>> more tv tomorrow with authors on "after words" including two members of congress democratic representative david price of north carolina will talk about the congressional experience and congressman jim jordan of ohio on his book do what you saidyou would do. we hear from authors randy barnett and evan burnett about the meaning of the 14th amendment . "after words" all day tomorrow on c-span2 and now we continue with our look at dy current affairs. >> welcome to the heritage foundation, those in person and those joining us virtually. i'm speaking to you from washington dc where you need to show identification and a vaccine card to enter a gym or restaurantbut you do not need to show an id to vote . it is the same in many states across the country. last year at 2020 election for town council in eatonville florida was

overturned by a judge and a new winner was declared because of voter fraud. the same thing happened in mississippi where a judge overturned the result of the democratic primary for a position as a alderman because of voter intimidation. while voter fraud may not make a difference in many elections, it certainly can in close ones and we have lots of close elections in this country. another problem is that nobody really knows the full extent of the voter fraud problem. since there are many vulnerabilities in our election laws making iteasier to commit voter fraud and difficult to catch after the fact , that is if you can find prosecutor who is interested in pursuing voter fraud casesafter an election has occurred . one absolute truth that i can tell you is that it's highly unlikely to find voter fraud if you don't bother to look

for it. members of the mainstream media and many politicians choose to ignore or belittle any discussion about voter fraud and are quick to label any attempt to address it as voter suppression or a threat to our democracy. we are fortunate to have with us a distinguished panel to discuss s various facets of this problem. i'll introduce them in the order in which we speak and we will have questions at the end from in-person and virtual attendees will i would encourage you to be thinking about those questions and to submit them. we were forced here from john fund. john is a national affairs columnist for national review magazine and he is also an analyst for fox news. he previously served as columnist and member of the editorial board of the wall street journal.ks he's written articles that have appeared in dozens of publications . he's alsowritten several books including three books on voter fraud , two of which

co-authored with his fellow panelist hans von spakovsky. the first was who is counting,how fraudsters and bureaucrats put your vote at risk and the most recent is here . "our broken elections: how the left changed the way you vote" . we will then hear from hans von spakovsky, my colleague. hans is a senior fellow at the next election law initiative at the heritage foundation. like john, hans has written articles that appear in dozens ofperiodicals and is a frequent legal and political commentator on various media outlets . before joining heritage, hans served as a federal election commissioner which is the agency that enforces campaign-finance law for congressional and presidential elections and spent several years working in the civil rights division at the department of justice providing expertise and enforcing the voting rights act and tell america vote act

and also served as a former vice chairman of theelectoral board at fairfax county virginia and as a member of the fulton county georgia board of registration and elections and as an advisor to the us election commission . we will then hear from the honorable brian hughes. brian is in his second term in the texas senate where he represents 16 counties in east texas. he obtained his undergraduate degree from university of texas where he's been honored as an outstanding alumnus and has a lot of review from s baylor where he was honored as a young lawyer of the year while in the state senate brian received numerous accolades including the taxpayer champion award, the fender of the american dream award and horizon award from the texas right to life.we will then be joined virtually honorable kyle are doing. kyle ardoin. he is president-elect of the national association of secretaries of state . he served in that role since 2018 after serving for nearly

a decade as the first assistant secretary of state. since his election, kyle has championed legislation to strengthen louisiana's election laws and cyber security including laws that banned ballot harvesting, ballot trafficking and managerial or managed service providers to register and report to thesecretary of state . because of these efforts the agency they oversee has received recognition by the electionassistance commission and various other organizations .last certainly not least, we will your from jessica anderson. jessica is currently executive director at heritage action for america where she is responsible for the strategic vision and operation of that organization while working alongside the leadership of the heritage foundation to ensure both organizations are aligned and working towards common goals.

jessica previously worked at heritage action as a vice president before taking leave to join the trump administration as an associate director of intergovernmental affairs and strategic initiatives atthe office of management and budget. we are certainly glad to have her back . jessica received numerous awards including most recently the buckley award for conservative leadership and with that, john, the floor is yours. >> thank you john. in 2000, the issue of election integrity and administration of our elections stopped being so much a local and state issue and becoming a national issue with thebush versus gore race . americans realized that our sloppy, backward antiquated election systems in many states could impact national policy because the presidential race was decided one state in florida by just 537 votes. there was ya coming together both parties that we had to improve our election systems .

and that resulted in the help america vote act of 2002 which was completely bipartisan path by a democratic senate signed into law by a republican president. it's the cosponsor senator chris dodd, a democrat from connecticut said the purpose of this bill is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat for americans. we can do both at the same time. thefirst few years after that , election integrity was still to a large extent a bipartisan issue. in 2008 the supreme court by a vote of 60 3 upheld the constitutionality of indiana's voter id law and the opinion was written by the courts most liberal member at the time, john stevens who recounted a long history of voter fraud, voter irregularities and voter sloppiness and said the very integrity of our elections is at stake if people and he

citedseveral polls which rising cynicism about the accuracy and completeness of our. he said to the extentpublic citizen cynicism grows about the reliability of our elections , you're going to see voter turnout go down . want to see less public confidence in our elections and ultimately less legitimacy in our government and the government officials who serve us. unfortunately, starting about 10 or 12 yearsago , that bipartisan makeup of the debate over elections started to break down dramatically. under barack obama's justice department's hans and i have written a book about this. the issue became politicized. as soon as barack obama took office, one of his top justice officials held a meeting and announced that the provision of help america vote act which specified that an exchange for the federal government operating

elections systems for states, sending them money, they would have to submit to a calling of the rules. the cleanup of the voter registration rolls which in most states are notoriously inaccurate . the pew research center estimated one out of six voter registrations was inaccurate. unreliable or outdated. i think that starting with the obama administration and they decided openly to say we are not going to sfile any cases against states that don't maintain their voter rolls, where going to ignore that otbecause that could decrease voter turnout rather than increase voter turnout, that's not what we're interested in. if you have voter registration rolls that are inaccurate as the one many states have the people that are going to be voting are the ones that should be voting. one of the things are emphasizes is there are two civil rights everyone has. you have the right tovote freely , without any undue influence, any barriers, no

poll taxes, no jim crow awlaws that we had up until the 1960s. no one should standat a polling place location in any way shape or form block you from voting . that's the civil rights battle with in the 50s and we need to extend those gains that everyone in the country as a second civil right which is not to have their vote canceled out, nullified whose by someone who should be voting, someone who's dead. i believe in honoring our elders and honoring our ancestors but i don't believe in representation without respiration. and someone who's dead, someone who's moved out of state , as someone who doesn't exist, someone registered for a po box or who's a felon who doesn't have their civil rights restored. when that happens election results are tainted, illegitimate and people lose confidence in the election process. i'll conclude by saying that

it's unfortunate that the media in the last year or so has decided to completely ignore one side of the story. the headlines are full of articles about voter suppression,alleged racism . the big lie. we're not here to discuss that so much. in fact, the former kansas attorney general, many on the left decried the lack of transparency prior to the 20/20 election but now that they've won, they're silent. many on the right have improperly claimed definitive proof of fraud in 2020 and instead recognizing all investigations and reviews of government performance begin with questions, not conclusions . the result is a form of nuclear warfare where both sides engaged in mutually assured this option, hoping to cancel each other. meanwhile responsiveov government dies .

look, there are two sides of the story. we just went through a long debated united states senate over the let the people vote act. and the other side on this since probably $100 million. they had 99 percent of the mainstream media on their side yelling racism in a crowded political theater. which led to incendiary charges and the president of the united states refusing this act of being modern-day supporters of jim crow and jeadherence to the philosophy of jefferson davis, president of the confederacy. it's time to turn down the temperature and it's time that the bill has been defeated for us to actually step back and take a call or look and i think that has to begin with recognizing that this is a real debate. our systems are antiquated and d outdated and sometimes you can't tell where the incompetence and and the fraud begins around i'll give you great examples from yesterday's newspapers and

internet. in compton california, three people who'd been accused of stealing votes in the city council election that ultimately ended up just being decided by one votepled guilty . the city council member who was the instigator apparently for that fraud have not pled guilty but all his associates apparently have. compton by the way is 99 percent minority . the hundred thousand people live in compton. next door popcorn california, 2 people have been charged with submitting 8000 feet voter registrations in the city that's 64 percent minority . one of the things that is completely ignored in the mainstream media is at times the biggest victims are minorities in areas where government is corrupt, government is unresponsive, government provides or services . sometimes reporters try to change that and machines will take any action necessary including and up to voter

fraud in order to plsquelch reform. i've seen that help happen in detroit, in milwaukee, in st. louis and in many other places. that's why minorities surprisingly support voter integrity measures like voter id by percentages as high or higher than the white population. in fact the washington post survey a few years ago found minority populations, asians, blacks, hispanics support election integritymeasures and believe that voter fraud is a seriousproblem at a greaterpercentage than caucasians do . why is that ? i'll give you one example . we have seen over and over again that voter fraud does affect elections. we saw congressional race in north carolina overturned by a federal court, had to be rerun and we see examples of

the heritage foundation's website which has over 1500 documented cases of voter fraud . lastly , there are some signs that in the wake of the for the people act being defeated in the senate there are some signs that there's perhaps going to be a reevaluation. in sunday's new york times chris caldwell was a contributing writer for the new york times editorial page had a very interesting piece in which he said the various iterations of the for the people act were case in point in how themedia has distorted this issue . democrats outline the political arguments for a year. if there was a solid case their bill wasn't an emergency project to protect democracy it would have triumphed by now. he concludes by saying voters of any background might for example the appalled by what happened on january 6, 2021 at the capital but they also might consider the

intervention of infotech onbillionaires in the 2020 election to be a larger potential threat to our democracy . mark zuckerberg's foundation gave upward of $400 million to the nonprofit center for tech and civic life to help organizers organize elections tunder covid-19 conditions. it's hard to imagine anyone worried about military contracting or public schools welcome such a role in elections. whether this says anything about the president presidential election of 2024 liis unclear but for the time being writes caldwell the republican argument against which the democratic argument is being measured does not include these factors. and i believe that if we are going to discuss this in the wake of the dfailure of the for the people act we have to have an honest discussion that there are two sides to the story and that the american people rejected the argument that this was only about votersuppression and only about preserving democracy . after$100 million was spent on this , posed by various

organizations including the honest election project prove conclusively that needle did not move at all on these issues. the american people to believe our elections are imperiled but they don't believe in the simplistic one-size-fits-all explanation. they do believe we have to pay attention not just to the civil rights of making sure everyone is able to vote but also that every vote is counted accurately and that people's rights are protected from fraudsters and from incompetent bureaucrats. thank you. >> it's hard to follow up with john but since we often write together we have to do that. look, some years ago the heritage foundation, john malcolm and myself got the idea that we got tired of reading stories in the

washington post and others election fraud, we don't need to worry about it so we started an election frauddatabase . it's the only one in the country that we know of . it only has proven cases of fraud in it, someone's been convicted in a court of law or a judge is ordered a new election like the telections john was talking about . we're up to 1340 cases. we now have three more cases to add, the compton california cases. and you know, what's happened is now what the newspapers and others say is there no widespread election fraud across the country and i'm going well, how widespread does it need to be before you do something about it, particularly when you have elections, close elections that get overturned and there's example after example of that . the other problem of course with this is and john mentioned this is prosecutors unfortunately aren't

interested in prosecuting and taking a lot of these cases. i know of many many other cases of potential fraud that brought prosecutors have ignored. and a quick example esif i may give it, the public interest legal foundation, i'm on the board of that besides my work at heritage. they recently used the sunshine laws in florida to ask for all criminal referrals from just 10 counties in florida. criminal referrals where election officials found evidence that criminal violations of election laws that occurred related to the 2020 election, they issued a report on their website. 156 criminal referrals from those counties, nine of them, nine out of the 10 and then they followed up, checked court records and everything and you know that the prosecutors, local

prosecutors and those nine counties did nothing about any of those criminal referrals . now, if they done something about that and those cases have been proven, our database would jump up quite a bit but thereare many instances of that unfortunately . so this website shows again, it's a sampling of cases. it is not a comprehensive list and it does not include all the potential cases out there that are investigated byelection officials . and are prosecuted. by the way, remember i said they tried 10 counties? they got sinformation back from nine county, hillsborough county said the election officials said we don't refer any of the cases we find the local prosecutors so they're onot even interested in investigating potential election crime . that's a real problem in this area. the other ... and this is a

map, youcan click on any state and it will pull up the fraud case .most importantly it will give you citations s to the source documents. everything from newspaper articles to actual court cases. as john can tell you, before the last election, several media outlets got together and assigned 14 reporters to not investigate possible problems in the elections fear but to investigate our database. to go through every single case we had, try to find problems and they couldn't find a single one and it was very terrible. the latest thingwe've done , this was a huge project. a lot of work. we start this figure ago was we have on our website our election integrity scorecard . as you know the heritage foundation we don't just

identify problems, we want to recommend solutions. what we did is analyze the election laws we believe are important to election integrity and security which are intended to protectvoters . our goal is bothaccess and security . and we compared it to a list of best practices that we recommended to ethe states on how they should do everything from handling the cleanup and the voter registration rolls to how they should handle the absentee balloting process to maintain thesecurity of that process . and then we compared each state's laws to our best practices. now, understand this is not an analysis of the 20/20 elections. this is the status of the laws and regulations each state as of a month ago. and remember what happened in

2021. a number of states acted like texas and he's going to tell you about that to try to fix the vulnerabilities in their system which unfortunately exist and a number of states passed good election reform bills. florida, georgia, texas, arizona and a number of other states . so we rated each state a perfect score was 100. no state in the country got 100. i think the highest score was 83. texas was high. i think you guys were six . but what that shows you is that while a lot of states have done everything they can to improve the process, to protect their voters, there's still room forimprovement . and the other advantage to this is we've also put up model laws on issues like voter id for example. and this is going to be continually updated. so we're going to be doing a lot of work from now on. anytime states have their

legislative sessions, we will update it. one final warning about this scorecard. you can have the best laws and regulations in the country. but if local officials, estate officials don't comply with those laws and don't enforce them, they're not going to do you much good and we're hoping that folks at the grassroots, public citizens, state legislators and others will use this to not only put in good laws but make sure that election officials are complying with the laws that have been constitutionally put in place by their state legislatures. each state you can click on it. you can get complete details. we explain our methodology. what the best practices are that we think should be there. 12 broad categories, 47 differentcriteria . this is a work in progress. if folks think we've missed something, if they think something needs to be

corrected. if they think there's another standard or criteria they think we ought to consider we want to hear about it. we encourage folks to take a look at this, analyze it. look at our standards, look at our methodology andlet us know if there's anything you think we should fix . i hate to say it but there's a number of states that are at the bottom of the list because their standards are so bad and there election laws are in terrible shape and what does that mean? it means there's a lot of room unfortunately for problems . if someone wants to commit and there are no security measures in place to stop it awor detect it, you can do it and get away with it. and as the cases in our database show there are folks who are willing to do that, to get into positions of power. what is that? because as a now retired longtime career lawyer cat the justice department told me years ago, he had been

responsible for prosecuting these kind of election crimes . he said look, in many places whether it's big cities or rural counties, elected positions are positions of power because jobs, contracts , money are dealt out by local governments and people in some places unfortunately are willing to misbehave to get into those decisions. so i want to thank everybody for coming today that there's a lot more to be said about this and i thinki'll and there . it's great to be here. >> connecting with those who are also present. >> were thankful for the work of heritage, i got to work with each one in the room and learning about how federalism is supposed to work. we learn from each other's mistakes and copied the good stuff.

so with that, texas could go through this in the last year. election integrity is something we worked on for a ba while. in 2017 we had a mail ballot reform bill that was passed on a bipartisan basis. in 2019 we came back for kmore reforms based on what we hear from folks back home. it's should be a partisan issue as john said. sadly it's becomethat and in 2021 we came back with more reforms again. in texas since we have a part-time citizen legislature we're in session for normally 140 days . every two years , but if it were two days, every hundred 40 years but we were there for five months every other year and in doing that interim we're back in our old jobs and we see people at church and football games and at the grocery store. we have to give accounts for what mohappened, what didn't happen. we hear testimony from folks. that way also formally in hearings and when trwe hear these problemswhether it's about integrity ad, we try to address those problems.

that's what this was about and it was an especially ugly debate this year because of all that was going on nationally but the good news is common sense reforms you got t to put in place. any of those are not partisan, many of them for example our paper backup. one of the, part of the fallout was urging everyone towards electronic voting and those direct voting systems. they're somewhat unfulfilling when you vote on electronic systems and prove you voted.st some not just rednecks, a lot of folks would have more confidence if there were a paper record so if we have to do a recount we can do a recount. that was a long fight that got done in texas and how about a way to trackyour own

mail ballot application. we've heard from folks who say i sent my application by mail. cki don't know if it's getting there in time. i returned my ballot , is it going to make it now in texas we have a portal , a unique number you can go into and track your mail ballot application and make sure it's going to get there in time and know whether you should vote in person. chain of custody for those ballots. 24 hour live stream video where those ballots are being kept when they are brought to central accounting. things like that which should not have any fight. edwe have those in texas now but we did learn in this process that so much of what we were doing was being scrutinized. such a presumption that we were trying to do something the various when in fact these reforms on their face and as we follow through were just common sense reforms expanding access was an important theme. because senator dodd's words about being easy to vote, we

mean that. easy to vote, hard to cheat. it makes sense so we expanded access. texas already had more early voting days spent new jersey or new york, more than which had zero early voting days but we expanded those more. we expanded access to make sure folks could get access to the ballot and why we do that we wanted to work on access as well as security. it's interesting, if you look at the criminal penalties in our reform bill and you look at the other measures with teeth, they are and not so much an individual voters to see. happens but the real problem is those we've seen some places, those election officials who are misleading people or those ballots harvesters, those paid political operatives trying to get between the voter and their ballot. we cracked down hard so polls

have access and they're k allowed to vote and vote in a way that's going to be counted. in texas if you look at our prosecutions, the greatest problem we see is of course mail ballot fraud. in texas we do not have mail ballots for everyone. in texas you need to be 65 or older or disabled to voteby mail . we do offer robust in person early voting options but as far as ballots by mail, what we find is ballots harvesters going to neighborhoods and they get people to sign blank forms and go back and change the information. take disability when a person didn't claim to be disabled. they know when the ballots come, they forged signatures. the still cracks down on that and it makes it a crime and in fact, the language in this bill is so strong that political parties will be cable careful now, a political operatives will not be able to have anything to do with anapplication for ballot by mail or a mail

ballot . if you're a volunteer, you can help with that but if you're looking for campaigns payroll in texas it is illegal for you to have any interaction with the voter in person . with that application or ballots by mail. that was a hard line to draw we thought it was important to protect those vulnerable voters and also illegal assistance. that sounds awkward but you must understand the lingo. that's when people claim to be assisting a voter one claim is putting the way they want to, not only the owner wants to attorney y general's office these cases and there's tangible evidence i'm going to show you in a moment.. those things we crackdown on, we also put things in place to make sure the system is working right, make sure all watchers have access to do their jobs but not to intimidate, not to interfere with the votingprocess . making sure that machines are

working right so we can have confidence in that system. those are some of the high point things we did. we fed voter id in texas since 2011. we now have voter id for ballots by mail cleansing for this election cycle. our secretary of state is working to make sure everybody knows and for the first time ever and this it never gets talked about in many of the stories but for the first time in texas there is a standardized your process for those o applications for ballot by xe mail. in the past if you have a problem on your ballot by mail its projected, you don't know about it t unless you chase it down. now in texas in every county

as one tool we added private causes of action private causes of action. so let's say in election is stolen from you and the district attorney won't prosecute well in

texas now, you can file a civil lawsuit against that ballot harvester against that one who stole the election and you can you can make them discourage the monies that were paid for doing that also get your attorney's fees back. of course. there's always the abnormal process for challenging elections and and those are pretty tight frames for that. that's always an option. but even if it's too late to overturn the election if you can prove you were cheated you can hold the wrongdoer accountable and we as conservatives we shouldn't fear this, you know number seven of the first 10 is a the right to trial by jury in a civil case. has it been abused of course, do we have to guard a jealously? yes, but private citizens a jury of your peers holding you accountable. that just makes sense. that's a uniquely american idea. and so we are using that in texas. you may know we're also using it in the heartbeat bill separate issue. today, but we're using that in texas and we believe that will have an effect as far as illegal assistance. what does that look like? i do when i do want to share one example with you before i give

you a little bit of time back and so we talked about you talked about how many times? the fraud takes place in in minority communities we found that as well elderly voters folks who maybe don't speak to english language. so well first time voters. they're the ones most often prayed upon by illegal by ballot harvesters by these paid operatives who just want to cheat and yes with with financial motives. and so i'm going to read you sworn testimony from a trial and it all go county, texas. this is a sworn testimony given under trial the cases on appeal now and this the lady i'm going to quote his name angie cavazos ms. cavazos was a first-time voter, but she wanted to vote she was encouraged to vote until she came and then when she got to the polling place someone showed up to help her and i'm just going to read you her words. and she says and then i go to the polling place and marcella goes up now. i should have mentioned marcella later testified. she was being paid $500 to be at

the polling place to help canada. >> i go to the polling place as marcella goes up. marcella testified she was being paid $500 to be at the polling place to help voters. she was being paid by one of the candidates. to that color the way she was giving assistance? who knows but she was being paid by candidates at the polling place to help voters so the lady says i go to the polling place as marcella goes up, then marcella comes up behind me . i had the intention of she was going to assist me how to do those things. because i didn't understand that machine. she started punching in the machine, i don't even remember the language in the polls so she was telling me you're going to press here and press over there. i saw that she puts it in favorof the team that she was on .i had an idea she was giving me a tour of how to do those things and that she was going to leave. i didn't touch the poll at any time.

i told her let me, let mevote on my own . she said no, you already voted. that's what we are cracking down on in texas. voters like that have a right to vote however they want to vote and people that were doing what was alleged to be done going tobe held accountable in texas . this is happening as he said, the chart from the other side used to be there is no evidence of voter fraud now there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud and we h rsalways ask the question how much fraud is okay. how much fraud is acceptable. how much fraud is acceptable, none. how muchis acceptable , none. we have to get this right and we really do have to make it easier to vote and how to cheat. i'm glad to be here today i'm learning from everyone on the panel . >> the left says voter fraud isa myth, now they say it's rare .

they really have no idea how rare are often that happens . >> in 10 years i worked in this office beginning as first assistant and now i secretary of state i've never seen the public more focused on election integrity as it is now. personally i relish the opportunity to educate the public on louisiana's top-notch election processes and d procedures and i'm here about heritage has ranked louisiana as one of the best state for election integrity in the nation. in the time since i become secretary of state i've worked to implement sensible measures that have garnered bipartisan support while pushing back againstattempts to implement liberal policies lacking in accountability . in 2020 when the nation was first with covid i face pressure to implement vote by mail in louisiana. i stood up to that pressure and worked with womy colleagues and our attorney general to craft a plan that works for

louisiana. one that was limited in scope and upheld by a liberal judge not once but twice . in that same year we passed a bill to ban ballot harvesting in louisiana, one that passed with overwhelming support in both parties and signed into law by a democratic governor. during last year's otsession we passed legislation that ensure the most accurate information available was supplied by my department to ensure that deceased voters were being removed from our voter registration list. as an aside, this bill passed with unanimous support. every republican and every democrat voted for it and our democratic governor signed into law and yet at the brennan center called this a voter purge and accused us of making voting harder. even after we confronted them and gave them the facts they maintained their life about what this law actually does. yes, we faced some defeats. i championed legislation with

my republican friends to band zuckerbucks and institute of voter canvas to ensure our voter registration list is staying as accurate as possible. both bills were vetoed by the governor of where not giving up in louisiana. this year i'm excited about 2 pieces of legislation that we've secured sponsors for. one is a bill on our voter id laws that have been on the books since 1997 and i would ironically let you know that that was the clinton administration's department of justice approved our voter id law when we had to have legislation approved by the department of justice. i believe that was called pre-clearance. for those that are registering to vote online, we're going to require them to utilize additional efforts to prove citizenship. i'm proud we were among the

first states to adopt online voter registration but equally as proud we are looking for ways to make sure nobody can take advantage of that system. secondly i'll be pursuing an amendment to our state constitution that will than any municipality or local government authority in louisiana from allowing noncitizens to vote in any election. what happened in new york just a few weeks ago is an front to election integrity and we can't let that happen. the best part of this proposed amendment is that it doesn't need to go in our signature. once it passes the legislature it will be going straight to the voters of louisiana for theirapproval . sti'm proud of our record in louisiana as we continue to stress our election integrity laws. i'm proud we've done so by working with republicans and democrats. proud we stood our ground against outside liberal groups like the brennan center who want to tell louisiana how to run our election. again thank you for this

opportunity to brag about louisiana and the strides we've made and how we can be an example to the rest of the nation on the strength of our elections and as others have said, it's not wrong to strengthen our laws and election integrity efforts. we need to make it harder to cheat and easier to vote and in louisiana it's never been easier to register and vote or both. it's very simple. when you have over 90 percent of your eligible registrants eligible citizens register, that's an important part of the other part is making it easy to access the ballot box. when you have early voting in louisiana we have seven days. we expanded during covid to offer more uropportunities and we will look for ways to expand it but we will also make sure that on balance integrity efforts are a priority in our great state. thank you for this opportunity and i lookforward to questions . >> jessica.

>> it's a pleasure to be with everybody after this very diverse discussion about the different aspects that go nsinto securing the vote and safeguarding our elections. i run heritage action, a grassroots organization with 2 million activists across the country and one of the things that we've realized in the last 12 to 18 months is the fight to secure our elections is the base of any form of grassroots activism on any issue going forward. we don't have a shot at advocating for issues to cut spending, engaged in a strong foreign national defense. to work on energy environmental issues in the united states. we don't have a shot at doing any of that our elected officials if we don't have faith in our vote. so that's an album of the grassroots the last year. i think a lot of it was

spurred from some of the confusion coming out of the november election. it took a while for people to understand exactly what was at stake and what was at play on the ground but then to focus on moving forward. the goal for the grassroots b the last year and a half has been to full. it's the block the overreach of our election system and tackles state-based reform so i'm proud of the work grassroots activists and have been able to do to support great legislators like senator hughes in texas, come alongside them as they pass these incredibly important bills that frankly are nonpartisan. there's nothing crazy, athere's nothing racist about any of these bills that move through the states and they were there. they did all the activism. engaged with the lawmakers. this is the power of citizen activists coming out of the woodwork and engaging in such

an important and frankly comprehensive issue to our republic . that work at the state level that was going on just very intentionally not only in texas but in florida, georgia and arizona and other places across the country . always on top of our mind was what was going on in washington with the various bills that leadership as well as nancy pelosi were putting forward .. >> a federal takeover of our election. someone asked me if i thought we needed that. we need a federal election system, my answer was no, states are doing a fine good job and they should continue to do a fine good job. there is notd a need for those

legislative packages. the left arguably unsuccessful this last year trying to reframe this debate about voting rights and disenfranchisement about racial inequality inequities of the state level they had a vested interest in seeing states like georgia, texas, arizona, florida. in reframing what the states did and calling it out as basis or voter suppression is. they need to show their fellow lawmakers in washington that there was a need for the federal takeover the states are crazy o and they cannot do it on their own we the mighty washington bureaucrats must do it for them the american people saw through that. this is a year end a half were somebody got up to pass the bills they failed and lost the

public argument and we are seeing now a complete wave of not just conservative activists but every day average american citizens like my parents actually see through so much of the narrative and recognizing that the left is manipulating the success of the states for their goal in washington. they cannot actually when with a compelling legislative agenda so they resort to reading the rules, rigging the filibuster as we all know in advancing as one forward. that has been top of mind there is a very broad coalition that's worked from coast to coast to have these two goals in mind tackling the state bills, we call ourselves to save our election coalition and the goal is to do just that, save our elections. going forward i think this'll be a fight were glad to take on and

it's very much the roadmap for what states in the voter integrity. i love the scorecard it is so easy to use and lets me click my state, what can i do to increase myd score and the model legislation i download. as an activist in the citizen activist i go to my state lawmaker and encourage them to tackle this and take it on this year end or state legislative chambers. i expect we will see a lot of the activity in 2022. received a half a dozen states introduce bills around these provisions on strengthening voter id and making sure this commonsense provision of voter id is john comments. you have to have an id to get t your vaccine in your vaccine

card to get into restaurants but you do not have to vote in d.c. that comparison existed a lot of states around the country and people are eager to have a voter id and a lot of places like georgia and south carolina if you don't have them there available for free. there is going to be much more excitement around bills like that so were watching what states are doing and we will continue to see grassroots and enthusiasm and people show up you will see people engage in a substantive way on the merit in the peaceable of this bill. it is not enough to read the soundbite of what these bills did at the state level. you have to go inn and look. that's not what this bill is doing. a lot ofed activists learn we he to read the bill for ourselves we cannot rely on what the mainstream media is characterizing that will be

rerenewed enthusiasm around the state bills as they moved to the legislative chambers. the second thing in washington. the fight to block the federal overreach is not yet over there is a lot of interest from schumer amp losey to nuke the filibuster in the senate and events these bills to biden's desk and biden's comments. two weeks in atlanta, he wants to see a a version of these bils on his desk. certainly before the midterm elections. conservatives will need to stay vigilant not only to preserve the filibuster for the many reasons we all would agree that we need it but to recognize the two-step power grab that could come shortly after with the h.r.1 package of bills. the third point i would make is one that conservatives are getting really comfortable and were used to talk about, they

illustrated this point so beautifully the role of a poll worker and a poll watcher and volunteering on election day operation. this is no easy task. what were asking people to do is to give up three or four or five weeks depending on how early voting is, give up their time take time off work indicia weapon to a constitutional duty and constitutional privilege to sit in there and be the eyes and ears for freedom in our constitution within the election system and the polling location. that is a role that traditionally there is a lot of interest from the left and placing activist to do those things. i would argue those under that is a role that we should be doing we love the constitution and want to see her vote protected. we can volunteer poll workers

and watches as well. we made a significant push to encourage activists across the country to consider volunteering their time you have to get trained by the state and a lot of times that training with the state in the vetting process that the secretary of state goes through and the placement begins now begins the spring. coming off of not only the virginia governor's election where you saw more poll workers from the conservative right turn out you'll see the same enthusiasm boots on the ground to be safe stewards of the constitution within our polling location. i'm excited to see that these are all good things for every public with conservative activation what and ask tough questions and defend the truth and when they support great ball lawmakers in our great secretary of state the work diligently to manage these election day operations without any andre her

friends. i'm really proud of the work i know it's a little different than the history and legislative background but i wanted to leave you will with the grassroots of what we heard on the ground across the country and how real and personal this is become for us. >> i should imagine were going by number of friends and allies in the election integrity. i would be opening up the questions close. people. i want to make a quick point maybe some will want to comment. election consequences and if you would like the people onde t yor side you get policies that you like it can lead tome appointments, government contracts, power. i am ahead scratcher when i see the media outlet on the left when they point out somebody who

is accused of election fraud is a republican voter. that means that this is not really a problem as employees to pointed out this is universal ipbipartisan problem. on the other point i want to make you think, on either of both of those the left has been trying to make a number of election changes many in the federal bills for years and theb failed at thebl ballot box and s not able to get the changes to the legislature. but a number of executive branch officials and judges changed the rules in 2020 without getting gratification from the state legislatures in most cases. on the rules that applied to that election. the department of justice has already announced in states and the pandemic begins to wane and

hopefully be over o very soon, y state that attempts to revert back to the laws that are on the books in those states may be subject by the department of justice. i think that is a danger. >> let's take some questions. >> i will point out in the debate for the people act in the senate there was one point that senator schumer the majority leader declined to every answer which was this we know among many of the things that the bill would do to override state election laws and require same-day voter registration which is an open invitation to ballot fraud and also eliminate any need for excuse for absentee voting. he had no answer for those who brought up the fact that his own home stay in new york does not have same-day voter registration

does not allow unlimited absentee voting. in fact just last november to ballot measures were presented to new york voters to institute same-day voter registration and no excuse absentee voting, two of the pillars for the people act in new york voters overwhelmingly defeated them. senator schumer was pushing on all 50 states, measures his own constituents. he made a very important point about human nature being frail and were all flawed creatures. it can get pretty ugly out there power is a very dangerous drug. we had two former members of congress in pennsylvania indicted inec recent years and what were they doing, these are former members of congress you think they would have a reputation to protect they would go into alzheimer's home where

there were patients in the system and filling out the balance they were both indicted. in texas where senator hughes is from a few years ago there was houston votes registering people who didn't exist illegal aliens ineligible toeg vote. the county registrar, leo vasquez said this was outrageous. he founded the 25000 applications. i wrote about that story and his name was sean goodale, he struck me as an invasive fellow. but i had no idea because is been involved all over the country from his home based in

new jersey which is a fountain of voter fraud. yesterday afternoon in new jersey he paid a price for his activities over the years which extend back to texas. he pled guilty for murder for hire. he murdered a fellow political consultant. he paid to individuals to go to his apartment a fewde years ago and stabbed him to death and torched the place to hide the evidence. he is in home detention $1 million bail. there are people that will stop at nothing and for one side to deny that this is going on is frankly very dereliction of duty. senator schumer knows better for the following reasons.

this is an official government position james o'keefe. dishes go from neighborhood to neighborhood for repeat voting and he admitted that he said we need voter id. what was the response from election officials in new york city. mayoro de blasio had him fired within 48mi hours. he was committing a political gaffe which as you know in washington and new york means you tell the truth and politics. secondly one of the last acts before he turned over the mayor's office to mayor de blasio was to authorize the department ofrt investigation probe into the new york board of elections which is a n notorious sinkhole of corruption the department of investigation look to see of the system of integrity they took 63

investigators and had them posed as voters and had them move out of state for data reserving time on rikers island. they would go to polling places on the day that mayor de blasio was elected and they would try to vote. they would mix-and-match a 25 euro puerto rican investigator of a 93-year-old polish widow. completely disparate description in terms of age and everything else. 61 of the 63 times in chuck schumer new york, those people were bound to vote because there's no voter id law there'sn only two in which they were temporarily blocked from voting. one was a fellow had moved or alleged voter had moved from one neighborhood to another nearby. the polling inspector said you can't vote here. so he walked back to the street, pointed down the block and you can go to the place he originally registered and he

could vote there. the second case the fellow showed up it appeared before the polling inspector and that i would like to vote and said i'm sorry i can't let you vote and he said why not he said you're trying to vote in the name of my son and he is dead and you're not my son. that was only time sudbury was prevented from voting. chuck schumer knows all of this and he was trying to foist this belt including louisiana, texas network so hard to improve the integrity of the election. this is a tragedy. thankfully the $100 million campaign to nationalize our election into one-size-fits-all failed miserably not only on offense and a renewed effort to protect our elections. >> we had that happened in texas

the in response to covid. we don't have drive-through buffer disabilities. election workers will bring the equipment out who are not able to go when and vote. i think we all recognize the importance of the secret ballot in the private ballot i don't know if you and your spouse discuss how you vote or your boss or your coworker but that's important that your vote to be your boat. imagine when they're passing the machine around that the problem also they got to the end of early voting where they tried drive-through in the number of voters and there was 1800 off so the election administrator said we better stop this before

election day. were not sure these votes are going to t count. we made it clear in texas we don't have drive-through voting. they also did 24 hour voting and they had a hard time finding election workers and poll watchers. when we said no drive-through voting no 24 hour voting we were accused of suppression we scoured the country tried to find anyone who did 24 hour voting we almost gave up but then wea. found los angeles, california they implemented 24 hour voting in b the primary but then they stopped it before the general because it did not work i have not seen them accused of jim crow or anything else. we did have accounting using covid to make up their own rules and we did block that going forward. what did we do to help folks nthat need access. in texas when you show up to vote if you are in line when the polls close you will be allowed to vote, since the 1980s.

that was not the law for early lyvoting a lot of us talk about working folks we would t remind them those are my people those are my voters we care about all voters. the law in texas for a long time said for election day if your work schedule does not allow you to getor off work your employer must let you get off work to vote that was for election day only now the senate bill we have that for early voting we put aside the made-up ways and put in real ways that will help working people. we had the same county on the cusp of mailing out millions ofs applications to beau biden now.n attorney general stop that before happened. we think we put a stop in texas.

>> we have people with microphones, if you have a question raise your hand. i want to see if we have any questions. we have one hand up in the room. goop ahead. >> you need a microphone over here. >> here's the first question. louisiana's remaining state with a paperless voting system they use the machine as opposed to paper ballots to vote the washington post reports although the state legislature committed to switching paper ballots multi-made in time for the 2022 election and it might not be ready for the 2024 election what obstacles are preventing this from a timely transition. >> this is specifically for the and?y >> thank you very much we obviously moved from a paper-based system to an electronic system. now were in the process of trying to move back to

paper-based. the senator spoke about a paper trail we've been trying to implement an audible paper trail system since 2018 and we've been balked in those efforts because of the bidding process in the complications in the process and the competition between the voting system companies. the legislature chose to provide us the opportunity to expand our efforts and created a voting system. will be wrapping up our work with the voting system v commission around the middle of february and from that we will begin the process once again a developing a request for proposals. the problem is when you have

2.1 million people voting in person you have to make sure you have all the right process and procedures in place plus we have to implement training for not just our commissioners but our local registrars and voting systems and our clerks and their employees for election day voting. we want to make sure that we educate the public so they understand how the system is going to work once it's ready for implementation. we solve the problems in georgia with an overnight implementation if you will ordered by the courts. we don't want to have to go through those issues and those problems so louisiana will have a paper-based system h by 2024 t maybe not 100% implemented we will just have to see how it goes. >> over here.

>> what is being done to determine the validity of citizenship on a voter registrationte card, 35 million illegal aliens in 2 million more just this year. what are we doing to make sure those people don't register to vote or if they do do we check on the validity of their citizenship? >> that is a real problem and one of the problems we've gotten bad decisions on liberal federal judges in florida and elsewhere when states have tried to put in provisions that would require election officials to check the citizenship individuals registering to vote we had a federal judge say you can't do that. i think those decisions are wrong. that is a real problem actually senator one of the things that you did in your election reform

bill was to put in a provision requiring the secretary of state of texas to regularly check with the dmv because in every state across the country as you all know if you're an alien and you are here legally you can get a drivers license. a dozen and a dozen and have provided illegal aliens with a fdrivers license. but texas passed provision saying you have to check the dmv records to see if individuals who got a drivers license and they did as an alien they legally do they get registered to vote. that is one of the states ought to beug doing. one of the other things they ought to be doing as part of our election scorecard, states should require in use jury list injury summonses. if you are called for jury duty in a state court it is highly likely that the jury commissioner of that county got the information, where did they

get there list from election officials. in many states when someone is excused from jury duty because they're not a u.s. citizen that information is being sent back to election officials. not only that but the federal court, where do they think that they get there list for jury duty. they go. every state should say the federal courts, you can have our voter registration list but a condition of you using our voter registration list when someone is excused jury duty in a federal court you have to tell us that they have been excused because they're not ae u.s. citizen or perhaps they had moved out of state. those are all things that states ought to be doing in many states are not doing. >> responded to your question.

i live in new york city our system is broken look at our last primary election for mayor which was a disaster. what is new york city doing it is expanding the right of noncitizens to vote in all minutes about elections. this is a big problem. they wanted to get further. there's no enforcement on illegal status. there is no enforcement of that. secondly a majority of the democratic caucus in the house of representatives last year voted to allow 16 -year-olds in federal elections trying to expand the franchise to 16-year-old in the risk of running along two very patient people in the room. i'm in a take those two questions and go back here in two questions you try to get the answers. >> thank you, great piano.

one organized effort to recruit election officials? particularly in cities where republicans tend to lose elections. igo take that or you want to get both questions. >> let's take the second question as well. >> thank you, my question is for hans i am representative of the people that go out weeks and months in advance of an election to secure the right to vote and preventt integrity problems. one of the challenge a lot of people like me, the local folks are not willing to intervene when problems are identified. d to what degree does the scorecard take into account the statutory or regulatory environment that allows or requires local election or other officials to intervene and

assist when these types of problems are identified. i guess a subsidiary question are you thinking about amending the scorecard at some point inme the future evaluating the effectiveness and the bear willingness of local folks to enforce the law. >> those are great questions. i meditate your second question we are open-minded to enroll during one problem with that for instance there are some states that have 40 or 50 counties -- 254. >> five let's take 50. 46 of them follow the law enforcement them don't. one getting the information to prove that is difficult how do you evaluate that when the overwhelming majority is following the law but the fortified are causing a problem. those are practical difficulties

and now will go back to the other question. you go first. >> we realize that the problem and that's why the scorecard has a reading of states on whether or not they give the state legislature and residents of the state the ability to sue in court election officials and others who are not complying with the election laws of the state legislator put in place. they should have standing to go after election officials and others who are saying do you have a law on this trade we are not going to comply. that is a very important part of our qualification. we are looking at that issue. >> that is in the scorecard so it doesn't have to be amended. >> briefly, yesterday was national poll worker recruitment

day. this is a nonpartisan push across the country to recruit and identify poll workers toba basically get vetted and train down so they can be ready for november andnd early voting. i would encourage anyone that is looking to volunteer to check out the resources online a lot of them are available at saber election.com. there is a really deep and pretty cool coalition that is working outside of washington to recruit in place poll workers in areas where we have a been in years previously with the capacity on the ground. if you are interested in getting involved, see me "after words" i'm happy to plug even. it is a real effort in the model that was in virginia for the guv editorial race and up and down the ballot proves that this can be done in other states. >> i knew this time would fly by. my apologies if we did not get to your question. this is an important effort and

something willl be ongoing pleae take a moment to thank her panelist thank you for coming to heritage. >> booktv every sunday on c-span2 featuring leading authors other nonfiction books. reverend al sharpton the lesser-known civil rights activist and how they impacted the movement in the rightist troublemakers breed untold stories of the social justice movement in america. at 9:00 p.m. eastern heritage foundation mike gonzales takes a critical look at the black lives matter movement the author blm the making of a new marxist revolution pre-watch booktv every sunday on c-span2 and five the whole schedule in the program guide and watch it at booktv.org.

hundreds of thousands of children and teenagers are actively involved in the civil rights movement they took part in boycotts, strikes, marches and demonstrations and face the same risks as adult participants. sunday on q&a professor of history dt franklin author of the young crusaders will join us to talk about the stories of the overlooking contributors to social justice in the u.s. >> they showed up for these protest initially. they were not under the constraint that their parents were were leaders, religious leaders that participated in this margin protest and that would affect their livelihood. but the teenagers they