Is It Possible to Restore Integrity to American Elections?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the importance of securing elections in the United States. Today the “House Administrative Committee held the first in a series of hearings leading up to reintroduction of the American Confidence in Elections Act,” also known as the ACE Act.

According to Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal, the bill was introduced in the Democrat-led House, and preparations are being made to reintroduce it to the current Republican-led House. Lucas wrote four takeaways from the hearing. 

1. ‘Most Insidious Election Interference in U.S. History’

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, who supervises elections in his state, called out the now infamous letter orchestrated by Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign – and in particular by then-campaign aide Antony Blinken, now U.S. secretary of state.

Blinken reportedly was instrumental in getting 51 former U.S. intelligence officials to sign a letter claiming that the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop had “all the classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation.

The letter from former intelligence officials was used as justification to suppress the Biden laptop story in social media and legacy media.

A Media Research Center poll shortly after the 2020 election found that 36% of self-described Biden voters said they were unaware of evidence that Joe Biden was personally involved in his son Hunter’s business deals with China, a claim bolstered by emails found on the laptop. Of those Biden voters, 13% -- or 4.6% of all Biden voters in the sample – said they would not have voted for him if they had known about the laptop contents. The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog, said the shift could have turned the election in Donald Trump’s favor….

 

2. Noncitizen Voting a ‘Recipe for Foreign Interference.’

House Republicans’ ACE Act would prohibit local jurisdictions from allowing noncitizen voting. Under the bill, Congress also would exercise its responsibility over the District of Columbia to require voter ID and annual maintenance of the city’s voter registration list, prohibit same-day registration, and prevent the process of ballot harvesting….

 

3. ‘Common Sense to Require an ID to Vote.’

During the hearing, [Hans] von Spakovsky pushed back on the myth that requiring voter ID suppresses voting. He noted a report two years ago by the National Bureau of Economic Research that found voter ID requirements had no negative impact on turnout based on 10 years of data comparing states with voter ID laws and states with no such laws.

“The conclusion was that voter ID has absolutely no effect on individuals; it doesn’t matter what race they are, it doesn’t matter what gender, it doesn’t matter what socio-economic group,” von Spakovsky said. “We know the public supports this. The polling is actually quite something. Americans disagree quite sharply on many issues. The one thing they agree on is that it’s common sense to require an ID to vote.”

Von Spakovsky went on to talk about Georgia, which was maligned by the Left for passing legislation in 2021 to extend existing voter ID requirements to mail-in voting. “Georgia had turnout six percentage points above the national turnout and it had better turnout than Delaware, the home state of the president, who harshly criticized the bill,” von Spakovsky told lawmakers….

 

4. ‘Muddy Voter Rolls That Can Be Exploited.’

In the state of Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, is fighting a lawsuit to keep the names of about 26,000 dead people on the voter rolls.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation is suing Michigan to force removal of those names in compliance with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

“Some states are compliant with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act and conduct routine list maintenance. However, others refuse to do that,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., said. “In your opinion, why would a state intentionally refuse to perform list maintenance?

Such intentions aren’t good, said Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative and former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security….