Deep Dive： One Group Fighting To Safeguard Against Illegal Voting in November 2024 ｜ Ep. 867
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Summary
In the shadow of 2020, many Americans are wondering about efforts to ensure the safety and legality of their vote. We wanted to take a deep dive on this issue with someone whose organization is making it a point to stop illegal voting in America. Gene Hamilton is the Executive Director and General Counsel at America First Legal and joins me to discuss what AFL is doing.
Transcript
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Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to The Megan Kelly Show. Early voting in America starts
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in a couple of weeks. And in the shadow of 2020, many Americans are wondering about efforts to
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ensure the safety and legality of our vote. We wanted to take a deep dive on this issue with
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someone whose organization is making it a point to stop illegal voting in America.
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Gene Hamilton is that man. He is executive director and general counsel at America First
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Legal. And he joins me now to discuss what America First Legal or AFL is doing.
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telling Congress to guard your card while you're there, too. Gene, welcome to the show.
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Okay, so just outline the problem for me first, as, you know, you were looking at it before you
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decided to tackle it. Of course. Look, everyone in America has heard about problems related to
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non-citizens or illegal aliens being on voter rolls. This is a very common occurrence. Now,
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the left would want you to believe, of course, that this never happens. No one would ever be an
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illegal alien and register to vote. But it's actually more common than what you would actually
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think. It's actually a very frequent occurrence, especially at the point of obtaining a driver's
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license or other such things, where someone can get added to a state's list of voters where they
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shouldn't be. Or if they actually use a federal form where they just simply check a box that says
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that I swear that I am a citizen. Now, please register me to vote. Those are real problems. There should
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never be an illegal alien on any state's voter rolls. Now, look, there are a number of states who
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have been doing some things for a number of years that are kind of very basic and that are helpful
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and that are good, but there don't go far enough. So what we have done at America First Legal is
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identify a plan that every state across America can use. Steps that they can take to remove illegal aliens
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from their list of voters using data and information that they're entitled to receive
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from the Department of Homeland Security. All right, stand by. We'll get to the cure in a minute. I want
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to spend another few minutes on the problem. So is it the case, because when I lived in New York City,
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they passed a law trying to make it legal for illegal aliens to vote. That was not upheld. But
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are there states out there like the crazy New York, you know, policy that are actually trying,
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you know, you mentioned driver's licenses for illegals. We know Tim Walsh wanted this in
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Minnesota. So there are states out there that are saying it's fine for illegals to get driver's
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licenses. And I guess there could be some as crazy as New York where then they say, and they should
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have the right to vote. Do you know what, whether that's out there? Yeah, and it certainly is. And
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it can also happen in states that aren't crazy, because there is a single point of failure. And
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the single point of failure is at the point of the person getting the driver's license from a clerk at
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the DMV. That is your single point of failure. So if you are a clerk at the DMV and someone comes to
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you, maybe they're an illegal alien and maybe it's a crazy state that says, hey, we give driver's
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licenses to everyone who's here, regardless of their immigration status. Or maybe you're a good
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state. But your laws in your state say that if you're here and you have work authorization
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from the Department of Homeland Security, that we'll go ahead and give you a driver's license.
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Now, what can happen, though, at that single point of failure, at the point of getting your driver's
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license, is that at least before the Real ID Act, and there's still problems after the Real ID Act,
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is that it's just a matter of somebody checking a box that says, I'm a citizen.
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And I want to be registered to vote. This is something that happens all over the place.
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And it is something that leads to people being on the voter rolls, which, of course, is an important
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point to point out to everyone right now. The issue here is not necessarily that an illegal alien
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is 100% of the time going to go register to vote at the DMV or through the mail, and that they are then
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going to show up at the ballot box and themselves cast a vote. The issue here, of course, is that
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they are getting their name registered to vote. And when you have states all across the country using
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mail-in ballots, right, this is all about ballot harvesting and getting as many names on as many
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ballots as you possibly can turned in, get the votes counted, of course, before anyone can do
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anything. And then at the end of the day, say, look, there's more ballots that were cast for so-and-so
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than the other. Explain that. What do you mean? So Democratic operatives engaging in fraud would
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figure out who's an illegal and who's not and try to send in a ballot for this guy that he doesn't
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even know he's sending in? Look, that's certainly something that can happen. And it's certainly
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something that can happen, especially in transient communities. So if you're at an apartment, your
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listeners across the country will understand that if you're in an apartment, it's oftentimes you'll get
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mail for the prior residence. It's especially going to be true in transient communities populated
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by immigrants. And so if you are somebody who gets registered to vote and you're in one of these
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states that does 100 percent mail-in balloting, one of these states that makes it extremely easy to
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request your ballot to be sent in via the mail, and no one ever has to check or confirm that you are,
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in fact, a citizen, that at some point along the process that you produce documentation that shows
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that you are, in fact, a citizen of the United States, the recipes for fraud are almost unlimited
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in terms of what can possibly be done. How do we have any idea how many illegal aliens are
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currently registered or have been registered over the past few years in the United States and in
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particular in the swing states? It's a wonderful question, and I don't know that there's any kind
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of actual reliable evidence indicating one number or another. The fact of the matter, though, is that
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there are millions upon millions of illegal aliens who have entered the United States over the last
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three and a half years, that they are here and they are loose in the United States. And when you look
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at the margin of victory in a place like Arizona or in a place like Georgia, where just a couple
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thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand votes can make the difference in the outcome of an election,
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the recipe is there. And it's really a matter of how do we make sure that there are none on the voter
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rolls? If it's a hundred, that's a problem. If it's a thousand, it's a problem. If it's a hundred
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thousand, it's a problem. Now, some of your listeners have probably seen in recent weeks, there have been a
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number of elected officials across the country putting out press releases saying things like,
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hey, guess what? We removed four thousand non-citizens from our voter rolls over the last year or so.
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Twenty five hundred in Pennsylvania. Exactly. Virginia's been cracking down. North Carolina
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identified more than fourteen hundred. Yeah. Arizona said we've identified forty two thousand people as
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federal only registrants, which I don't totally understand. But yes. So more and more are coming out to say,
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they're making this effort and they've identified some. So keep going. Yeah, absolutely. So and that's
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great. And what they're typically doing in those situations is using a system called SAVE that DHS
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administers. And so for your viewers at home and listeners at home, if they think about it this way,
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DHS has a database that states are eligible to ping against. But to use that database to have it be
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reliable, you have to have some kind of an identifier that links the person to an identifier
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in the DHS database. And so that identifier tends to be what's known as an alien registration number.
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And so think of this as like you're searching for a friend on social media, right? And if you're
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searching for a friend and you have their email address, maybe you can actually find the person
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because you have their email address. But if you don't have their email address, you're never going
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to find the person. And this is depending on the privacy settings. And so this is the single point
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of failure for the SAVE system is if you have someone who's registering to vote, whether that's
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with a federal form, and we can touch more on that in a minute, or whether it's somebody who registered
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to vote at the DMV, chances are they didn't provide you with an alien registration. Chances are that
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they just gave you their name and their date of birth, which makes this DHS SAVE system essentially
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worthless to get the folks off of the voter rolls who didn't actually give you their alien registration
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number. So when you see a press release from someone saying, hey, we removed, you know, two,
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4,000 people from our voter rolls using the DHS SAVE system. Well, that's fabulous. And that's
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great. Now, just imagine how many more you can do if you could instead search by things like a name
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and a date of birth. Hmm. Okay. So you're saying there's a lot more on that federal registry
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who would be illegal. We just, we don't have the technology right now to capture them. And so they
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will remain on the voter registration rolls as illegal aliens. The system is flawed.
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Well, yes and no. So the system that DHS built for the states to use called SAVE is flawed and it has
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that issue. But here's the great thing. And here's the fun thing for all of the states across the
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country. And it's actually part of a plan that we laid out for all of the states across the country
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to use, which is there's a law in the books, in the Immigration and Nationality Act at 8 U.S.C. 1373.
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And it says that a state or local government can get information from the Department of Homeland
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Security to verify or ascertain the citizenship status of any individual in their jurisdiction for
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any purpose authorized under law. And that DHS has to provide that information to the state or the
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locality. And so what DHS is doing is that they've been telling the states and the local governments,
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hey, you have to use this SAVE database and you have to use this alien registration number as the
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query. Oh, and by the way, DHS charges the states and localities to use it. But there is a separate
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provision of law that no one was using up until recently that says that actually the states are
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entitled to receive this information as a matter of law. And it's about any individual. And it's to
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ascertain or to verify their citizenship or immigration status for any purpose authorized under law. And so
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any purpose authorized under law certainly has to include ensuring that there are eligible voters on
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your voter rolls and there's not any illegal aliens or, for example, permanent residents or anyone else
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who's not entitled to vote on the voter rolls. And so the states have the ability to ask DHS to give
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them the information that they need about anyone that they have any question about on their voter
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rolls. They just need the will to do it. So they need the will to do it. But in my experience, the only
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states that would have the will to do it would be blue states and they're not going to do it. I mean,
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and they don't be like they're not going to. And the red states might want to do it, but that doesn't
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really help Republicans make sure there are fair elections. Right. So then what are the swing states
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do? The odds of the swing states actually taking advantage of this, I think, are slim and none because
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I don't know, most of them tend to have Democratic governors.
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Yeah, look, it's a real conundrum. And you've identified it is everyone should be doing this,
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though, because DHS has the capability to verify based on a name, based on a date of birth. They
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do have a technological capability of doing this. And so this is a matter of common sense. This is a
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matter of good government. This should not be a red or a blue issue or anything in between. This is a
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common sense measure that every state across the country should be using. And if the citizens of
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each state petition their leaders and they say, hey, look, why aren't we doing this one way or the
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other? Why aren't we trying to make sure that there aren't people who shouldn't be on our voter
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rolls voting regardless of how they vote? And this is one of these situations where the solution is
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there. The federal law provides a remedy and the states can use it to get people off this against
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very good government kind of basic obligation thing to do. But because nobody, don't you think
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that they'll look at they'll slow roll it, this administration be like, sure, we're definitely
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going to comply with your many requests and we'll get that information to you probably around February.
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Yeah, right. Well, so that's again, you've identified a very real problem, which is why what states need
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to do is give DHS hard and fast deadlines. And if DHS doesn't comply in a reasonable amount of time
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with the information the states are obligated to receive under federal law, the states should go into
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federal court and sue and demand immediate remedies to get the information that they need, given that
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there's an election coming up soon, given as you identified early voting starts very soon in many
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states. And the time is now to act in Pennsylvania. Absolutely. September 16th is like right around the
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corner. So can you tell me, do you know what Virginia is doing? Some kind of interested in what
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Glenn Youngkin is doing down there. He clearly does care about voter integrity. It seems like he's making
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sure that there's going to be paper ballots there, mandating a documented chain of custody for the paper
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ballots. They don't use voting machines down there, just paper ballot counting machines. But they also
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have to have the paper ballots retained for 22 months. The absentee ballots seem to be more secure
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than they are in other states requiring a Social Security match. I don't know. It seems like Glenn
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Youngkin is one governor who's in not exactly a swing state, but it's still a little purple trying to set
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things right. Yeah, it certainly seems that way. And his efforts should be commended. Every governor
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across the country should be doing more, and they should be doing as much as they possibly can do
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to do things that are just common sense. I mean, look, for the viewers and listeners at home,
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if your elected officials are not doing things that would be common sense measures that you would
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think that maybe even like the bank would require for you to be able to go take money out of your
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account, verifying your identity, ensuring that there's proper paper trails, doing all those
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types of good governance measures, you know, why shouldn't we expect the same of our elected leaders
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when it comes to our elections, when it comes time for the citizenry to, you know, cast the kind of the
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ultimate pinnacle of democratic action in society, which is casting that vote, that ballot,
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um, and getting, getting that ballot counted properly, um, and having it administered in a
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way that people can have confidence in the integrity of the system and in, uh, the future
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of their democratic society. Yeah. I mean, this is definitely something that people are very worried
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about on top of the issue of just stealing, you know, they're very worried about people stealing
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ballots and harvesting and taking, but this is an area that you're saying, this is an area that can be
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exploited by bad actors. Uh, that's one of the many reasons it could be the illegal alien, or it could
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be somebody who's taking advantage of the fact that there is an illegal alien who's registered
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who might not know he's getting a ballot by mail and Bob's your uncle. Boom. I mean, Biden won Georgia
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by 11,000 votes. That's just one state. So every vote counts as we know, Jean, thank you. Thanks for
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all the great work you guys do at America first legal love, love all of it. Thanks very much for having
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me on. Really appreciate it. All the best. Uh, and thanks to all of you for joining us today for this
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special deep dive into the problem of how to solve the illegal aliens voting in our elections back
00:17:19.060
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