The Daily Signal - #339: What You Need to Know About Florida Recounts, Georgia Vote Tallying

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

As recounts continue in Florida for the gubernatorial and Senate races, and Georgia continues tallying votes in its gubernatorial election, Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakvosky, an expert on voter fraud, joins us to discuss what's really going on--and causes for concern about shenanigans. We also cover these stories:--A California college student defies the LGBT activists and stays true to her beliefs. --CNN is suing the White House over press credentials. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed the lawsuit as “more grandstanding from CNN."--The attorney general of Maryland is now asking a federal court to block Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker from serving as acting attorney general, and to name Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein in his place.--Calling for a "green new deal," Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio Cortez joined a protest over climate issues in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, November 14th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. The election controversy in Florida is causing many to doubt the integrity of elections held in that state. Today, we'll sit down with Hans von Spikovsky, heritage expert in election law, who has considerable experience fighting voter fraud. Plus, a Christian student at Berkeley comes under heavy attack over transgenderism. She says she's not going anywhere. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines.

California continues to be ravaged by wildfires. In Northern California, 42 are now dead because of the campfire, making it the deadliest in the Golden States history. Another massive fire raging is in Southern California. Neither fire is anywhere near contained, and the state continues to be threatened. CNN is suing the White House over press credentials. The White House suspended the press credential of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta last week, after Acosta had a tense and prolonged exchange with the president at a press conference.

Without that credential, Acosta is unable to enter the White House grounds. This unusual lawsuit from CNN asks for a judge to restore Acosta's access to his press pass. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed the lawsuit as more grandstanding from CNN, saying, quote, CNN, who has nearly 50 additional hard pass holders and Mr. Acosta is no more or less. special than any other media outlet or reporter with respect to the First Amendment. Kirsten Nielsen, Department of Homeland Security Secretary, may be out, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites unnamed White House sources. The journal also reports that this could mean the departure of Chief of Staff John Kelly, an ally of Nielsen. Meanwhile, First Lady Melania

Trump spokeswoman indicated that the First Lady wants a Deputy National Security Advisor, Mira Ricardall, out. It is the position of the office of the First Lady, that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House, said Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman. Well, Jeff Sessions is gone, but Democrats are not satisfied with his temporary replacement, Matthew Whitaker. The Attorney General of Maryland is now asking for a federal court to block Whitaker from serving as acting Attorney General and to name Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein in his place.

Maryland argues that the Deputy Attorney General has to be confirmed by the Senate and that Whitaker is ineligible because he was never confirmed by the Senate for any previous role. Meanwhile, Senator Diane Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, is demanding a hearing with both Whitaker and Sessions as soon as possible. She expressed concern about the impact that Whitaker could have on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Well, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi may soon be joining the chorus of those deriding millennials. Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined a protest over climate issues in Pelosi's office Tuesday. Ocasio-Cortez said, this is not about me.

This is not about the dynamics of any personalities. But this is about uplifting the voice and the message of the fact that we need a green new deal. And we need to get to 100% renewables because our lives depend on it. Well, America, that's what you get for electing a 26-year-old socially. I think she's 29. 29, sorry. And I actually have no problem with her age. I would be down for some conservatives to run her that old.

Well, the FBI reports that hate crimes in 2017 were up for the third year in a row, having risen from 17% just the previous year. Hate crimes are defined as crimes motivated by racial, sexual, religious, or other forms of prejudice. Notably, last year saw a 23% increase in religion-based crimes, with a 37% increase in anti-Semitic crimes. And out of all of the religious-based crimes, 58% were against Jews, while 18% were against Muslims.

As Democrats gear up, a new poll out from Politico and Morning Consult shows just over half of voters oppose any beginning of impeachment proceedings. However, a third of voters do back starting impeachment, so it is a sizable minority. Well, Amazon finally picked, its second headquarters, known as HQ2, and actually it's the second and third headquarters, because the e-commerce giant picked Northern Virginia and New York City as secondary hubs to its

main hub in Seattle. Those hubs specifically will be in Crystal City, which is Arlington, Virginia, and Long Island, New York. Amazon concluded that just one city wouldn't provide enough tech talent to meet its needs. It expects to place 50,000 employees in those two cities. I was so disappointed by this decision. Why? Because you live there? I do live in Arlington and I am concerned about commute and all that other fun stuff.

But no, I just more think like this could have meant so much to different cities around the country like Praoria, Illinois, like Louisville, Kentucky. Yeah. Yeah, like there's so many places and maybe some people would come from out of state. But I just feel like, yes, an Arlington, Virginia housing is outrageously expensive already. commutes are horrendous already. And New York City is another place not really starving for good jobs and horrendous housing rates. Actually, I've lived in both places. So, yeah, I think it's a real bummer that they decided to go in this direction and sort of built up, you know, East Coast Alita cities instead of going somewhere else in the country with plenty of room for housing and plenty of smart folks.

That's right. Amazon is coming to the swamp. And I wouldn't be surprised if they built a little lobbying wing onto their... I think already they Well they do have lobbying here I was going to say I seem to recall reading that their most extensive presence outside of Seattle is already in D.C. and New York right now. Well up next we'll talk to Hans von Spikovsky

an election law expert about that election fiasco in Florida. Did you know you can now listen to all of our events through SoundCloud or just by visiting our events page on heritage.org? You now have access to hundreds of events and compelling discussions on podcast. policy issues from your car, on the train, or the comfort of your own home. Visit heritage.org slash events for more information or search for the Heritage Foundation on SoundCloud.

So, President Trump, for one, is ready to call the elections in Florida. On Monday, the president tweeted, the Florida election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible. ballots massively infected, must go with election night. On Tuesday, the president again tweeted, this time saying, when will Bill Nelson concede in Florida?

The characters running Broward and Palm Beach voting will not be able to find enough votes. Too much spotlight on them now. Right now, Florida is doing a recount in both the Senate and the gubernatorial elections. Joining us today is Hans von Spikosky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and an expert in voter fraud. Hans, do you think it's right to be concerned about how these recounts are being done? Yes, because of not only the problems that have surfaced in Broward and Palm Beach County, but also because of prior problems with these election officials. I hate to say this, but Brenda Snipes, who heads Broward County, is known as one of the worst election officials in the state.

and she has been found on numerous prior occasions to have broken the law and made grievous errors. I mean, just give you a couple of quick examples. She destroyed ballots after an election. In fact, it was after a Democratic primary. She destroyed ballots in violation of both state and federal law. Totally unapologetic about it. At one point, some years ago, she circulated an absentee ballot that was missing, major races on the ballot. And we've seen huge problems in this race with her not complying

with state law. You know, right after election eve, when the elections close, a state law requires reporting of results, reporting of the number of votes counted, how many outstanding provisional and absentee ballots there are. And she not only did not do that, but for the entire week after the election was finding new batches of ballots that she couldn't explain where they came from or where they had been and why they hadn't been previously reported, which raises all kinds of potential issues. So it's just one thing after another like that that tells us that she just can't be trusted to do the job right of tallying votes and counting up who won that county. Well, and with all those past examples of

of abuse that you mentioned. I think a lot of folks are wondering, how does she still have a job? And of course, she is elected by the people of Broward. That's a very good question. And what people need to understand is that Browd County is such a basket pick case and has been so badly run that she actually came in to replace the prior head of Browd elections who've been removed from office also because of incompetence and had been removed, I believe, by the governor. And the governor in the state of Florida does have the power to remove election officials who are incompetent, can't do their jobs, or engage in illegal behavior. I'm sure that right now, Governor Scott is wishing that he had done this a couple of years

ago when these problems first surfaced. Yeah. On that, my understanding is from some of the reports that there's as many as 25,000 ballots in Broward County that didn't seem to mark someone in one of the major races, I believe the Senate race. Right. So, and they're discussing, they're doing a machine recount now throughout Florida, but it could come down to a manual recount. Are those methods problematic? Are you concerned that irregularities are going to occur?

Here's the problem. The reason you have a manual recount is because what Florida uses is they use what are called opti-scan ballots. Those are paper ballots. With Chads? No, no, no, no Chads. That's all gone in Florida, fortunately. Now Opti scanner are paper ballots where you fill in a bubble next to the person's name.

It's kind of like an SAT test for what most people understand. And those are then fed through a computer scanner, which counts up the votes. If the computer scanner can't read the ballot, then the ballot is rejected. It has to be looked at by hand. The problem comes in trying to determine was there actually a vote cast? or can you not tell who the vote was for? And I'll give you an example. You're supposed to fill in the bubble next to the name.

Well, sometimes people, instead of doing that, will circle the name of the candidate. So the machine can't read that, but when officials examine it, you can tell, obviously the person meant for that vote to go to that candidate. But sometimes people will, they'll cross off names, they'll circle something, then try to cross it out. It can get very confusing. or maybe there's a stray check mark, but it's not on either name, but it's closer to one name or the other. How do you figure out, you know, what was the intention of the vote? So what you have to do when you do a hand count, you have to make sure that there are observers there from both parties, both political candidates, to make sure that local officials are not making

decisions that favor one side versus the other. Because I can tell you that the lawyers who are down there have been hired by the incumbent Democratic senator, headed by Mark Elias, who's a very well-known Democratic lawyer, they will be doing everything they can to, one, push any stray marks to be considered as votes for their candidate. And they will also be pushing in Democratic counties like Broward to make sure that all absentee ballots are counted, even those that come in and that are not in compliance with federal law. state law. You know, for example, absentee ballots have to be signed, you know, have to be a signature of the voter. I'm sure they're going to be pushing saying, oh, you don't really need that. You should count it anyway, because they're assuming that vote will be for them. So you've got to have people on the other side there to make sure those kind of attempts to evade state law are not happening. Some good old-fashioned checks and balances. Yes. So, you know, I think what was so

stunning for a lot of folks last week was that day after day, they kept finding more votes in Broward County. I think I saw actually, Marker Rubio tweeted a video of a local person who found a ballot box that was left at a retirement home that was full of ballots and that had just been abandoned there. You know, it makes you wonder if it's more than just incompetence, but actually, you know, something more insidious. You know, we hear a lot about, you know, a lot of conservatives are very skeptical about this. Do the Democrats tend to have a worse record on this, or is it kind of a bipartisan tendency? Well, what we have found in our investigations of voter fraud, and as you all know, the Heritage Foundation now has a database. We've been collecting for a couple of years of voter fraud cases from around the country. And you will find in that database both Republicans and Democrats who've been found guilty of voter fraud.

I do have to say, unfortunately, however, that there seem to be a lot more cases. of Democrats found cheating than Republicans. And often times it's not Democrats stealing from Republicans. We have many cases where Democrats stealing from other Democrats, particularly in primaries too. And I said both parties do commit fraud or at least individual members of those parties, but at least most recent cases, it tends to be Democrats. So you had mentioned earlier that you bet what Rick Scott wishes he had

gotten rid of Brenda Snipes, you know, for her failings earlier. Bill Nelson, his Democrat opponent, of course, in the Senate race, has called on Scott, who is currently governor of Florida, to recuse himself from any involvement in the recounts. Do you think that's appropriate? Well, there's no need for him to recuse himself because the governor doesn't have any power over the election process in the state. Yeah, he can remove an incompetent election official, but the governor has no involvement in the counting of ballots, in the certification.

of the vote counts. So there's nothing really for him to recuse himself from. His lawyers have filed several lawsuits, and they've been successful in doing things like ordering local election officials, including Brenda Snipes and also the head of Palm Beach, to allow observers in to see what they're doing. The election officials in defiance of state law have been trying to keep observers out, And that is not the way you handle things, particularly not a recount, where you want complete and total transparency so that everyone can see exactly how the recount's being conducted.

At the very least, it causes people to doubt the integrity of the process, even if they're doing it right, if there's no transparency. So we've got the Florida example. Also in Georgia, another race being closely watched between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams. It looks like he came out with a wider margin of victory than Rick Scott did. But can you give us an update on what the controversy is in Georgia? Well, I understand that there's already been decisions from several federal judges. There's a judge in Atlanta named Judge Amy Totenberg, who, by the way, just happens to be the sister of Nita Totenberg. I was wondering about that.

NPR, yeah. And she's issued an order preventing state officials from certifying their vote counts before Friday, I guess, while she examines claims being made in the case. And there's another federal judge who, to me, has issued a nutty decision overriding state law and saying that even absentee ballots that come in that are missing information, something as basic as the birth date of the voter, have to be counted. And that's interfering with the state process of determining the eligibility of voters. You know, absentee ballots, officials can't watch them being completed.

One of the ways they try to make sure that it's really the person who's a registered voter who sent it in, that somebody didn't forge their ballot, is to one require signature and one to require them to recite the basic information that matches their registration form like when they were born. And for a federal judge to come in and say you can't do that, that judge is interfering actually with the integrity of the election process and making it easier for fraudulent ballots to get through. And that judge cited the Civil Rights Act, right? Yeah, and I don't know what in the world that would have to do with the Civil Rights Act. Okay. Well, speaking of judges, and you mentioned that Mark Elias, a top Democrat lawyer, is working on Florida. Of course, you know, I remember 2000, although I was quite a bit younger.

Do you think there's any chance this ends up at the Supreme Court? You know, I doubt it. I think that was a unique circumstance. You know, what's really so terrible about what's happening right now is that it's actually really giving Florida a black eye. I think you could argue Florida had a black eye before this. But I actually know election officials down there. And after the 2000 election, they were so embarrassed by what happened that they made huge

improvements in the state. They rewrote and tightened their laws on recounts, on how you determine a vote. They got rid of all the bad punch card voting equipment that caused the chads. They got new voting equipment. And now, once again, they're looking bad basically because of two county election officials and two of the worst counties in the state. Yeah. Well, it looks like this time it was human error and maybe not the system itself.

That's what it appears to be. When you can't keep track of tens of thousands of ballots, which are coming in for a whole week after the election, that's human error. That's not a machine problem. So, you know, a lot of folks are going to be watching the outcome of this. Do you expect to see any surprises, overturned results, or what do you expect to see from the judges? Well, given that Governor Scott won on Election Day by literally 10. tens of thousands of votes. If after they do a recount, particularly in Broward County and Palm Beach, if suddenly it

overturns the results of the election, I think there's going to be litigation for the next year, fighting over how that was done. You all may recall that in 2008, when Al Franken was the loser on election day and he challenged Norm Coleman, who had won on election day, he was a Republican, that litigate went on for eight months. And who was Senator during that time? I'm not sure that Senator Coleman. The election was in dispute.

So I think that seat was just kind of open. Open. But do you know who the lawyer was for Al Franken, who managed to turn that election around and get the losing candidate to finally win? Mark Elias. The same lawyer now down in Florida leading the Democratic effort to overturn the election results.

Well, I have a feeling. We'll be hearing a lot more about his name. I think we will. All right. much for joining us, Hans. Sure. Thanks for having me. Okay, next up, we're going to talk about Berkeley's latest war on free speech. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? I'm Rob Bluie, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, and I'm inviting you to share your thoughts with us. Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at letters atdailysignal.com. Yours could be

featured on the Daily Signal podcast. Well, a student at UC Berkeley, is coming under intense fire from fellow students after abstaining from a vote to support transgender rights. Isabella Chow is a campus senator in Berkeley student government. Last week, the student senate voted on a measure to condemn the Trump administration for considering a legal definition of gender that would tie gender to one's sex at birth. And by the way, that's always been the legal definition up until the most recent years of the Obama administration. When it came time to vote, Isabella decided to abstain. saying that voting in favor of the measure would violate her conscience as a Christian.

At that point, Chal felt the wrath of fellow students. Over a thousand of them signed a petition demanding that she resign from student government, and her campus political party severed ties with her. And when she sought to write an editorial in the student paper to explain herself, she was denied and instead lambasted by the editorial team. She released a statement condemning discrimination, saying that it's never, ever okay, And then she said this, quote, As a Christian, I personally do believe that certain acts and lifestyles

conflict with what is good, right, and true. I believe that God created male and female at the beginning of time and designed sex for marriage between one man and one woman. For me, to love another person does not mean that I silently concur with at the bottom of my heart. I do not believe that your choices are right or the best for you as an individual. So, Kate, a really fascinating story here. Your thoughts on all of this. Yeah, I was extremely disheartened. I mean, it's not surprising in a way, but it's also, yeah, I mean, here is someone, you know, I think there's certainly been examples in the past where someone on the right makes a comment that, you know, is very insensitive about LGBT matters and an uproar ensues. I think in this case, like, it appears that Isabella Chow has thought deeply about this issue. She also wrote in a way that seemed very sensitive, you know, to the LGBT community. Her full statement, which is a lot. I encourage you to check out on her Facebook page, which her handle there as Senator Chow,

is very thoughtful and very serious in recognizing that there has been discrimination and harassment against the LGBT community. And she does not condone that. And so it's incredibly disheartening that because of even with all that, she is still seen as a horrible person for saying she doesn't agree with this. And I think she also has a point. You know, she talks about, you know, what's best for people. And there was a study that came out a couple months ago, I believe it was, in Pediatrics, a science journal that showed that teen girls who now identified as boys were, I think it was something crazy, like half of them have committed suicide, or not committed, but have attempted suicide. That's compared to 14% of the overall population. Another study that came out of

Sweden, I think in 2011, you can tell I don't have my notes, so this is all very authentic, found that, again, the attempts among those in the transgender community of suicide were 19 times higher than the overall average. And now a lot of people in the LGBT community would argue that's because of society's perceptions. But what you can't sort of, that's not really very credible, frankly, because Sweden is not known as some bigoted country. The United States currently, I mean, I believe this study took place over recent years, has been become more and more friendly. There is, you know, a teen who is transitioning who has, you know, their own TV show. So I think that if you genuinely love people who are struggling with their gender identity, you ought to raise

these concerns. You ought to say, I am concerned that going down this path, you are putting your psychological health and perhaps even your life at risk. Yeah, what's interesting is she seems to have a real sense that her staying in as a senator and her being there is very important, not just for her own integrity, but actually for other people that she says their voices aren't being heard or they are forced to be silent. And she is really making a stand for free speech, but more than that, really for just representation, you know, making sure that a view that is a lot more common on college campuses than people want to believe because they're silence. They're kind of marginalized.

She wants to make sure that she's not made an example of so that people after her come along and aren't able to actually say what they believe. Right. I think she's extremely courageous. I mean, she's 20 years old. To do this at 20, to become, you know, something the San Francisco Chronicle has covered it. Like, it's gone way beyond. Berkeley. That's a really bold move. She's got to know that she'll be Googled for the rest of her life and that'll come up when she's looking for jobs for other stuff. I really wish there were more courageous people like her. I mean, just tremendous courage. But the other thing I would say is, you know, we covered last week on this podcast, the example of the 69-year-old guy who

wants to identify as a 49-year-old. And, you know, if you did a little thought experiment here, if, you know, Isabella Chow had voted against a resolution that said the Trump administration can't determine your age based on your date of birth. Would there have been an uproar? No, I think most people would agree with her. And you might argue that age and gender are different things, that there's different arguments, but the facts are that we have said that certain things like age, race, gender

are not changeable for centuries, if not really all of human history. It is relatively new to argue that they can be changed. And if you think it's insane to say a 69-year-old should identify as a 49-year-old, But you think Isabella Chow should be, you know, all but asked to wear the scarlet A on her chest for thinking these thoughts about transgenderism. I would love to know your reasoning and why you're so confident they aren't the same. Yeah. And even the, you know, the issue that they were disputing, they were voting on, the Trump administration proposal, that's not even a decision yet, but proposal to change. Possible.

Possible. It was a leaked proposal. Right. It's not even a thing yet. So there might be several going around. Right. But the New York Times wrote a piece on this basically saying that it would erase transgender people from legal protections. But that hasn't even happened, and that's not what it would do.

But I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this was not even a thought until the later years of the Obama administration. When they decided, okay, we're going to arbitrarily decide to redefine the way we understand gender in the law. passing anything, you know, just a pure, lawyers at the DOJ decided we're going to interpret it this way. And that's a very recent thing. So I just find it a little bit rich that students think that citing with the Obama administration during its first term is a radical thing to do, especially when, again, the Trump administration hasn't acted yet. And there's nothing that the student body could ever do that to change what the administration's. doing. I mean, I think frankly, this is about the fact that transgender advocates are afraid to have

a genuine debate about this topic. Right. You know, I don't think they have a great answer for the age question. For Rachel Dolazol, whatever her name is, for why it's okay to change your gender, but not your race. I think these are not questions that they have grappled with seriously or that they, you know, I mean, another thing is there's a kind of disorder, which it's a mental health disorder, and I can't remember, I think it's body integrity disorder, but people literally want to cut off limbs. Oh, yeah. And they feel like that.

They call it transableness. I'm not, perhaps. I'm not super familiar with this disorder. But, you know, generally the medical community is like, no, we're not going to cut off a healthy leg just because you feel like your true self doesn't have a right leg or something. And this is a real disorder.

How does the transgender community think that that's different? And there are arguments to be made, but like this is the sort of discourse we should be having, Not saying that people like Isabella Chow should be outside all human contact. Right. She's not erasing anyone. I mean, but they're erasing her, so that's cool. Well, they are certainly erasing her.

But, uh, last, we'll leave it there for today. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad.

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