Editor’s note: This is part II of a two-part series covering Liberty Nation’s exclusive interview with Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project.
In part I of this interview, Jason Snead discussed the damage done to America’s elections by ballot harvesting and other forms of voter fraud. In this second part, he explains the many potential problems with mail-in voting – something the Democratic Party and left-wing activist groups are working hard to foist upon all Americans.
Graham Noble: The Democratic Party has been pushing what is known as “vote at home,” usually described as vote-by-mail or mail-in voting. The proponents of this system claim that it not only reduces the cost of holding elections, but that it is in fact a fairer system because everyone is assured of having their vote counted and they do not have to physically show up at a polling station. Would you agree with those claims?
Jason Snead: No, I would not. On the question of costs, first of all, we have to remember that we are not going to be moving to an entirely vote-by-mail election in the fall. If we adopt the plan that folks on the left are advocating right now, where we’re mailing ballots to everyone, we’re still also then going to have to keep polling places open and we’re going to be paying officials to do that. So we’re effectively going to be running two election systems in parallel to one another, and I don’t see how that does anything except increase costs.
One other thing that we’re seeing is that a large number of ballots in places like Nevada, for instance, which are in the process right now of mailing ballots to every registration on file, a large number of these ballots are undeliverable. Clark County, for instance, estimated that it would cost at least $323,000 in order to mail ballots just to the inactive voter registrations because that was the demand that was put on them by the Democratic Party. Now we’re seeing that those ballots are being abandoned en masse or dumped in garbage cans, which literally amounts to throwing away taxpayers’ dollars.
So I simply do not subscribe to the notion that this is going to save money. What I do think vote-by-mail is going to do is create significant election integrity concerns. It’s going to open the door to fraudulent behavior, potentially on a scale we’ve not seen before. It’s going to open the door to widespread election litigation – again, on a scale that we may never have seen. It’s going to lead to the, I think, inevitable result that Americans will not know on election night who won the 2020 presidential election, or who is their representative, or their senator, or any of the other down ballot races.
We’re going to wind up waiting for so many absentee ballots to come back. We’re going to have to go through the process of counting those – which takes longer – and there are undoubtedly going to be lawsuits filed, trying to change the rules about who’s ballots get counted, and how those ballots get counted and when those ballots should be counted in order to try to obtain the particular outcome that the left wants to see.
And so I think that, no matter how you look at it, this push for a vote by mail is a recipe for chaos, confusion, and ultimately I think it’s going to turn voters off.
Graham Noble: Well, my next question was going to be, whether you believe vote at home is more – or less – vulnerable to election fraud than the way most elections are currently conducted, but I think you’ve pretty much answered that question.
Jason Snead: I can elaborate a little bit. So the way that people do remote voting or voting by mail now with the absentee voting process is different than what is being advocated for in the vote-by-mail plan that is being put forward by either the House Democrats in their legislation, or by the Democratic Party and various liberal groups when they’re filing lawsuits.
What we’re seeing with vote-by-mail is that they want ballots to be mailed out automatically to every registration on file, even knowing that a significant percentage of those registrations are invalid. They want to do away with voter identification requirements, or seriously undermine them. They want to do away with signature verification requirements, which is one of the protections in place for absentee ballots to help provide a degree of certainty that the people casting those ballots are the registered voters who requested them. And witness requirements, which again is a safeguard designed to ensure that people are not forging ballots.
So, what we’re talking about is a system which will send a ballot to everyone and do away with all of the protections against absentee ballot fraud. Absentee ballots are the most vulnerable way to vote right now, in terms of election fraud. So we’re looking at a very different sort of a system that the folks on the left are talking about putting in place. There’s a whole host of reasons why we ought to avoid going down the path that they’re talking about.
Graham Noble: Is the Honest Elections Project actively doing anything to push back against this move towards vote at home?
Jason Snead: Yes. One of the big things that we have been doing is working on amicus briefs in court cases where – whether it’s the Democratic Party itself or whether it’s various liberal groups – are suing to change state election laws to force either a vote by mail approach to primary elections and to the November election or otherwise change election procedures, ostensibly, because of COVID-19. But in reality what we’re seeing is an attempt to use the courts to accomplish a longstanding political goal to change and reshape the way Americans vote – really to do that for very political reasons.
We filed nine briefs so far, making important arguments about why courts should not be rewriting election laws at the last minute. Simply put, doing so invites chaos, it risks causing confusion among voters and among officials who are running our elections.
It distracts those officials who are trying to make reforms in the election process in light of the virus because now they have to deal with litigation. It drains precious resources, and it ultimately leaves us in a worse position than we would have been if we had avoided all of that litigation. We’re filing amicus briefs in these courts, trying to make sure that courts are seeing good arguments about what the Constitution actually says, when it comes to voting, and trying to make sure that we’re defending duly enacted state laws against these very partisan and brazen attempts to undermine those laws in court for partisan gain.
Graham Noble: If people wanted to find out more about The Honest Elections Project, how would they do that?
Jason Snead: We have a website, honestelections.org, where we post updates on all our latest activity, including some quick responses and reactions to some of the many developments that happened. It seems like we see something new two or three times a day. And you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter @honestelections where again, we’re posting updates, news stories, about all of our activities and about the various ways in which election integrity is being challenged, undermined and what we are doing to resist that.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
