To prevent the election fraud that plagued 2020, conservatives are renewed showing efforts for election transparency in the battleground states. But are these efforts good enough to prevent a repeat of 2020?
In Georgia, the state’s election board recently told the Democrat-led Fulton County that they must have an independent election monitor for 2024 because it violated the election law during the 2020 presidential election. The Federalist reported last week (May 9) that Georgia’s State Election Board (SEB) “chided” Fulton County for using “improper procedures” during the 2020 presidential recount.
The SEB found that over 3,000 ballots were scanned twice during the 2020 presidential recount. SEB member Janice Johnston was also cited saying during the board’s meeting last week that 380,761 ballot images from the 2020 Election Day machine count are not available.
Fulton County has not accounted for those missing ballot images from the election day in November 2020. Given that Biden was declared the winner in Georgia by less than 12000 votes, these unsolved issues with hundreds of thousands of ballots in the Democrat-led Fulton County more than three years after the election belie the fraud denial of Democrats and their allied media corporations.
Despite these violations of the election law, however, the SEB chose not to refer the matter to the Attorney General of Georgia for further investigation, raising concerns among conservatives that the Republicans in charge are not doing enough to prevent potential fraud in 2024.
In other states, considered battleground for 2024, various lawsuits and official measures are in progress to ensure transparency in the elections. In Ohio, Secretary of State Frank LaRose ordered non-citizens to be removed from voter rolls in the state. The measure comes after more than 100 people living in Ohio and registered to vote were found not to be American citizens. Fox News reported on Wednesday:
An investigation by Ohio’s Public Integrity Division analyzed data from the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles and found 137 people who appeared on voter rolls despite twice confirming they were not U.S. citizens.
LaRose was cited saying that some of these registrations could simply be an “honest mistake” by “well-meaning people” pursuing the American dream. His office did admit that there could be more such ineligible voters registered to vote in the state.
However, conservative organization Judicial Watch has obtained documents that show an organized scheme of registering non-citizens, including illegal aliens, to register for voting in the Democrat-run D.C. In a press release posted on Monday (May 13), Judicial Watch cited new documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the District of Columbia. The documents show that the D.C. officials offered a training event in April to instruct non-citizens on how to vote in local elections under the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022. While non-citizens are not allowed to vote for federal offices yet, this is seen as a step in that direction.
Judicial Watch is also suing the Democrat-controlled California in pursuit of election transparency. On May 7, the organization announced the filing of a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to force the blue state to clean up its voter rolls. In its press release announcing the lawsuit, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was cited as:
“Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections. And California’s voting rolls continue to be a mess. Judicial Watch litigation already caused the state to remove over a million outdated names from the rolls in California but our new lawsuit shows there is more work to do.”
The legal battle surrounding election procedures and oversight also continues in Wisconsin, a key battleground state with a Democrat governor and a Republican legislature. On Tuesday (May 14), the State Senate voted to override a number of vetoes by the state’s Governor Tony Evers. One of these vetoes was the post-election audit bill SB 736 that would require the Legislative Audit Bureau to examine every aspect of the election administration process. Scott Allen, Republican member of Wisconsin State Assembly, was cited by Wispolitics.com as:
“It’s unfortunate that Governor Evers prefers to spout political slogans instead of taking seriously the task of ensuring election integrity through robust, comprehensive, and non-partisan audits.”