Mollie Hemingway of ‘The Federalist’ Testifies Before Congress About the Issues Facing American Elections
“The American system of self-governance is under attack.”
Mollie Hemingway, the conservative writer who helped to create The Federalist, testified before Congress this week, outlining the concerns shared by millions of Americans about the current state of our elections.
Hemingway spoke about mail-in ballots, extended voting periods, the efforts by Democrats to prosecute Trump, our one-sided media, and the actions of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to take control of election offices with an army of progressive volunteers.
She also spoke about social media censorship, pointing to the blocking of her own reporting after the 2020 election.
Here’s a partial transcript from Real Clear Politics:
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Distinguished members of this committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today.
The American system of self-governance is under attack. Instead of an Election Fay where everyone votes at the same time, and with the same full set of information, votes are counted quickly, and everyone promptly knows and trusts the outcome, we now have lengthy election seasons that can last months prior to and even after Election Day.
The situation is so absurd that we have presidential and gubernatorial debates weeks after some people have already voted. Instead of having total security and a verifiable chain of custody for ballots being issued, cast, and counted, we flood addresses across the country with tens of millions of unsupervised mail-in ballots months ahead of elections, frequently to locations from which voters, if they’re even alive, have long since moved.
Instead of having election administration that is rigorously nonpartisan and impartial under the law, we have allowed the private takeover of government election offices, by partisan oligarchs and their armies of activists who use those offices and their authorities to tilt the election towards favored candidates.
Instead of voters being able to vote for the candidate of their choice, powerful interests backed by wealthy oligarchs are working to remove the most popular candidate, and the ruling party’s chief opponent, from the ballot in a move reminiscent of Soviet Russia.
If that weren’t enough, instead of the top candidates chosen by the people being able to fully engage in a vigorous campaign heading into an election, we have one side actively attempting to throw its opponent in prison and bankrupt his family, again reminiscent of Soviet Russia.
Instead of a system of rule of law that gives Americans the same rights and due process, the Department of Justice and other partisan actors are prosecuting their opposition, whether powerful or lowly, and doing so in places where partisan juries will ensure a quick conviction.
Instead of a free and independent press that shares news and information to help inform voters, we have a press that is almost exclusively the arm of one political party and is so corrupt that it is willing to perpetrate hoax after hoax against opposition party members.
Watch the video below. This is outstanding. On a side note, the bearded gentleman sitting behind her on your right is her husband, the writer Mark Hemingway. I have met them a few times in my travels in Washington, DC. They’re lovely people.
Writing at The Federalist, Shawn Fleetwood elaborated on the Zuckerberg issue:
Democrats’ Election Interference Undermines Voters’ Confidence In The Electoral Process
Partisan interference in elections undermines Americans’ confidence in the electoral process, several witnesses — including Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway — said during a House committee hearing on Wednesday.
“The American system of self-governance is under attack,” Hemingway said. “We have allowed the private takeover of government election offices by partisan oligarchs and their armies of activists who use those offices and their authorities to tilt the election toward favored candidates.”
Titled, “American Confidence in Elections: Confronting Zuckerbucks, Private Funding of Election Administration,” the hearing before the Committee on House Administration mainly focused on private actors’ interference in the 2020 and 2024 elections to the benefit of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. During the 2020 contest, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg poured hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL).
While Zuckerberg’s donations to CTCL were marketed as a good-faith initiative to ensure Covid didn’t disrupt local election administration, House Republicans later discovered that less than 1 percent of CTCL’s 2020 funds were spent on personal protective equipment. In fact, the “Zuckbucks” dumped into local election offices by CTCL were primarily used to change how elections were administered; among other things, this was done by expanding unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes.
Are Republicans listening?
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
She is a very effective advocate b/c she stays focused on the problems and offers solutions to them.
We have several parallel paths here. In those jurisdictions who have kept traditional election day instead of opting for an expanded election season we need to work to maintain that. In the jurisdictions where the legislature has, foolishly IMO, opted for an expanded election season we MUST adapt to the changes. It is similar to a soccer match and the opposing team is using their hands to pass, to pick up the ball and run, to throw the ball into the goal. Insisting on following the traditional rules which have been superseded puts us at a structural disadvantage that we can’t hope to overcome.
Whatever the length of the voting period we must absolutely insist that elections are secure, accurate, able to withstand an audit (not a simple recount) and in some cases have the tainted results in a particular precinct or the whole State voided.
Start with voter registration list audits. Insist on removing the dead and those who departed to another County or State. Voter ID to register and a verification process prior to casting or counting ballots is the minimum acceptable standard. Where a jurisdiction or precinct allows ballots by unlawfully registered voters to be cast and counted or mixed them in with valid ballots instead of segregating questionable ballots for intensive review then that precinct’s results should be voided.
While the perpetrators keep bleating that reforms will bring about the destruction of democracy. Because their bleating has worked. So far, anyway. What an amazingly stupid and lazy populace we have.
In my engineering classes I tell students that it is impossible to design a “foolproof” system because of the amazing intelligence and ingenuity of complete fools.
The same is true for a Constitutional Republic and the voting system that is supposed to be an integral part of it. The Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution is worthless if the political leaders and courts decide to ignore it. How can there be free and fair elections when election laws are either disregarded or fashioned in a way to make ballot fraud easy, and political opposition candidates are arrested or removed from the ballot?
Ballot fraud has long been a gangrenous part of the American political scene, but until recently it has been largely confined to deep blue hellholes like Chicago (with the predictable results of crime and incompetent management). No longer. It is clear what the Republican response should have been after the brazen in-you-face fraud of 2020: 100% non-compliance at all levels of government. Instead we got a lot of empty twaddle from the Franz von Papen Republicans about “our precious democracy” even as the Biden* junta sent in the military to keep the proles away from the inauguration (don’t think for one minute they didn’t know and approve of the obvious symbolism of installing a President by force) and the DoJ began a crackdown on J6 protestors and other dissidents.
Mollie Hemingway is a national treasure. Her opening statement was one of the best ever given, about one of the most important topics that concerns us. It was just about perfect.
Did she mention ranked choice? That has to end.
I could maybe go along with ranked choice if it was an actual ranking and an actual choice instead of what the proponents deliver which is IMO neither.
As an example, five candidates. Each voter puts them in the order they want first thru fifth. This assigns points just like an AP football poll so the first place gets five points, the second place gets four all the way to one point for the fifth place candidate on that voter’s ballot.
Use a simple #2 pencil, bubble/circles to indicate the rank choice and most important a choice of zero points. Not only must no voter be compelled to assist the election of any particular candidate, the ballot must have a mechanism to respect that choice and prevent tampering.
No multiple rounds of candidate elimination or transfer of votes from one candidate to another, no game theory at play. Just run the paper through the scanner and it will tabulate the total points for each candidate. IOW add the points and the candidate with highest point total is the winner.
If states or their subdivisions choose such for their local governing so be it. But Federal representation and President? One person – one vote & no shenanigans.
Under what I outlined it’s still one person/one vote, there is no lessening of nor additional political power. It’s just a different way of allocating the power of the individual voter.
The difference between what I outlined and the usual ‘ranked choice’ regime is that all the power and all the decisions remain in the hands of the individual voter independent of the actions of others.
she is top notch
so many great women who are pro american
the left alwaysssss has back up plans to subver the one person one vote system
cumulative voting
ranked choice voting
mail in voting
anything and everything to subvert freedom
correct:
subvert
I watched her yesterday and she was fantastic. No, the Republicans aren’t listening. Most elected Republicans in Congress went right along with the “most secure election ever” nonsense.
If the people can have no confidence in the honesty and integrity of the electoral system [and to be honest, they can’t] what basis other than coercion is there for them to obey the government? That is how serious this is, which both so-called parties want us to ignore.
Subotai Bahadur
On the Five, Jessica Tarlov stated that Biden had won by millions of votes. That is nonsense, A change of about 25,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin would have resulted in an electoral college tie. It would have then switched to a vote in the House of Representatives with each state getting exactly one vote. Since the Republicans held a 26-24 advantage in House delegations, Trump would have presumably won.
In order to have a fair election, both sides must agree on the rules ahead of time and adhere to them when tallying up the results. What Tarlov was saying is that the Democrats are allowed to invoke a different set of rules after the fact if it makes them look stronger.
Imagine an NBA seventh game final in which one team, say the Golden State Warriors, eked out a three point victory. After the game, the losing team looked at game film and discovered that if the three point line was removed and all field goals counted only two points, the result of the game would be reversed. Then imagine that they claimed therefore they had won.
The Democrats in several states looked into changing state rules so that regardless of the outcome of statewide contests, the states electoral college votes would be awarded to the winner of the overall popular vote. The Democrats proposed this because they have succeeded in making California into essentially a one party state and so republicans don’t bother to compete in the nation’s most populous state. That has not been good for California but it has given the overall popular vote to the Democrats in most recent presidential elections.
It is ironic that in the state of Colorado’s defense before the Supreme Court, they claimed that the Constitution gave them the right to choose whoever they wish to allow on the ballot for president, even in the states primaries. It is ironic because the Constitution also says that the election laws in each state are to be determined by the state legislatures. The main complaint about the 2020 election was that election rules were changed without the approval of the state legislatures, something that was ignored in key battleground states. The Courts did not allow challenges on this basis but nonetheless it happened.