In this episode, Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation joins Jenny Beth to expose how the Left is using legal warfare to undermine election integrity. From voter ID laws to bloated voter rolls and non-citizen voting, Hans breaks down the most pressing threats to fair elections—and what must be done to stop them. Don't miss this crucial conversation about securing America's elections and protecting your vote.
In this episode, Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky of The Heritage Foundation joins Jenny Beth to expose how the Left is using legal warfare to undermine election integrity. From voter ID laws to bloated voter rolls and non-citizen voting, Hans breaks down the most pressing threats to fair elections—and what must be done to stop them. Don't miss this crucial conversation about securing America's elections and protecting your vote.
Twitter/X: @HvonSpakovsky | @Heritage | @jennybethm | @tppatriots
Website: https://www.heritage.org/staff/hans-von-spakovsky
https://www.dailysignal.com/author/hansvonspakovsky/
Hans Von Spakovsky (00:00):
One of the worst problems we have in the country are bad voter registration lists, lists that are still filled with people who have died, people who've moved to other states, people who are not US citizens on the voter rolls,
Narrator (00:17):
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's 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 we're joined by Hans von Bakowski, who is a longtime friend of mine. He is also the senior legal fellow or a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the chairman of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Hans, I'm so glad to have you with me today.
Hans Von Spakovsky (01:05):
Well, it's really nice to talk to you again, Jenny.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:07):
We have been working on election issues the whole time. We've known each other. We have, and we've been been on election integrity issues specifically since, well, I've been working on it with you since the year 2000 when we both were deployed down to Florida for the recount in Bush v Gore.
Hans Von Spakovsky (01:23):
Yeah, Jerry Beth. That's something I still tell my kids about the fact that I went down there to help watch them do the recount and the Al Gore George Bush election.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:33):
Yeah, it was pretty crazy. I had my go bagg packed and finally got that call from BJ Van Gundy, I think at like three o'clock in the morning. You need to be ready. You need to leave now. We need to be at an airport at five o'clock in the morning or something crazy like that.
Hans Von Spakovsky (01:49):
No, that's right. And I actually at home have one of the punch card voting machines that caused such a huge controversy in Florida in which of course no one uses in the country anymore. One of these days I may give it to the Smithsonian.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:03):
Wow. You should. The Smithsonian should have that, and we definitely should not be using those. Think there are some other machines we probably shouldn't be using that we are using right now, but that's not what we're here to talk about today. Explain to the audience what your experience is with election integrity and explain what your credentials are.
Hans Von Spakovsky (02:26):
I've served on two county election boards, one in Georgia, one in Virginia. In both times it was the largest county in the state, and it was the county election Board in charge of not only processing everyone getting registered to vote, but running the polls on election day. I also spent several years at the US Justice Department in the Civil Rights Division where I was responsible for enforcement of our federal voting rights laws. I then went over to the Federal Election Commission for two years, federal Commission, enforce our laws on the financing of federal campaigns, both the presidential campaign and congressional campaigns. And then I went over to the Heritage Foundation where I am actually the manager of our election law reform initiative. And that's a long time project we've been working on to convince states to improve the integrity and security of their election process.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:27):
Well, you just know so much about elections and you really, when you're talking about elections, you're not just talking in theory because you actually have done it. You were on the election board in Fulton County, Georgia, and you understand the process inside and out. And not only that, you also understand it from the viewpoint of an activist because you used to be the County Party chairman for the Republican Party in Fulton County, Georgia as well.
Hans Von Spakovsky (03:55):
No, that's right, and I have found that a lot of, there's a lot of academic professors these days who are constantly saying, well, we ought to be doing this and we ought to be doing that. And most of them have absolutely no experience in the practical problems of, for example, running an entire county of polling places on election day.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:18):
And the theory theory sounds good in a very sterile classroom environment, but what happens on the ground in election day is very far from a sterile environment.
Hans Von Spakovsky (04:29):
No, it's very true, and that has also led to huge amounts of, we talk about the lawfare used against President Trump, but there's been a huge amount of lawfare in the election reform area also because every time states have tried to improve things, for example, most basically putting in a voter ID law, which almost all voters think is a good idea, they face huge fights in the court from all these groups on the left side of the political aisle, unfortunately, who are opponents of basic reforms like voter id.
Jenny Beth Martin (05:07):
And it's mind boggling
Hans Von Spakovsky (05:08):
Because
Jenny Beth Martin (05:08):
Most people agree that we should have voter id. They want their vote to count and not be canceled out by an illegal or improper vote, and they understand they can get an id. It's not impossible to get an ID in America.
Hans Von Spakovsky (05:22):
Yeah, it's a really interesting issue because Americans are pretty deeply divided, a lot of issues, but when it comes to, for example, having a show photo ID when you vote, Americans overwhelmingly agree. I mean, the last poll I saw on this was over 80% of Americans, and it's a majority of it don't matter whether people, republicans, democrats or doesn't matter their race or ethnic background, a majority of all voters say, well, that's just common sense,
Jenny Beth Martin (05:55):
And it is even proving citizenship to register to vote. Americans agree on this as well. They want only Americans deciding the outcome of American elections.
Hans Von Spakovsky (06:07):
Yeah, it's true, but the left is just uniformly against this. I was nominated by George Bush to be a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, and there was a particular senator, democratic senator who put a hold of my nomination, a guy named Barack Obama, and why I
Jenny Beth Martin (06:27):
May have heard of him,
Hans Von Spakovsky (06:28):
He wrote an op-ed going after me because I had proposed that voters should have to show an ID to vote.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:37):
Wow. And then it explains a lot, doesn't
Hans Von Spakovsky (06:41):
It? Does.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:42):
He was a senator, became the president, and that is what we've been up against when it comes to the kind of common sense reform that we want with election laws. So looking at the landscape of election integrity, what do you think are the most pressing problems that need to be solved, and what do you think that the Trump administration can do versus what should be left to states to do?
Hans Von Spakovsky (07:09):
Look, under the constitution, states have the primary responsibility to run elections, and that's the way it's been. And the problem with folks who say, well, the federal government ought to come in and nationalize this and take it over and run it is for everything good that Congress could do, they could do something bad. And the best example of that was back when Nancy Pelosi was still in control of the house, they came up with this huge bill, 800 pages that would've nationalized the election process, taken it away from the states, and one of the most priority things in that bill was to void out all voter ID laws that shows the problem. What the federal government ought to be doing is helping in assisting the states to do a good job. For example, one of the worst problems we have in the country are bad voter registration lists, lists that are still filled with people who have died, people who've moved to other states, people who are not US citizens on the voter roll, and that's an area where the federal government can assist the states.
Hans Von Spakovsky (08:17):
I mean, for example, for years, the Department of Homeland Security has put up all these bureaucratic obstacles to make it difficult for states to have any access to what they call the SAVE database. This is a database of aliens who are in the us, those who are here legally, and those who are here illegally, but at some point were caught and processed and a record was created. Well, state election officials ought to be able to access that so they can verify the citizenship status of people who are registered to vote. That's one of the things the federal government ought to immediately help them. Another one is the Social Security Administration has a master death index. They try to keep track of people who die all over the country. They should be giving access without any charge to state election officials so they can find people who perhaps were registered to vote in Georgia but died in California because Georgia's not going to find out about that unless they do it. That's the kind of assistance that can be given by the federal government to help the states rather than taking over administration of elections. Anybody who thinks that the federal government would do a good job if they were running our polling places, come on, that's not going to, no, that would not happen.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:46):
Well, I think we're seeing we doge that there are all sorts of problems in the federal government with it trained to run just about anything.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:52):
There
Jenny Beth Martin (09:52):
Are all sorts of errors. One of the things you just mentioned about the voter databases and keeping those up to date,
Jenny Beth Martin (10:05):
I think there should be some way that, and maybe you disagree with this and it's fine if you do, you can explain why that through the motor voter law, when you go to get your driver's license, you can register to vote and there is a federal law that allows for that. I think that that law should be updated so that if you're going to get your driver's license and you're changing your address, it should automatically change the address of your voter registration. And if you move out of a state, it should automatically cancel your old registration just like it cancels your old license.
Hans Von Spakovsky (10:44):
Oh, I agree. In fact, I wrote a heritage paper about this last year that said exactly that, and a lot of people don't realize it, but most of the states are a member of a National Association of State Driver's License Department, and they actually have a computer network that does exactly what you're talking about for driver's licenses. If you go and get your driver's license in one of the states that is a member of this network, they will automatically notify the state where you used to have your driver's license and the states are not using that system to also get current voter registration information and they should,
Jenny Beth Martin (11:36):
And it is crazy that they're not doing this. It becomes onerous on the citizen and it puts the citizen in a situation where they think they've taken care of it and they don't realize that they haven't
Jenny Beth Martin (11:51):
Because
Jenny Beth Martin (11:52):
You go to the place where you are registering to vote and you're getting your driver's license and that same place cancels out your old license, they'll clip it or tear it up or do whatever they do. So the old one is canceled and they give you a new one and at the same time they're registering you to vote. And it would make common, it makes logical sense that the citizen thinks, okay, they canceled my driver's license or going to cancel my voter registration, but instead to change your voter registration, you've got to reach out to your old election office, get some sort of paperwork, fill it out oftentimes with your driver's license number that now has been shredded and you may not even know what the number is. It doesn't make sense. It makes no sense at all.
Hans Von Spakovsky (12:40):
No, but you and I both know that's one of the problems is often things that are just common senses aren't getting done. I mean, I'll give you another example of something that would be a great help and not just in the voting area, but for other issues too. And that is every state in the country ought to change their driver's license so that it says prominently on the front of the driver's license, whether you are a US citizen or not. If you are in every state, if you're in the US legally as an alien, you can get a driver's license. Unfortunately, there's about a dozen and a half states that also provide a license to aliens are here illegally. It ought to say on the license whether you're a citizen. Not only would that help in the voter registration area, but it would also help, for example, states pay out a lot in public assistance welfare. Well, the requirements of federal welfare laws are that in order to get welfare benefits, you have to be a citizen. Well, if that kind of information was on your driver's license, that would make it easier for states to ensure that they are not paying out monies that they shouldn't be.
Jenny Beth Martin (13:58):
So have you in your work, either with public Interest Legal Foundation or the Heritage Foundation been working with the new administration on ways that they can improve the election system?
Hans Von Spakovsky (14:10):
Well, not directly, but I've been writing about things that I think they ought to be doing, and for example, I've recommended them that they immediately drop and throw out of court all of the meritless lawsuits that the prior administration filed against election reform. George is a good example of that. Remember when Georgia passed its big reform bill back in 2021, the one that so angered Joe Biden that he went down and gave a speech called a Jim Crow 2.0, which of course was not true. The states had record registration to turnout with these reforms. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the claimant. It was discriminatory, which it isn't. That case needs to be dismissed. There are other cases like that the administration has been acting. One of the other just bizarre, bizarre lawsuits that the Biden administration filed is Jerry Beth. You'll recall that prior to the last November's election, Virginia announced that it had been checking its statewide voter registration list against its DMV list, and they had found over 6,000 aliens. Now, these are people here legally, but 6,000 aliens who had a driver's license in Virginia and were also registered to vote. So they said, we're taking 'em off the roll. The Justice Department under Merrick Garland sued Virginia and said, oh, you can't do that. You can't take these aliens off the roll. The Justice Department under Pam Bonnie has just thrown out that lawsuit.
Jenny Beth Martin (15:58):
Well, and how could they even say that was violating a civil right? There
Hans Von Spakovsky (16:05):
Was, well, they were claiming it violated the National Voter Registration Act because it was done within 90 days of the election, but that was a complete misinterpretation of the law.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:18):
What other suits should be thrown up?
Hans Von Spakovsky (16:23):
There have been redistricting cases that I think have where they've taken the wrong position, but the other thing they need to do is they need to file lawsuits. And the best example of that I would say is the state of California. One of the things that the National Voter Registration Act, that's what everybody calls Motor Voter
Hans Von Spakovsky (16:45):
And the Help America Vote Act. That was passed in 2002 after our experiences in Florida. Both of those laws require states to maintain accurate voter rolls. California is probably the worst state in the country in terms of not doing the things they ought to be doing keep their voter rolls current. And the Justice Department has never gone after them to enforce it. The Obama administration refused to do it. The Biden administration didn't do it, and they need to file a lawsuit against California under the National Voter Registration Act, over the refusal of the state to clean up its voter rolls. You may recall how bad is it? Remember, judicial Watch filed suit against just Los Angeles a couple of years ago, and in order to settle it, Los Angeles finally agreed to take I think over a million and a half individuals off the voter rolls who were no longer eligible. They were just leaving them on there.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:54):
A million and a half,
Hans Von Spakovsky (17:56):
A million and a half, right.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:57):
In Virginia, when you're talking about 6,000, I was thinking that's enough to sway a really close election, a million and a half. I'm not saying that they are all voting, but it does wind up. That's just insane.
Hans Von Spakovsky (18:11):
It creates the risk that someone will use that registration address to vote, and we've seen that happen.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:20):
And what are the other things you think the Trump administration should be working on?
Hans Von Spakovsky (18:24):
Well, and to give you two other basic ones which are kind of interesting, and unfortunately no prior administration has done this. There are 93 US attorneys across the country, right in 93 judicial districts. Georgia, for example, I think has what, three? Three districts. Anyway, when US attorney's offices engage in criminal prosecution, where do you think they get their list of potential jury members from state election officials? And one thing they're not doing is when they call people for jury duty in these federal court cases, if somebody says, oh, I'm actually not a US citizen, they're excused from jury duty.
Hans Von Spakovsky (19:15):
What the US attorneys are not doing is then going back to the election officials where they got that list and saying, you know that person whose name you sent us, who's registered to vote they're not a US citizen, that every single US attorney in all 93 of these districts ought to be sending that kind of information back to election officials so that they can be taken off the list. And then the other thing that US attorney should do is then say to the election of state election officials, send me that person's file and investigate it because it is a felony under federal law for an alien to register and or vote in this country. And none of those cases are being investigated by any US Attorney's office anywhere in the country. The other thing that they ought to be doing that has never been done is if you look at the application that people fill out when they want to become a citizen, part nine of that form, it says, have you ever registered or voted in any US election? And if someone answers yes, what does the Department of Homeland Security do about it these days? They don't do anything about it. Every one of those files ought to be sent by the Department of Homeland Security over to where the Department of Justice, so they can investigate that alien and potentially prosecute them for illegally registering or voting in US elections.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:51):
Why would they fill out that form if they know that there could be consequences to it?
Hans Von Spakovsky (20:58):
Because at the moment, there are no consequences. Not only has DHS not been doing anything about it, but DHS hasn't been using that to deny citizenship and it's riskier to lie on that form because if you get caught lying, then they might actually do something about that.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:19):
I think that they could wind up being registered without even realizing that they were registered or knowing because especially in the last four years, the way that the Biden administration had a whole of government approach to voter registration,
Jenny Beth Martin (21:37):
You
Jenny Beth Martin (21:37):
Could go to the hospital, be in the middle of some emergency in the emergency room in the hospital and be given a stack of papers or forms online, and you're just filling it out, filling it out because you're not completely paying attention at that point. You're dealing with an actual medical emergency. And part of the paperwork there in many hospitals around the country was actually a voter registration form.
Hans Von Spakovsky (22:00):
Now, in fact, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which does a lot of work in obtaining voter registration records, has found many situations like that where in fact, the alien often at DMV offices when they would get to the question on the voter registration form that says, are you a US citizen? They would answer no. And election officials would register them anyway. Those are situations where it's not the alien's fault that it happened, and that's not a situation that I think should be prosecuted. But when folks lie and claim they're a US citizen, whether or not those are the cases that do need to get prosecuted
Jenny Beth Martin (22:45):
And that makes sense, and then they need to be cleaned up. If they're non-citizens, we need to go through and say, did they fill out that form and say they're a non-citizen? Are they still a non-citizen? If they are, they need to be removed from the roles mean.
Hans Von Spakovsky (23:02):
Those are just basic things need to be done. Now look, one other thing that needs to happen is to make this whole situation cleaner is Congress is working on potentially trying to pass a new bill called the SAVE Act. And this is a law that would actually require states to get proof of citizenship when people register to vote. And that is something that does need to get done,
Jenny Beth Martin (23:30):
And I've been working very heavily on that and want to see it get all the way passed and pass through Congress and signed into law.
Hans Von Spakovsky (23:37):
And we should mention in the last Congress, it did make it through the house and then got filibustered by Democrats in the Senate.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:47):
We just have to attach it to something that Democrats want so that Democrats will vote for it.
Hans Von Spakovsky (23:51):
Right? But think about that Jenny Beth, that you have one political party who is against anything that would prevent people who aren't US citizens from vote registering, voting or getting caught. It's just astonishing to me. And what's interesting to me about that is that does not match their
Jenny Beth Martin (24:15):
Constituency, not even a little bit. A little bit. The majority, the super majority, regardless of political party want to ensure that it's only citizens
Hans Von Spakovsky (24:27):
Voting. That's a clear example where the leadership of one particular political party is not reflecting what their voters and their constitu constituency wants them to do.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:38):
Yeah. They're just playing political games at that point for pure raw political power. It's completely wrong. I want to see that passed. I want to see that passed very badly. I also think haven't seen legislation yet to clean up the motor voter law with the driver's license the way we were talking about. I really need to go back and talk to some congressmen and senators and see if they can get their staff to write a bill to do that. Sort of like what just happened with the Save act in the last Congress. And what I find interesting, Hans, with the things that you're talking about right now, that the Trump administration can do most of it, the Save act is a different story, but most of it doesn't even require congressional action. It is within the executive branch to be able to do that already.
Hans Von Spakovsky (25:39):
No, that is true. And the reason for that is that, I mean, for example, what I was talking about with the requirement in the National Voter Registration Act that requires states to maintain clean voter rolls that NVRA, that was the first bill signed by Bill Clinton for the eight years of the Clinton administration. The Justice Department refused to enforce that provision. When George Bush came in after beating Al Gore, I actually went to work at the Justice Department and we filed the first cases ever to enforce that provision. We actually filed two cases, one against Indiana, one against Missouri, which at the time one state was a Republican state, one state was a Democratic state. When the Obama administration came in, the Missouri case was still going on. What do you think was the first thing that the Obama administration did when they got control of the Justice Department?
Jenny Beth Martin (26:43):
They dropped those cases. They
Hans Von Spakovsky (26:44):
Dropped the case. They dropped the case against the state that we were suing to try to make sure they had accurate voter rolls.
Jenny Beth Martin (26:51):
When was the bill passed initially? What year was it signed into law?
Hans Von Spakovsky (26:56):
The NVRA? Yeah, 92.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:00):
So it was passed into law by a Democrats and a Democrat Congress and signed by a Democrat president. It's not like this was a Republican bill that the Justice Department was working against. They were working against what their own party just did in Congress,
Hans Von Spakovsky (27:20):
Right? But they just, the part about having clean voter rolls successive Democratic administrations did not want to enforce that provision, which just is that ought to upset Americans. I don't care which political party affiliated with and
Jenny Beth Martin (27:36):
The rules are a mess. And when citizens try to go before their local vote or election board to get them updated, a lot of times they run into a lot of resistance to be able to do that. And I don't want you to be able to just willy-nilly remove people from the roles. But if you are coming in and saying, this person no longer lives at this address, and the people who live at this address have signed an affidavit saying that person does not live here, at what point do you remove them? Why do you continue to allow that to stand? It makes no logical sense.
Hans Von Spakovsky (28:13):
No, it doesn't. Although I have to tell you on this issue, opponents of election reforms are constantly raising these claims against, oh my gosh. If you try to clean up your roles, you're going to purge, that's the word like they used. You're going to purge people and going to take away their ability to vote. That is an absolute lie. And you know why? Because part of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 was a requirement putting in what they call provisional ballot. So even if a local election official makes a mistake, they take somebody off the rolls because they believe that registered voter moved to a different state. That person is not going to be kept from voting if they show up at their polling place and the election official says, you're not on the list. If the voter says, Hey, I'm eligible. I registered to vote, they have to be handed a provisional ballot. Under federal law, election officials have to investigate the circumstances, and if they made a mistake, the vote has to be counted. So all these claims that cleaning up voter rolls will lead to large numbers of people being denied the ability to vote. That's an absolute lie.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:29):
It is a lie, but the lie sometimes spreads faster than the truth and the lie is scary. So people don't want to be afraid. The scary thing will trump the things that make sense and are calm and reassuring every single time. One of the things that they're doing right now, they're talking about how if the Save Act passes and women won't be able to prove that they are citizens somehow, do they think that we're, what do they think? We don't know how to maintain our name. We have to prove our name to get your new driver's license after you're married or after your divorce, you have to have certain paperwork for that, including your birth certificate and your marriage certificate, possibly your divorce certificate. And then the same goes for the Social Security Administration with changing your name. The same goes with the passport office and you think we can do all of those, but somehow when it comes to registering to vote, we lost our brain cells.
Hans Von Spakovsky (30:34):
Well, lemme tell you. Remember 20 years ago when Georgia passed one of the first photo ID laws in the country requiring you to show an ID when you vote, they used that exact same claim that claim was used not just in Georgia, but in other states where they were putting ID requirements and saying, oh, married women wouldn't be able to meet this requirement. It was of course completely untrue and not a problem. Plus, I should mention that the SAVE Act actually has a provision in it. It has a list of things you can use to prove your citizenship, but then it has a special provision that says that every state has to set up a special process and procedure so that if there is a discrepancy basically between your current name and whatever you use to prove your citizenship, you can present that documentation. So that takes care of the problem.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:34):
It does. It solves the problem right there for it. They're using scare tactics to try to galvanize people to take action, and they're lies just like what you were describing. It's just lies. And honestly, it's
Hans Von Spakovsky (31:53):
A insult thing, particularly for immigrants. Particularly for immigrants because listen, I can say this. I'm first generation American, okay? My mother was German, my father was Russian. They became US citizens. And do you know what the most precious document was that they held? And they had a very special place in our house. It was their naturalization documents. They would've had no problems whatsoever proving their citizenship in order to be able to vote. And you talk to any,
Jenny Beth Martin (32:22):
That's right.
Hans Von Spakovsky (32:22):
Any legal immigrant of this country who's been naturalized, every single one of them will immediately have the documents necessary to do that.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:32):
And almost everyone has a birth certificate, and if you don't, you can go get one. It isn't hard to get them. You can go to, I think there's a singular website where you can go at this point.
Hans Von Spakovsky (32:45):
There is an internet web service now. I used it.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:48):
I used it just a couple of years ago for my kids. So you can do that. You don't have to go back to your original county and go through the board of registrars or whatever it may be called to handle figuring that out any longer. There's a service that does it for a pretty low fee. Some of what they see, it's absolutely insulting.
Hans Von Spakovsky (33:13):
Yeah, no, it is. But that is an issue. It's something that's got to be fixed eventually. I mean, the Save Act is most important, but at some point it's also important for Congress to try to fix the apportionment problem, which is another issue After every census, every state is told how many members of the US House they get, and unfortunately we now have such a huge number of people who are not citizens in this country, both legal and illegal. They're included in that formula. So what that means is that states, some states that don't have large alien populations get cheated out of representation in the US House and states like California, California is the largest number of aliens of any state in the country. They probably would lose four or five congressional seats if apportionment was based on citizen population, which is what it ought to be.
Jenny Beth Martin (34:16):
And can you back up why it should be that way? How is it constitutional to say that? Because some people would say, oh no, it's not constitutional
Hans Von Spakovsky (34:24):
Because individuals who are not US citizens have no right to participate in our political process. They can't run for office, they're not allowed to vote. In fact, it's a felony if they run for vote. So why should they be able to distort political representation by being included in apportionment?
Jenny Beth Martin (34:48):
I think they should not. So Hans, what are the things that you think that people should do individually to help make a difference when it comes to election integrity?
Hans Von Spakovsky (35:00):
Two things. First of all, as we talked about at the beginning, I sat on two different county election boards. Our meetings were all public and members of the public almost never showed up at our meetings. I know it's a little bit of a pain, but if it's once a month, once every two months, members of the public who are interested in election integrity should show up at the meeting of their county election board and be prepared to ask questions, ask questions, try to get answers on what they're doing for basic requirements, like what do they do to make sure that the voter rolls are clean and accurate? The other thing they should do is talk to whoever is their local representative in the state legislature. Take a look and make sure, does your state, for example, have a voter ID law? It doesn't talk to your legislate legislator and say, why aren't we implementing and passing something like that? I would tell folks that if they want to know how their state is doing or what their state's lacking, they can go to the website of the Heritage Foundation where I work heritage.org. We have a thing there called our Election Integrity Scorecard,
Hans Von Spakovsky (36:24):
And we have a complete analysis of every single state, 50 different criteria. You can pull up your state and it'll tell you whether, well, does the state have an ID law? If the state has an ID law, does it only apply to in-person voting or does it also cover absentee ballots? What does your state do to clean up its voter rolls? Do they do the most basic step? Compare the statewide list to your driver's license list to find people who've moved out of state. You can look through that list and figure out what is it your state is not doing, and you can use that to talk to your state legislator and persuade them that they ought to be working.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:05):
Very good. Well, Hans, how can people follow your work and keep up to date with what you're doing?
Hans Von Spakovsky (37:10):
They can go to heritage.org. Even when I write elsewhere and I do that a lot, heritage will republish it, and I also publish a lot at The Daily Signal, which is the electronic newspaper of the Heritage.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:25):
And are you on social media?
Hans Von Spakovsky (37:27):
I am at HV.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:30):
We'll put that. You want to spell it in case people are listening?
Hans Von Spakovsky (37:34):
It's H-V-O-N-S-P-A-K-O-V-S-K-Y. And I don't know why that's so hard. It's a typical name for somebody from Alabama like me.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:44):
It is. It's perfectly normal for Alab Alabamians to have that. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and I really appreciate it. And I think that people have learned a lot. Most especially, there's a lot that the Trump administration can do that we'd like to see it do. I'm sure they're working on it, especially as Pam Bondy really gets her, her feet under her and hits the ground running. She's already hit the ground running, but continues
Hans Von Spakovsky (38:15):
Running. Yeah, we're only a
Jenny Beth Martin (38:15):
Month. Yeah, we're only a month in. It's month in. So that we're going to see a lot of these changes happen, and it's very exciting. We live in such exciting times right now.
Hans Von Spakovsky (38:26):
We certainly do.
Narrator (38:26):
And it's been great to talk.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:29):
Thank you so much, Hans.
Narrator (38:30):
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 (38:50):
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