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FreedomFest 2021: Election Integrity – Securing the Sanctity of the Ballot Box

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

This is the fifth in a series of articles from FreedomFest 2021, an annual libertarian-oriented conference hosted by Dr. Mark Skousen, an economist and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University in California. This year’s venue is Rapid City, SD (God’s country), a short distance from Mount Rushmore. This article covers a panel discussion about election security with a panel consisting of Craig Huey (author and former political candidate), Larry Elder (pundit and candidate for California governor), John Lott (author and analyst), and John Fund (moderator).

Fund: one of our panelists has just been approved to be on the ballot in the California governor’s race, and the latest Emerson poll shows that Larry Elder is in first place in his candidacy for California governor. Larry, why are you doing this and what will happen before the election on 14 September? The vote is a two-step process, with the first step being a vote of greater than 50% to recall Newsom before voting for candidates to replace him.

Elder: it was regular people who convinced me to run for governor. No one asked me about why I should run. They knew my politics and understood the issues just like I did. One of my issues is better schools and better standards in those schools. It is all about expectations and standards. Low expectations and standards are a disservice to everyone. I am fighting the public sector unions who are all-in behind Newsom.

Fund: California media is terrible; they don’t even cover their local issues. The recall election will lead to a real debate over the next few months for a change, largely thanks to Larry Elder.

Fund: ballot harvesting was legalized in California. That’s a problem

Huey: Ballot harvesting is legal in 28 states. Election integrity laws are of great interest in many states. Larry Elder is going to be fighting a machine. The Left have schools that train people how to do ballot harvesting. Voter ID makes ballot harvesting impossible. Ballot harvesting means about 7-10% of the popular vote when it is legal. Ballot harvesters directly canvass Democrat voters for voting on their behalf. The ballot harvesters are invisible because they are merely intermediaries between voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote and the ballot boxes. Ballot harvesting in evangelical (conservative) churches is frequently facilitated by pastors; the Right needs to use this legalized ballot harvesting to counteract the Left’s ongoing efforts. Registration lists in California are fraudulent, too.

Fund: the media tell us that there is no voter fraud, and that asking someone for voter ID is “racist.” John Lott will explain some of his research into the topic.

Lott: the Democrat-media complex insist Republicans are “delusional” about voter ID (“it’s anti-democratic!”). Except the rest of the world have much stronger voter ID rules than any state in the US. Virtually all countries in the EU require voter ID; in short order, all countries in Europe will require voter ID. In Mexico, they have a biometric system for voter ID that prevents double voting by citizens. 74% of European countries ban absentee ballots for people living in the countries, and a third of them ban absentee ballots for citizens outside their countries. Third-party verification is required for many European military personnel who are outside their country in order to cast an absentee ballot. The UK issued tamper-resistant government IDs a few years ago in order to thwart Sinn Fein fake IDs. One of the big concerns is that voter IDs will depress turnout. The Mexicans have stringent rules for issuing IDs; average voter turnout increased by an average of 9% across Mexican states because people thought that their votes actually counted because real voter IDs were required. I looked at voter turnout rates in counties in swing states. Republican counties had a higher turnout in 2020 than 2016 while Democrat counties had a lower turnout except in the few large counties in swing states where voter fraud was almost certain to have transpired.

Elder: 66% of Democrats believe the 2016 election was stolen (numbers changed by the Russian). No evidence was ever found that that was true. Hillary Clinton has propagated her big lie for over four years. Yet, she did not call for audits in 2016 because she knew that Democrats committed systematic voter fraud that audits would have exposed.

Fund: my sources tell me that Trump was informed about voter fraud early in 2020 and did nothing about it. Jared Kushner was briefed on it. The election was lost in March and April when the state election laws were changed to enable the fraud. [This was in response to my direct question about what the RNC had not devoted any resources to challenging known election fraud in several states. In short, he evaded answering the question and showed his anti-Trump colors by deflecting the blame for RNC inactivity on voter fraud to Trump.]

Fund: the national motor-voter law was the first piece of legislation implemented by Bill Clinton. Crashing the voting system was the goal over time, as espoused by Cloward-Piven.

The end.

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