Exclusive — Rep. Ted Budd: ‘More Work to Do’ on Election Integrity in North Carolina

As “fair elections” continue to poll as a top priority for U.S. voters, Trump-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) said his home state of North Carolina has “more work to do” on election integrity to ensure people “believe that their vote counts.”

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday, the congressman spoke on combating voter fraud, apathy from establishment Republicans, and fending off the false narratives of far-left Democrats looking to federalize elections. The House Republican has notably introduced and co-sponsored numerous bills aimed at bolstering election integrity, one of which is ironically dubbed the “You Must be Alive to Vote Act.”

The bill is even more timely now, given a recent Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) investigation which discovered tens of thousands of deceased and duplicate voter registrations after the 2020 election in North Carolina. PILF in its findings emphasized the importance of removing these voters from the registry before what looks to be a “close election” in the state. Budd commented on the investigation, saying cleaning up the voter rolls before the May 17 Republican primary should not be a “partisan issue.”

“I think we’ve made progress during this election cycle — I think there’s more work to do. And again, I don’t think this should be a partisan issue,” he said. “I think this is about faith in our institutions and [the ability to] rest on the integrity of whether or not people believe that their vote counts.”

But more needs to be done to protect the right to vote besides keeping tidy voter rolls, introducing legislation at a federal level, and even winning back the House, Senate, and White House, Budd said. The congressman emphasized the importance of local and state races in the Tar Heel State and around the country in introducing election integrity measures.

“We have to make sure that we have a super majority in the general assembly, the State House, the State Senate, and also on our State Supreme Court. [They need to focus on] particularly voter ID, which is so state-oriented [and] has been overwhelmingly supported by the Republican general assembly and on a ballot,” he said. “…But liberal justices in the State Supreme Court of North Carolina have overturned it repeatedly and violated the will of the people. …We need voter ID in the states and it takes a state Supreme Court that doesn’t overturn the will of people to do that. ”

Budd, who is leading his competitor former Gov. Pat McCrory by double digits in recent polling, took the opportunity to jab at establishment-backed McCrory for “wavering” on election integrity. McCrory is notably backed by outgoing Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), one of the seven Senate Republicans who voted in favor of convicting former President Donald Trump of impeachment charges in 2021.

“Well, of all the candidates in this race,  I have the strongest record on election integrity, and I’m the only candidate in this race to actually stand up to Constitutional violations in 2020. So, when it was on the line, I stood up for the Constitution,” he said. 

After McCrory served as Charlotte mayor for 14 years and governor for one term, he hosted a popular Charlotte-based radio show before terminating it last year to run for office. On his Nov. 23, 2020, radio show at around 56 minutes, he said Georgia gubernatorial candidate “Stacy Abrams is getting a free ride by the national media. Because she’s doing the exact same thing Donald Trump is doing, destroying democracy.” A clip of McCrory’s comment was used in Club For Growth‘s political attack ad against him.

“It’s not surprising because he didn’t even stand up for himself and fight in 2016 when he lost, and he was the only Republican governor nationally that lost in 2016,” Budd said. “He’s saying he’s the most electable, but he’s lost this state twice.”

Budd reflected on how his stance on election integrity was key in securing  Trump’s endorsement last summer — a coveted endorsement which voters say makes them more likely to vote for Budd over his competitors. 

“But when it comes to [election integrity] I’m the only one that hasn’t wavered on this. And that’s why President Trump endorsed me. He told me before he endorsed me — he said, ‘Ted, lots of candidates have wavered, but you’ve never wavered on America First policies or on the important issues,’ and that’s why he endorsed me,” Budd continued. “What we need is Republicans that we can trust, that respect the will of the people — including on election integrity. And we just can’t trust McCrory to be conservative.” 

Besides cleaning up the GOP, Budd said Republicans must continue exposing far-left Democrats’ “language games,” around election integrity. These “language games” could otherwise be called “propaganda,” and are usually marked by an attempt to make bad or even evil policy sound right or compassionate. Examples include “reproductive healthcare,” which is actually abortion — the killing of an unborn child — or “gender-affirming care for minors,” which actually involves prescribing puberty blockers and hormones, and sometimes sex-change surgeries, for children who believe they are transgender.

When it comes to election integrity, Democrats have used a similar strategy. GOP bills have been smeared as a “threat to democracy” and “Jim Crow 2.0,” and Republican lawmakers have been maligned as “racist” supporters of “voter suppression” for wanting to curtail ballot harvesting and voter fraud in upcoming elections.

“I think you need to speak in very direct terms. You need to say that for election integrity, it needs to be easy to vote and hard to cheat. But the broader aspect of your question… is we need to call out broadly the duplicitous nature of Democrats’ language,” Budd said.

“There’s a rule of thumb and it is: If the Democrats are blaming someone for it, it’s actually what they are doing. If they’re talking about destroying democracy, it’s actually what they are doing,” he continued. “So I think we need to expose the language games that they’ve been playing on us for decades and letting mainstream media carry their water.”

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter.