[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 categ