Sen. Rand Paul Shines Light On Preventing Fake Votes From Counting
Free, fair, and secure elections are the bedrock of a democracy
Senator Rand Paul guest appeared at a virtual event with The Heritage Foundation to discuss ‘Safeguarding our Elections’ and their focus was on states’ efforts towards election reform and an update on H.R. 1 also known as “For the People Act of 2021.”
Hans A. von Spakovsky, Manager, Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fell at The Heritage Foundation, hosted the event with Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday.
Sen. Paul shared that courts have always been hesitant to get involved in elections since the beginning of time and stated, “The bottom line is the courts don’t like to hear these things, but it isn’t a valid argument to say that because courts don’t like to hear election issues that there weren’t any problems.”
The senator also reflected back to the beginning of his political history where back in 1976 when his dad, Ron Paul lost an election by 200 votes out of 200,00 and contested the election.
“We found dead people voted. We found 13 people who voted out of one household and we couldn’t find anyone who had ever answered the door at that house. We found vacant lots, we found commercial lots, we found precincts. And this is in 1976 where the entire precinct was one hundred percent for the opponent, zero for us. And the handwriting at first appearance appeared to be the same person signed everybody in and they had one hundred percent turnout. So anomalies like that are not brand new, but no court would hear my father’s case,” Sen. Paul shared.
Sen. Paul believes it should only be one person, one vote and one person, one ballot. The senator shutdown the idea of allowing people to print out hundreds of ballots or applications for ballots for one person and how there should only be one appilication for each voter that is assigned to them.
“If that voter wants a ballot, there should be valid ways, their family can help them if they’re elderly or if they’re infirmed to get their ballot. But what we shouldn’t allow is organizations, whether they be the state or whether they be MoveOn.org or frankly, whether they be the NRA. From right or left, we should not have harvesting of ballot applications sent to millions of people and then resent and resent. And you shouldn’t allow somebody to go door to door, collect ten thousand ballots and then stuff them in a dropbox. It should be one person, one vote at a time,” the senator continued.
“It shouldn’t be voting by the tens of thousands, shouldn’t be solicited or harvested. I want elections to remain at the state level. There are some now promoting this House Bill One which is Nancy Pelosi’s bill to federalize elections. I’m absolutely opposed to that. But I can tell you, I’m not that excited about the conservative proposals to also federalize elections and then tell states what to do. I think the battle should be enjoined at the state level, not the federal level at all. We should fight it state by state,” Sen. Paul stated.
The senator continued, “We’re not going to win any federalization election issues anyway. If anything becomes federalized by Congress or anything passes, it will be a terrible bill because it would be a bill passed by a Democrat Senate, a Democrat House, and a Democrat president signing it. So I think we should be very, very reticent to offer any kind of conservative federalization of elections. And we should try to fight the battle where we have a chance of winning and we’re really where our founding fathers intended it to be. And that’s at the state level. But I would say to anybody listening to this call, do not back down, fight for election integrity, and let’s don’t give up on this issue because it does make a difference where we go in the country.”
Full Video: Safeguarding Out Elections: A Conversation With Sen. Rand Paul
