The Daily Signal - Why Voter Fraud Is a Real Threat in Next Week's Election

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

The presidential election Nov. 3 is now just days away. Is election security really at stake? Can states turn into vote-by-mail jurisdictions virtually overnight, as so many have done during the COVID-19 pandemic? Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., a member of the Committee on House Administration, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss. We also cover these stories: Ahead of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s expected Senate confirmation Monday night to the Supreme Court, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, becomes the only Senate Republican to say she won’t vote for President Trump’s nominee.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops by 950 points. The 3.4% decrease marks the worst day for markets since June. The U.S. reaches a new record of 68,767 coronavirus cases a day on a seven-day average, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.  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 Tuesday, October 27th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. Is election security at stake as the November 3rd presidential election is just days away? Congressman Rodney Davis, a ranking member from Illinois, who is on the House Administration Committee, joins me on the Daily Signal podcast to discuss. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on our top news. Ahead of Judge Amy Coney-Barritt's expected Senate confirmation Monday night,

Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said she won't be voting for President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. In a statement issued Sunday on her website, Collins said, Because this vote is occurring prior to the election, I will vote against the nomination of Judge Amy Coney-Barritt. To be clear, my vote does not reflect any conclusion that I've reached about Judge Barrett's qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court. What I have concentrated on is being fair and consistent, and I do not think it is fair nor consistent

to have a Senate confirmation vote prior to the election. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 950 points on Monday. The 3.4% decrease marks the worst day for markets since June. The S&P 500 fell by 2.8% and the NASDAQ composite by 2.7%. The decline largely. can be attributed to concerns over whether Congress will pass another stimulus package or not. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows have both accused the other of moving the goalposts amid stimulus negotiations. With no agreement reached over the weekend,

it appears unlikely a deal will be passed before the election. The U.S. has reached a new daily record of 68,767 coronavirus cases a day on a seven-day average, per a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Per CNBC, the U.S. has had over 8.66 million coronavirus cases and at least 225,379 deaths. President Trump continues to note that the fatality rate has dropped sharply because of advancements in treatment. Many universities are struggling financially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they're making big changes in an effort to see. save money. The New York Times reports that the pandemic may have cost colleges and universities

more than $120 billion. Last week, the University of Florida announced it was closing its undergraduate school of education in order to save money, and Ohio Wesleyan University is going so far as to eliminate 18 majors. Robert Kelchin, a Seton Hall University Associate Professor, told the times, we haven't seen a budget crisis like this in a job. generation. There's nothing off limits at this point. Universities have had to spend a great deal on personal protective equipment, testing, and contact tracing, even while an increasing number of students are requesting financial aid, the Times reports. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that freshman enrollment is down by 16% from last year. Now, many universities are being

forced to cut staff, such as Ithaca College in New York, which announced plans to let go. over 130 faculty. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Congressman Rodney Davis on voter fraud. America is at a crossroads. Each day we see the penalties of progressive policies across our nation, while night after night our city streets are set ablaze by riots and rage. That's why the Heritage Foundation has developed a plan to help take our country back. The Citizens Guide to Fight for America provides a series of heritage recommended

action items delivered to you each week. Make an impact in your community and in our country. Sign up for the Citizens Guide at heritage.org slash 2020 and join in the fight for America today. We're joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Congressman Rodney Davis, a ranking member from Illinois who is on the House Administration Committee. Congressman Davis, it's great to have you with us on the Daily Signal podcast. Rachel, it's great to be on with you. Well, as the election is just now days away, I want to talk to you about is election security at stake, given the huge increase in mail-in voting and absentee voting that we're seeing this election?

You know, I think that's on a state-by-state basis. If you look at states like Illinois, I'm glad that we have a process that does not mail live ballots out to every registered voter. But in states like California, in New York, they're going to mail live ballots to every registered voter, even at the same time when you look at California, there has been estimated over a million erroneously registered voters in Los Angeles County alone as of May of this year. But because of some of the corrupt public officials in that state, they're going to mail live ballots out to those erroneously registered individuals. That's ripe for fraud. We saw it happen in North

Carolina's ninth district in the last election when ballot harvesting fraud was committed by a Republican operative. And we know what's going to happen elsewhere. In California just seems to seems to decide to take it to the next level. Well, Congressman, what's your perspective on the push we've seen? And I think a large part of it has been due to coronavirus, but the huge push we've seen for all male voting as a substitute for going to the polls and casting one's vote at the polls. You know, I think before we ever have a discussion on vote-by-mail in a universal way throughout

this country, we have to go talk to the voters. 59% of the voters poll want to vote on election day at their polling place. So we have to take that into consideration before anybody tries to nationalize the election process. There are some states that have implemented fully vote by mail systems. But when you look at those systems, even Secretary of State of Washington State, Kim Wyman, who helped implement one of those systems, she says it takes a minimum of five years to get a system in place. Democrats have tried to do it in less than a year, and it would have failed if they would have been successful. Well, has your state of Illinois experienced any situations of voter fraud when it comes to mail and or absentee voting?

You know, there's always instances of fraud that we're worried about them. But Illinois, I've got to give Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature some credit. They came together and put together a COVID response. That still has an emphasis on election day voting, polling place locations. And they milled absentee ballot requests, mail-in ballot requests that we used to call no-fault absentee rather than mailing live ballots. But it's those states like California that I think should concern a lot of Americans. And that's what the president talks about when he talks about it's right for fraud. And Rachel, at a recent hearing, I had the Secretary of State Alex Padilla as one of the Democratic witnesses.

He couldn't even commit to me that he had removed already identified deceased individuals from the voter rolls in California. That's just corruption at its highest level. So did he not know or did he just not want to disclose to you? What was his reasoning? Like what did he say? He would not answer that they had been removed and did not commit to do that either, along with the already identified hundreds of thousands, if not millions of erroneously registered voters in the state of California that now are going to get a live ballot sent to their address. Wow. Well, as we've been talking about, due to coronavirus, mail-in voting has really increased. The Pew Research Center had a recent report come out that noted

in the 2016 general election, 24.9% of votes were absentia mail-in. In the 2018 general election, 27.4% of votes were absent to your mail-in. And then in the 2020 primaries, 50.3% of votes were absenteeer mail-in. So what is your perspective, Congressman Davis, on this huge increase we've seen. And as you highlighted that one state, I think you mentioned that they had said it takes about five years to get this process going well. And so what's your perspective on just the huge increase we've seen in such a short amount of time? I think that was going to happen regardless of coronavirus, maybe not as exponentially in some states. But it's a convenience factor. You know, we're all busy. Pre-pandemic, there are folks and families fighting for whatever minutes they could take

to go to their families' sporting events to watch their kids play. It's going to increase, just like early voting has progressively gotten more and more prevalent throughout our country and especially in states like Illinois. I early vote. The president is going to early vote. It's convenient. And these are the types of things that we have to allow states, Rachel, and localities that our Constitution tells us should run our elections.

We got to allow them the flexibility to implement. standards and procedures and policies that benefit them and their constituents. Well, Congressman Davis, can you walk us through some of the documented security vulnerabilities and problems that you're familiar with that can happen with mailing or absentee ballots? Well, when you look at states like California, and this is also what the Democrats in Washington in the House have tried to implement nationwide, and actually as recently as the last stimulus bill that passed with zero Republican support and 18 Democrats voting against it with us just a few weeks ago, it had 71 pages of election law changes that would have been permanent.

That's not a pandemic response. And in those changes, ballot harvesting would have been legal nationwide in this election. And when they passed that bill, the election in Illinois had already started with early voting and mail-in voting. That's their priority. Now, what has happened in states like California? You have a live ballot sent to every registered voter. Then there's a list of every registered voter who gets that ballot. You have ballot brokers, political operatives that go to the doors where they know these ballots have been mailed.

And they ask the voter, can we see that? Can we have that ballot? Have you cast it? Don't worry. We'll take it to the polling place for you. Well, that process was already disrupted. and part of a fraudulent scheme in North Carolina so much so that we didn't seat a Republican member of Congress

because of the fraud. But here's the irony, Rachel. In the last election, if that Republican operative would have done the exact same thing in California, would have been legal. What do you foresee happening, Congressman Davis, if there is widespread voter fraud in this presidential election, what are some scenarios that you could see as potential things

that might happen if there is widespread fraud? Well, I certainly hope our law enforcement officials will prosecute. And that's what has to happen to stop voter fraud. Our vote is worth a lot more than money that might be paid to somebody to hand their ballot over to have somebody else take it to the polling place with them. We need to make sure that law enforcement holds people who commit fraud accountable, just like the Republican operative in North Carolina's ninth district. If we don't have that, we're going to continue to see a push from national Democrats to really nationalize some of the processes that I believe have been ripe with fraud.

And if we allow that to happen, then we're going to see it exponentially grow. But here's the good part. I think there are a lot of states that are doing what they can to shine the light on possible fraud. We're doing that right here in my district, where we had a county clerk in Champaign County, Illinois, break the election law rules in the primary by counting ballots before the poll. even closed. Those are things that when you shine the light on the problem, it makes them a little leery about committing those errors or violations in the future. And I certainly hope the emphasis on possible fraud and mail-in voting has made everybody take a look and know that the world is watching

and thus maybe reduce the opportunity to do so. Well, on that note, and just practically speaking, what would you encourage voters to do who maybe will be going to the polls? And if they see something that looks suspicious or even poll workers. I know a lot of people, friends of mine, even family who will be poll workers. If they see, I know the poll workers are trained, but if people who are voting see something suspicious, is there anything that you would encourage them to do? Yeah, I would encourage them to contact their local election official. And if that local election official doesn't take it seriously or reach out to the campaign of somebody you know who's running for office in that jurisdiction so that that possible error or that possible fraud that may have

been witnessed can be reported to your state election authorities too. I'm really glad that we had an announcement just a few days ago from Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, who happens to be one of the most honorable people I've ever met and had the chance to serve with. And he talked about how voter registration systems had been hacked into and information had been gotten through ill, ill-gotten means by countries like Iran and Russia. We need to do more to make sure that we protect non-voting machine types of technology too. We don't require at the federal level certain standards to be met by states to house e-poll books or voter registration databases. That's something we ought to have bipartisan support on. When you look at the voting machines, they have to meet a

certain set of standards before they're even allowed to be placed in a polling place. But voter registration systems that are online and meant to be used to make sure somebody doesn't try and vote twice, or more than that, they don't follow those same guidelines. And we need to look in the future to make sure that they do and avoid having Director Ratcliffe and Director of the FBI, Mr. Ray, have to do a press conference to tell the American people about it. When it comes to looking into the future and future Congresses with your colleagues in the House,

are there any legislation you'd like to highlight or things you would like to do, particularly in years to come, that would address voter fraud? We've had numerous pieces of legislation that we've introduced and they've fallen on deaf ears with a Democratic majority because their priority is just to nationalize our elections and actually legalized ballot harvesting nationwide, something that we have already seen as ripe of fraud. So it's protecting our state and local election officials right now from what the Democrats have tried to do this entire Congress and tried to do just as recently as two weeks ago to really disrupt our current election. But as we look ahead, we've got to have standards in place for our non-voting machine technology, like voter registration databases. We've got to make sure that we invest in getting poll workers to the polls that are going

to be the next generation of poll workers because right now, the average poll worker is 65 years and over, and they're most at risk during this pandemic. So we need to encourage young people to get engaged in the process and be our eyes and ears in the polling places, and we can do that by helping them pay down their student debt. Now, if that happens, having eyes and ears on the ground and well-trained individuals and young people who are excited to be a part of this process in the polling places, you know what? You're going to cut down on fraud at the polling places and at the counting stations where mail-in ballots are returned, exponentially more than what you could if we continue to have a shortage of poll workers.

Congressman Davis, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily Signal podcast and discussing this really important topic. We appreciate having me with us. Thanks for having me on, Rachel. I really enjoyed it. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage Ellers to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you. all tomorrow.

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