Election integrity front and center

Election integrity is back in the news this week, as even Elon Musk’s DOGE has produced relevant findings. A legislative leader in Michigan, and Missouri’s new top election official, both have announced action to make elections trustworthy again. So a more thorough review, both of the motives of the left in undermining election integrity and of how to run a trustworthy election quickly and efficiently, are in order.

Qualifications to review election integrity, both current status and reform plans

Your editor, once again, is an Officer of Election with nearly four years’ experience, including a full year as Chief. He knows how elections currently run, and what makes them vulnerable. Moreover he has received insights from several election integrity activists who have organized various kinds of protests of present systems.

One such activist – who shall remain nameless – urged voters to mutilate their ballots so that no scanner-tabulator could read them – but a human being could. The Attorney General directly threatened to prosecute him for that, and the State Secretary of State sent a letter to every registrar in every unit (that is, county or independent city), advising them to be on the lookout for anyone mutilating his ballot. Accordingly, that activist desisted from that campaign.

On the other hand, at least one registrar recognizes that power might fail during an election. Inclement weather is one possible cause. Accordingly, every Chief’s Bag contains paper poll books and instructions for counting ballots by hand until the power company can restore power.

The issues that affect election integrity today include without limit:

1. Voter rolls that still have names of voters who have died or moved out of State – or others who shouldn’t vote at all,
2. Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) that produce output no human can read, and
3. Scanner-tabulators that provide no reliable assurance to anyone on the scene, including the Chief OOE, that the final vote count is accurate.

Latest findings from DOGE, etc.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk held a town hall in advance of tomorrow’s Special Supreme Court Election in Wisconsin. There the entire Congressional district map is under challenge. Musk fears that a liberal court will, in Equitarian fashion, throw out the map in favor of a map that favors Democrats. (An equitarian is a trial judge who abuses his equity powers, or an appellate judge who assumes equity powers his court does not have. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Supreme Court are all equitarians and constitute that Court’s Equitarian Bloc.)

Joining Musk on the rally stage was one Antonion Gracias, a key member of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). According to Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit, Musk and Gracias displayed a chart showing:

a dramatic spike in Social Security Numbers issued to non-citizens, soaring from 270,000 in 2021 to a mind-blowing 2.1 million in 2024. That’s almost 5 million non-citizens now embedded in the system—collecting benefits, draining taxpayer dollars, and, most alarmingly, infiltrating the voter rolls.

The arithmetic above might look incomplete, but it reflects incidence, or new cases every year. The five-million figure indicates prevalence, or total existing cases. Social Security remains today the mainstay of personal identification – though the law technically forbids that. The Social Security Administration is supposed to know who is, or is not, a citizen, and when someone dies. Clearly someone wasn’t paying attention. Musk called this:

a massive, large-scale program under the Biden administration to import as many illegals as possible—ultimately to change the voting map of the United States, disenfranchise the American people, and lock in a permanent deep-blue, one-party state from which there’d be no escape.

In fact the Social Security Administration lays itself wide-open to fraud by illegal immigrants. From Mr. Gracias:

And then you walk across the border. They do what’s called a “release on your own recognizance” and give you an NTA — a Notice to Appear — which is to appear before a judge. The wait times on judges are, on average, six years. Look it up on Grok — you’ll see it. Immigration judges — there are only 700 of them. This is 5.5 million people.

So what happens then? Once you’re in the country and you’ve got asylum through one of these pathways — and we mapped the whole thing out — you can apply for a work document. You file a 765 — that’s the work form. You get this form called the 766 — that’s the authorization. And then the Social Security Administration automatically sends you your Social Security number in the mail. No interview. No ID.

What that means for election integrity and Congressional representation

Lay aside the dreadful human cost of trafficking, a frequent means of illegal immigration. Think of how many people now have Social Security numbers – and are offering this as proof of citizenship. In too many States, that’s all the proof one needs to register to vote! Musk and Gracias pointed out that many of those five and a half million not only registered, but also voted.

This is what Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) was trying to stop with his Executive Order for registration vetting. Recall, from CNAV’s discussion of Executive Order 35, that the Justice Department, and the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, sued to force the Commissioner of Elections to leave the voter rolls alone. They alleged that:

1. Noncitizen voting is “vanishingly rare,” and
2. Actual naturalized citizens were losing their right to vote.

Elon Musk has just offered further counterexamples against the first allegation. As to the second, any citizen so affected has ample opportunity to “square” that with his registrar.

Even when noncitizens do not register to vote – or lose voting registration without suffering deportation – their presence presents a problem. The United State Census now counts all persons, excluding only Native Americans who pay no U.S. taxes. Democrats object so vociferously to mass deportation for one reason only: there go their seats in the House of Representatives.

The Michigan election integrity investigation

Michigan is embroiled in a voter fraud scandal that dates from the Election of 2020, involving fraudulent voter registrations. Patty McMurray of The Gateway Pundit has followed that scandal for four years. In her latest report she describes the suspicions surrounding GBI Strategies, a Democrat-funded group specializing in voter registration. One month before the Election of 2020, the Clerk of Muskegon, Mich., noticed boxes of registrations mailed in from Auburn Hills – on the opposite side of the State. Many of these registration forms had the same addresses, and even the same handwriting.

The investigation began with the Muskegon Police Department. But it now involves the Michigan State Police and Michigan’s Secretary of State and Attorney General, both Democrats. Furthermore, more than one City or County Clerk received similar packages from GBI Strategies or its front group, Empower America. Somewhere in the process, the FBI – under Director Christopher Wray – entered the case.

Now State Rep. Rachelle Smit, Chair of the House Committee on Election Integrity, has announced her intention to press the FBI for progress on that investigation. She couldn’t have picked a better time for that pressing – because today the FBI has new, patriotic leadership. So has the Department of Justice, of course.

Equal time for hand-count advocates

Last comes a report of the most significant event in the debate on how and when to count ballots. This report comes from Joe Hoft, occasional Gateway Pundit contributor and host of his own show.The Missouri Clerks Association recently demonstrated electronic voting machines to a skeptical public. Now newly appointed Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has agreed to schedule a demonstration of hand counting. This demonstration will take place April 2, from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon CDT.

JOIN US! Let’s take our voices back! pic.twitter.com/BxTrmaP6Ty— Pretty Patriot (@PatriotFlyover) March 19, 2025

This equal-time demonstration might have been very difficult to arrange, except for a persistent problem with electronic voting machines. No one seems to know how to certify them. In August 2022, a State representative candidate sued the State,

alleging that the laboratories responsible for testing and certifying the state’s electronic voting equipment lacked proper legal accreditation, violating federal election law.

As Jim Hoft of TGP noted then, then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft had that suit removed to federal court. The next year, activists filed two formal complaints with the Secretary of State. They alleged noncompliance with State and federal law in electronic voting machine certification. Now Missouri has a new Secretary of State, who is open to election reform to ensure – or restore – election integrity.

In fact, activists in Virginia and many other States specifically allege that no certification of any Ballot Marking Device or scanner-tabulator can legitimately be valid under current procedures. Reasons include:

1. BMDs producing output that humans can’t read, but that the scanner-tabulator is supposed to read, and
2. Scanner-tabulators with proprietary software that therefore represents a secret count, in violation of nearly every State’s laws.

An actual hand-count proposal

About three weeks ago, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) made news with a draft copy of his Make Elections Secure Again Act. Why he has not formally introduced this in the current Congress, CNAV will not speculate. To summarize, Mr. Sessions proposed that States conduct federal elections:

1. In precincts which each have 1500 or fewer registered voters,
2. With voting by mail available only to active-duty military and voters who show a health danger to self or others,
3. With paper poll books that voters must sign, said signature constituting an affidavit of citizenship and non-intent to vote elsewhere,
4. Making BMDs (that produce human-readable output) available only to the handicapped, and
5. Counting all votes by hand, in front of a live-streaming Webcam, by counters trained in advance.

Rep. Sessions did not consider doing away with the Australian Ballot that requires repeated handling to count multiple races. Nor did he consider reforming the college vote, which today skews left. (Though that might not hold much longer! President Trump captured 46 percent of the 18-29 vote.)

That said, election integrity, and reforms leading to it, enjoy the best popular support they’ve ever had. That a State Secretary of State would allow a hand-count demonstration on government property is a significant step. Given Elon Musk’s findings at the Social Security Administration, this couldn’t come at a better time.