Last month, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL), chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, suggested states’ attorneys general consider taking legal action against other states that used executive or judicial authority to change presidential election rules for violations of the U.S. Constitution.
Late Monday, the state of Texas filed suit challenging election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin because they violate the Constitution, similarly to as Palmer had suggested.
During an interview with Mobile, AL radio FM Talk 106.5 on Tuesday, Palmer said he was “disappointed it took someone this long to act” on his call. However, the Alabama Republican lawmaker explained how vital evidence was in determining whether or not anything untoward occurred and noted the evidence, which in this case would be the election materials, was required to be preserved for 22 months.
“We’re continuing to work on this, and the key here is that I’m trying to get across to people is we’ve got to be able to look at the evidence, and the evidence would be the election materials — the envelopes, the affidavits in states where you don’t have ballot harvesting — if you’ve got thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of envelopes that don’t have a postmark or have a manipulated postmark,” he said. “It does not matter that you cannot connect that envelope to the actual vote cast. What matters is those envelopes represent votes that should not have been cast. Same thing with the affidavits where your typical disqualification rate is anywhere from 1 to 3%, closer to 3%. We know in Atlanta and Detroit and other places it is a fraction — a fourth of a percent. We should be able to audit the affidavits and determine first of all if they were even signed. And if they were signed, were they signed by people that are still living or people that are actually qualified to vote in that precinct or in that state, and does the signature match what’s on file?”
“Again, when you find tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of affidavits that should have been disqualified, it doesn’t matter who the individual voted for,” Palmer continued. “What matters is that it was an illegitimate vote. And if we go in and we can do those audits, and we can look at those materials, which by the way — federal law requires those materials be preserved for 22 months. It is a federal crime to destroy election material. After we look at that, if it turns out there was not massive fraud, then I think we move on. But I don’t think we can know that until we’ve had the opportunity to evaluate the evidence.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor