The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an attempt from left-wing organizations to have the court reconsider a ruling that found unelected bureaucrats were wrong to accept thousands of undated or incorrectly dated ballots during the 2020 election.

A three-judge panel for the 3rd Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision in March that any mail-in ballots that arrive in envelopes missing a date or with an incorrect date are invalid, upholding a state law and overturning a lower court’s decision.

Several left-wing organizations appealed the ruling by petitioning the court to review the decision en banc, a petition which was denied on Tuesday. It’s a big blow for Democrat operative and Russia hoaxer Marc Elias, whose group supported the lawsuit against the state law and which called it a “crucial” and “critical” case ahead of 2024. //

The panel for the 3rd Circuit overturned Baxter’s ruling, admitting that while their immediate reaction would be to find that a “failure to date a return envelope should not cause his ballot to be disqualified,” their role was simply to determine when the Materiality Provision can be applied.

“We hold that the Materiality Provision only applies when the State is determining who may vote,” Judge Thomas Ambra wrote. “In other words, its role stops at the door of the voting place. The provision does not apply to rules, like the date requirement, that govern how a qualified voter must cast his ballot for it to be counted.”

One in five mail-in voters admitted to violating election laws in 2020, which should have disqualified their ballots. Further details are even worse. //

The Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey, which was conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6, asked likely voters who cast ballots in 2020 questions about fraudulent activities, without telling them such actions were a form of voter fraud. The results were stunning. One in five people who voted by mail admitted to engaging in at least one kind of potential voter fraud, seriously calling into question the security of widespread mail-in balloting.

For example, one question asked, “During the 2020 election, did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident?” Such an action nearly always constitutes fraud. Incredibly, 17 percent of voters said “yes.” //

It’s an incredibly important finding since that contest involved more mail-in ballots than any other election in U.S. history. Election officials report that of 159 million ballots cast in 2020, more than 68 million were submitted by mail, about 43 percent of the total. In addition, as the MIT Election Data and Science Lab noted, “the dramatic increase in the raw number of absentee ballots cast was accompanied by a significant decrease in the overall absentee rejection rate for the country: from 0.96 percent in 2016 to 0.79 percent in 2020.”

If the recent Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey is accurate and one in five ballots were, in fact, fraudulent, that would suggest greater than 13 million ballots should not have been counted nationwide in 2020. That’s far more than the margin of victory for President Biden in the popular vote, about 7 million.

As troubling as these findings are, however, additional questions in the Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey suggest voter fraud and illegal voting may have been even worse than the one-in-five figure suggests. For instance, 8 percent of all respondents — not just those who voted by mail — said they were offered “pay” or “reward” in return for voting. //

Another survey conducted in March and April by the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen shows that 28 percent of likely voters now say they would commit at least one form of illegal voting during the 2024 election, “if given the opportunity.” Interestingly, respondents’ willingness to commit fraud was similar among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. //

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, just three states require notaries for mail-in ballots — Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Only nine additional states mandate that a voter obtain one or more non-notary witness signatures when casting a ballot by mail. Most states require neither a witness nor a notary to verify signatures.

Lawmakers must ensure widespread voter fraud does not happen in future elections. That can only occur if mail-in voting systems are radically improved. Time is running out for legislators to fix these major threats to American self-government.

These are events that took place three and a half years ago. This indictment could have been brought three years ago, or two years ago. There is a reason why it is being brought right now. It is to freeze the Arizona Republican Party so that they cannot organize themselves to win that Senate seat. //

Proft (05:30):

So then, we should expect since Dana Nessel, the AG of Michigan, has a similar investigation ongoing. We should expect that indictment maybe right after Labor Day?

WAJ (05:40):

Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s what’s going on this year. All of these Trump indictments, with the exception of the Mar-a-Lago one, where the events took place later, all of these lawsuits, criminal prosecutions are regarding events that took place over three years ago. They are brought so that the trials will take place in this election year, including the one that’s ongoing now in Manhattan, [which] involves events six or seven years ago. //

Going to the merits of it. the claim is that there was a fraud perpetrated on the Congress and the public regarding the Arizona election. The problem with that, is that there was no deception. No one was deceived…

This took place in plain sight. It was in the media. People were on TV. //

Proft (09:35):

Well, it’s more than freezing. What they’re really going to do is now they’ve got this indictment, and now they’re going to run tens of millions of dollars of ads saying the Arizona Republican party leadership has been indicted for trying to steal the 2020 election. //

So I say that as somebody who disagreed with John Eastman at the time, on the record. But you know, they have not only criminalized politics, they have now criminalized lawyering if you’re a Republican lawyer.

So people make aggressive arguments in court all the time. People make arguments for the extension of the law. I think Eastman’s argument was wrong. I don’t think it rose to such a frivolous level that you should lose your Bar license over it. //

There is a group, I think they’re called the 65 Group or something like that, which is going around the country trying to get Republican lawyers disbarred. They have weaponized not just the Democrat prosecutorial offices, they are now weaponizing Bar counsel and they’re now weaponizing the disciplinary process. And they have said explicitly, they advertise it, that they want to make Republican lawyers toxic in their communities.

So people need to wake up. What’s going on in this country is really totalitarian, and it is an attempt to not enforce the rule of law, but to destroy the rule of law and to prevent Republicans from ever mounting an election challenge again. What Republican lawyer, if there is an alleged fraud in the next election, is going to dare to raise legal arguments against it knowing that John Eastman has now been disbarred for that? //

Subotai Bahadur | April 26, 2024 at 11:01 pm
The actual charge is, I believe, “objecting to election theft while Republican”.

Subotai Bahadur

A new report from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) opens with an obvious point that has incredibly become less than obvious to some.

“A functioning democracy requires that those who elect their representatives trust the voting system in place. This means that elections must be safe and secure and that there is no doubt that elected officials were legitimately elected to their positions,” states the report, exclusively provided to The Federalist.

The paper lays out “Commonsense Solutions to Better Secure the 2024 Election.” The suggested reforms center on dealing with the explosion of absentee/mail-in voting, which surged 131 percent in Covid-stained 2020 compared to the general election just four years before. FGA says states still have the opportunity “to make the process as secure as in-person voting,” but doing so requires:

• Banning ballot harvesting
• Narrowing who can return ballots
• Banning third-party distribution of unsolicited absentee applications
• Stopping unsolicited applications and ballots by government officials
• Adopting strict guidelines for absentee ballot returns
• Requiring voter ID to cast an absentee ballot
• Prohibiting unsecured drop boxes
• Requiring absentee and mail-in ballots to be returned by Election Day

Critical swing state Michigan announces a ‘first-of-its-kind collaboration’ with the Small Business Administration to help drive Biden’s GOTV campaign.

January 09, 2018

After 35 years, the consent decree that prohibited the Republican National Committee (RNC) from engaging in ballot security activities wasterminated by a federal judge. RNLA Chair John Ryder, former General Counsel to the RNC, stated:

Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ended the consent decree that had banned the Republican National Committee from engaging in activities to ensure that elections are open, fair, and honest since 1982. Despite years and much money spent searching for evidence of Republican voter suppression, the Democratic National Committee could not present evidence to the court sufficient for the consent decree to remain in effect. We applaud the fact that the RNC may now, on the same, lawful, non-discriminatory basis as other political organizations, ensure that every eligible voter is able to vote and that the votes of ineligible voters are not counted. //

While the consent decree has been in effect, other Republican organizations, such as the RNLA, NRCC, NRSC, Republican state parties, and other groups, have worked to ensure that elections are open, fair, and honest. As Mr. Ryder noted, we look forward to a new era where the RNC can, if it so chooses, be a part of this effort to protect the right to vote of every eligible voter.

Fortunately, someone stepped up to do something about it: Phil Izon of Alaskans for Honest Elections. On Monday, the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) released their interview with Mr. Izon, describing in detail how RCV was pushed on Alaska, how he decided to fight back, how he got a repeal on the ballot for this fall — and in so doing provided a blueprint for other states faced with this terrible idea.

One man, it seems, can still make a difference. //

anon-7lqi
2 hours ago
Congrats.

Now the PR campaign leading up to the election begins. There are a lot of outside groups who want to protect their $7 million investment in Sen Murky Murkowski.

Good luck, may actual Alaskans who live in Alaska prevail.

The left is apoplectic over the bill. That’s a good sign for anyone who values election integrity in Georgia.

We believe that no system is perfect, with each having trade-offs. Hand-marked and hand-counted ballots remove the uncertainty introduced by use of electronic machinery and the ability of bad actors to exploit electronic vulnerabilities to remotely alter the results. However, some portion of voters mistakenly mark paper ballots in a manner that will not be counted in the way the voter intended, or which even voids the ballot. Hand-counts delay timely reporting of results, and introduce the possibility for human error, bias, or misinterpretation.

Technology introduces the means of efficient tabulation, but also introduces a manifold increase in complexity and sophistication of the process. This places the understanding of the process beyond the average person’s understanding, which can foster distrust. It also opens the door to human or machine error, as well as exploitation by sophisticated and malicious actors.

Rather than assert that each component of the process can be made perfectly secure on its own, we believe the goal of each component of the elections process is to validate every other component.

Consequently, we believe that the hallmarks of a reliable and optimal election process are hand-marked paper ballots, which are optically scanned, separately and securely stored, and rigorously audited after the election but before certification. We recommend state legislators adopt policies consistent with these guiding principles, which are further developed below.

Records obtained by PILF showed Virginia elections officials filtered out ‘approximately 100,000 deceased’ individuals and about 68,000 people who no longer resided in Virginia. //

Calvin Coolidge, long before he was president, told his state senator father, “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin must have been channelling old Silent Cal earlier this month when he vetoed Democrat-led bills that would have required the commonwealth to rejoin the leftist-linked Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). //

Virginia is among a growing number of states severing ties with ERIC. The multi-state voter roll maintenance partnership has been criticized for pushing expansive voter registration efforts, particularly a requirement that member states reach out to “eligible but unregistered” voters (EBUs) from lists compiled by ERIC.

ERIC “expanded beyond that of its initial intent – to improve the accuracy of voter rolls,” Elections Commissioner Susan Beals wrote upon Virginia’s break with the group.

None of Democrats’ witnesses in a congressional hearing Tuesday could say resolutely that they believe only citizens should be able to vote in a federal election. //

Public Interest Legal Foundation Maureen Riordan and Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation Hans von Spakovsky said they do not believe non-citizens should be able to vote. Both were Republican witnesses. //

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act seeks to federalize all elections by stripping states and local jurisdictions from making changes to their elections without approval from federal bureaucrats. If the legislation is passed, the U.S. Justice Department could essentially take over an election if its left-wing allies claim minority voters are being harmed by something as simple as requiring an ID or proving citizenship to vote.

Tucker Carlson detailed a “classified briefing” that took place Tuesday with officials from the Department of Justice in attendance, as well as Ocasio-Cortez.

“In a classified briefing this afternoon, attended by officials from the Biden Justice Department, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Elon committed ‘election interference’ in 2022 by ‘changing the algorithms’ on X to alter the results of the midterms that year,” Carlson posted on X.

X CEO Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter in 2022 after the satirical website The Babylon Bee had its account suspended for months, responded to the post, saying “Actually, I made the algorithm open source and neutral to all parties, but of course that is ‘election interference’ by her standards.”

AOC’s ire is misdirected. It’s not like Musk suppressed a bombshell report weeks before the 2020 election or shut down the Twitter accounts of journalists and White House officials who posted the story. But she’s right that the people who did that — and who have weaponized Big Tech algorithms in a host of other ways to control discourse — are guilty of “election interference.”

The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, alleging the state’s voter rolls are inflated with ineligible voters.

The suit claims that 53 of the state’s 83 counties have more registered voters than they do residents who are eligible to vote. Twenty-three other counties also allegedly have “suspiciously high” voter registration rates of 90 percent or more, which does not comport with the nationwide voter registration rate, according to the suit. //

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) lodged a similar suit in 2021 that was recently tossed out after the court ruled the state was removing dead voters from its rolls and therefore was not in violation of the NVRA. //

One of the voters still on the state’s list at the time the suit was filed was Pauline Schmainda, who was born in 1908 and died in 1990. Her obituary was posted in the Detroit Free Press.

But U.S. District Court Judge Jane Beckering of the Western District of Michigan dismissed the PILF suit, claiming “the record demonstrates that deceased voters are removed from Michigan’s voter rolls on a regular and ongoing basis.”

The 2020 election involved a criminal voter fraud scheme with mass absentee ballots and phony voter registrations, according to the Justice Department and the New Jersey attorney general.

This verdict and indictment happened in 2023. Prosecutors in Massachusetts and New York brought election fraud charges in the closing weeks of December.

The Justice Department secured a guilty verdict against a congressional candidate’s spouse—Kim Phuong Taylor—from a federal jury in November in Sioux City, Iowa, on 52 counts regarding causing absentee ballots to be fraudulently requested and cast that occurred in two elections.

If Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans have any interest in stopping Biden’s weaponization of the federal government to boost Democrats’ get-out-the-vote machine, they must be willing to halt all federal funding until the aforementioned provisions are included in any spending bill that comes across their desks. Otherwise, Biden’s secret election-rigging scheme will derail the GOP’s electoral prospects for years to come.

Justin Levitt may be gone from the White House, but the incentives remain for the left to cry voter suppression while undermining democracy. //

In my 25 years working to improve confidence in our elections, one thing has never changed: Democrats will falsely charge Republicans with suppressing the vote. This is because election chaos and false allegations of voter suppression have no downside for Democrats and will be rewarded. There is no better example than Levitt, the former top adviser to President Biden on voting. //

If the left cared about election administration or campaign finance law, they never would have hired the lawyer who oversaw what the FEC found were record-breaking exploitation of elections. But his upward rise in the left’s anti-democracy movement continued until he was eventually rewarded with the ultimate voting job — advising the president of the United States.

A study published by FGA last year discovered thousands of “exhausted” ballots that were discarded in states and localities that have employed RCV in recent elections. In Alaska’s 2022 special congressional election, for example, more than 11,000 of the almost 15,000 “exhausted” ballots were thrown out because those electors “voted for only one Republican candidate and no one else.” Meanwhile, more than 8,000 ballots were deemed “exhausted” and effectively thrown out in a 2018 Maine congressional race, according to FGA.

“The result is that a much smaller, manufactured pool of voters ultimately decides the election to the exclusion of thousands of other voters,” the video narrator said. //

In 2022, Democrat Mary Peltola won Alaska’s at-large congressional seat even though “nearly 60 percent of voters [cast] their ballots for a Republican.” RCV also played a major role in helping Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski win reelection during the 2022 midterms. Efforts are currently underway in the state to have a measure repealing RCV appear on Alaska’s 2024 general election ballot. //

“Ultimately, ranked-choice voting undermines voters’ confidence in the integrity and accuracy of elections,” FGA Marketing Director Victoria Eardley told The Federalist. “Trust is something that is very hard to gain and very easy to lose, and the track record of ranked-choice voting shows it’s the fastest way to erode trust.”

In a statement, PILF President J. Christian Adams blasted federal law for “hamper[ing] states’ abilities to validate citizenship during the voter registration process” and called on lawmakers to change it so states can verify registrants’ citizenship.

“Arizona is limited to building imperfect systems to address the problem of foreign nationals voting,” Adams said.

Fontes dismissed concerns about Arizona’s election administration, but a new lawsuit alleges widespread failures.

Graham Allen
@GrahamAllen_1
·
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Justice Thomas is ON FIRE.

He took down Colorado attorney Jason Murray BASELESS CLAIMS during Donald Trump's 14th Amendment hearing at SCOTUS.

Thomas - "What are the examples?"
Murray - Provides no examples.
Thomas - "Do you have any examples of this?"

4:46 PM · Feb 8, 2024 //

Kraken from the Metacosmos
3 hours ago
Colorado argues that what even though Trump was never charged, never indicted, never convicted, what he did was so heinous he has to banned from the ballot. What utter drivel. I can't see the Supremes buying an argument that stupid. //

Terrible System
3 hours ago
The odds were much higher that this case would be decided 9-0 in Trump’s favor than that Trump would lose. Maybe one or two of the leftist justices writes a concurring opinion instead of agreeing entirely with the majority, but without a conviction or even a pending charge of insurrection by a criminal court, the argument that Trump should be treated as guilty of a crime based on the fact that Democrats don’t like him is quite possibly the thinnest argument with which any attorney has ever walked into the Supreme Court.