Washington Wednesday: Election integrity

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 30th of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Washington Wednesday.

We are now just six days from Election Day. Already, though, more than 50 million votes are in. That’s according to data from the University of Florida. About half those votes are in-person early voting; the other half, votes by mail.

With so many ballots in play and the presidential election expected to be close, conversations on election integrity are going on everywhere.

MAST: Today we’ve got stories on issues related to voter registration in the swing states of Arizona and Pennsylvania. But first, an update on resources in WORLD’s election center.

Executive News Editor Lynde Langdon joins us now…good morning, Lynde.

LYNDE LANGDON: Good morning.

MAST: So Lynde, your team has been very busy. Can you bring us up to speed on what is now in the 2024 Election Center?

LANGDON: The Election Center is our online hub for everything related to this election and in all 50 states. We just finished publishing our election guide state by state and our audience can go to wng.org/election2024 and find a map where they can click on their state and see information on everything from election security and voting procedures to the ballot initiatives that are up for a vote in their state and the top competitive races. Those state guides are really designed to help WORLD readers and listeners familiarize themselves with the election and with the biblical worldview issues that are at stake in their state before they go to the polls.

MAST: There's a lot there, but another resource I haven't seen before is this encyclopedia on election integrity. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

LANGDON: Yeah, I'm really excited about this effort. It really came out of feedback that we got from readers and listeners after the 2020 election. They told us that they wanted more information, not just on the "who" of elections, who's running and who's winning, but the "how," and how elections played out. Of course, you know that election security was a major concern after the election of 2020 and so we've identified seven key issues that are related to election integrity, and we've got explainers on each one, and also links to where people can find the latest news on anything that might be going on across the country or in their area with respect to securing the vote. I know that we've talked today about voter registration and rolls and making sure that those are accurate, and that's one of the issues that we cover. But we also look at get out the vote efforts by both parties, along with ballot harvesting. Where is it happening? Where is it legal? Where is it not and even down to how machine voting works and machine tabulation. So again, this is all available at wng.org/election2024, and I'm really excited that hopefully WORLD readers and listeners can use this as a way to help themselves get ready to vote and get ready to watch the results.

MAST: All right, wng.org/election2024, definitely a resource worth bookmarking between now and election night. Lynde Langdon is World's Executive Editor for News. Thank you so much for your time, Lynde.

LANGDON: Thank you.

EICHER: Well now for today’s stories. Up first, voter registration in Arizona. Here’s WORLD Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno.

LEO BRICENO: Is it possible for non-citizens to cast votes in U.S. elections? The question keeps coming up as Election Day approaches, especially among those concerned about the millions of unauthorized migrants who have entered the country in recent years. Those concerns have only been furthered by videos on social media…like this one.

OVERSIGHT PROJECT: “Soy… me vine ahorita entre con el permite de DACA…” [Fade under]

It’s hard to make out from the distorted audio, but two people are standing in a store, talking in Spanish. One says he’s a DACA recipient and asks if he can register to vote. The DACA program protects immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children from deportation and also provides work permits.

Because they’re non-citizens, DACA recipients can’t vote. But they are allowed to drive.

OVERSIGHT PROJECT: “Tienes licencia de manejar en Arizona?”
“Si.”
“Solo eso necesitarías eso y su residencia…”

There a second person says all that’s needed to register to vote is a driver's license. That video has been picked up by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project as one example of a larger problem.

This is exactly the kind of scenario Congressional Republicans have been worried about for much of the past year.

JOHNSON: We now have so many non-citizens in the country that if only one out of a hundred of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes…

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson articulating Republican concerns over the Motor Voter Registration Act of 1993. That law requires drivers’ license applications to double as federal voter registration. But if one application is going to do both, Republicans argue the bar needs to be set high: States should require documented proof of citizenship.

JOHNSON: If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name. That’s it; that's all that’s required.

Requirements for drivers’ licenses are different from state to state—and some states already do require proof of citizenship. Arizona, for instance, requires new drivers to show up to the DMV with a passport, birth certificate, or other documentation of citizenship.

But even that’s not foolproof.

ARIZONA DMV: [BACKGROUND] Thank you for holding. Your level 2 representative will be available shortly.

I called the Arizona DMV to learn a bit more about their process for how they separate out citizens and non-citizens on drivers’ license applications. An employee named Alexa filled me in:

ALEXA: So, they do have to visit the MVD office to apply for a license...

ARIZONA DMV: Once they come in, they will have to fill out their application and we will have them fill in their information and then they have to provide their documentation

That would include documents like passports and permanent residence cards. Alexa confirmed everyone fills out the same driver’s license paperwork, regardless of their citizenship status.

ARIZONA DMV: It’s all together.

The only difference between U.S. Citizens and DACA recipients is what proof of documentation they present. If applicants check the box saying they would like to register to vote, Arizona officials should be able to catch the mistake and keep them off the voter rolls.

But according to some experts who have studied the issue, that’s where things can break down.

SPAKOVSKY: DMV officials resent the fact that the National Voter Registration Act got them into the voter Registration business.

That’s Hans Von Spakovsky. Senior Legal Fellow for the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He says DMV officials tell him they are trained to take care of drivers licenses first and foremost.

SPAKOVSKY: They are not election officials. It is not their decision to make whether someone is eligible to vote… They just forward it on to election officials, the form, and their attitude that I ran into was ‘look, it’s up to election officials to then decide whether the person is registered or not.’

While I was on the phone with Spakovsky, another spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles gave me her own answer to that question. Here’s what the spokesperson, identified as Laura T., sent me:

“The information is sent to the recorder’s office. It would then be up to them to determine voter eligibility. However, if the applicant does not have proper documents it would be up to the recorder's office to determine eligibility.”

I read the quote to Spakovsky. Here’s his reaction.

HANS VON SPAKOVSKY:They’re giving the person the ability to register to vote! So they’re sending to the recorder a registration statement and they’re saying it's up to the recorder to decide. No. What ought to happen is the DMV ought to tell its clerks ‘unless the person getting a drivers’ license presents proof to you they’re a U.S. citizen, you do not offer them the ability to register to vote.’”

The bottom line is that communication errors and structural inefficiencies could be allowing non-citizens to side-step rules that limit ballot access to citizens.

But how many non-citizens purposely—or accidentally—try to register to vote? How many of them evade notice and end up on voter rolls? Of that batch, how many actually end up voting? And are there enough to affect the outcome of an election?

Democrats and critics of these concerns say the cases are very sparse. Here’s Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California earlier this summer when Republicans made non-citizen voting a focus on Capitol Hill. Garcia believes the alarm about non-citizens voting is more prejudicial than it is substantive.

REP. GARCIA: Non-citizens cannot vote in our election, that's the law of the land. I became a citizen in my early 20’s and clearly I began to vote when I was able to. So I think that’s really just bad messaging.

A recent report pulled by the Heritage Foundation found only 24 federal cases of noncitizen voting between 2003 and 2022 with 15 resulting in criminal convictions .

While Republican litigators have said they intend to take a good hard look at who ended up on the voter rolls in 2024—and how they got there—it won’t happen until after the election. There’s also the opposite: some attempts to play it safe and keep voters on the rolls until after the election. Spakovsky expects a number of those cases to eventually reach the Supreme Court sometime next year.

Here’s Spakovsky.

SPAKOVSKY: There’s litigation going on now in Alabama and Virginia where DOJ has sued the states for taking aliens off the voter rolls. Those cases may go all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

MAST: Making sure voter registration rolls have the right voters in the right place and the right time is a year-round struggle for election officials across the country. Just last week in Pennsylvania, county leaders announced they had uncovered a fraud scheme intended to put excess voters on the rolls.

EICHER: WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta has been following the story …

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Ballot canvassing can mean two things. One kind happens when a ballot is cast and election workers “canvass” by opening up ballots and preparing them for tabulation. Another type happens when campaign staff or volunteers walk around and ask people to register to vote. Officials in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania say they’ve stopped a widespread organized fraud effort involving registration canvassing...that second kind.

PARSON: As you've now heard, thanks to the great work of our board of election staff, we have identified the suspected voter registration fraud operation…

The Lancaster County Board of Elections held a news conference on Friday… reporting they stopped an organized fraud attempt to falsely register people to vote. According to the commissioners, election workers noticed several applications with the same handwriting. Other applications included incorrect information. The documents were part of a batch of 2,500 that were dropped off at the office shortly before the registration deadline last Monday. Election workers flagged them, and the district attorney and county detectives began investigating.

ADAMS: Indicators of fraud included inaccuracies with the addresses listed on the applications, false personal identification information, as well as false names.

Heather Adams is Lancaster County’s District Attorney.

ADAMS: …In some cases, applications contained correct personal identification information such as the correct address, correct phone number, date of birth, driver's license number, and social security number, but the individuals listed on the applications informed detectives that they did not request the form. They did not complete the form and verified that the signature on the form was not theirs.

Adams says they currently believe the fraudulent registrations are part of large scale canvassing operations that date back to June…but weren’t filed until recently. She mentions that at least two other Pennsylvania counties received similarly suspicious batches and are also being investigated. She did not comment on who they believe is behind the fraud but said canvassers were paid to collect voter registrations. She also did not say whether the forms signed voters up with any particular political party.

ADAMS: What we are concerned about is the fact that if there’s fraudulent voters, if there are voters on the books that shouldn't be, it increases the chance that we're gonna have, uh, voter fraud.

Activists are permitted to engage in political canvassing by knocking on doors or stopping people in public parking lots. Canvassers can carry applications to vote, stump for their particular candidate, and even file those applications themselves. Both political parties engage in the practice.

However, no canvasser is allowed to be paid for registering people to vote. They also may not intimidate potential voters or fill out the application on behalf of a voter. County commissioner Ray D’Agostino said that while canvassing is allowed, the actions they uncovered are not:

D’AGOSTINO: We don't want to say that you can't trust anybody quite frankly because, you know, voter registration is uh a personal matter and there are a lot of good people trying to help register people and that's, that's great and that's fine and we're happy to help, you know, get those people registered, but this is not right. It's illegal, it's immoral, and we found it and we're going to take care of it.

While it’s normal for elections offices to receive batches of applications from canvassing operations, a huge dump from one organization shortly before the deadline raised red flags in Lancaster County. In this case, officials saw the red flags in time. Here’s Adams again.

ADAMS: Thankfully we stopped part one. Right. That was getting a voter on the books that, that perhaps shouldn't have, have been. But part two is whether or not anyone intended to turn that application then into a fraudulent vote. And for all intents and purposes that's been stopped because of the good work of those in the elections office and the ongoing investigation.

More than 365,000 voters are registered in Lancaster County, a record number. They are some of the 9 million voters across Pennsylvania who could determine next week’s presidential election.

That’s it for this week’s Washington Wednesday. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

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