The latest report is that Wisconsin has joined the ranks of states that will investigate what happened last year by adopting a resolution authorizing an investigation that “would give the investigators subpoena power to compel testimony and gather documents.” That’s at least three states who are keeping the issue in front of the public, counting Arizona and Georgia.

While these actions are excellent, there are three significant challenges that must be overcome in order to restore election integrity and voter confidence in US elections:

• Overcoming Democrat attempts to institutionalize election fraud nationwide, as well as their unified resistance to revising state election laws to prevent fraud.
• Restoring trust in federal and state government agencies, especially law enforcement, to enforce state election laws to the letter.
• Educating the general public about why restoration of election integrity is of vital importance in preserving our constitutional Republic.

There is evidence to suggest a coordinated effort by Democrat operatives and sympathizers both inside and outside state governments to rig state election laws in 2020 in order to enable election fraud. There have been a number of independent analyses by various experts, as well as hundreds of affidavits produced in state election hearings since November 3^rd, that document evidence of massive election irregularities. See here, here, here, here, and here, for starters. The endlessly repeated legacy media narrative from Election Day through the end of January was that there was no evidence of election fraud, and if there was any at all, it was insufficient to change the results of the presidential election. That narrative was torpedoed by an article in TIME on February 4^th that detailed the wide-ranging conspiracy to unlawfully change election laws in states in order to enable fraud.

With that as backdrop, let us now examine the three challenges that must be overcome in order to restore election integrity in more detail.

Overcoming Democrat Attempts to Institutionalize Election Fraud Nationwide. With the success of their machinations in 2020, the Democrats have shifted to institutionalizing nationally what they were able to unlawfully implement in key states last year. It is telling that the very first bill submitted and passed by the new Congress was the gratuitously entitled “For the People Act,” House of Representatives Bill Number 1 (HR 1). According to the Heritage Foundation, these are some of the actions that HR 1 would implement:

• Seize the authority of states to regulate voter registration and the voting process by forcing states to implement early voting, automatic voter registration, same-day registration, online voter registration, and no-fault absentee balloting.

• Make it easier to commit fraud and promote chaos at the polls through same-day registration, as election officials would have no time to verify the accuracy of voter registration information and the eligibility of an individual to vote and could not anticipate the number of ballots and precinct workers that would be needed at specific polling locations.

• Hurt voter turnout through 15 days of mandated early voting by diffusing the intensity of get-out-the-vote efforts; it would raise the cost of campaigns.

• Degrade the accuracy of registration lists by requiring states to automatically register all individuals (as opposed to “citizens”) from state and federal databases, such as state Departments of Motor Vehicles, corrections and welfare offices, and federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the Department of Labor, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the Department of Health and Human Services. This would register large numbers of ineligible voters, including aliens, and cause multiple or duplicate registrations of the same individuals and put federal agencies in charge of determining a person’s domicile for voting purposes (as well as that individual’s taxing state).

• Constitute a recipe for massive voter registration fraud by hackers and cyber criminals through online voter registration that is not tied to an existing state record, such as a driver’s license. It would make it a criminal offense for a state official to reject a voter registration application even when it is rejected “under color of law” because the official believes the individual is ineligible to vote. It would also require states to allow 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to register; when combined with a ban on voter ID and restrictions on the ability to challenge the eligibility of a voter, this would effectively ensure that underage individuals could vote with impunity.

• Require states to count ballots cast by voters outside of their assigned precincts, overriding the precinct system used by almost all states that allows election officials to monitor votes, staff polling places, provide enough ballots, and prevent election fraud.

• Mandate no-fault absentee ballots, which are the tool of choice for vote thieves. It would ban witness signature or notarization requirements for absentee ballots; force states to accept absentee ballots received up to 10 days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by Election Day; and require states to allow vote trafficking (vote harvesting) so that any third parties—including campaign staffers and political consultants—can pick up and deliver absentee ballots.

• Prevent election officials from checking the eligibility and qualifications of voters and removing ineligible voters. This includes restrictions on using the U.S. Postal Service’s national change-of-address system to verify the address of registered voters; participating in state programs that compare voter registration lists to detect individuals registered in multiple states; or ever removing registrants due to a failure to vote no matter how much time has elapsed. It also would substantially limit the public release of voter registration information, making it almost impossible for nonpartisan organizations to verify the accuracy of registration rolls, and prohibit states from using undeliverable election mail as a basis for challenging a registrant’s eligibility.

• Ban state voter ID laws by forcing states to allow individuals to vote without an ID and merely signing a statement in which they claim they are who they say they are.

• [Plus several other important actions listed in the Heritage article]

The above actions would change our constitutional Republic forever, insulating the political class from the citizens completely by institutionalizing election fraud controlled by the Democrat Party. Fully recognizing the threat HR 1 poses to election integrity, fairness, and credibility of future election outcomes, Republican attorneys general in 20 states, led by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita who was a former chief elections official in his state, signed a letter to House and Senate leaders of both political parties denouncing the bill. Some excerpts:

As the chief legal officers of our states, we write regarding H.R.1, the For the People Act of 2021 (the “Act”) and any companion Senate bill. As introduced, the Act betrays several Constitutional deficiencies and alarming mandates that, if passed, would federalize state elections and impose burdensome costs and regulations on state and local officials. Under both the Elections Clause of Article I of the Constitution and the Electors Clause of Article II, States have principal—and with presidential elections, exclusive— responsibility to safeguard the manner of holding elections. The Act would invert that constitutional structure, commandeer state resources, confuse and muddle elections procedures, and erode faith in our elections and systems of governance.

Perhaps most egregious is the Act’s limitations on voter ID laws. Fairly considered, requiring government-issued photo identification at the polls represents nothing more than a best practice for election administration. Government-issued photo identification has been the global standard for documentary identification for decades. Nearly twenty years ago, in the Help America Vote Act, Congress required first-time voters who register by mail without proof of identification to present identification either to the county voter-registration office or at the polls. 42 U.S.C. § 15483(b). It thereby acknowledged the existence of voter fraud and the capacity of documentary identification to prevent it. 148 Cong. Rec. S10489 (Oct. 16, 2002) (statement of Sen. Bond) (“By passage of this legislation, Congress has made a statement that vote fraud exists in this country.”). Then, in 2005, a bi-partisan commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State James Baker recognized the existence of in-person voter fraud and endorsed a photo-identification requirement. In the wake of these endorsements, states began passing voter ID laws, and over a decade ago the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law—one of the most robust in the nation. See Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).

Adding to the threat of increased voter fraud, the Act would mandate nationwide automatic voter registration and Election Day voter registration. Such systems would provide too many opportunities for non-citizens and others ineligible to vote to register and cast fraudulent ballots before officials can take preventive action. States should determine appropriate methods for voter registration based on their own experiences with voting access and voter fraud.

HR 1 must be stopped in the US Senate and repealed if passed by the Democrats and signed into law. The best approach to assuring election integrity in future elections is to urge the states to fix the holes in their election laws to ensure that only eligible voters can vote and that ballot tampering is prevented. The Democrats will conflate strict voter identification laws, which will weed out ineligible voters, with “voter suppression,” arguing that such laws depress minority voter registration and turnout. These claims need to be forcefully countered using the simple logic that personal identification is required for many everyday transactions in American life, and that any US citizen can easily obtain the requisite identification cards.

Restoring Trust in Federal and State Government Agencies. Many elected and appointed officials in the federal and state governments failed their oaths of office in 2020 by either willfully enabling or passively supporting vote fraud and/or by ignoring responsibilities for investigating evidence of election fraud. For example, the FBI has a responsibility for investigating election-related crimes, as summarized on their own website (emphasis added):

An election crime is generally a federal crime if:

• The ballot includes one or more federal candidates

• An election or polling place official abuses their office

• The conduct involves false voter registration

• The crime intentionally targets minority protected classes

• The activity violates federal campaign finance laws

During the 2020 election, there was documented evidence in several states of polling place abuses, false voter registrations (including fake ballots), hundreds of thousands more voters in some states than were registered to vote, and US Postal Service corruption, yet the FBI did not conduct the requisite investigations into these and other election-related matters. Americans are losing confidence in the ability of the FBI to perform its missions without political bias; our faith in federal law enforcement and their ability to uphold the rule of law for all Americans fairly must be fully restored.

In several states, the governors and secretaries of state refused to cleanse voter rolls (e.g., no cross-checking of voter lists with other states to weed out ineligible voters), legalized voting for millions of illegal aliens, refused to validate signatures for mail-in ballots (both on Election Day and during recounts), and illegally changed the voting rules of their states (including just weeks before the election). This means that state officials were illegally enabling election fraud because Article I, Section IV, Clause 1 of the US Constitution gives state legislatures the exclusive power and authority to write state election laws, not to governors, secretaries of state, or other elected or appointed state officials. Prodding state legislatures to restore and revise state election laws is a key challenge to restoring election integrity in future elections. Removing and replacing corrupt officials with those who understand and support voter integrity is a required corollary action.

Educating the general public about why restoration of election integrity is of vital importance in preserving our constitutional Republic. Given the evidence of election irregularities that has been uncovered over the months since November 3^rd, the confidence of Americans in elections is at a record low. Most Americans intuitively realize that, without election integrity, citizen-controlled government is simply not possible, as election fraud destroys the ability of voters to democratically elect our government representatives, including the president of the United States and Congress. Widespread election fraud has an even more insidious effect by demoralizing citizens and making them apathetic about voting at all.

Signing HR 1 into federal law will effectively end our constitutionally-based political system, with all of its checks and balances, replacing it over time with a one-party political dictatorship that would be immune to the outrages of average Americans over capricious authoritarian federal and state policies implemented since corrective elections to replace “elected officials” would be impossible. Third World dictators would be proud.

To educate the public on the importance of election integrity requires talking over the heads of the legacy media, who essentially operate as the communications bureau of the Democrat Party. This will require vocal leadership from elected Republicans strongly backed by their voter base, as well as actions by like-minded private institutions and nonprofit organizations to publicize the issue and counter contrarian Democrat-media narratives.

Conclusion. At least three states are in the process of investigating election irregularities. The results of these investigations should provide additional impetus by those states to restore election integrity through revised election laws. There are three significant challenges that must be overcome to restore election integrity and voter confidence in US elections. All three require significant actions by American citizens who are concerned about the future of our constitutional Republic. The first is to stop HR1 dead in its tracks in the US Senate.

The end.