Election Integrity Dead: Killed in Court
by J. Christian Adams • May 3, 2022 at 5:00 am
Many election operatives know that elections are won or lost because of process. For decades, one side has been focused on policy, big ideas, and winning debates. Meanwhile, the other side has been focused on process and the rules of the elections game.
[A] war is taking place around elections that has nothing to do with voting machines being controlled by Italian satellites or Internet hackers. They don't need to be.
Election process fights have become a Darwinian "survival of the fittest." Whichever side can effectively adapt to a new technological or cultural environment often determines who wins and who loses.
In 2020, an unprecedented burst of mail ballots swamped election offices because of the fright of COVID. All over the country, judges struck down or suspended laws that would have ensured those mail ballots were processed according to the law. At the same time, hundreds of millions of dollars in private money poured into election offices to change the way the elections were run.
It is a dangerous place we find ourselves, where citizens through the legislative process are enacting safeguards to keep our elections clean and manageable, yet a hyper-funded onslaught has mastered the art of killing real, verifiable, integrity in elections.
First, do not assume there will be a "red wave" this November. Many election operatives have demonstrated a fierce ability to adapt and leverage cultural and technological awareness into electoral wins.
Second, a "red wave" cannot overcome the "blue wave" tactics of 2020 seen in urban areas flush with outside cash.
Third, the Biden administration is already turning the battleship of the entire federal government toward turnout in 2022. Institutions have mobilized every single agency into a weapon to increase voter turnout among "historically marginalized communities." Decoded, that means racial groups. This is all happening with little fanfare, and little means to stop it.
It also means that every federal agency has had a year-long head start into morphing into a get-out-the-vote tool. It means housing, welfare, and education offices will be turned into turnout machines. Institutions have adapted and created an architecture using the powers of the state to target certain voters and get them to the polls.
For good measure, the Biden administration proposed a $10 billion federal fund available for the next decade to replicate and expand the cash injections to election offices like those seen in 2020. Another $5 billion is requested for the U.S. Postal Service so it can expand its role in voting-by-mail. Even if the administration gets a fraction of that request, it will make the $500 million spent in 2020 from private groups to increase urban turnout look like small potatoes.
Perhaps most of all, we can start to pay close attention to the fights going on behind the scenes -- the process fights. For so long, we have rightfully cared about policies such as taxes, government spending, education, and energy. We try to move heart and minds. But others put policy second: they are worried about whether process helps or hurts their ability to move bodies and ballots. Process is driving the outcomes of policies; it is time to fully engage before our ability to engage at all is extinguished.
In the wake of the 2020 election, states across the country enacted laws to try to prevent a repeat of the chaos from that election. In some states such as Arizona, Texas, and Florida, laws were passed to prohibit the private funding of election offices. In others, ballot custody vulnerabilities were addressed, such as limits on harvesting and drop-boxes.
Predictably, an enormous litigation apparatus attacked nearly every post-2020 election reform in federal or state court. Too often, they were successful.
Arizona, for example, enacted legislation to ensure that only citizens are registering and voting. No sooner had the ink dried on Governor Doug Ducey's signature, than the state was hit with a federal lawsuit by Mi Familia Vota, an organization dedicated to "build[ing] Latino political power by expanding the electorate...." This promises to be another example of trench warfare-style litigation ultimately decided well into the future.
