The Daily Signal - How the Left Upended Our Election Laws in 2020

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

The integrity of our elections is under assault from Democrats in Washington and left-wing forces across America. Using the pretext of COVID, a web of well-funded organizations, working with Democrat lawmakers and friendly judges, systematically changed state election laws in 2020. Cleta Mitchell, who has spent a lifetime fighting for free and fair elections, is calling out the left's tactics and encouraging Americans to take an active role in their local elections. Mitchell, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute, leads the Election Integrity Network and hosts a podcast, "Who's Counting?" With high-stakes debates taking place in Washington and state capitals, Mitchell tells The Daily Signal that it's a crucial moment to champion election integrity. Read a lightly edited transcript of the interview at DailySignal.com or listen to our conversation on "The Daily Signal Podcast." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at go transit.com slash tickets. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, February 14th. I'm Virginia Allen.

And I'm Rob Blewey. On today's show, I talk with Clita Mitchell, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute and host of the Who's Counting podcast. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about an eight-year-old boy who wrote and illustrated his own book that's now gaining national attention. Before we get to today's show, we want to tell you about the Heritage Foundation's new election integrity score. At Heritage, we believe voting is a sacred duty. It's how people express what course they want the nation to take. Given the importance of the ballot box, it's necessary to have a transparent and fraud-free system that can be trusted. This is why Heritage created the Election Integrity Scorecard.

The scorecard compares the laws and regulations for elections state-to-state and ranks them based on their security and transparency. Check out the Election Integrity Scorecard today at Heritage. dot org slash election scorecard. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. The integrity of our elections is under assault from Democrats in Washington and left-wing forces across this country. It's one of the reasons the Daily Signal has devoted so many resources to covering the issue. And it's also why we're thankful for people like Clita Mitchell, who is fighting for free

and fair elections. Clita is a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute and chairs its election integrity network. She's also the host of the Who's Counting podcast. Glita, thanks for joining the Daily Signal podcast. Well, thank you, Rob. It's wonderful to be with you. You are a former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, as a Democrat, I should note,

who later became a Republican and went on to champion many conservative causes. Now, of all the issues that you've worked on in your life, why does election integrity matter so much to you? Well, that's a really important question, and I will tell you that the reason I care so much about this. Look, I mean, my law practice for all these many years has been really focused on, we call it the area of political law, but it includes election law, campaign finance, lobbying regulations, financial disclosure, ethics rules. It's the business and regulation of politics and policy. And one of the things that has become clear to me over the years since I, as they said, I was once a Democrat. And the thing that it's been very difficult for me to explain to people over many years is that Democrats and leftists focus on, they focus on these process issues. if you'll notice when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker in 2007 after the House was won by the Democrats in the 2006 election, what was her number one legislative priority?

It was lobbying legislation. And then fast forward, they lose the House. They come back in 2018. What's the number one issue that the Democrats have on the calendar with the three? with the number one, HR1. What is that? It's a process issue. It's about election law. So the thing I have tried many years to tell conservatives and Republicans is we cannot leave the field to the left in these important process issues. We have let them write the laws on elections, on campaign finance, on lobbying regulation, all of these things. And then we're, we, we,

end up fighting about them, but we're always playing defense. These are not the issues that conservatives tend to want to fight about. We tend to want to fight about tax policy, education policy, school choice, you know, all those kinds of things. But I think that the 2020 election finally woke up this sleeping giant of everyday citizens and conservative organizations and leaders to realize that you can't leave election law and the rules of engagement on elections to the left because the other thing we have to be aware of is they write all these laws, but they have no intention of abiding by them. I mean, there was just wholesale disregard of the rule of law in 2020.

So I'm very gratified that after all these years that so many people have awakened to the need for paying attention to things that Hans Fonskowski and I have been talking about working on for decades. Well, thank you for that. And thank you for the work that you are doing. You've also sacrificed a lot personally to champion election integrity, including your job at that nationally known law firm. That happened after the 2020 election when you were a volunteer attorney for the Trump legal

team in Georgia. Some people might walk away after an episode like that, Kleta. Instead, you leaned in. Tell us why you started the election. Election Integrity Network and what your goals are? Well, I was really freed by the decision to leave my partnership at my law firm where I'd been for 20 years to be able to focus full time on the vast area of election integrity, to be able to help to educate citizens and build a network and try to equip people,

normal everyday people with the tools that they need to be part of the election process. That's what I'm working on is trying to train people in the various areas that are needed to not cede the local election office to the League of Women Voters and the local left-wing groups. Because trust me on this, they're in the election offices. We're the ones who haven't been. It's really a lot like parents and school boards. we've kind of let the, quote, professionals have their way, and now we're paying the price for it. So what I'm doing with the Election Integrity Network is to try to raise awareness, educate people,

provide resources, training, meetings, gatherings. My podcast, you mentioned, a weekly podcast where we talk about the elections, what happened in 2020, and then bigger, broader issues about what we can do to make sure that the elections, are conducted in accordance with the law. That's my goal, is that the legislature's write the election laws. That's who should write them, not judges, not unelected bureaucrats, not elected bureaucrats, the legislature. And then we as citizens need to make darn sure that those laws are followed.

I really want to stress this point to our listeners, Kleda. Election integrity is an issue where they can have a major impact simply by taking steps in their own community. Elections happen at all levels of government and at least every two years and often more frequently in some states. You have created a citizen's guide for them. What is your advice for how they can get started? Picture somebody who might be intimidated by the process that you've just outlined here. What is a good first step if they want to start getting engaged in their own community? Well, the very first step is to download the citizens guide to building an election integrity infrastructure, which they can get by going.

It's free. They can go to the website www. who's counting.us. And we're going to be amping up and adding more resources. But download the Citizens Guide, and you can see, you know, get five or six people, ten people in your area who are concerned about what happened in 2020. and want to know more and do more. It's all there in the Citizens Guide. It's just a question of getting some people together to learn about how to become part of the fabric of the election office in your community. You recently had Congresswoman Claudia Tenney on your podcast,

who's counting. Representative Tenney comes from the area where I grew up in Utaku, New York, and she speaks about some of the challenges that she faced in her own election, which was the last race to be called well after Congress was sworn in in 2021. You've also talked about some of the issues that were at play in 2020. I know a lot of states, because of that pandemic, changed election rules and in ways that they shouldn't have, perhaps not giving the legislature the ability to do so. A lot of that was happening in the courts.

Can you just sum up for us so our listeners understand what was going on in 2020 and why it was problematic? Well, interestingly enough, in May, of 2019, Hans von Spokovsky from Heritage and I and Jay Christian Adams, who's the President and General Council of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, put together a presentation, and I arranged for the three of us to go and meet with the lawyers for the Trump campaign. Now, remember, this was May of 2019, and do you know what we were saying to them then? And this was well before COVID. they were trying to, they had already filed more than 100 lawsuits, they being the leftist network of leftist voting groups, Mark Elias, who is the attack dog litigator funded by George Soros.

They had already started filing these lawsuits all over America to try to upend the election laws because they had failed to get HR1 passed in that Congress after Republicans' law. lost the house and Nancy Pelosi took over again. And so when people say that it was that COVID was the cause of the changes in the election laws and procedures, I just have to tell you, they knew to use that axiom that Rahm Emanuel once said, never let a good crisis go to waste. The moment COVID hit, they pivoted. And they began to use COVID as the pretext to vastly expand mail voting.

voting by mail, challenging prohibitions on no-excused absentee voting, challenging all kinds of election integrity measures in the court. And in some cases, as in Pennsylvania, for instance, the legislature had adopted a new first-time-ever no-excuse absentee ballot voting system. but it still required that the person who wanted to vote by absentee ballots still had to have a signature on the envelope and all those signatures had to be matched to verify identity. Well, the Democrat Secretary of State in September of 2020 sent a letter to all the election officers in each county telling them, just disregard that provision of the statute. it was wide scale in 2020 where the election laws were utterly upended and disregarded.

And then you had the flood of money, the private money from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, through their foundation, where they used charitable dollars to basically turn local election offices into Democrat turnout machines and dramatically increased the turnout percentages in areas that were Democrat anyway, but drove us. the Democrat vote totals to offset a statewide vote total. And that's what happened in Pennsylvania, what happened in Wisconsin, what happened in Georgia, in Arizona, and a number of states, certainly enough to have changed the outcome of the election. Gleda, who is the mastermind behind this effort on the left, both from the standpoint of bankrolling

it and then operationalizing it, as you just outlined? The sad truth about this, Rob, is that the left has an, an incredible web of organizations. They have billionaires who give them tons of money for these things. Pierre Omidyar, who was one of the founders of eBay, and he's a multi-billionaire. And I would bet that since 2011, 2012, he's probably given, I mean, he's given tens of millions of dollars to create these entities that then become part of the election. office, Ballot Scout, Center for Civic Design, the Designs ballots, Ballot Scout tracks absentee ballots, turbo vote, an organization that's founded by leftists that basically wants

to be in communication with every voter in America to remind them to vote and to tell them where to vote. Center for Civic Design, I mentioned. The Center for Tech and Civic Life was a sleepy little million-dollar. a year organization up until 2020, and it supposedly would help train election officials on the use of technology and had gotten an endorsement from the election, the federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, and enter Mark Zuckerberg and his money, $419 million total. About 365 of it went to the Center for Tech and Civic Life.

It then went, you know, went out to these different communities. And then they, in turn, in these election offices, they turned around and entered into contracts and hired groups like the Brennan Center and other left-wing groups to basically have access in real time to the election board information that other people would have to pay for and were able to use that, as I said, to turn out this. massive Democratic voter turnout. And the person who operated, who directed all of that on behalf of Mark Zuckerberg is none other than David Fluff, who was one of the Obama campaign managers. So, you know, now Michelle Obama has founded a, quote, voting rights group. And so they are like amoeba. They just pop up and they all have tons of money.

And the only way we're ever going to be able to overcome their money, is with our people. Grassroots, people can overcome the funding every time. And that's why I want people to be in the election offices and building these local task forces. And one of the other things we've started to see from the grassroots after the 2020 election is a lot of activity in certain states where they were frustrated by what happened in 2020 and decided that they were going to try to put in place some safeguards for future elections. As you look at the 50 states, who do you you think is doing it well? Where do you want to see more activity take place in in 2022 as we lead up to the midterm elections? And maybe even beyond, I know some states don't even have

their legislative sessions this year. Well, I have to say, I have to give applause to Virginia because in Virginia, people in Virginia, some of the citizens of Virginia came together in the spring of last year and said, we've got off-year elections. We elect our governor, our lieutenant governor, and our Attorney General, all three of our statewide elected officials are up this year, and our entire House of Representatives are what they call the General Assembly in Virginia. And so they came together and they more or less started doing this building of the infrastructure and they formed a Virginia Fair Elections Coalition. They still, they work doing Zoom meetings twice a week.

Now they're down, they do it once a week. But they created these people, all. volunteers came together and they created in Fairfax County, the election integrity task force. They created a group from Loudoun County created an election integrity task force. In Richmond, they created an election integrity task force. And I'm telling you, I could give many, many examples of how the work that they did and being at the election offices day in and day out, asking questions, learning the system, being there and then recruiting and deploying people, people to be poll workers and poll watchers.

And as I mentioned about how they're supposed to be parity, in Fairfax County, there's never been parity between the parties in terms of those election judges. And one of the chair of the Election Territory Task Force in Fairfax County was just doggedly determined that they were going to make sure that that statute was followed. And she would go in and say, you don't have our people. These three people, we've researched them, and they may be unaffiliated, but they're actually Democrats. They give money to Democrats, and we've given you these names. And by the time they got around at voting, for the first time, maybe ever, there was almost parity between Democrats and Republicans working the polls.

Now, that's a huge change, and we need to be doing that around the country. It's a lot of work to do, but I think a lot of people are coming around and realizing if we don't do this, we will lose our election system, not losing the elections of the candidates of our choice, but we'll lose our system. And that's what's going to, that will kill our republic. That really is what's at stake. And thank you for sharing those encouraging stories, Clita. It's definitely good to hear and I appreciate the work that you're doing to help educate people

about the options that are available to them and why it's so important that they take an active role. Now, let me ask you this, because at a recent press conference, President Biden's suggested that the 22 midterms might be, quote, illegitimate because Democrats couldn't pass their election bills through Congress. The White House later tried to clarify what he meant, but it sure seemed to me and probably other listeners, like it was an attempt to make an excuse for his potential political defeat in November. What did you make of that? And can you bring us up to speed on what is going on in Congress and why Democrats do seem so adamant about passing something at the national level. Well, they don't like the idea that Republicans and legislatures in red states

and other places have said, you know, we saw what happened in 2020, and we're not going to just leave this playing field to the left any longer. And so the states have started, legislatures have looked at the problems in their election laws. As in Georgia, Georgia did a good job. I think it could have been a little tougher in certain places, but they certainly did a good job in many ways of strengthening the election code in Georgia to avoid the problems of 2020. And of course, what the Democrats in the vast left-wing conspiracy want is they want Congress to come in and pass federal laws that eliminate all the election integrity provisions that we support and the vast majority of the American people support.

Voter identification, verifying identity if you're voting by mail, cutting back on the extended season of voting because it's impossible. It's really hard to staff and oversee and have observers if you have 45 days of voting, as was the case, as has been the case in Virginia. But they want to make voter rolls, not public records, so that they can put those behind walls that the citizens can't even know whether the voting roles are being maintained as required. by federal law.

All the things that we know are important for protecting the integrity of the election, the Democrats and their leftist allies want to federalize and say, no, you can't do that. They want to prohibit enforcement of laws against non-citizen voting. I mean, the list is endless and utterly crazy. They want to turn the elections basically over. They want to federalize them and turn them over, turn all of our elections over to the very left-wing lawyers in the voting section of the Department of Justice. And what I'm worried about is something that I've been worried about for a year and which we're getting ready to release

more information about. Demos, one of these leftist groups, has proposed a program to the Biden administration in December of 2020, whereby they could turn every federal agency into a Democrat voter turnout machine using our federal dollars to do in 22 what the Zuckerberg money did in 2020. And it's very frightening. Biden issued an executive order in March of 2021, directing every federal agency to develop and submit a plan by last September about how that agency was going to use its program to register and mobilize voters. 2022. And those plans were all supposed to be submitted to the White House last September. So we have submitted FOIA requests to all the agencies. And so far we've gotten virtually nothing back. They're

stonewalling. The program is being run by Susan Rice in the White House. And she has someone from Demos who is working for her in her office to implement the plans from the federal agencies. So this is a real Mayday, Mayday that we're just beginning to put together the information about to alert people and members of Congress and governors and legislators and attorneys general about this proposal, which is it's not to treat every voter the same. That's the problem. They want to use our money, our tax dollars, to favor certain groups of voters who they think will contribute to Democratic victories. And to me, there are huge constitutional and legal problems with that, but they've got a lot of money that are using our tax dollars to try to accomplish again what they did in 2020 with the private

money from Mark Zuckerberg. And the zeros in commas are only exponentiallyally larger. It truly is scary. The resources that they have at their disposal, thank you for the work you're doing to hold them accountable and try to get to the bottom of this and expose more and more what is going on in the White House. Now, Cleo, let me ask you this. We, always like to feature fellow podcasters on this show and your podcast, who's counting is one of the best, particularly on this topic of election integrity. You've regularly had guests who discuss threats to our voting system. How do you want to use the podcast as a means of educating your listeners and also for a daily signal podcast listeners, how can they go about finding it? Well, I thank you so

much for asking. It is just go to the website or just go to any of the different podcast platforms and just look for who's counting. That's WHO apostrophe is. Who's counting with Cleeta Mitchell? And you can download and subscribe. And my goal is to identify issues, get experts to talk about those issues. And honestly, I consider experts to include everyday citizens who are doing important work to restore the integrity of our election. Well, that certainly is true, Kleda. Thank you for the work you're doing on this issue, the leadership you've shown over the years. We're truly grateful for it.

Again, listeners, check out the podcast. It's who's counting. And we'll make sure to leave a link in the show notes and the transcript so you can easily access it. Kleda, thanks for being a guest on the Daily Signal podcast today. We appreciate it. Thank you so much, Rob. Daily Signal is what I read every day.

I don't need to read much of anything else. I know just what's going on by reading the daily signal. Thank you so much for that. We appreciate it. Voting is one of our most important civic duties. Because its impact reaches far and wide, it is important to have trust in our electoral system. That's why the Heritage Foundation created the Election Integrity Scorecard. The scorecard compares each state's voting rules and regulations and gives each state a ranking on their transparency and overall potential for interference and corruption.

If you want to understand the nature of the election system in your state, make sure you check out the election integrity scorecard at heritage.org slash election scorecard. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? In response to my podcast interview with Leon Lee discussing the dark realities of the Chinese Communist Party, Kathy writes, thank you for the excellent interview with film director Leon Lee about his new release unsilenced.

I saw the film last week and was moved profoundly. The parallels to what is happening in American society today are deeply disturbing. There is much to learn from this courageous story. If you haven't listened to that interview, please do, Virginia. It was such a powerful story that he told. It really is. It breaks your heart, but a story that certainly needs to be told. Definitely.

And our second letter comes in response to Charlie Jacobs piece, as I found out with my daughter, not even Catholic schools are safe havens from gender ideology. Elizabeth Corr writes to us, Wow, as I read the article by Charlie Jacobs, I became almost physically ill. What has happened to Catholic schools? How can the clergy allow this? As a lifelong Catholic, I am heartbroken to read her story. Catholic clergy decry the decline in attendance at Mass,

the decline in the number of marriages, and the decline of families. They may look to themselves when they allow, and in some cases foster the craziness of critical race theory and gender identity in Catholic schools, as well as other liberal anti-religion attitudes. Charlie, thank you for your thoughtful and articulate article in The Daily Signal. I shall pray for you, your family, and your endeavors on behalf of our children. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. So send an email to Letters at DailySignal.com. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas. Bad philosophy, revisionist history, junk science, and divisive politics.

But here's something I've come to understand. When faced with bad ideas, it's not enough to just defend. If we want to save this country, then it's time to go on offense. Conservative principles are ideas that work, individual responsibility, strong local communities, and belief in the American dream. As a former college professor and current president of the Heritage Foundation, my life's mission is to learn, educate, and take action. My podcast, The Kevin Roberts Show, is my opportunity to share that journey with you. I'll be diving into the critical issues that plague our nation,

having deep conversations with high-profile guests, some of whom may surprise you. And I want to ensure freedom for the next generation. Find the Kevin Roberts Show wherever you get your podcast. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thank you so much, Rob. Many people dream of writing a book and seeing it on the shelves of their local bookstore or library.

For 8-year-old Dylan Helbig, that dream just became a reality. Dylan is in the second grade and lives in Boise, Idaho. He loves to write and to draw, and so he took four days to create an 81-page comic book about Christmas and time travel. He used a red journal to write the book and titled it, The Adventures of Dellen Hellbig's Christmas by Dylan himself. In December, Dylan slipped his creation onto the shelves of his local library in hopes some kids might enjoy reading it and looking at the pictures. To Dylan and his parents' surprise, the book became a sensation.

The librarian added it to the library's catalog, and there is currently a year-long waiting list to check it out. Dylan recently joined the Today Show with his parents to talk about why he wrote the book. Well, I've been writing books since I was five. So I made this one and put it in the library. Dylan's father, Alex, says the book's popularity has taken the whole family by surprise. He definitely never thought that this was going to happen, including himself. He just, in his mind, he just wanted to get the book in his own.

in his library and have some kids read it. The fact that it's all over the world as news is just amazing. The eight-year-old is already working on another book about a jacket-eating closet. Dylan's Library has awarded him the first ever Houdini Award for the best young novelist. And what a gift for this young man to be recognized for his talents and his creativity at such a young age. Now I think all that's needed is for a publishing company to get in touch with Dylan and his family and see about getting some more copies printed of that book because I think just one is not quite going to meet the demands. I love the initiative, Virginia. Thanks for finding that story today.

Absolutely. Great to hear about a young entrepreneur. It certainly is. And we're going to leave it there for today. I'd like to thank our intern, Julia Dandoy, for her help with today's interview. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rikishay Audio Network and all of our shows at DailySignal. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review and a five-star rating. It means a lot to us and helps us spread the word to other listeners. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at DailySignal and Facebook.com slash the DailySignal News. Have a happy Valentine's Day and a great week.

The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Bluey and Virginia. Allen. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.