A federal judge Friday blocked an effort to keep U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn off North Carolina ballot this year, saying the state’s election board can’t proceed with an inquiry that would have delved his role leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Chief District Court Judge Richard Myers said he couldn’t allow the challenge, filed by attorneys looking to label the first-term Republican as an insurrectionist who should be legally barred from the ballot, to move forward. The courts, Myers said, must protect the soapbox, the ballot box and the jury box.

“When those fail, that’s when people proceed to the ammunition box,” said Myers, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

this case might resurface in the future, as the Supreme Court appears to be set to refine how the Voting Rights Act can be used. In the past few years, the Supreme Court has transformed the Voting Rights Act from an un-Constitutional means of mass punishment and imposing collective guilt to something that is merely offensive to the Constitutional right of states to set “time, place, and manner” of elections and a tool for the left to interject chaos and ad hoc rules in defiance of state law. There is a very good chance that five justices will drag Chief Justice John Roberts to outlaw the use of race in setting voting district boundaries.

Democrats want to continue allowing private money to fund public elections. Republicans want to limit the practice, which they say gave Joe Biden an unfair and perhaps decisive advantage over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential contest.

So far, at least 10 Republican-controlled states have passed laws to prohibit or limit the use of private money in public elections. These include the swing states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio. In another swing state, North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed such legislation, as did other Democratic governors.

During 2020, nonprofits donated more than $400 million to state and local election boards to support their work and get out the vote. Most of the funding, about $350 million, came from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, distributed primarily through the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a Chicago-based progressive-led group that includes former operatives of President Barack Obama.

Democrats and others contend that such money is necessary to support the work of underfunded election boards facing the added challenges of the pandemic. Republicans assert that the private grants were disproportionately allocated to counties eventually won by Biden, a mismatch that hurt them in 2020 and, if continued, would damage their chances in future elections. //

The outsize private grants in 2020, however, were not covered by transparency laws governing federal spending.

The Capital Research Center, a conservative group that describes its study of election 2020 as “exposing how one billionaire privatized a presidential election,” estimates that in Georgia, the Zuckerberg-aligned center gave $5.06 per capita in counties that went for Biden and 98 cents in counties that went for Trump.

In Pennsylvania, another swing state, the group estimates that the center gave $3.11 per capita in counties that went for Biden, while Trump counties received 57 cents per capita. In Arizona, the group says, the breakdown was $5.83 for Biden counties and $1.29 for Trump counties. //

The private funding on its own is not as problematic as the appearance it creates, based on the originator of the money, said Ilya Shapiro, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute.

“If just one group is providing the money, it has the look of being tainted,” Shapiro said. “Part of election integrity is the perception.”

These videos indicate there were widespread violations of the election code in a large Pennsylvania county, followed by coverups. //

According to a new whistleblower video obtained by The Federalist, 80 percent of Delaware County, Pennsylvania precincts lacked a valid chain of custody for the provisional ballots cast in the November 2020 election.

Private funding of election administration in Wisconsin was biased, significant, objectionable and should end moving forward. //.

Based on what we know, CTCL did not result in fraud such as made-up votes and ineligible voters. But it did put a fairly large thumb on the scale for Democrat turnout efforts. Unfortunately, such funding is probably legal. If someone would uncover illegal acts funded by CTCL, it’d be a different matter. So far, no one has.

CTCL’s closeness with supposedly neutral election officials was somewhere between unsavory and putrid. It injected a private and partisan actor into the administration of our elections. Even if that’s not illegal currently, it is definitely unfair and unseemly. To reiterate, we believe that dynamic should change moving forward.

Several state courts issued major election integrity rulings this week that could have a profound effect on elections in swing states ahead of the 2022 midterms.

In one week alone, President Biden eclipsed everything Donald Trump and his supporters said about the validity of the 2020 election. By framing his false claims of “voter suppression” and “election subversion” as Jim Crow 2.0, our commander in chief has guaranteed a divided America. The only remaining question is whether he has also guaranteed a violent America.

Yesterday, President Joe “The Uniter” Biden proclaimed on Twitter that “Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion. It’s about making it harder to vote, who gets to count the vote, and whether your vote counts at all.”

And what is Jim Crow 2.0? State election integrity laws in effect in every or nearly every state, which Biden and his fellow Democrats want to gut with the passage of the so-called “Freedom to Vote Act,” which President Biden promoted in the same tweet. //

What Biden just told the country and the world is this: that when Democrats lose in November 2022, or thereafter suffer defeat in the presidential election of 2024, it will be because of voter suppression and election subversion—it will be because black Americans were denied the right to vote.

Biden’s peremptory challenge to the election results far surpasses anything Trump said or did. At least, Trump made it about him, claiming the election was stolen from him. Biden cast the die about democracy, “domestic enemies,” and race, all while declaring his words fact and not hyperbole.

May God save our country if the people actually believe him.

This video provides yet another example of the widespread violations of election law during the last presidential election. //

“So, we’re going to actually follow the law fully this time,” Delaware County, Pennsylvania’s Christina Perrone told fellow election-related workers during a Zoom meeting after the November 2020 election. This video—the latest obtained by The Federalist—provides yet another example of widespread violations of election law during the last presidential election.

Regina Miller, a contract worker for the large Pennsylvania county, filmed the video of the April 7, 2021 Zoom meeting, which involved voting officials discussing plans for the upcoming elections, according to sources familiar with the recording. The video began with Perrone, who, according to a lawsuit filed against her, other Delaware County officials, and the county, served as a project manager for the county, saying they would “talk about that off-line”—with the “that” not specified. //

Several other videos previously obtained by The Federalist capture an array of troubling discussions also related to the 2020 election, including “Delaware County officials destroying election material or blocking out ‘derogatory’ information in the copies made in response to the Right to Know Request” submitted to county officials by residents seeking copies of documents to confirm the November election results.

Another video captured a man identified for The Federalist by sources familiar with the recordings as James Savage, the chief custodian and voting machine warehouse supervisor for the Delaware County Voting Machine Department during the November 2020 election.

The legislation increases the likelihood of a disputed election and should be rejected outright, especially considering the chaos this country endured after the 2020 election. //

Congressional Democrats’ proposed legislation includes many sweeping provisions. It would force states to implement automatic voter registration, early voting, same-day registration, and no-fault absentee balloting. It would require states to allow ballot harvesting, ban voter ID laws nationwide, and limit access to federal courts for anyone who challenges such legislation.

It would require states to automatically register people (not necessarily “citizens”) whose names are in government databases (such as with the Social Security Administration, Department of Motor Vehicles, and Federal Bureau of Prisons). It would ban witness signature or notarization requirements for absentee ballots, prevent election officials from verifying voter eligibility of voters and removing ineligible names from voter rolls, and expand government censorship of political speech and activity (including online speech). //

This supposed “voting rights legislation” would violate the Constitution by wresting control of elections away from states and federalizing our elections. Centralized, top-down control of the process whereby citizens elect the officials who represent them is precisely the system the Founding Fathers sought to avoid in their careful formation of America. //

Politicians should be providing policy prescriptions that reduce the capacity for fraud and result in a high degree of assurance that our elections are secure and administered fairly with only legal votes being counted. This bill does the exact opposite.

“He's got to recognize that when he was elected, people were not looking for him to transform America. They were looking to get back to normal. To stop the crazy,” Romney said of Biden.

Everybody's talking about Georgia because the president went there, Romney said. But “it's easier to vote in Georgia, even under the new legislation, than it is to vote in Delaware, or to vote in New York, or to vote in New Jersey. And no one is saying, ‘Oh, New York has discriminatory practices.’”

Opponents of pending election reform legislation claim it would take power away from the states and have the federal government essentially run elections. The voting rights legislation is “clearly a political play to appeal to a base in the Democratic Party,” Romney said.

Romney’s solution — and that of about 12 other senators, both Republicans and Democrats — is to reform the Electoral Count Act. That 1887 law governs how members of Congress handle Electoral College results. But, he said, “An effort to really work at a bipartisan basis hasn't happened yet.”

A federal court refused to grant a request by Marc Elias, the Democrat operative who helped run the Russia collusion hoax, to rescind their sanctions against him for deceiving judges in his attempts to fight Republicans in Texas who pushed back on bad election practices by banning straight-ticket voting in the 2020 election.

Elias, who worked as Hillary Clinton’s top campaign lawyer in 2016 and served as legal counsel to now-Vice President Kamala Harris when she ran for president in 2020, was first sanctioned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in March for deceptively refiling a motion to the court after it was previously denied. Two of the three judges on the panel agreed to sanction Elias and his team for the shady attempt to lie to the court. Elias was quickly scolded by the judges for lacking “candor” in a courtroom setting. //

After legal counsel for Elias demanded that the judges rethink the “unprecedented” penalties and asked for an appeals court hearing to remove the sanctions, the judges unanimously refused.

As reported by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren, after hearing three hours of arguments, determined state law allows absentee ballots to be returned in person or by mail — but not in a ballot drop box. //

Bohren then ordered the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to retract its instructions to election officials on how to use drop boxes, declaring that the WEC had overstepped its authority in issuing the guidance in the first place. It was a “major policy decision that alters how our absentee ballot process operates,” Bohren said, that was significant enough that it should have required approval by the Wisconsin State Assembly.

“It’s all good and nice,” the judge explained, “but there’s no authority to do it.”

According to the transcript for a new interview on “Face the Nation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) falsely claimed that Republicans were trying to suppress the vote and she called voter integrity laws a “legislative continuation” of Jan. 6. //

But if that wasn’t enough to show how disingenuous this whole effort by the Democrats is, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the Democratic whip and the guy who helped stick us with Joe Biden, gave the game away during an interview Sunday on Fox with Bret Baier. He confessed for the record that this was about federalizing elections, saying “these federal elections cannot be left up to the states, should not be left up to the states.”

There it is. They haven’t actually been that blunt with it before, preferring to cloak it in the false language of “voter suppression” or similar words. But there it is — it’s about taking the control away from the states. They’re power-hungry and no longer even hiding it. //

We must “mature” — to let Democrats do what they want to seize what power they can. Our founders who vested the process in the states were just pikers apparently. What they’re scared of are voter integrity laws that will protect the right to vote. There is no “suppression” going on, but there is a lot of protection against funny business.

Have Democrats found the issue on which they can break what’s left of Senate traditions and parlay a 50-50 split into partisan domination? It’s far from clear that anything will be enough to move the two recalcitrant members of their caucus — Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., — to change their minds about voting to change the chamber’s rules that require a majority of 60 in order to invoke cloture and end filibusters. But if anything will do it, it might be the claim that passing their game-changing federal voting rights bill is the only way to defend American democracy against Republican insurrectionists. //

with their ambitious spending plans blocked, Democrats are pivoting in the new year to a renewed effort to pass something that is likely even dearer to the hearts of their left-wing base: changing voting laws to make it easier for Democrats to win elections. They are tying the “nuclear option” on the filibuster and passage of voting bills to their attempt to turn the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot into a festival aimed at demonizing all Republicans as “insurrectionist” traitors who present a threat to democracy.

With their cheering section in the corporate media treating “Insurrection Day” observances as if it were a new national holiday and more important than 9/11, they’ve created more leverage that could shift their two holdouts. If it does, that would allow Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote to transform the electoral landscape in a manner that will end federalism for all intents and purposes and give federal bureaucrats unprecedented power to help Democrats win elections.

Some may quibble with my use of the word “rigged,” but I think it’s more than apt. The Democrats’ legislation not only bans voter ID laws that are key to election security, but it also endorses ballot harvesting, uses taxpayer money to fund political campaigns, mandates same-day registration with no safeguards, makes mail-in voting universal, automatically registers minors, legalizes so-called “drive-thru” voting, and even sets up a system where ballots are allowed to be counted if they arrive 10 days after an election.

There is simply no justification for passing an illegitimate power grab over the nation’s election systems, and in my opinion, no justification could ever exist in any circumstance. We are a republic, and localized control of elections is a bedrock principle of our system. //

If you can make an exception on “voting rights,” one can be made on anything. Oh yeah, and lest we forget, Democrats would like to pack the Supreme Court as well. You know, to save “democracy” or some such.

This is all really tyrannical stuff, and if the shoe was on the other foot, the gnashing of teeth from the press would never cease. Yet, instead of being condemned, Democrats are actually lauded for their dictatorial efforts. It’s absolute insanity.

Last week, the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life finally filed its 2020 federal tax return and the list of grant recipients is shocking.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated approximately $350 million to the formerly unknown liberal organization CTCL. The group then gave “grants” to local election offices, along with explicit instructions regarding how election procedures were to be changed. This greatly benefitted Democrat candidates.

Although hundreds of jurisdictions received tiny gifts of a few thousand dollars, which probably made no difference in their actions, a surprisingly large number of jurisdictions received multi-million dollar grants of these so-called “ZuckBucks.”

Having spent many hours reviewing CTCL’s tax information and speaking with researchers at the Capital Research Center and the Rodney Election Research Institute, I am now more convinced than ever that this unprecedented type of “election spending” by CTCL and Zuckerberg is a serious violation of the spirit of free and fair elections. I am unable to recall any comparable effort ever having been undertaken in the entire history of U.S. elections.

An integral part of any such system is that neither side gets to run the administration of the election. Neither candidate gets to design the rules. Election offices are supposed to be guided by the principle of neutrality, and both teams get to look over election officials’ shoulders to assure that neutrality.

The funding of election administration should be roughly equal on a per-capita basis, should be equally distributed to all election offices in a state, and must come from taxpayers. Neutrality in election administration, funding, and staffing must be paramount.

Election offices must never be subject to outside influences that might favor a particular candidate. Wealthy and powerful people should not be allowed to use their money to influence the manner of administering elections. There is too much potential for such financial influence to result in elections favoring the party of the wealthy and the powerful.

In a farewell letter to the American public, former Senator Bob Dole, who passed away at 98 years old this week of lung cancer, mocked Chicago’s long history of allowing dead people to vote in elections.

Robin Dole, Dole’s daughter, read the tribute during her speech at his funeral in the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

“As I make the final walk on my life’s journey, I do so without fear. Because I know that I will, again, not be walking alone. I know that God will be walking with me,” the late senator wrote. “I also confess that I’m a bit curious to learn and find if I am correct in thinking that heaven will look a lot like Kansas and to see, like others who have gone before me, if I will still be able to vote in Chicago.”

ID requirements appear to be less stringent to vote absentee in Georgia than to enter an indoor establishment in Los Angeles. //

One of the major objections that Biden and his allies have had to the Georgia law is its enhanced ID requirements for proving one’s eligibility to vote. Contrast this with how supportive the left is of ID requirements for proving that one is vaccinated against COVID-19 and thus is worthy to participate in normal American life. //

If you want to walk into a restaurant, bar, coffee shop, gym, movie theater, sports arena, museum, concert venue, mall, bowling alley, arcade, pool hall, hair salon, nail salon, or barbershop (all of these places, and others, are specifically listed) in the nation’s second-largest city, you will have to show proof of vaccination — plus an ID. But if you want to vote in Georgia, having to show an ID — and nothing else — is allegedly the second coming of Jim Crow.

This would be ludicrous even apart from the fact that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, white people are 20 percent more likely, per capita, to be vaccinated than black people. In other words, Los Angeles has imposed a vaccine mandate that has a disproportionate racial impact, on top of an ID requirement that is stricter than the ostensibly “un-American” voter ID requirement in Georgia.

The only way to guarantee secret ballot is to restore the local in-person option everywhere, including states that have long abolished it, such as Oregon.

there is no question that Elias played a key role in radically altering election rules and procedures in ways that benefited Democrats. In January 2020, long before anyone knew how COVID-19 might affect voting, Elias published a piece arguing that there was an ‘epidemic of uncounted ballots.’ He said that it was wrong not to count ballots that don’t have signature matches, even though signature matches are one of the very few security measures through which mail-in ballots can be verified.”

Elias then announced a four-part initiative to greatly expand mail-in balloting, including free postage, counting of ballots arriving long after Election Day, relaxed signature verification, and allowing ballot traffickers to visit people’s homes to collect ballots, and, if needed, pressure voters into giving up their ballots (it’s not coincidental that this process mimics union card check elections).