Protecting Your Vote

PILF Attorney Joe Nixon joins PILF President J. Christian Adams to discuss the Foundation’s lawsuit to protect voters’ right to a secret ballot. Under the current election system in Texas, it is possible to look up how many people voted. The right to political privacy is protected by the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Learn more about the Foundation’s lawsuit against Harris County here. 

Ever wonder what happens when an election ends in a tie? Clara Belle Wheeler, a PILF Board member and Vice Chairman of Albemarle County Electoral Board, joins our podcast to discuss her experience participating in a lottery to decide the winner of a tied election that would decide which political party would control the Virginia House of Delegates. The Public Interest Legal Foundation has launched a tied elections database that logs elections that have ended in ties or been decided by one vote. Together these more than 700 elections show that one illegal vote can affect the outcome of an election. 

Never heard of ERIC? It is an acronym, not a person, that stands for the Electronic Registration Information Center. ERIC is a program that allows states to find the names of individuals registered to vote in other states. Currently, it is the only program set up that has the ability to do this. Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow, Hans von Spakovksy joins the show to discuss what ERIC does, problems with the organization, and reforms it needs to make. PILF President, J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky wrote a report breaking down a list of reforms ERIC needs to make. Read the full report here. 

Florida Secretary of State, Cord Byrd, joins Protecting Your Vote. He discusses Florida’s election procedures that allow for the state to report is election results in a timely fashion on election night. Learn more about why Election Day still means something in the Sunshine State in our report Worst to First.  Byrd, also, discusses how election crime referrals were gathering dust in county prosecutors offices. PILF’s report Safe Harbor uncovered 156 election crime referrals by supervisors of elections where nothing had been done by county prosecutors. Governor Ron DeSantis saw this problem and created a statewide election crimes prosecutor to ensure that election crimes are being prosecuted.

In this episode, Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State and current PILF Board Member, joins PILF President, J. Christian Adams, to discuss how the 2022 elections went from an election integrity perspective. There are still many reforms that need to be passed before the 2024 elections. 

Earlier this year, New York City passed a law that allowed foreign citizens to vote in municipal elections. We filed a lawsuit that this law was passed with racial intent and, therefore, violates the 15th Amendment.  In episode 9 of Protecting Your Vote, Phyllis Coachman, the lead plaintiff in our case, joins PILF President J. Christian Adams to discuss the lawsuit. You can learn more about the case here. 

Episode 8 of our podcast discusses our federal lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, for failing to remove deceased registrants from the voter rolls. Our analysis reveals that as of August 2021, there were over 25,975 deceased registrants on Michigan's voter rolls. Almost 4,000 of these registrants have been dead for over two decades. We won a similar case in Pennsylvania over the deceased registrants on their voter rolls. In a settlement agreement, the Pennsylvania Department of State agreed to remove over 20,000 deceased registrants from the voter roll. 

Episode 7 of Protecting Your Vote details the important problem of county prosecutors not perusing election crimes. People often point to the low number of election crime prosecutions as evidence that there is little to no voter fraud in the U.S. There is a major problem with this talking point. County prosecutors more often than not do not act on criminal referrals they receive from supervisors of elections. The Foundation released a new report, Safe Harbor, that documents this problem in Florida's big counties. We found 156 referrals from nine county supervisors of elections about potential criminal election law violations. Not a single one of these referrals was prosecuted.  Governor Ron DeSantis has a solution to fix this problem. He has proposed giving state government officials a concurrent power to prosecute election crimes. This will provide a check and balance to the failure to enforce the law by county officials. Read Safe Harbor here. Learn More about Governor DeSantis' proposal below: Ken Blackwell in the Washington Examiner: DeSantis is right, a state election crimes agency will make elections more secure J. Christian Adams in the Tampa Free Press: Florida Needs To Beef Up Election Crimes Enforcement

In Episode 5 of Protecting Your Vote, PILF President J. Christian Adams discusses how vote by mail led to chaos and disenfranchisement in 2020. He delves into federal data that shows several swing states had more undeliverable and lost ballots than Biden’s margin of victory.  The Public Interest Legal Foundation has released new analysis of federal data that revealed a alarmingly high level of mail ballots went missing and were undeliverable. Checkout our reports below.  Nearly 15 Million Mail Ballots Went Unaccounted for in 2020 election  83K Mail Ballots Went Missing or Undeliverable Amid 20K  Vote Margin of Victory in WI 2020 Presidential  2020: Biden Won Georgia By 11K Votes. 27K Mail Ballots Bounced Off Bad Addresses. 440K Mail Ballots Went Missing or Were Undeliverable Amid 81K Vote Margin of Victory in PA 2020 Presidential 

Episode 4 of Protecting Your Vote will tell you everything you need to know about Zuckbucks. Zuckbucks refers to the millions of dollars given to election offices across the country by Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerburg. These funds were designed to change election procedures and turnout voters in heavily urban areas. The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has conducted original research on how Zuckbucks were spent in Texas and Florida. Learn more below about PILF’s victory in forcing Palm Beach County to return their unspent Zuckbucks here.

In Episode 2 of Protecting Your Vote, PILF President J. Christian Adams dives into the vulnerabilities in our electoral system from dirty voter rolls that include people registered more than once and with incorrect addresses to dead voters. To learn more about the cases and vulnerabilities mentioned in the podcast, checkout the links below. PILF Secures Settlement with Allegheny County That Includes Information-Sharing Agreement for Voter Roll List Maintenance Leads VIDEO: Voting from Nevada Businesses REPORT: 92K Clark County NV Mail Ballots Went to Wrong Addresses in 2020 Presidential Election REPORT: Steeling the Vote: Allegheny County Reveals how Citizenship Verification Protects Citizens and Immigrants Alike ONGOING LITIGATION regarding non-citizens voting: PILF v. Pennsylvania PILF Secures Victory to Stop Virginia from Accepting Absentee Ballots Received After Election Day with no Postmark

We have published resources to help the public and lawmakers understand the dangers of H.R. 4. To learn more about specifics of the bill, read our policy brief, The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4) Puts Partisan Bureaucrats in Total Control of Elections. Checkout our most recent editorials. PILF Board Member Ken Blackwell in Townhall: The Left's Next Move Is Even Worse than H.R. 1PILF President J. Christian Adams in the Washington Examiner: Democrats' partisan power grab fails — for now