Election integrity is at the heart of fair and transparent republic, and in this episode, Josh Findlay of the Texas Public Policy Foundation breaks down what’s changed between 2020 and 2024, the biggest challenges ahead, and how grassroots efforts are making a real impact. From voter roll cleanup to poll watching, election law enforcement, and battleground state strategies, Josh shares critical insights into how we can protect the vote. Discover what’s working, what still needs to change, and how you can get involved to safeguard America’s elections.
Election integrity is at the heart of fair and transparent republic, and in this episode, Josh Findlay of the Texas Public Policy Foundation breaks down what’s changed between 2020 and 2024, the biggest challenges ahead, and how grassroots efforts are making a real impact. From voter roll cleanup to poll watching, election law enforcement, and battleground state strategies, Josh shares critical insights into how we can protect the vote. Discover what’s working, what still needs to change, and how you can get involved to safeguard America’s elections.
Twitter/X: @RealJoshFindlay | @TPPFelections | @jennybethm
Website: www.texaspolicy.com
Josh Findley (00:00):
Join your local election integrity group. You look at their successes getting Zuck buck's banned in so many states, getting election bills passed in Georgia like you worked so hard to do it and your team. Those are real changes that were led by the grassroots
Narrator (00:16):
Keeping. Our Republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is Mom to Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:49):
Today I am joined by Josh Finley, who's with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. And you work on election security issues around the entire country, don't you?
Josh Findley (00:58):
I do. That's right, Jenny Beth.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:59):
Now, how do you do that with the Texas Public Policy Foundation? People are going to think that focus is only on Texas.
Josh Findley (01:05):
That's exactly right. But we're not. We're actually a national initiative. A couple of things about the Texas Public Policy Foundation that most people don't know is that we are a very large think tank. We've got over 125 employees, which means if you compared us to most national think tanks, you would be exceptionally large. And because of that, we run a lot of national initiatives. I am the director of the Election Protection Project, which is our election integrity operation, but we also have initiatives for things like criminal justice, energy, immigration, and so Texas Public Policy Foundation runs several national initiatives. And even though our office is based out of Texas, to your point, we do a lot of work in the battleground states. So our operations, this last cycle covered Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and then of course Texas.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:55):
And you have been working on election security and election integrity issues for how long? For quite a few years, right?
Josh Findley (02:03):
For about six years. So yes, I really got started in this as a legal counsel for President Trump's campaign in 2020. That was how I got started and saw everything that happened after that election. And from there I went to become the Republican National Committee's first ever national Director of Election Integrity. And then from there went to the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:24):
Very good. And you said you are the director of their project. Do you have people who also work for you there? I
Josh Findley (02:30):
Do, I do. We've got a staff that varies depending on what projects we're working on. We're based out of DC so we're not based out of Texas. That gives us access to all of the other states that we're working in. So we hire a DC staff to do comms, we've got lawyers, we've got support staff, and then we also hire people in the states so that we can get that state level expertise to execute the projects that we need to.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:55):
That is really good. So what do you think differences were between 2024 and 2020, and maybe you want to touch on what happened in 2022 to make us prepared for 2024?
Josh Findley (03:09):
Sure. So the world changed as far as election integrity goes, in my opinion, from 2020 to 2024. In 2020, conservatives didn't pay a lot of attention to how our elections were run. The election process itself, we were focused on getting out the vote, and our operations were great at doing that, but we didn't pay attention to how votes were counted the election apparatus in every state. And we saw the left weaponize that in 2020, this, we've talked about this many times, but under the pretext of Covid, they made all kinds of rule changes that were last minute. They caused confusion, they caused doubt. There were rule changes that states just didn't have the infrastructure to implement a lot of mail-in voting states that led to a lack of security around ballots and a lot of doubt and confusion about those election results. Following that, and I think this is something that I'm very proud of and something that I think most people find very interesting, but I went to the RNC to run their election integrity.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:13):
You're going to say, wait, you were proud of going to the RNC.
Josh Findley (04:16):
The project. The
Jenny Beth Martin (04:17):
Project. Well, the fact that they started a project to work on election integrity.
Josh Findley (04:21):
That's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:21):
That's good. And we can give credit where credit is due.
Josh Findley (04:24):
That's absolutely right. And one thing to remember is that just about every state requires the party to place poll workers and poll watchers. So the party under the laws of most states should have a very big responsibility when it comes to election integrity. Now they have not always executed or exercised that right and that obligation, and they should and it needs to grow.
Josh Findley (04:49):
In 2022, that election cycle starting in 2021, they started doing that. And I call that version 1.0 because it was the first time that they had ever done anything like that. And so my goal following that 2020 election was something very simple. I wanted to find out what exactly was happening in our elections because people were saying all kinds of things. People didn't know what was true and what wasn't true. So we had to follow the lead of the president and we wanted to get documentation behind that. President Trump. I mean, so we put 80,000 new people in place in these poll worker and poll watcher roles, gave them all an issue reporting system and said, in real time, tell us what you're seeing about the elections. What are the issues? What are the problems? What are the things that are actually keeping people from voting?
Josh Findley (05:37):
And what we found is that in just about every state, the answers were the same, but the order varied. It was election administration issues, it was machines not functioning properly. So Maricopa County, for example, where you show up to vote, it's a two hour line because ballots won't scan. Or in Pennsylvania where they ran out of ballot paper or Harris County, Texas where it's a mix of everything, every state where they ran encountered voter issues. It was around these same topics. And so what we learned is that you have to work on election integrity issues early. You kind of knew that following 2020, but these administration issues don't change overnight. You have to go in and talk to the administrators about the problems, make sure that they understand and then work on solutions. You wouldn't think this would be a partisan thing. You'd think this would be something that everybody agrees with, but that's just not true.
Josh Findley (06:34):
So you asked the biggest changes between 2020 and 2024 following the 2020 election, the grassroots on our side really rose up and got involved in elections. They spent four years in election administration offices, meeting with administrators and talking about these things, attending election board meetings and finding out what companies are getting, what contracts, what rule changes are being implemented in 2021, a year before the 2022 elections that people might not pay attention to, things like that. So we really had an infrastructure in place. Another thing that I think was different, as I talked earlier about these poll working and poll watching roles,
Josh Findley (07:17):
Something that we didn't fill before. A lot of people don't know this, but in 2020, excuse me, 2019 before the 2020 elections in New Jersey for example, they had so few poll watchers for their off year elections that they have to call in the National Guard starting in 2022. Like I said, we made an effort to put people in these roles. And in 2024, we had more poll workers and poll watchers nationally on the conservative side than we ever have in any other election. And I did election integrity for Glenn Jenkins race in 2021, the Washington Post, who never wants to write anything good about anything. We did interviewed the Fairfax County election administrator and he said kind of jokingly, yes, we had to do things by the book this time because we knew people were watching.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:06):
That's how it should be.
Josh Findley (08:08):
That's exactly right. And I think in 2024, we had more people watching than we've ever had. It prevented a lot of issues from arising, but then also as soon as things did happen, we knew right away we were able to fight back against it
Jenny Beth Martin (08:22):
And off we did not have that in 2020. And so after the election, I spent hours and hours and weeks of time getting complaints that had gone into the hotline and the help desk about problems that people were having from voting and getting those reports turned into sworn affidavits that President Trump later used in his lawsuit in Georgia. But we learned from 2020, if all you're doing is waiting until after the election to file soup, the courts are reluctant to do anything about it. I think that's wrong, but they don't want to take the responsibility. It's like a hot potato. They don't want to touch
Josh Findley (09:08):
It. That's right.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:09):
And you have to be able to address it early if you can address it early, you don't have to worry about the litigation on the backend. You're solving the problem ahead of time or attempting to.
Josh Findley (09:19):
That's exactly right. And that's one thing that our operation focuses on for the 2024 election cycle. We put people on the ground for every race that we could starting in 2023 because the small races have value for us. A lot of places run those elections in the same way, but the scale is smaller. People are less worried about news coverage and things like that. So you can get involved, you can see the process, you can see how machines work, you can see how ballots are counted, and then it also gives you a chance to make changes before the big elections that really count. And we found election administrators, they don't like dealing with confusion. And a lot of people don't remember that elections are run sometimes at the county level, but sometimes even at the township level. And when there's a mess in an election in your town, people know about it and they don't want those things. And so if you go in early and say, this is a logical change that's being done other places, you're not going to get sued for it. Let's see what we can do to improve this process. A lot of administrators are open to doing that and are willing to make changes
Jenny Beth Martin (10:31):
And those changes. It's good that we've had those and it hasn't been that way everywhere, but we have had that in some places and it's really good that we have had that. There are places you guys, were you involved in the suit in Fulton County, Georgia against the election board with Julie Adams who's now part of the election board?
Josh Findley (10:57):
That's exactly right. We did a lot of research that led to that suit, A FPI was the one that actually filed it, but we did a lot of research that and worked with Julie extensively on the information that led to the filing of that suit.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:10):
And that's the kind of thing that needs to happen. We don't want, I think that you and I both agree, we would prefer for the problems to be solved without having to file suit. And sometimes maybe you have to file suit because the law is unclear and you've got to get clarity and someone has to rule and judge how it's supposed to be done. But being able to do that research, lay the groundwork, and then work to get the change and make the change happen, it's extremely important and it helps restore that confidence in the election, which we have to have that confidence.
Josh Findley (11:51):
That's right. And in cases like that, so let me be clear, there are still administrators out there that don't want to cooperate and that are trying to weaponize the election process to the benefit of one party. I mean, in Georgia itself, we saw a whole effort by the left to take away the right of local election officials to ask questions about their election, this certification issue. The left deployed lawyers, they were talking to county attorneys, they were providing legal advice that we think just blatantly violates election law in Georgia in an effort to, like I said, weaponize the election process to the advantage of one party.
Jenny Beth Martin (12:30):
And so neither one of us are looking at this with rose colored glasses and saying all the problems are solved. That's right. There's still a lot of work to do, and quite frankly, there will always be a lot of work to do. The elections at the end of the day are administered by human beings and people, and we have those checks and balances in place, or the guardrails, which however you want to think of it, the poll watchers and the public observers and the people who are working the polls, they're all people as well, but they help add checks and balances to the system. And there is a role for that. And there's always going to be a role for that. And as people come and people go in those positions, I think the problems will ebb and flow naturally that is going to happen. But I think what we wound up having was that the ebb and flow became so severe that we weren't engaged enough. And you were working on it in 2019. My organization was trying to provide poll watchers in 2020,
Josh Findley (13:35):
And
Jenny Beth Martin (13:36):
We had people at the top who just were kind of tone deaf to what we were doing that is not happening anymore and they're paying attention. What are the kind of issues that you think we're going to have to do going forward as we look to the future? Because election integrity is always going to require us to be involved.
Josh Findley (13:58):
Exactly right. So I think right now, without seeing the left's playbook, right, it always takes a while for them to throw it out there for every election cycle. I would say there's going to be three things that we need to pay attention to going forward. The first voter id, I think that's still going to be an issue that hasn't been resolved, and that is something that we need to continue to pursue. I think holding election administrators accountable for either one running bad elections or blatantly violating the law. I mean, we saw in Bucks County in the Senate race following this last cycle, election administrators just blatantly saying they were going to count ballots that courts had said they couldn't count. And there's really no remedy for election administrators who do that sort of thing. And we have to stop that. And so I think if we can look at those two things, those are going to be two things that we really focus on. And then kind of the issues that we saw this past election cycle, non-citizen voting, I think there's going to be things that need to get tightened up with laws about that. So like I said, without seeing the left's playbook, I think we're going to be fighting with a lot of the same fights. I'm just hoping we have better tools this time around.
Jenny Beth Martin (15:13):
And how would we have better tools? Is it going to be because of Trump being in the White House and the Republican control of Congress, or is it going to be at the state level and the local level, or is it a combination of all of that?
Josh Findley (15:30):
So it's definitely going to be a combination, right? Most election laws are state laws, and so you have to have the cooperation of officials in states. I think the things that we were just talking about though, really touch on federal issues, the one that I'm really interested in right now is that issue about the election officials and the Department of Justice and what are they going to do to investigate these elections. I mean, we whole, we just had a campaign four years under a different administration where the Department of Justice investigated conservatives for participating in election integrity for signing up to be those poll workers and poll watchers. All we heard about was how these poll workers and poll watchers were going to disrupt elections and cause violence to election officials. And for the most part, I mean there were a few super minor cases, but for the most part that didn't play out.
Josh Findley (16:20):
And the left was just using the Department of Justice to investigate citizens who wanted to find out. I'm hoping that this time around the Department of Justice takes a different attitude and they ask questions about these election administrators who say, we are going to count these ballots. Even courts said, courts told us not to. I think even just the investigative powers of the Department of Justice this time around can be very different. And then also to your point about Congress, we have a small window, I think the first couple of years here of this administration to pass a good election integrity bill. I know there's some things you've talked about with the NVRA, but things need to be fixed at the federal level. We certainly don't want a sweeping election integrity bill, but there are already federal bills out there. And if we can fix those federal laws in the first couple of years of this congress, I think it'll go a long way.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:10):
When you talked about voter id, do you think that needs to happen at the national level or at the state and local level?
Josh Findley (17:16):
Both. Actually. I think there's parts of the NBRA that need to be fixed when it comes to requiring voter ID through the registration process. That absolutely needs to be tightened up. But then there are states that really need to fix their voter ID laws. I mean, registering with student IDs for example, is something that just seems crazy to me. And so we need better documentation that way as well.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:41):
Yeah, I think that we really do. And some of the IDs that states allow as voter id when I've read the list, one place I read said that it would allow homeowner association IDs, and I'm like, how can you do that? That's right. That's not even the issue by the state. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That just seems like a really easy way to fake IDs. One of the things that I have noticed from the grassroots around the country that they've had the most difficult time getting addressed is cleaning the voter rolls. They will find discrepancies in the voter rolls and then they go to challenge the voter, the individual voters, because they're not registered where they currently live. Usually that is the situation. And when you go to vote, you have to be registered where you live because you're electing someone who represents you and represents that area.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:42):
And if you're maybe for the Senate, a statewide election, it isn't such a big deal as long as you're in the state, it doesn't really matter. But if it's like a local school board election or county commission race, you're determining who represents this little tiny area of land. And if you don't even live in it, that's just not right to the people who do live there. So it's not that we don't want you to be able to vote, we just want you to be able to vote where you're voting for the people who actually represent you and not voting for people who are going to represent someone else. So they run into these issues. And I have noticed that I think that there is one thing that can be done with the National Voter Registration Act. So when you go to get your driver's license, you walk into your local DMV and you get your driver's license and you're asked to register to vote, and you're able to get your license and register to vote in the exact same office.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:41):
And then if you move, you go to the DMV and you get a new driver's license for where you are now living, and they also ask you if you want to register to vote. And so you register to vote there. I think that two things should happen. One, even if it's within a state, they should automatically clean where you previously were so that you don't have to go back to your old county and fill out paperwork to do that. But especially if you move out of the state into another state, I think this confuses people. They leave a state, they go to the DMV, they get their driver's license, they say they want to register to vote in the new state. The new state cancels sends an old state notification to cancel the driver's license. So their first driver's license in state A, if they're in Virginia, that's gone now and they have a license in New Mexico or wherever and they register to vote in New Mexico, but it does not cancel voter registration. And they think it is, it cancels the driver's license. So automatically you're just thinking, well, it would make sense to cancel the voter registration, but it doesn't.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:59):
And I think that is something that if we're doing it with driver's license, which may be done through an interstate compact rather than loss, I'm not exactly sure, but you're registering to vote in the same office. It seems like you could say if they're moving states, you have to cancel the old states voter registration.
Josh Findley (21:19):
That's exactly right. I mean, that's a change that absolutely needs to happen.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:22):
It seems like common sense. And I know that the people who have been banging their heads against the wall crunching all this data on voter rolls, I think they would love that change because at least that one change would help. It's not going to solve all the problems, but it would solve a lot of problems, especially when you're leaving a state.
Josh Findley (21:45):
It absolutely would. And to your point about the voter rolls, there needs to be huge efforts to clean the rules, but also data sharing among states.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:54):
To
Josh Findley (21:54):
Your point with that, I mean it's just absurd that we have this information, but we can't get one state to talk to another so that we can make these changes
Jenny Beth Martin (22:03):
And it is possible to use that data and clean it up, but they're not doing it. They have no desire to, they don't want to clean the voter rolls. If you have more people who you can send ballots to more people names who you can send ballots to, it makes it easier to stuff the ballot box in the end, which is not how it should be done.
Josh Findley (22:28):
No, absolutely not.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:31):
What other changes do you think need to be made? You mentioned three, do you think any others?
Josh Findley (22:38):
I think there's a lot of changes with the election process at the state level, for example, with how ballots are counted, right? We saw in California, I mean I don't know how many days they were counting ballots afterwards, but weeks. Weeks. So I was working with the Congressional Observer program for Congress and we had people that didn't get home for Thanksgiving after the race because they were still counting ballots in California. I'm hoping that there's going to be some progress on that. I've heard that even some democrat secretaries of state are interested in making changes because this so undermines the election process. But if we are still counting ballots weeks after the election, I think that's an absolute problem.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:22):
Well, and it's frustrating when you're trying to figure out what the balance of congress is and you've got, it's a slim margin and you have these seats outstanding, but it's not fair for local races either because they're often decided by just a handful of votes. So all those, the longer it takes, they can't even get started with. They don't even know, do I give notice to my old job? I've got a new job now. Or That's right. They don't even know. It's just wrong. It needs to be a clear and decisive end. It blows my mind.
Josh Findley (23:58):
It does. It's crazy. It's crazy.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:00):
And I think even if you're a Democrat, you would want that
Josh Findley (24:03):
Absolutely.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:05):
Maybe if you're trying to rig the system, you wouldn't want it, but I think normal everyday Americans, regardless of party would want that.
Josh Findley (24:13):
That's right. That's exactly right.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:16):
That one, just that one's awful. What are things that people can do locally to get involved?
Josh Findley (24:23):
Well, so I think the first thing is go down to your local elections office, find out how your elections run and sign up to be a part of it. If you can be an election worker, if you've got that time commitment and start now, because as the big elections come up in 26, for example, a lot of times they give the best jobs based on seniority. And if you sign up now and get some experience working the off year elections in 2025, they'll put you doing something great for 2026
Jenny Beth Martin (24:54):
Instead of being a parking attendant.
Josh Findley (24:56):
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So I think that's the first thing if you've got time. Yeah. So the second thing I would say is get involved and be a poll watcher. Whatever you can do to get involved and be part of the elections, again, they're going to be off your elections. They are going to need poll watchers for these, and so get involved. Another thing is for bigger jurisdictions, election board meetings are streamed over the internet. Watch those, find out the issues that your election board is talking about. You can learn so much by listening to what they're saying and you can put it on the background of your lunch hour and become educated pretty quickly. And so I think those are a couple of things that people can do right away to get involved.
Jenny Beth Martin (25:40):
And then our friend Cleta has the Election Integrity network and there are a lot of local election integrity groups that people can plug into so that they can work on those issues with other people who have been working on them now for four and five years.
Josh Findley (25:55):
Well, absolutely, and that's so important. If you have time and the inclination to get involved at that level, join your local election integrity group. The work that these groups do, it's just absolutely incredible. I mean, you look at their successes getting Zuck bucks banned in so many states. I mean, that was a grassroots led effort getting election bills passed in Georgia like you worked so hard to do and your team. Those are real changes that were led by the grassroots ballot. Initiatives are another thing that have been successful in places just led by the grassroots in every certainly battleground state, but in most states, there's an election integrity organization to join, get involved with that organization. You can make real change that way.
Jenny Beth Martin (26:43):
It's very, very good advice. And then is there anything else you think people should be considering related to election integrity?
Josh Findley (26:53):
I think for your average citizen, the big thing is get involved. And like I said earlier, whether it's through one of these organizations or through your party, your local party has the obligation to place those poll watchers and a lot of times poll workers, whatever your party of choice is, get involved and watch that way. It's super important. And then just pressure your legislators, right? They are going to see election integrity bills coming across, whether it's at the state level or the congressional level. Get involved, know what those bills are and make sure that they're taking the right votes on those. One thing that's amazing to me sometimes is our legislators get in under a system, and so they are reluctant to make changes to that system, even though those changes are for the better. Get involved and let them know why those changes are better.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:48):
Yeah, that's very, very good point. And one thing you just said, the party of your choice, we have both found oftentimes the more liberal party does not agree with us on a lot of things, but at the local level, there are times when both people who are involved in the Republican Party and the Democrat Party and in Georgia, the Constitution party very active on election integrity, they can find common ground on some of the things that need to be done to streamline the process and work together on the places where they can find common ground. So even when we have differences of political opinion, we don't always have differences when it comes to this process.
Josh Findley (28:34):
Well, it's because so many fixes for election integrity are common sense.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:39):
People
Josh Findley (28:39):
Would be shocked to know you've seen the polling. How many of the issues that we find so important under election integrity are 80% issues across the spectrum. People care about these issues and they think they're right. And so you're exactly right. This is one place where both sides agree to common sense reform.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:56):
Well, very good. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it and I'm glad that people understand election integrity is not going away. We're going to continue working on it. We didn't just do this for 2024 and now we're washing our hands and walking away. We still have to keep involved on this, and it's going to require eternal vigilance.
Josh Findley (29:17):
That's right. All the credit in the world to Donald Trump for making this election too big to rig. But I'm worried that some people will think that this issue is over and it's not because the left is going to come back hard and try to weaponize the process.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:31):
Thank you so much, and we'll do everything we can to prevent that from happening.
Josh Findley (29:35):
Thank you, Jenny Beth.
Narrator (29:36):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:55):
If you light this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much.