Christian Adams: Election Integrity? Oh, Sure

By An Old Friend
Wed, May 4, 2022 12:38 a.m.

Christian Adams: Election integrity? Oh, sure.

The much-anticipated Republican wave in November might not materialize.

Related, as Mark Steyn pointed out about Marine LePen's improved performance between the last two French elections (five years apart), "It's not improving fast enough."

Election Integrity

Dead: Killed in Court

By J. Christian Adams
May 3, 2022
Gatestone Institute

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.

Before you think these sorts of lawsuits are frivolous, consider the fact that every lawsuit like it brought against other states has effectively won to the expense of election integrity. Additionally, governors in five states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, & North Carolina, & Michigan and Louisiana -- have vetoed legislation that would have banned or restricted the Mark Zuckerberg-style private funding of elections.

Kansas thought it could require documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, but after a disastrous trial, a Republican-appointed federal judge ruled against Kansas in 2018. There was also no salvation on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10^th Circuit, where, again, a panel that even included Republican-appointed federal appeals judges ruled against Kansas for not being able to demonstrate a data-driven justification for the law. The Supreme Court decided against taking up the matter, and Kansas taxpayers had to pay the victorious ACLU's court fees.

The big news on election integrity however, now comes from Florida. There, a federal judge recently wrote a 288-pageopinion striking down SB90, an election integrity overhaul package passed in the wake of the 2020 election.

The omnibus law tried to do a number of important things.

First, it required that mail ballot drop-boxes be monitored. These resemble outdoor mailboxes where, during the 2020 election, the huge increase in mail ballots were delivered. The purpose of monitoring was to ensure the security of the ballots inside those drop-boxes.

Second, SB90 prohibited third parties from engaging with voters within 150 feet of the drop-boxes. This extended the usual zone of protection found near polling places also to include drop-box locations.

Third, Florida had been allowing a vote-by-mail request in one election to carry over to a subsequent election. The problem is that the voter requestor may die or move away by then, and a ballot would be floating around with no voter at the address ready to receive it. SB90 shrank the longevity of a vote-by-mail request from two elections to one.

Fourth, SB90 required voters requesting an absentee ballot to include verifying information that the request really came from the voter. That could include the last four digits of a Social Security number. The number would be verified before an absentee ballot was sent in the mail.

After a trial, United States District Court Judge Mark E. Walker in Tallahassee shredded SB90's new provisions.

Walker ruled that the requirement that drop-boxes be monitored resulted in fewer drop-boxes, and had a discriminatory impact on black voters who particularly use them. Walker heard evidence to this effect, and to the extent that rebuttal evidence was presented, Walker certainly did not find it noteworthy enough even to mention it in his opinion.

Fifth, Walker ruled that the prohibition on engaging with voters near a drop-box infringed on First Amendment rights. The limit on a vote-by-mail request rollovers shrinking from two elections to one election was found to be a violation of the Voting Rights Act because black voters particularly use mail voting. On the other side of the ledger, the court did uphold the requirement that voters requesting a mail ballot provide a unique number that could be used to verify that the request was authentic. The court reasoned that, if anything, whites are hurt by this requirement more than blacks.

Apparently that makes it okay, at least to Judge Walker.

Mi Familia Vota was not the only not-for-profit group to sue over SB90. The case had a veritable dogpile of other groups attacking the law, including the League of Women Voters of Florida Inc., League of Women Voters of Florida Education Fund Inc., Black Voters Matter Fund Inc., and the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans Inc.