're going to get more representatives in the U.S. House.
The effect of that, California has the largest population of noncitizens in the U.S. If apportionment was based on citizen population, which is what I think it should be, California would probably lose anywhere between four and six congressional seats.
Illinois would probably lose a congressional seat.
New York would probably lose a congressional seat.
Texas, potentially, would lose a congressional seat.
I think the inclusion of noncitizens is, frankly, unfair to U.S. citizens in the voting process.
Something that was in the last election, in places where ballot harvesting is legal, that methodology was used a lot more, if I understand correctly, in 2020 than in previous years.
I'm curious how that's being applied today, has been changes in laws, and maybe just even remind us what it is.
Unfortunately, and that's a problem, unfortunately about half the states allow third-party strangers to come to your house and offer to pick up and deliver your absentee ballot.
That's a mistake.
Look, in states that don't allow it, one side likes to call it vote harvesting because that sounds beneficial.
I call it what it is, which is vote trafficking.
Look, if you need to vote by an absentee ballot, you have plenty of ways that you can get that ballot back.
You can drop it off yourself and every state a member of your family can drop it off with election officials and you can mail it.
But in about half the states, like I said, they allow any third party stranger to pick it up.
So that means that people working for campaigns, party activists, folks who have a stake in the outcome of the election, Can get something very valuable, a valuable commodity, your ballot.
And if you look at the election fraud database that we maintain at the Heritage Foundation, you'll find there are a lot of absentee ballot fraud cases, and in particular cases in which when those kind of political consultants and others get a hold of people's ballots, You can't trust that they're going to deliver them.
You can't trust that they may not open your ballot, and if you voted for the wrong person, toss it out or perhaps change it.
We've got cases like that sprinkled throughout our database, and it's just not a good idea to allow that to happen.
So that is a problem in many states, including in places like California.
So you've described tightening up around voter ID requirements in many states.
What are, at the moment, the existing vulnerabilities that come to mind, like the most significant ones?
Well, you know, a lot of it depends on the state.
The biggest vulnerability we have are absentee mail-in ballots.
They've become such a huge part of the election.
Look, I don't have a problem with people voting absentee if they really need to.
You know, someone who's so physically disabled that they can't make it to the polls.
But even that issue of absentee ballots, the need for it has lessened over the years.
Why?
Because we now have early voting in almost all of the states.
And, you know, if you live in Virginia, Virginia has the earliest voting of any state in the country.
It starts 45 days before Election Day.
There aren't too many people who are going to be out of the state that entire time and couldn't vote early in person.
The other big problem with absentee balloting that concerns me is a lot of states have changed their laws, unfortunately, to say that rather than the absentee ballot having to be in the hands of election officials by the end of Election Day, Oh, no, no, no.
We'll keep counting ballots that come in for days after the election, five days, ten days.
And that opens up potential manipulation of the voting process.
Also...
You mean people voting after the fact or what...
Yeah, trying to vote after the fact.
But also, do you really want to trust the U.S. mail to deliver your ballot?
You know, what I always ask people is, if you won the lottery, Would you mail your ticket?
No, of course not.
Everybody says no.
They would show up in person.
Voting is the same way, particularly when you consider that just a month ago, the two leading organizations of election officials in the country, bipartisan organizations, sent a joint letter to the U.S. Postal Service complaining about the mishandling of mail during the primary season this year.
And what they complained about were delays in the delivery of absentee ballots, misdirected absentee ballots, and problems that caused absentee ballots, a certain percentage, to arrive too late to be counted.
And in fact, that came on top of a report by the Postal Service's own Inspector General, which also looked at the handling of absentee ballots during the primary season, and they had a lot of criticisms of the Postal Service and its mishandling of that mail.
And with absentee ballots, you're arguing that it introduces uncertainty into the system that isn't necessary, is that right?
Yeah, and it's riskier because It subjects voters, for example, to potential pressure and coercion.
You know, a staffer for a candidate can't go inside a polling place and try to pressure the person who's sitting there with a ballot in a voting particular way.
But they can do that by knocking on the door of a voter and saying, oh, have you voted your ballot?
Can I help you vote your ballot?
Can I help you fill it out?
That's the kind of thing that can happen in people's homes and there are cases like that, particularly we've seen cases like that down in Texas.
Of individuals who are paid by the campaigns to go to voters' homes to try to pressure and coerce them to vote a particular way.
For folks who think this can't make a difference, in 2018, in North Carolina, the State Board of Elections overturned a congressional election Because of widespread absentee ballot fraud that included and was basically organized by staffers for one of the candidates going to people's homes to collect their absentee ballots and pressuring them to vote a particular way,
and if they didn't, actually Opening up their ballots and changing the vote.
A final thought as we finish, Hans?
You know, integrity in the election process is something that should be a bipartisan concern.
It unfortunately has kind of delved away from that in recent years, and I would go back and tell people, you know, the last time there was a great The bipartisan report in which both Republicans and Democrats participated was chaired by, of all people, Jimmy Carter, former Democratic president who just recently turned 100.
And if folks want to see some good recommendations, they should take a look at that report.
It was released in 2005.
It was Jimmy Carter and James Baker, former Republican Secretary of State.
And back then, It was bipartisan.
People agreed on things like voter ID. It's unfortunate that since then, there has developed such a political partisan divide on this issue.
Well, Hans von Spakovsky, such a pleasure to have had you on again.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you all for joining Hans von Spakovsky and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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