Transcripts For CSPAN2 Conservative 20240705

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the june conservative womens network. Im michelle easton, president of the Clare Boothe Luce center for conservative women. Welcome to the all of you, and welcome to the cspan audience as well. Were very happy to be cohosting now with cpi, the conservative partnership institute, for our cwns that we hold in d. C. , and specialing thanks to ed corrigan, there he is, for doig this partnership with us. Were very grateful to you. This years, marks the luce centers 50th year of preparing and promoting key women e leaders using great role models like Cleta Mitchell and the conservative partnership institute, Outstanding Group founded in 2017, a trailblazing conservative organization that trains, equips and unites conservative leaders in washington and across the nation to take ground and win. The monthly conservative womens move network began 23 years ago. Weve been doing this lunch promoting great women for all these years. Todays speaker, Cleta Mitchell. Shes a friend, shes an incredible leader for our country. Her topic today, what the left has done to our elections and what we can do about it. After being with a major d. C. Law firm for many years, cleta is now a senior legal fellow here at cpi and is the founder ofnd the Election Integrity network. Shes a licensed attorney in oklahoma and washington, d. C. , a leader with i many, many accomplishments over the years including standing up to the harassment by obamas irs during their targeting of Tea Party Groups and many conservative groups like ours. Clare boothe luce had a dreadful audit. And she also worked in 2020 the, well known representing President Trumps legal team in georgia. Shes one of our favorite speakers before young women at the luce center. Shes spoken for us many, many times. She has a wonderful speech, ive asked her to come and give it this summer, my favorite speech for young women is called being respected is more important than being liked. Thats a great speech, and im asking cleta to write a book about that. Things my mama taught me, right . Right. And cleta was our 2013 woman of the year. Every year we pick the best, most outstanding conservative woman, and that was cleta back then. She also served in the Oklahoma House of representatives from 76 to 1986, and she 1984, and she ran for Lieutenant Governor of oklahoma. She got 48 . She was a democrat then, but she shifted s back when there wee good democrats, you know in she also practiced law in oklahoma for eight years before she came to washington. She received her b. A. And her juris detective rate from from the university of oklahoma. She has a daughter, a soninlaw and grand baby now. Life is rich are, isnt it . She currently resides in North Carolina with her husband dale. Please join me in welcoming Cleta Mitchell. [applause] i tell michelle she has moe daughters than think mama in america. She has been training and idealing and promoting and inspiring young women for, whatd you say . 30 years now . Pretty darned amazing. Thank you all for having me, and welcome to cpi. The conservative partnership institute. I was a lawyer who im the midwife for cpi. This was my client, and and i helped give birth to this wonderful organization. I do want ed, would you like to say a word about cpi . Would you like to come forward and say a word about cpi . Thank you, and thanks for hosting this panel. We started cpi in 2017. Were a service organization, our goal01 is to provide support for those in the movement who are doing wonderful things, and hang to all of you who are here today thank you to all of you who are here to learn about some of the Amazing Things that cleta has to talk about. Basically, we provide the training, coalitions, we help Career Advancement for conservatives andce basically anything. We help, with cletas help, weve helped to incubate a number of i new organizations. And so were trying to just be the wind behind peoples sails. Were trying to fight for the right things in this country, is so appreciate you giving me the opportunity. [applause] well, cpi is a truly amazing organization. So i want to a talk today to talk today about, i want to talk about elections. Im an election lawyer. And for many years, i mean, thats what ive done. When i was in private law practice, i was i always said my elevator speech was that i was the consigliere to the vast rightwing conspiracy, and im very fortunate in that ive had the opportunity to represent many conservative organizations, advocacy organizations, candidates, republican candidates, political Republican Party committees, etc. And its about the business and regulation of politics. Thats what political law is. And that includes such things as election law. Campaign finance law, lobbying law, all of those, as i say, the business and regulation of politics and advocacy and policy. And is so in that capacity, ive had the opportunity over the years to be very involved in election law. And i want to talk about that today. Im going to talk about and try to cover five points. I always believe its important to tell people so when youre looking at your watch, how many more because she have to go . I want to talk about the history of election law in america, i want to talk a little bit about the status of our elections today, the sad state of media, lack of coverage, misreporting about election, election issues and election system issues, what the left has done to our election systems and what we as citizens can do about it. Because im a big believer that you dont lay out a problem if youre not willing to talk about howli do we resolve it, and i always mean for everybody in the room to take a task and do it. So a little bit about the history of elections in america. At the constitutional a convention, article i remember this, we dont often think about this. Article i is not the about the executive branch. Article i of our constitution is the legislative branch. Because the founders were mostly dedicated, they were so concerned about making sure that the primary control of our country and of our federal government rest ared with the legislative branch. The peoples representatives in the house and, at that time, the senators who were elected by state legislatures, not by voters. And so they but remember as well that this is a federalist system. Is and so elections, the responsibility for determining the time, place and manner of elections in america is vested in the states, not in the federal government. Now, there was a concern i could give you a whole speech about the history and the politics of the constitution and the first ten amendments. Anyway, its a really its really fascinating to me. Ive spent a lot of time studying that when i was cocounsel to the case of term limits that went to the u. S. Supreme court. So i spent a lot of time in the u. S. Supreme Court Law Library studying colony laws and the history of the constitutional convention. There was a concern that what if this new constitution they were drafting was not if really accepted by the states . Because, remember, they went to the philadelphia to amend, to make changes to the articles of confederation. And when they got there, they just wrote a whole new constitution. So theyt werent really sure how that was going to be received. And there was a concern that vesting the authority in the states, solely in the states to determine how members of congress or members of the house were to be elected, what if the stateses decided, well, were jt not going to do that. Were not even going to have an election. Were not to going to elect anybody. So they included in the constitution a reserved power for congress essentially to be able to come in and establish a procedure by which the members of the house would be elected in the event that the states didnt do it. So it is a reserved power. It is not a plenary power that congress has with regard to elections. Gaits always been the promise f the states. And there have been six constitutional amendments that have addressed voting and Voting Rights, the 14th amendment which provided that male citizens would have the right to vote, and it does say male. There ises the 15th amendment which provides for former slaves who were male to have the right to vote which require required the 19th amendment to say that women would have the right to vote. And then theres the 23rd amendment which gave Voting Rights to the citizens of the district of columbia, the 24th amendment they give that prohibits, is a permanent ban on any poll tax. And then the 26th amendment that lowered the voting age nationally. To 18. But historically besides that, there have been very few federal laws governing elections. There are a few. This year the National Voter registration act, the mbra nvra, will be 30 years old. The help america vote act was racket acted in 2001 following the florida president ial election of 2000. And, of course, we know about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was followed by the Voting Rights act of 1965. And the Voting Rights act of 1965 was premised on the 15th amendment, on implementing the 15th amendment. But historically, it has always been the province of the states to determine determine the election laws for the states. And, you know, one of the things that is really important in my if world is to remember that. For the last several years, the democrats in congress have been trying to federalize our elections, to create a one size fits none, basically, when you really read the bill to the basically turn the over the rules and regulations about elections to congress which i think is a really terrible idea as are most of the things this congress decide. When you want to take power from the states and turn it over to the federal government. Does that mean i love everything that the states are doing with elections . No, i dont. Ill talk about that in just a moment. But its still the the province of the states, not congress. Yesterday there was a hearing, because i want to talk now a little bit about the status of our election systems today. There was a hearing yesterday, it was a joint hearing between the House Administration committee and the House Oversight and reform committee. And it was focused on a provision of law, a field thats in the process of being proposed and probably introduced in the next, you know, maybe the next month. The american confidence in elections act. And it has a provision, a section addressing elections in the district of columbia. Now remember, the district of columbia is the ultimate legislative body for the district of columbia, its the congress of the united states. And, again, that is part of the u. S. Constitution. And so there was a discussion yesterday, the topic of the hearing was focused on some serious issues, an Election Administration in washington d. C. And i want to share with you just some bullet points, some facts from the Opening Statement of bryan steil who chairs the House Administration committee, a republican from wisconsin. Listen to this. These are facts that he presented. Which no bundies piloted, by the way. Inic 2015 the d. C. Board of elections sent verification of registration postcards to 260,000 inactive voters with nearly 40,000 of those returned as undeliverable. In 2015 the the d. C. Auditor reviewed a list of people who had died the year before. Every Single Person on the death list was still registered on the voter rolls in d. C. D. C. Failed its audit. Of in 2020 the d. C. s bad decisions continued. During the primary voters waited in line at some polling places for hours, and some never if received their mailin ballots. D. C. Then made the decision to allow voters or to submit ballots by unsecured email. [laughter] in the 2020 general election, the d. C. Board of elections made up made every person on the list a ballot. Not an application, a ballot. A postelection audit found that nearly that over 911 of the 421,791 11 ballots sent were undeliverable. Thats nearly 50,000 ballots floating around d. C. , live ballots that were undeliverable. Two years later, last year, during the 2020 midterm, 508,543 ballots were mailed, and nearly 90,000 were undeliverable. Thats on top of hundreds of voters who are mailed incorrect ballots. The did d. C. Work to address those errors . No. Hay passed a new law recently which allows voting without a photo id, it allows ballot harvesting, so if youre a political operative and you know there are 900,000 live ballots floating around d. C. , what do you think youre going to do . And theres no way to prevent that from happening under the d. C. Laws. And here is my favorite, d. C. Law now allows noncitizens to to vote. If you have lived in the district for 30 days and youre an employee of the Russian Embassy or the Chinese Embassy or any embassy from anywhere in the world and youve are lived in d. C. For 30 days, you can now vote in d. C. Elections. We already know that leftleaning organizations accept millions of dollars in foreign money intended to influence american politics. We should all be busy working to stop foreign influence in our elections, but what does d. C. Do . Under their new law, d. C. Elections d. C. Law makes elections more susceptible to to foreign influence. So this is beyond unacceptable. American elections should be for american citizens. What i think is interesting, i watched that entire hearing. I know, im a nerd. [laughter] but its my work. And not a single democrat on either of the committees asked a question, challenged any of the facts that were presented as problematic that had been presented by the chairman and by the republican members of the committee. All they did, all they did was complain, first of all, that there was even being a hearing to talk about this even though congress has the oversight responsibility for the district of columbia. And all they talked about was how trying to identify, make them clean the voter roles once a year. The new bill will require the district of columbia to clean its voter rolls once a year. It will eliminate sameday registration. It will undo the provisions about allowing citizens to vote in d. C. Elections and other common sense provisions. But all that was said by with any of the members of the minority party, the democrats on the committees yesterday, all they talked about was how this was suppression, voter suppression, how it was jim crow 2. 0 or whatever. But just remember that thats what they said about the georgia law that was passed in 2021. Remember the great brouhaha that when georgia passed a law to strengthenss the integrity of is elections following what was a lawless 2020 election and to insure that the same problems that had happened in 2020 the didnt happenn again. And remember Major League Baseball with, all of Corporate America went berserk, Major League Baseball moved its allstar game that was supposed to have been held in g atlanta, and they moved it to to denver, and all they could talk about was it was voter suppression. Fast forward and guess what happened in georgia in 2022 . It had the high they saw the highest voter turnout in any election in georgia history. And a survey that was performed by the university of georgia following the election asked all voters, did you have a problem voting. Did you experience any suppression, vote iser suppression or difficulty voting. Would you like to know the percentage of black citizens of georgia who said, yes, i had problems because of i this new law, there was voter suppression, i couldnt vote . Would you like to know the percentage of people, of black voters in georgia who said yes to the that question . Zero. Zero. So the jim crow 2. 0 law that was attacked by Corporate America, woke corporations including major leagueme baseball, saw highest voter turnout and zero percentage of black voters in georgia a reported any problems voting. So that takes me to the third topic i want to talk about, and that is the media and its failures to properly report on the situation, on electionrelated issues in america today. If you read the National Media the new yorkall times wannabe and gannett papers, like media, you will get a steady dietet that those of us who are involved in Election Integrity that have named us, theyve given us a new name. We are election deniers. [laughter] were election deniers. Thats e a term that they have just thrown out, and thats what they call us. I have never once denied that there was an election in 2020. [laughter] i know there was an election in to 2020. I spent a good bit of time in georgia studying and working on what had happened in the election ofle 2020. Heres what i know, there was an election. I dont deny that. It was not a lawfullyconducted election. And and that is true in state after state after state. I know because of the work that i did ase one of President Trumps volunteer attorneys in the postelection in georgia that there are more, there were more votes cast in violation of georgia law and counted and included in the certified total than the margin of difference between President Trump and joe biden. And thats because with Election Officials led by the secretary of state didnt follow the law. And in my view, the legislative code, because the constitution gives the legislature the constitutional responsibility for writing the election laws, it is up to the administrators of elections to follow those laws. And we identified our team of lawyers, we identified over 30 categories of ballots that had been cast, votes that had been cast and counted, that were cast and counted in violation of georgia law. And there were more votes in that category of illegal votes than the margin of difference. Teunder georgia law as in the ce of most states, if there are more votes and you can establish by evidence that there were more votes cast in violation of law than the margin, the remedy is a new election. Well, georgia was having another election on january 5th of 2021 because they had a relatively in my view, crazy general election runoff system. And so we filed a 64page complaint, an election contest urn georgia law with over 1100 pages of verified affidavits, citizens testifying under penalty of perjury that they had witnessed this violation of law are or this violation of law. Or we had verify affidavit of a fact witness or a verified affidavit from an expert9 based on review of publiclyly publiclyavailable government documents run against the voter records to determine that there were more, that these ballots were cast by people who were not if registered properly. And, therefore, were ineligible to have been counted. And we filed that election contest on december the 4th of 2020 and did not that is suppose to be an expedited proceeding. Youre supposed to get to court immediately because its a very short time frame. And particularly in all elections, particularly when you have a president ial election and you haved hectorses that are going to be certified elector to haves and youre on a pretty ffast track. The chief judge of Fulton County georgia failed to appoint a judge to hear the election contest for a month. And literally it was we received notice on january 4th which was two days before the certification of electors taking place in washington. So people can say what they want about President Trump lost all his court cases, well, he didnt lose ours because he never got his day this in court. And so now i hear every time these reporters, and i use that term loosely. Look, i was, i will tell you when i was in high school, i had decided i was going to go to Journalism School is. I had journalism scholarships. I was going to be lois lane. Youre tuning to know who that was. [laughter] i guess there have been movies. But i decided after i got into Journalism School, wait a minute, im too opinionated. I did, im too opinionated to be a journalist. Journalists are supposed to be objective. Their supposed the make their personal opinions secondary, and theyre supposed to cover all sides equally. Boy, did i never realize i changed my major and ended up going to laww school. But, boy, did i make a mistake because i didnt realize that in my lifetime that that would completely change, and the idea today of objective journalism, we know that is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. And so i can just share with you, i get asked a lot about this, and ive debated about whether i should talk about this because it is the subject of, supposedly the the subject of a grand jury investigation in pullton county being yet another political, in my view, political witch hunt being conducted by a partisan District Attorney because i was on a phone all call with the president and with the secretary of state of georgia on january the 2nd. It was january the 2nd. Now, i will tell you i did not think that that phone call was a good idea. And i expressed that view. Because we had been trying to work with the secretary of state at that point for six weeks to try to get him to understand that there were problems in certain counties with the election and that he as the chief election officer of the state should Pay Attention and should look into these things. And we kept sending letters, i think we attached either three or four letters, voluminous letters that we had written to the secretary of state were included in our election contest showing that we had made a yeoman effort to try to reach out, to reach out to the secretary of state. But t the thing the media focuss on is a statement the president made f during that phone call. In which he said we just have to find 12,000 votes or some such thing. I didnt say that, but thats what the president said. So people say, oh, the media and the leftwing crazies, and i repeat myself, that they that somehow the president was demanding that the secretary of state manufacturere votes to overturn the election. Thats the narrative they want you to believe. Well, let me say this, ladies and gentlemen, wed already found those votes. They were in the public record, in t our lawsuit, 64 pages with over 1100 exhibits. And we had names, addresses of everyone who we believe that according to the statute and according to the government record a had voted illegally in georgia in the november 3rd, 2020, general election. We didnt have to find any, and all we had asked the secretary of state to do and all the president was really asking him to do, we had offered, we had been offering this for weeks, so sit down. Well bring our data he kept saying, youray data is wrong. And we said, fine, well bring our data, you bring your data, and if were wrong, well tell everybody. But if youre wrong, you need to do something. And he refused to do that. The leftwing media is constantly theyve given us these, they attack us. There are hill literally, one of the things ive cone since i became the senior fellow here at cpi since 2021, ive been working to help organize citizens across this country to be involved and engaged in the election process. That is something that is envisioned by thehe statutes of every state. All but one state in this country provide for citizen observers to the observe the election process and in most of states, they are required to be appointedd by the political parties, and thats how well ensure that its fair to everybody. And election workers in many states are required to be nominated by political parties. And in many states they require parity between the election workersan appointed by the democrats and the numbers appointed by the republicans so that theyre watching each other. This is the way the elections supposed to work. But what we as citizens have allowed to to happen is the same thing that parents have allowed to happen with regard to their kids and their schools and their school boards. We thought the experts would just handle it. And now we know that we cant do it that way. And so just as parents have becomey. Involved in going to School Board Meetings and really reading budgets and looking at books in the library and curriculums, citizens all over in this country are engaged in the election process. And and i have we have a web site, whos counting. Us, and we have published the citizens guide. I wrote the citizens guide to building an Election Integrity infrastructure that talks about starting local task forces, heres what a task force should co, heres where you can get more information should do. We have prepared and posted videos, howto the training videos on how to be involved in the election process, and those are also we call it the master class in Election Integrity, and thats also on the web site whos counting. Us. And we have state coalitions and local task forces all over this country where literally thousands of americans are beginning to become involved in their election process. And i and all of those people are attacked by the leftwing media as a threat to election workers, they are attacked even though theres not a single instance that has been reported over the last two years of any election observer, poll observer, volunteers, theres not a single instance of an observer attacking, threatening or harassing an election official. Facts dont matter. Facts dont matter. All of these are election deniers, and theyre cast solely in negativeir and pejorative the terms. I host every wednesday a National Working group on cleaning voter rolls. Now, you would think that people would have Better Things to do than spend an hour every wednesday to the talk about cleaning voter rolls. I have between 120 and 160 people every week on that call talking about databases available to compare voter rolls, whats the best way to organize your task force, how to approach and build relationships with hoping Election Officials and on and on. It inspires me to the point i can hardly talk about it without crying. Because these are patriots. They are doing this because they love this country, and they know if were going to save our country from all the crazy socialist leftists, we have to the save the election system. And so i want to share with you what happened to one of our volunteers in atlanta in Fulton County, a citizen who has literally gone through the voter rolls, compared in Fulton County which are a mess as they are in most major cities and places in america, and hes found i all of these anomalies d dead the people on the rolls. And so he has presented that, which was part of the georgia statutef passed in 2021 as challenges, and hes taken the documentation and all. And so so somebody complained about him to the local nbc affiliate because theyre pals here, right . So do you think that the nbc reporter reported on this and praised him for spending countless hours paying out of his pocket to pay for database withs to use or run the voter rolls and see if there are peoplean who are dead and ingel ineligible on the rolls . No. She did a story in which she came up with yet a new name for people like that. And she would refer, no doubt, to the all the people who are on my calls every week as vote fraud hunters. These are vote fraud hunters. And so the media has been absolutely incorrigible about its coverage of in this movement that is a Citizens Movement of citizens across the country i trying to help clean the voter rolls. But i think its important to know about some of these people. I mean, i used to spend a lot of time with reporters because i figured theyd never talk to a conservative, and so it was my job to be the sole conservative to try to give them a little different perspective. I dont do that anymore because what ive realized is the days of any reporter for any publication that is considered mainstream although theyre not mainstream, theyre completely out of step with the mainstream of american citizens. They just, theyre part of the elite, and and theyre the mouthpiece for the left. But ith want to share with you, you probably think that the Associated Press is an unbiased reporting entity. You would be wrong. And now were even seeing the evidence of it, which i love. Because in about april of last year the Associated Press announced, let me tell you the headline, ap announces a nnsweeping Climate Change initiative. The expansion is sported by several philanthropic organizations including the william and Flora Hewitt Foundation and the rockefeller foundation. Now, do we believe for one moment that the Associated Press is going to be reporting that perhaps some of the Climate Change hysteria is not based in fact . But, oh, dont worry. They said went they announced this funding a ap retains complete editorial control of all content. Then in december of last year, ap announces sweeping democracy journalism initiative. Ap aims to improve civic hit rassi and combat misinformation by bolstering explanatory journalism to aid their coverage. Would you like to know whos funding that . Esupport by the lily endowment inc. , william and known are hewitt Flora Hewitt Foundation. If you would like to know more about what each of those foundations fund, with go to influence watch. Influence watch. Org, and you will find that these are not exactly funding places like cpi. In that money is going for leftwing organizations and causes. We deal with that every day, and i dont even talk i dont even try to explain. Theres no point this point in talking to an Associated Press reporterte because hes on the take from all of these leftwing foundations. Number four, i want to talk about what the left has done to our election system over the last decade and then close with what you can do about it. Over the last decade and and, look, this is not me saying this, ive researched, ive read the articles, ive seen the reports. In january of 2013, there was a gathering according to mother jones, not exactly a conservative media outlet, tht a talked about a gathering of progressive leadersng in washington to to talk about they came out with their report, were goinghe to change the political system of this country. Were going to raise millions of dollars to dont it. And and they had three primary issues they were going to promote, one of which was to get rid of voter id laws. Thats one of their top three main things. They wanted to get rid of voter id. Later that year the Obama Justice department under eric holder proceeded to sue the state of texas and the state of North Carolina to invalidate their voter id laws. North carolina adopted, first adopted a voter id law in 2012. It was invalidated, thats a long saga, and ultimately it was submitted as a constitutional amendment to the people of North Carolina which passed it, a margin of, what, 60 something percent to have voter id. And the state Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional even though it was now in the constitution. And only this year with a new Supreme Court in the state w of North Carolina has the voter id law been finally being implemented. And it will be implemented in Upcoming Elections for the first time after having been enacted originally 12 years ago. Later that year there was a gathering of, according to politico, lawmakers from 50 states to the talk about how they were going to change the election laws. Heres some of the things they wanted to do. They announced they were going to do, registration on election day, online and preregistering students. Expanding early voting, distributing locations of ypolling places including on college campuses, reducing long lines at polling places by offering voting by mail and expanded absentee voting. And basically all of those so they set about, and they didnt raise millions, they raised billions. According to they have one leftist billionaire after another. I want to know where where our conservative billionaires are because we need your help to try to fight the leftist billionaires. Weve all heard of george soros, but the founder of ebay, we know he gave 250 million in about 2011, 12 to create something called theab the Democracy Fund which created all of these entities devoted to the election space. His primary goals are to fund public journalism like the Associated Press thats now being funded, propublica and others. But to help change the election systems. And then, of course,te that set the stage because one of the entities created was the center for tech and civic life, cccl, which was the receptacle for billionaire number two, Mark Zuckerberg, who stepped in and gave nearly half a billion dollars to help, to change the outcome of the 2020 election by having money flowing from his foundation to the Silicon Valley Community Town aation to ccl and one other group which then gave money to election offices ostensibly because of covid. But what really, it was used to gin up the democratic vote in key democratic areas such as the five democratic citieses in wisconsin and Fulton County to drive up the democratic turnout to change the outcome and the electoral vote in those states in to 2020. Now we have yet another leftist billionaire, or bill gates, assisted by a foreign billionaire whose last name i cant even pronounce. I cant even pronounce his name, but hes foreign. A billionaire. They have all these billionaires. Fo and theyre giving something to call the u. S. Alliance for election excellence 80 million that theyre spreading around to election offices to help them better conduct their elections. It would be as if the Kansas City Chiefs had played a game where some boosters in kansas city brought money in and trained the referees to be better referees at the super bowl. Does anybody think that that would be have confidence many in their calls during the super bowl . No. So we have to reclaim our election system. And the way we do that is citizen engagement, so im going to give you some tasks that you can do. There may be polling places on your campus. You should be an observer, you should be a worker. You should sign up to build a local task force. Go tok your local election offices. I first got involved my first task was when i was in law school, and i signed up to be on the absentee ballot board for cleveland, oklahoma, which is where the law school is. There was one democrat and is one republican, and we took this wooden ballot box around to the nursing home so that we could so that they could vote. But there was a democrat and a republican. You watched each other and you knew that no staffer and no political operative was influencing howha that elderly person was voting. We have vulnerable voters in this country, and the left preys upon those people. And we have seen evidence from wisconsin and elsewhere where they abandoned the stew choir requirement for what they call speciall voting deputies which s like the old absentee ballot board that i wase on in oklahoma all those years ago, and is they allowed people who work in the nursing home to the help cast ball to otts for people in the Nursing Homes ballots for people in the Nursing Homeses is wisconsin. And those are the kinds of things we need to stop. We need to be there, we need to be watching, and we need to be protecting our election system. And ill just close with this. This is this our power to do, and we have to do it. Ask and all those patriots out there who are working so hard to help save our elections are heroes and heroines. Theyre not bad people. As, the media would have you believe. Our declaration of independence says governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governedded. And in our constitution the way we as citizens give and withdraw our consent is through elections. And when elected officials do changes in the laws, administrative elected officials allow leftist influences to come in and dictate how they conduct the elections, when the election process is put beyond the reach of the voters, we lose that fundamental right to give and withdraw our consent. And that is no longer a constitutional republic. That is then a system that is dominated and controlled by the elites who dictate to us rather than incorporating us in the decision u making. And we are headed for that sort of system if we dont stop it. And that is why many, many thousands of people across this country are engaged in the election process, andnd its whi urge all of you to think what you can do, what role you can play to help save our elections. And with that, i thank you. [applause] what a fabulous summary of where we are and what we need. Thank you so much. Thank you. Cletas agreed to do some q a. Lindsay has a microphone. If you would raise your hand if you have a question, and if you wouldnt mind, give your name oh, hey, katie and who youre affiliated, if you are. Or if youre an intern, where you go to school. And ill also repeat the question so everybody can make sure to hear it. So, katie today i will my affiliation of catholics engaged for fairfax, so were working at the local level. I wonder, could you drill down a little bit on the idea of this independent funding, if philanthropic funding . Because i know it is such a big problem. Have you all thought about any potential policy solutions to this . Well, the question is about the private funding. And its all coming from the left. I mean, it would never dawn on conservatives to go raise money and give it toou an election office. [laughter] but, look, i mean, if many states actually, i just heard a report yesterday, louisiana has now passed, the Louisiana Legislature passedlo a constitutional, proposed constitutional amendment yesterday, and 23 states have a passed, previously passed bans on, this their states, against having Election Officials receiving private funding. Is private funding to election offices are now, thats now banned in 23 states, soon to be, hopefully,ne its in the hopefully, people will adopt that in louisiana. I dont think anybody who hears about that thinks thats a good idea, that youre going to have private groups funding your election system . And, you know, and its all coming from leftwing billionaires. And so there are other tates, several other states that in 202122 passed the ban, but it was vetoed by the democratic governor. Republican legislatures in illinois in North Carolina and wisconsin both passed it, vetoed by the governor. The North Carolina legislature is getting ready to pass it again and hopefully this time theyll have a t vetoproof majority. So thats what were trying that is what citizens across the country are trying to do, is to ban the private funding of the election officesva with by, you know, new private funding. I just cant imagine i do know who came up with the ideas. David plus, who was an obama political adviser, was working for Mark Zuckerberg in 2019. I dont know when he started, but he was but he wrote a book on how to defeat President Trump. And so he came up with a plan, and ingenious it was to be able to manipulate the election system. Its crazy but it happened. Yes. A. [inaudible] School Board Candidate from loudoun county, georgia. Good for you. I also wrote a book on the 2020 election are. Thank you for being here, good to meet you in person. Consent of the governed. I think many times people think of that as just the outcome of an election are, but ive often, as you know, you talked about an unlawful election are, the laws of the land that we went through the process of debating, proposing, passing, amending, all these things and getting them into law, those are the of the peoples consent and the peoples selfgovernment, right . So i think thats just really important to reemphasize that. Theres not really a question in that no, but thats exactly right. I mean, our Founding Fathers really believed in the idea that, ultimately, the citizens control the country and not the other way around. And when you, when you have Election Officials who dont abide by the election laws, you know, i mentioned the special voting deputies in wisconsin and the statute that requires that you have a democrat and ea republican together who the Wisconsin Election Commission administrator, she just said just ignore that, just dont pay any attention to. That they used covid as a pretext for saying, oh, you know that statute . Well ignore that. The statute in virginia that requires matching of signatures on absentee ballots, the secretary of state sent something out in september of 2020 c saying you dont have too signature matching because of covid. I wasnt aware that you couldnt sign your name once covid was covid, but its one of camps. So they just were lawless. And youre right, when your elected representatives have adopted a statute and you have administrators who just disregard it,mi then you are eliminating the consent of the governed. Yes. Im abby hutchinson, and im working at Clare Boothe Luce center for conservative women and going to school at oklahoma wesleyan university. Id like to the ask you, weve seen in alaska, and i believe e maine as well, frank Choice Voting, and i would like to ask your take on it and if you believe its the unconstitutional. All right. The question is about rank Choice Voting and,nc actually, i do, i conduct a weekly call with leaders from around the country, and we had a presentation this morning from a leader of a Citizens Group in alaska. Talking about rank Choice Voting. And interestingly, rank Choice Voting is yet another concoction of the left. They have about half a dozen of them. If you want to know more about them, you can go to a web site, the election assistance commission, its eac. Gov, and they have a white paper on alternative voting systems. So this is a system that is so complicated, it is they describe it as instant runoff or some such thing. If you want to have a run areoff, have a runoff. But you go in, you vote for this person or that person on the what rank Choice Voting does, and its now the law in new york city, its now the law it was enacted by Ballot Initiative in the maine and in alaska, both inexpensive states for purposes of doing that. And the one in, the one in alaska was buried under a, add that several, youre supposed to only have one topic, one issue. But they had several, and it was buried under a get rid of dark money was the campaign. They never mentioned rank Choice Voting. But it is where you go in and you vote, and you rank all the candidates on the baa ballot. You have to rank all the candidates on the ballot. So it would be like saying youre for the republican, but you have to rank where you, where you put the democrat. You put the democrat last. But to you say, well, i dont want to vote for five people, i just want to vote for my candidate. In some cases if nobody getses a majority on the first ballot, then they run them through again. Andd so they keep going through, and whoever when you get to to so lets say that you are putting people, you put the people you least like at the bottom, if you dont put anymore, your ballot is discarded. Youve cast your ballot for your favorite candidate, and now your voice isnt heard any further. And same is true if you say you only votee for three, you dont like these other two, you wouldnt vote for them, get past the third ballot, youre not heard anymore. So these discarded ballots are pretty problematic. But they just keep running the numbers, running the ballots through with your second, third, fourthth and fifth choices. And then come to, and when somebody finally gets a majority. So if you look at the result, let me see if i remember this exactly. But alaska now has a democrat in the u. S. House of representatives for the first time in 50 years, and red alaska now has a legislature thats basically evenno divided between republicans and democrats. So is it any wonder that that there is massive leftwing funding for rank Choice Voting, and theyre pushing it in every state . I heard a report this morning that there may be a constitution al amendment for the people of oregon. Im worried about the electoral votes from alaska next year, a historically reliable red state. And its no, its no surprise that maine that used to have one republican and one democrat in the u. S. House now has two democrats. So, look, its a convoluted way its hard enough to get people to to vote. One of the things thats happened, a couple of things have happened. It takes months, weeks to go through all these rounds and rounds of voting. And in oakland, california, in a School Board Election last fall somehow this was a programming error and the wrong candidate was elected under rank Choice Voting. Its a nightmare, and theres been a precipitous dropoff in vote iser participation in alaska, as reported by people there that reliable voters have just checked out and have not participated because of the complexity and thee difficulty f utilizing this rank Choice Voting system. And the Supreme Court of alaska ruled that the guidance given by the state Election Officials was incorrect. And thats just been within the last six weeks or so. But, man, we are fighting it everywhere because it is popping upve everywhere. Minnesotas in the process offing. It of canning considering it. It was on the ballot in 20202 2022, its going to be on the ballot again. Its a very real threat, and its utter chaos. And how people can say that they care about voter turnout and participation and then turn around and support rank Choice Voting isen beyond me, because it is the designed to get people to just thrown their hands and not participate. One more, please . One more question. Listening to programs on cspan through cspan radio just got easier. Tell your smart speaker, play cspan radio, and listen to washington journal daily at 7 a. M. Eastern, important congressional hearings and other Public Affairs events throughout the day. And and weekdays at 5 p. M. And 9 p. M. Eastern catch with the washington today for a fastpaced report of stories of the day. Just tell your smart speaker, play cspan radio. Cspan, powered by with cable. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Were funded by these Television Companies and more including cox. This syndrome is extremely rare. But friends dont have to be. When youre connected, youre not alone. Cox supports cspan as a publ service along with these othe television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. And this was the scene around 3 p. M. Today in downtown miami. Protesters outside the ferguson federal courthouse where where former President Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned and pled not guilty