The Honest Elections Project is combating Democrat election reform proposals ostensibly linked to the coronavirus outbreak, explained Jason Snead, the organization’s director. He offered his analysis on Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Democrats are exploiting fears of the coronavirus — particularly reluctance to publicly congregate at polling stations due to fear of infection — to push a national vote-by-mail system ahead of 2020’s elections, explained Snead.
“Democrats are trying to use this global pandemic to push for voter fraud,” estimated Marlow. “They want to be able to exploit this crisis to change the voting rules to make it easier to cheat.”
Snead warned, “Unfortunately, there is an effort to use this crisis as an excuse to push what really is a sweeping national political agenda to change the way that democracy functions. So you would have federal micromanagerial control over elections; you would change the way Americans pass ballots and move towards an all-vote-by-mail election, which raises significantly the risk of fraud, not to mention the associated logistical burdens and all of the potential failures that come with that, because of so many changes to our elections being made at the last minute.”
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Snead continued, “I think people should be very concerned. We already saw that the House Democratic Caucus put this in their coronavirus stimulus package — the third relief package — and we see that they want to do it again in the fourth.”
Democrats view the coronavirus pandemic as a political opportunity to change election laws, assessed Snead.
“There is a recognition, I think, politically speaking, that coronavirus is an opportunity,” remarked Snead. “That’s not the way that I think we should be tackling this crisis, but unfortunately, that’s the way that it’s being treated.”
Democrats’ electoral reform measures marketed as responses to the coronavirus are a greater threat to elections than the viral pandemic itself, determined Snead.
“There is a real danger here that we will act hastily in a way which will undermine the credibility and confidence that voters have in their democracy,” Snead stated. “That’s the greatest danger, actually, that is posed to our elections from coronavirus. It’s not the virus itself. It’s the risk that we will act in such a way that will damage our ability to trust the results of our own elections.”
Snead noted Democrats’ primary election reform goals. “In the package that was proposed in the House, there were proposals to mandate same-day voter registration, two weeks of early voting, [and] vote-by-mail in a national emergency.”
Snead distinguished between Democrats’ ongoing vote-by-mail reform proposals and absentee voting. “When I’m talking about vote-by-mail, I’m not talking about absentee voting. I’m talking about a proposal to actually have ballots put in the mail and sent out to every person who’s registered on a voter roll, which is a big problem because our voter registration records are considerably inaccurate.”
Snead went on, “As many as one-in-eight voter registrations are invalid or outdated, so you’re looking at the prospect of millions of ballots being sent out to the wrong addresses, being sent out in the names of ineligible voters, [or] being sent out in the names of dead voters. The opportunities for fraud are significant.”
House Democrats’ “national vote-by-mail system” would mandate the mailing out of voter ballots to registered voter addresses, explained Snead. “It would have ballots sent to every registered voter whether they request one or not. … We have to keep in mind that our voter rolls are substantially inaccurate.”
Snead warned that inaccurate voter rolls combined with a national vote-by-mail mandate would have millions of ballots “sent out to the wrong addresses,” “in the name of dead people,” and to people who “have committed a felony that disqualifies them from voting.”
Democrat advocacy for the national legalization of “ballot harvesting” reveals the partisan political nature of their electoral reform plans, determined Snead, noting the inconsistency between shelter-in-place and social distancing directives and door-to-door ballot collection operations.
Snead said, “If you’re talking about responding to a pandemic, it’s probably not a good idea to send people door-to-door through nursing homes collecting ballots because that creates an opportunity to spread the virus, and just that really starkly puts in perspective how political and politicized this whole response has been.”
“The worst outcome here would be for us to make a wholesale sweeping change to our election that invites fraud [and] undermines the credibility of the election,” warned Snead.
Marlow asked about measures to protect election integrity.
Snead advised the banning of “ballot harvesting” and “cleaning up voter registration records” to ensure that persons listed on voter rolls are eligible to vote.
“Every single year, 10 percent of the U.S. population moves,” observed Snead. “In some demographics — military families or the young — [people move] even more frequently. That means that every single year you’ve got a massive number of voter registration records that suddenly become out-of-date because someone has moved from the residence where they are registered.”
Choosing “between voting safely and voting securely” is “a false choice,” maintained Snead.
The Honest Elections Project launched a $250,000 nationwide television and digital ad campaign calling on Democrats to stop “exploiting the pandemic to push radical election changes.”
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Assorted Democrats and affiliated news media figures have near uniformly called for vote-by-mail election reform during the coronavirus outbreak, including Barack Obama; Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA); and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA),
Left-wing billionaire George Soros is funding lawsuits and activism pushing for mail-in voting.
Democrats’ desired electoral reform measures would “make it easier to cheat” in elections, explained legal expert Hans von Spakovsky,
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