Protecting Your Vote

On this Episode of "Protecting your Vote," Public Interest Legal Foundation's newest lawyer, Jewel Lightfoot, joins the show to talk his background. He also discusses what voting remotely as a member of the armed forces was like, and how he plans on advancing the mission of election integrity.

Manager for the Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation Hans von Spakovsky joins the podcast to discuss the Heritage Voter Fraud Database, the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s Tied/Close Elections database, and a recently uncovered plot by the Chinese Communist Party to submit fake absentee ballots in the 2020 General Election. 

PILF Attorney Joe Nixon joins PILF President J. Christian Adams to discuss the Foundation’s lawsuit to protect voters’ right to a secret ballot. Under the current election system in Texas, it is possible to look up how many people voted. The right to political privacy is protected by the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Learn more about the Foundation’s lawsuit against Harris County here. 

Ever wonder what happens when an election ends in a tie? Clara Belle Wheeler, a PILF Board member and Vice Chairman of Albemarle County Electoral Board, joins our podcast to discuss her experience participating in a lottery to decide the winner of a tied election that would decide which political party would control the Virginia House of Delegates.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation has launched a tied elections database that logs elections that have ended in ties or been decided by one vote. Together these more than 700 elections show that one illegal vote can affect the outcome of an election. 

Never heard of ERIC? It is an acronym, not a person, that stands for the Electronic Registration Information Center. ERIC is a program that allows states to find the names of individuals registered to vote in other states. Currently, it is the only program set up that has the ability to do this.

Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow, Hans von Spakovksy joins the show to discuss what ERIC does, problems with the organization, and reforms it needs to make.

PILF President, J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky wrote a report breaking down a list of reforms ERIC needs to make. Read the full report here. 

Florida Secretary of State, Cord Byrd, joins Protecting Your Vote. He discusses Florida’s election procedures that allow for the state to report is election results in a timely fashion on election night. Learn more about why Election Day still means something in the Sunshine State in our report Worst to First. 

Byrd, also, discusses how election crime referrals were gathering dust in county prosecutors offices. PILF’s report Safe Harbor uncovered 156 election crime referrals by supervisors of elections where nothing had been done by county prosecutors. Governor Ron DeSantis saw this problem and created a statewide election crimes prosecutor to ensure that election crimes are being prosecuted.