Von Spakovsky on Mark Levin: Gutting Standards for Voting by Mail

By A Colleague
Mon, Nov 9, 2020 12:19 p.m.

Von Spakovsky on Mark Levin: Gutting Standards for Voting by Mail

Transcript below of about 10 minutes of Mark Levin's interview with a former commissioner on the Federal Election commission. Hans Von Spakovsky tells the purpose of the hundreds of lawsuits Democrats filed prior to this election, with a particular focus on Pennsylvania:

Hans von Spakovsky on Life, Liberty, and Levin (11-8-20):

Democrat operatives filed hundreds of pre-election lawsuits with a common theme: “They all tried to get the security protocols that are in place for absentee or mail-in ballots eliminated” [transcript of a crucial 10 minutes below, a 2-minute clip heading a Fox News report linked below]:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/von-spakovsky-mail-in-balloting-voter-electioneering

MARK LEVIN: Hans von Sakovsky [sic] was “a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission. He was council for the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, in charge of enforcing voting rights laws . . . Hans, hundreds of lawsuits were brought prior to this election, the vast majority of which were by the Democrat party [sic] or Democrat Party surrogates. Hundreds! . . . Number 1, have you ever seen anything like this before, and number 2, what was the purpose of these lawsuits?”

HANS: “No, it was unprecedented. I’ve never seen so many lawsuits filed before election day. And all the lawsuits had a common theme. They all tried to get the security protocols that are in place for absentee or mail-in ballots eliminated . . . They wanted to get rid of, for example, witness signature requirements on absentee ballots. They wanted to get rid of signature comparison for absentee ballots, when election officials compare the signature on the ballot with the signature on file for the voter. The tried to implement ‘vote harvesting’ in every state. So states that ban vote harvesting, in other words, strangers being able to come to your front door to pick up ballots, they wanted it over-ridden. In Alabama, which has a voter ID law that applies to absentee ballots, they tried to get the courts . . . to basically say they couldn’t apply that ID law to absentee ballots . . .

“So everything they did was intended to get rid of any of the protections and measures put in place by states to try to prevent fraud in the use of absentee ballots.”

MARK: “And they succeeded in many respects, in states like Pennsylvania and other states, didn’t they?

HANS: “Yeah, they sure did. The order by the Pennsylvania court was really bizarre in many aspects . . . telling the election officials there that they couldn’t reject a ballot if the signatures didn’t match, they couldn’t reject a ballot even if there is no post mark on the envelope to indicate it has been voted by election day, and then extending the deadline past the deadline set by the state legislature . . .

MARK: “ . . . In fact, you could have voted after election day, couldn’t you?”

HANS: “You sure could. And it would be very easy. If you could pick up absentee ballots that have not been voted by voters, which happens all the time, to submit fraudulent ballots . . .”

MARK: “Yeah, because no signature is required. So what are they going to check it against? . . . Now . . . in person voting has an absolute deadline. You better be in your precinct in Pennsylvania by 8 PM Eastern Time or you don’t get to vote. So all of these were Trump voters.

“On the other hand, if you’re sitting at home, maybe you’re watching the election results, you don’t like what’s happening in Pennsylvania in the early vote, you can vote your mail-in vote. You don’t have to have a postal date on it. In fact, you don’t want one. You don’t have to sign it. You drop it off and the vote counts. Correct?”

HANS: “Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that is very problematic. There’s no reason to extend the deadline for absentee ballots past election day. It’s not as if — absentee ballots — you can only get them a couple of days before election day. In fact, the vast majority of them can be requested and obtained weeks, if not more than a month, two months before election day. So you have PLENTY of time to get it back in the hands of election officials by the end of election day.

MARK: “You know I brought this up to Judge [Kenneth Starr] . . . the Democrats want an earlier and earlier vote and later and later count, an earlier vote and a later count. Why?”

HANS: “Well, the earlier you vote, frankly, the less information you have about candidates . . . Some states were starting early voting before the first presidential debate even occurred. And what that meant was that if individuals changed their mind, because of information they got after they’d already voted. Guess what? . . . It’s too late to change your ballot. And by counting ballots late, it gives, unfortunately, the opportunity, particularly for absentee ballots, to try and gather up ballots that have not been voted after election day — which is another reason they wanted vote harvesting everywhere.

“Vote harvesters can go through neighborhoods, collect absentee ballots that haven’t been voted and then use that to try to change the results of the election, which they already know how it’s going from the preliminary count.

MARK: “Isn’t another reason to have votes earlier and earlier to really incentivize people not to vote in person, where we . . . have election judges. We have both parties. Your name is matched against a registration [and] in many states you have voter ID. You vote early, you vote mail-in, you don’t need a signature, you don’t need a postal date . . . then you have anarchy in many of these situations, chaos, don’t you?

HANS: “Yeah, one of the most important ingredients in a fair election is transparency. That is why every state authorizes poll watchers from the candidates’ political parties to not only be in polling stations, but supposedly where they are counting the ballots. Well, you can’t have that when people are voting through the mail. They’re voting outside the supervision of election officials, outside the observation of poll watchers.

“Look, nobody disputes that you need absentee ballots for people who are too sick or too disabled to make it to the polls or who are going to be out of town on election day like our overseas military folks, but for the vast majority of us we should vote in person and you shouldn’t vote by absentee ballot. That’s just not the smart thing to do.”