Here at the center for conservative women, our message is for women for effective leadership and leading conservative women. Our materials, programs and initiatives sport Free Enterprise and entrepreneurship and active ambassadors school, workplace and within our community. If youre interested to learn more visit our website cc women, and monthly newsletter. We can jump into the webinar. A rising sophomore at in Computer Science and i. T. And math and were happy to have her here with us this summer. Good afternoon, everybody, thanks for joining us, i am very excited to be introducing our speaker. Shes a political law attorney in the washington d. C. Office, and a member of the firms political law practice. With over who years of experiences she advises nonprofit and organizations, candidates and campaigns and individuals on state and federal Campaign Finance law, election law and compliance issues. She practices after the federal election commission, the Ethics Commission of the u. S. House and agencies. She represents numerous campaigns and members of congress as well as state and Political Parties. She has Legal Council to the National Republican senatorial committee. Miss mitchell served as cocounsel for the National Rifle association in a Supreme Court case involving the federal Campaign Finance law. Our organization . Are for conservative women awarded her. And today Miss Mitchell will be discussing the loopholes in the mailin Ballot System and how our election could become without photo i. D. Please join me in welcoming ms. Mitchell. Thank you. Nice to be with you and fun to talk about the Election Year and whats happening and issues. I love doing things for the womens center, its a Great Organization and its helped young women in high schools across america to be able to know that theyre not crazy and when theyre trying to be silenced, theyre suffering from the efforts of silence them by the leftists on campus, that actually there are a lot of other people who share their views and youre not wrong. You maybe outnumbered, but its nice to have the center for conservative women working so hard to left up women all over the country like its done for many, many years, i hope you take to heart for everything that the center for conservatives women have to offer. And i love speaking with and hearing from the Women Associated with it. Today were going to talk about the elections and Election Integrity and how we protect the integrity of americas election when theyre under assault. Let me give you a little bit of background. It used to be that the government did did not have the ballots for the beginning part of the nations history. The ballots were actually printed and handed out and delivered and counted by Political Parties of the Political Party bosses and early in the 20th centuries, there came to be a effon effort interestingly, pushed by the Progressive Movement in the early 20th century, to take the control of elections out of the hands of party bosses and political and Campaign Operatives and move that, all of this machinery out of the Political Parties and into the hands of government and agencies where you had hopefully you would train Election Officials and that they would be nonpartisan. That isnt always the case, we know that, but the theory was that we should not allow the Political Parties to control the election process. Political parties could control the campaign process, but we needed to separate. That was the argument, you needed america needed to separate the campaigning from the election machinery itself and one of the manifestations was the australian ballot. The australia ballot means that the country of australia was the first country that decided that the government should print the ballots, distribute the ballots, collect the ballots, cast the ballots, rather than party bosses. So that was done in the earlier part of the 20th Century America began to institute in the state, now, remember the process of conducting elections is not a federal procedure. Under the u. S. Constitution, its delegated to the states. The states are possibly for conducting the elections, the states are responsible for what the constitution says, the time, place and manner of electing even the federal officials. Thats why we have 50 states laws that govern a candidate, when are the elections held. How everything about the elections are to be conducted. So, thats a state thats a province of the state. What were seeing now it started when bill clinton was in, when democrats and leftists are elected, the first thing they do is they start messing with the process, the political process. When nancy pelosi became speaker of the house in 2007, the first thing on our agenda was a major overhaul, she said of the federal lobbying laws. They didnt change very much. Frankly they were tweaking around the edges, but that was the very first bill when democrats took over in the 2018 election, hr1 in 2019, it was a massive, 2000plus page bill to rewrite the election laws, to federallize the elections, to rewrite Campaign Finance laws, all things related to political process. Its something the left is fixated upon is trying to manipulate and rewrite the process in hopes of changing the outcome. So what were seeing on 2020 is a situation where there are over 100 lawsuits, most of them filed by lawyers for the Democrat National committee, who are friended by george soros and other left wing groups and donors, to force states through the courts to have their election laws rewritten. And not by the legislatures. The legislatures already have written laws that are trying to force changes in the statutes by judges without true opportunity adversary proceedings. So let me go through some of the things they talked about. One of the things after 2016, there was russian interference in the election. Really . I think it was finally confirmed that somehow, some russian bot posted Something Like 100,000 of ads on facebook. Does anybody believe that that changed the outcome of the 2016 election . No, it did not. It had no impact. However, that has been used as a pretext was the pretext for getting facebook and twitter and you will the Big Tech Companies to either say theyre not going to allow any political conversation or ads, or to try to strip those big tech policeman forms from my electi election communication. Really that applies only to conservatives. So its a silencing of conservative views which they deem to be hate speech. If we we believe that america is not a racist country, they deem that as hate speech. I believe america is a wonderful country, that would be deemed hate speech by the Big Tech Companies. So weve seen the pressure to silence conservatives on elections and political related issues and statements, but what weve also seen is an effort by, as i said, these lawsuits that have been filed all over the country to change the election laws and now, instead of it being, we have to stop foreign interference in elections, now they have pivoted and now the concern is, or the supposed concern is because of covid19 we have to completely upend the election laws of the states and here are some things that have been brought to brought to the courts to demand. Number one, we know that over the last decade, we no longer have an election day. The constitution provides for an election day and that is set by federal law as the first tuesday after the first monday of november. And thats when all federal candidates are to be elected. Thats when youre supposed to have the election. Well, we know that beginning about 10 or 15 years ago, that states began to allow early voting and some states on the west coast have moved to eliminate their polling places altogether and now have all mail voting. In oregon, in Washington State and now colorado. Now, what does that mean for our democracy . It means were not all operating under the same set of situations when we cast our ballots. Ballots begin in many places in mid september. So something happens in october, well, the people have already voted have lost their ability to make a decision based on the same information as a neighbor and another state or a neighbor in their own state may have based their decision upon because they didnt vote until election day. So weve seen that change. And the big issue that is being raised today in court cases and hammering by the left, democrats today, is the rush to all mail mail, mail voting in every state. Thats one. Things that was included in this hr1. Thats one of the things, a provision that was included in the pandemic cares act that congress, the legislation that nancy pelosi introduced in response to the pandemic, and their argument is, well, people are not going to be able to leave their homes so we have to have all mail voting. Well, let me just say, there are so many things wrong with that premise. Lets start with this, the New York Times did a study and wrote an article about eight years ago in which it acknowledged that with an increase in mail voting in some states and across the country, that the ability of Election Officials to monitor and assure the inbound integrity of the ballot when you have mail voting and theyre not able to ensure the safeguards to protect the integrity of the election, to guard against fraud, to guard against those who would want to undo a pressure, the most vulnerable populations, whether its the elderly, whether its people with somewhat diminished mental capacity, people who live in group homes, people who live in assisted living facilities, that theres really no way for the laws on the books to protect those populations, theres no way for those to be enforced, but theres this enormous National Push by the media, by the left, to impose all mail voting. Now, one of the things that brings to mind is doesnt that assume that the u. S. Post office is able to process on a timely basis all of its ballots, if everybody is asking for a ballot and voting by mail . What is going to happen with the Postal Service . Well, let me give you some examples. The Postal Service office of Inspector General did a 2018 study of the election and special election since then and they their goal, let me just say, their goal, the post office has established a goal to only lose 4 of the ballots. Now, think about that. Their goal is not to ensure that 100 of the ballots are received timely and timely to the election facilities so they can be received, processed and counted timely. Their goal is to make sure that 96 of the ballots are received timely and returned timely. So thats their goal, thats their stated goal. How many ballots does this represent . A commission did a study over several cycles and found there were literally millions, millions of ballots that either were misdelivered, were delivered well after the deadline, or never delivered, millions of ballots. Now, if the post office tells the public we have a goal of only losing 4 of your votes and we did not meet that goal. We got close. Its actually closer to 5 that we know that the post office admits they did not process in time for that voters vote to be counted. Now, the left always says that we have to make sure that every single vote is cast, that every single vote is counted. I agree with that. We want every legally eligible voter to have the certainty that his or her ballot is going to be counted and that his or her expression of his or her opinion through his or her vote is counted. Mail that balloting does not assure that. The system of the returning the ballot does not ensure that 1 100 of the ballots will be received, returned, and delivered, and thats a big problem. So a few weeks ago a few months ago, actually, some of us watching the issues that had been presented in all of the different litigation, we assembled a task force of elections law experts from across the country of attorneys, Election Officials, people who have scholars, secretaries of state, and we collectively put together a list of what we call the standards for voting by mail. If you are going to and every state has some system for voting by mail. And so what we wanted to do as a group of people who have been involved in this arena for a long time, wanted to collectively assemble our experiences and our thoughts, and produced in june some National Standards by voting by mail and i think we may have those available to the post on the screen. Do we have those . In any event, there are a number of issues that relate to those issues. The first one is, is very there they are. So here are historically what we wanted people to understand is that voting by mail compromises the elections system, that anytime youre going to remove the voting process from the immediate personal scrutiny of Election Officials, you run the risk of creating problems, fraud, and lost ballots. We know that votes by mail are historically vulnerable to intimidation, manipulation, fraud and chaos. In new york, the New York Primary, there are races from the New York Primary in june where we still do not know the outcome. Almost to almost, you know, a little more than a month later. Now, one of the things that most election laws put in place a law put in place by the legislature, is certainty. Absolutely certainty, theres a time and to have absolute certainty of the election results. So one of the things that mail voting does not allow for is immediate information, determination of the results, and certainty of the results and its really important that we Pay Attention to that, particularly in a president ial election where the electors and the Electoral College are going to meet barely a month after the election. We cannot afford to have a situation where the Electoral College cannot meet on its required constitutional date because theyre still trying to locate, find ballots by mail. This is a huge problem. We also cite in these standards examples going back to many years and even in recent elections, where big buckets of absentee ballots were found in an Apartment Building near the trash can in nevada. Where entire set in miami was set aside because a massive fraud scheme in absentee ballots by mail. Here are the principles, look at the box there on the screen. There are four principles that are really important for all of the mail voting. Number one, you must not Election Officials must not automatically mail ballots to everyone on the voter roll. One of the things that we know from a number of years and many, many studies is that the voter rolls themselves are not kept up by the Election Officials, they are not current, and in many cases, they are a mess. They have many more people on the rolls than there are eligible adults of voting age population in that jurisdiction. So that you have more people on the rolls than who actually live there and can vote and if a jurisdiction, if a county election board for a state is sending ballots to everybody on the roll, guess what . Theyre going to be sending ballots to a lot of dead people. Theyre going to be sending multiple ballots to a single address because some people may have moved. If youre in an Apartment Building, you may have a person living in that apartment may receive four, five, six ballots. You tell me isnt that a huge opportunity for fraud . Particularly if you dont have safeguards in place so that the person who is sending back the ballot has to have some identifying information process to know that that person voting. And we must not send ballots automatically put that back down, please. Can you do that . Yeah, back down, i want to see that box there we go. I want to see that box. No, no, no, okay, there we go. Leave it there. So we dont want to have automatic mailing of ballots. Thats a recipe for fraud and disaster. Secondly, there has to be a process for safeguarding the return of the ballots. Thats a hugely important principle. There are those who want to set up in fact, one of the things that the post office says is when we cant process properly all of these ballots so maybe well just set up a receptacle and people can just drop their ballots in this receptacle, rather than having them go through the mail process. The big problem with that is that those receptacles can be stuffed. They can be stolen, they can be manipulated and theres not necessarily a way for the postal authorities to if you do that, theres no way for the postal authorities to postmark every envelope that contains a returned ballot. So there has to be a way to make certain that there is that theres a way to return any ballot and includes some way to clarify that the person who sent the ballot is actually that registered voter. The counting process, so we have dont send it out. Number one principle, dont just mail ballots to everybody. Number two principle is the return of the ballot, the manner in which its done has to have certain safeguards that makes sure that it comes from the ballot from the voter to the election official, to the Election Office which means, this is another thing that many of these are trying to get done.