What to Expect on Tuesday

We’re down to the wire now. Here’s what to watch for in the House races and the top 10 most competitive Senate races.

by Jeffrey H. Anderson for American Greatness

Americans will soon get to cast their first votes since the science–denying COVID mask and vaccine mandates, the second wave of COVID-related blowout spending and subsequent inflation, and the COVID-related school closures that allowed parents to see what the public schools are really teaching their boys and girls—including that they can choose whether they are boys or girls. With all of these matters implicitly on the ballot, how are things shaping up going into Election Day?

Starting with the House of Representatives, six months ago Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report projected “a GOP gain in the 15-25 seat range.” At the time, I responded, “While things could change over the next six months (although the cake is probably largely baked), a GOP gain of 30 to 40 House seats appears more likely at this stage of the contest than Walter’s projected GOP gain of 15 to 25 seats.”

Fast-forwarding six months, Cook now projects (as of November 6) Republican gains of between 0 and 35 seats, with a midpoint of 17.5 seats—so, slightly below the midpoint of its range of projected outcomes in April. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight now says that the most likely scenario is a Republican gain of 15 House seats, and it still maintains that Democrats have a 17 percent chance of holding the House. 

RealClearPolitics, meanwhile, is now projecting that Republicans will gain between 14 to 48 House seats, with a midpoint of 31 seats. Since Republicans need only 6 seats to obtain a majority, RCP’s projections amount to something like a 99 percent chance that Republicans will gain control of the House. In line with RCP, I’ll stick with my earlier projection of a Republican gain of 30 to 40 House seats, which would produce a GOP margin of about 50 to 70 House seats.

In Senate races, an expansive map suggests a range of possibilities spanning from having Democrats narrowly maintain control of that chamber to Republicans moving perhaps halfway from their current tally of 50 seats (if we’re counting Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski as Republicans) to a filibuster-proof 60 seats—with a favorable map to come in 2024. 

The Cook Political Report, as I have previously explained, can be a valuable resource for projecting Senate races, but this requires using a handy decoder to account for Cook’s consistent left-leaning bias. Over the past four federal elections, Republican Senate candidates have won a whopping 72 percent of Cook’s “toss-up” races, posting a win-loss record of 23-9. At the same time, they have posted an 11-0 win-loss record in Cook’s “competitive” races that merely “lean” Republican, winning by an average margin of 14 percentage points—6 points higher than Democrats’ 8-point average margin of victory in competitive races that Cook says “lean” their way. 

Cook currently lists four Senate races as toss-ups (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania). If Republicans win three of those four, effectively matching their usual winning percentage in Cook’s “toss-up” races, and if other states go as Cook projects, that would give Republicans two pickups, 52 Senate seats, and control of that chamber. 

FiveThirtyEight, meanwhile, is projecting (as of November 6) that the most likely scenario is for Republicans to pick up one Senate seat and gain control by a 51 to 49 margin. Offering a different assessment, RealClearPolitics projects that Republicans will gain three seats and end up with 53 senators.

Two weeks ago, I highlighted what appeared to be 11 competitive Senate races. One of those no longer qualifies, as Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) lead has ballooned from 3 points to 12 points in Des Moines Register polling. That leaves these 10 competitive races, with Republicans needing to win five to take the Senate and Democrats needing to win six to hold it:

10) Ohio (Advantage: Republicans): Republican J.D. Vance hasn’t trailed Democrat Tim Ryan in a poll listed by RCP since late September, and he currently (as of November 6) leads by 7.5 points in the RCP average of recent polling—after leading by less than a point just three weeks ago. In 2020, polling grossly underestimated Donald Trump’s support in Ohio—being off by 7 points. Vance will prevail unless this year’s polling is off by even more in the opposite direction, which isn’t likely.

9) North Carolina (Advantage: Republicans): Republican Ted Budd has led in every poll listed by RCP since the start of October, and the Tar Heel State was almost 6 points to the right of the nation in 2020 (as Joe Biden lost there by 1.3 points while winning by 4.5 points nationally.) It would be something of a shocker at this point if Democrat Cheri Beasley (who trails by 5.2 points) were to win, but this remains a dark-horse competitive race.

8) Wisconsin (Advantage: Republicans): In 2016, Ron Johnson performed 6.1 points better than the RCP average (winning by 3.4 points when polling had him behind by 2.7 points). This time, he’s up by 2.8 points versus Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes. Unless anti-incumbent sentiment is even stronger than polling indicates, Johnson appears to be in the driver’s seat.

7) Colorado (Advantage: Democrats): Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet looks beatable, and Colorado remains a swing state (albeit one that leans Democratic). But Republican Joe O’Dea—who praised Bennet’s role on immigration as a member of the Gang of Eight during a recent debate—might not have drawn enough of a contrast for voters. The RCP average has Bennet up by 5.3 points. Trafalgar has O’Dea within 2 points, however, and this race could still surprise.

6) Washington (Advantage: Democrats): If Republican Tiffany Smiley manages to upset longtime incumbent Democrat Patty Murray, who has held this seat since Bill Clinton entered the White House, this will be a night to remember for Republicans. While Murray still leads by 3 points in the RCPaverage of recent polling, Smiley—who has never held elective office of any sort—is positioned for a possible huge upset. FiveThirtyEight gives that upset only a 9 percent chance of happening, and Cook still says this race is “not considered competitive.” Still, the guess here is that the odds of Smiley’s winning are notably higher than the odds of having Stephen Curry—a career 91 percent free-throw shooter—miss a foul shot.

5) Nevada (Advantage: Republicans): Republican Adam Laxalt leads Democratic incumbent Cathy Cortez Masto by 2.4 points in the RCP average. Perhaps the greater concern for Cortez Masto is that polling shows her with only 44.9 percent support in an environment in which it seems unlikely that a lot of late-deciding voters will break toward incumbents of the same party as the president, whose approval rating (per RCP) is 42.4 percent. This is a state, however, in which polling has sometimes overstated Republican support. Trump fared 3.2 points worse than expected in 2016 (losing by 2.4 points when favored by 0.8 points), and Republican Dean Heller fared worse than expected in 2018 (losing by 5 points in what was supposed to be a dead heat), although polling was quite accurate in 2020.

4) Georgia (Advantage: Republicans): Republican Herschel Walker, the former Heisman Trophy-winning Georgia Bulldog, was behind by 5.2 points in the RCP average on October 9 but is now running neck-and-neck with Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock (with Walker leading by 0.4 points). Warnock sits at 46.8 percent support in the RCP average, so—like Cortez Masto—he would need to pick up a fair number of late-deciding voters. If neither candidate gets a majority of the vote, this race will go to a runoff in December.

3) Pennsylvania (Advantage: Republicans): Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman are separated by just 0.1 points in the RCP average. Oz, who was down by 4 points a month ago, appears to have some late momentum, perhaps especially in the wake of the candidates’ October 25 debate—but early voting in the state was well underway by then. Polling in Pennsylvania underestimated support for Trump by 2.6 points in 2016—he won by 0.7 points after being behind in the final RCP average by 1.9 points—but was accurate in 2020. This contest could easily go either way, but Oz’s recent surge, combined with the likelihood that Biden’s low approval rating won’t help Fetterman with late-deciding voters, appears to give Republicans a slight edge as this race heads to the wire.

2) New Hampshire (Advantage: Democrats): The Republican establishment has tried hard to lose this race by refusing to fund the GOP primary winner, Don Bolduc, a retired Army general and political outsider. According to Open Secrets, Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan has outraised General Bolduc by an astounding margin of 17-1. Yet Bolduc, who trailed Hassan by 5.4 points in the RCP average as recently as October 20, is now within 1 point (48.4 to 47.4 percent), with all of the polls in the current RCP average having been taken after the candidates’ sole debate. 

Cook still calls this race Democratic-leaning, but don’t be surprised if Cookmoves it to toss-up status by Election Day. New Hampshire is a quintessential swing state and is the only state to have been within 4 points of the nation (in either direction) in each of the past seven presidential elections. The Granite State also still believes in Election Day—not Election Month—and this is anyone’s race, with Hassan appearing to hold just a sliver of an advantage based on recent polling. 

1) Arizona (toss-up): The Republican establishment has also tried to lose this race, but Republican Blake Masters has closed a 5.5-point deficit on October 15 versus Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly to 1 just point in the current RCP average (48.2 percent to 47.2 percent). Masters should also be helped by the late withdrawal of libertarian Marc Victor, who dropped out on November 1 and endorsed Masters—a development that is only partially reflected in current polling. Don’t expect even Fox News to call this race early.

So, of these ten competitive races, Republicans appear to have the advantage in six and Democrats in three, with one race not favoring either party. If each party wins the races in which it now looks to have the advantage, Republicans would end up with 52 Senate seats. To keep control of the Senate, therefore, Democrats would need to win the three competitive states where they currently appear to have the advantage, win the toss-up state of Arizona, and win two of the six competitive races in which the GOP now appears to have at least a narrow edge.

RCP’s Sean Trende in January highlighted his model for Senate races, which is based primarily on the sitting president’s approval rating. Trende’s model indicated that if Biden had an approval rating of 42 or 43 percent on Election Day—his current approval rating is 42.4 percent—Republicans would pick up between two and five Senate seats, giving them between 52 and 55 seats. That sounds more plausible than FiveThirtyEight’s current claim that the most likely range is between 49 and 52 Republican seats—even though FiveThirtyEight has gotten to incorporate about nine months’ worth of additional information in making its projections. The guess here is that the GOP will end up with between 51 and 54 Senate seats. We’ll soon see the American people’s verdict.

X22, And we Know, and more- Nov 7

 

Do I know for sure what will happen tomorrow? I don't.

Do I firmly believe there will be many many wins? Absolutely.

Will there be possible twists or unexpected surprises? More then likely.

I do know this though: God is on our side. Always was, and always will be.

We are all here right now for a reason, we've all survived these last 2 years for a reason, and it's so we can fight back! 

So much goodness has happened this past year, and I believe that tomorrow will definitely be the main highlight of this amazing year.

I would also like to say: I am very proud of all the conservatives on here for sticking with these daily podcasts for the last 15 months! Helping out all of you and helping you all to have hope in a brighter future is why I started doing these, and it's a blessing to get to keep doing them every night. ❤

So, sit back, relax, maybe pop on a movie you might have on the DVR, and enjoy yourselves until tomorrow comes. :)

Oh, and there's a rally in my homestate tonight and new podcasts to listen to!

The Pathetic Democratic Pantheon ~ VDH

Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their radical ideology that was finally enacted and wrecked the country.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Over the last few months the four icons of the Democratic Party—Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi—have hit the campaign trail. 

They’ve weighed in on everything from “right-wing violence” and “election denialists” to the now tired “un-American” semi-fascist MAGA voter—and had nothing much to say about inflation, the border, crime, energy, or the Afghanistan debacle. In this, they remind us just how impoverished and calcified is this left-wing pantheon. 

So why should we take anything they say seriously, given their own records—and especially given their mastery of projecting their own shortcomings upon others as some sort of private exculpation or preemptive political strategy?

Still Hopin’ and Changin’? 

Barack Obama this past week has assumed the role of surrogate president. He is storming the country, while Joe Biden mopes at home or visits shrinking blue enclaves so he can claim post facto, “At least I was out there stumping.” 

Over the last six years, we have become accustomed to Obama’s periodic getaways from one of his three estates. It is always the same. From time to time, he reenters politics to remind us that he did not just cash in on his presidency to become a multi-millionaire. Instead, he is still the Chicago “community activist” of his youth. And so, Obama will not be overshadowed by the Biden crew that is enacting all the crazy things he as president had warned were a bit much even for him. 

At the funeral of the late John Lewis, Obama turned his eulogy into a political rant. He weighed in on the “racist” filibuster, the “Jim Crow relic” that he desperately sought in vain to use to stop the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito. 

At campaign stops, he deplores “divisions” that he, more than any modern figure, helped create. The entire left-wing vocabulary of disparagement for the white lower-working classes (e.g., deplorables, dregs, chumps, irredeemables, etc.) got its start with Obama’s putdown of Pennsylvania voters who rejected him in the 2008 primaries as “clingers.” 

In interviews, Obama suddenly now blasts harsh rhetoric—this from the wannabe tough guy who stole the “The Untouchables” line about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Well before crazy Maxine Waters’ calls to arms, Obama advised his supporters “get in their faces.”

Still, on the campaign trail, Obama appears not so much animated as stale. It is as if he has been suddenly stirred from a long coma that commenced in 2008. It’s the same old, same old—sleeves rolled up. He still resorts to the scripted outbursts of mock anger. And the nerdy prep school graduate still amateurishly modulates his patois—now policy wonk, now breaking into the Southern African-American pastor accent when an audience needs more preachy authenticity. 

He still tries to rev up his crowds with the familiar attacks: Republican demons will cut Social Security, the MAGA semi-fascists are captives of Donald Trump (as if the Democrats have not ceded their souls to woke hysterics), the Republican fanatics will all but kill women by denying abortions, and extremists unlike himself are dividing the country. 

On and on, Obama shouts about social justice. And then he wraps up and must decide to which of his mansions he will fly home (via private jet)—Kalorama, Martha’s Vineyard, Hyde Park, or soon the Waimanalo estate.

Obama offers no solutions much less hints at his own culpability in his sermons. There is nothing about the open border he helped birth. Nothing about Biden’s failed energy policies now bankrupting the middle class that were simply a reification of his energy secretary Steven Chu’s perverse wishes for European-priced gas (“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”). 

There is nothing about Obama’s old boasts about shutting down coal plants and skyrocketing electricity (“Under my plan . . . electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”). 

Nothing is said about the Skip Gates psychodrama and his blanket stereotyped attack on police, the tossing of his own grandmother under the racial bus, the Trayvon Martin racial editorialization, the Ferguson mythologies, and all his efforts to create a binary nation of oppressors and oppressed, as Obama himself determined who is the victim, who the victimizer.

The Role Model Pelosi

After the terrible attack on her husband, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s colleagues are rightly calling for an end to extremist rhetoric. If we are to follow the Democratic clarion call, what might Pelosi herself do to help us to lower the temperature?

Here are a few modest suggestions. 

Contrary to press reports, conservatives deplored the attack on Paul Pelosi. They want his attacker behind bars with no bail until his trial date. And if convicted they wish him to serve a long sentence before parole is even considered. Let us dish out a proper punishment to David DePape; one that can serve as a model to all such thugs who do his kind of devilish work daily against the innocent and weak—but unlike him, are usually exempt from punishment.

Recall that DePape should never have been in the United States. He is an illegal alien who violated his visa and should have had a warrant out for deportation, especially given his prior history of lawlessness. Would that the illegal alien who murdered innocent San Franciscan Kate Steinle had been subject to the likely punishment that now is awaiting DePape.

So yes, we all must lower the temperature. As speaker of the House, Pelosi can do her part in quieting passions, given half the country are her fellow Americans who do not live in the darkness of lies. She might ask Joe Biden to quit calling them semi-fascists and un-American. 

Pelosi herself should never again tear up her copy of the state of the union address on national television. In that congressional forum she was attacking the presidency, not just Donald Trump. Half the voters feel as strongly about Joe Biden as she does about Donald Trump. If, as House speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were to follow Pelosi’s precedent and rip up the next Biden State of the Union, would Pelosi find that continuation of her precedent conducive to healing the nation’s wounds?

Pelosi herself should not use any more violent imagery in expressing her anger at a president of the opposite party, much less threaten to use physical violence. 

When she was asked to clarify what she meant in screaming about Trump (“I hope he comes. I want to punch him out. . . . I’ve been waiting for this . . . I’m going to punch him out, and I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”), she scoffed that she could not follow up on her threat only because Trump would never come to Congress to give her the opportunity. 

Whatever one thinks of Trump, Pelosi only lowers the bar when she boasts about feloniously striking a president of the United States. 

That Joe Biden had boasted twice about taking Trump behind the gym to beat him up, and others such as actor Robert DeNiro have echoed such threats (“I’d like to punch him in the face”) was no excuse for her reckless talk. After 2016 it was hard to calibrate all the ways the leftists had shouted ways of slaying Donald Trump—by stabbing, shooting, incineration, or decapitation.

Pelosi should never again delay legislation aimed at protecting Supreme Court justices from the sort of violence that occurred when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was run out of a restaurant, or anti-abortion protesters swarmed his home, or a would-be assassin showed up at his house. 

Why was Pelosi so fearful about expediting such added security? Would prompt action have empowered the factual narrative that the chief threat to Supreme Court justices now arises from radical abortion protestors?

Pelosi might have reminded Democrats to tone down their rhetoric after the near-fatal shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). After all, the shooter was a highly political, left-wing activist and former Bernie Sanders’ volunteer. But she did no such thing.

She could have privately reprimanded her own daughter that it was not a funny thing to cheer on the violent attack against Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who suffered broken ribs, a collapsed lung, pneumonia, and had to undergo pulmonary surgery. 

When the younger Pelosi used her family name to gain traction by tweeting “Rand Paul’s neighbor was right,” (if she had used her married last name would anyone have read it?), it sent the message that there was a sort of happiness on the Left that a political opponent had been a target of violence. The Left is furious at Donald Trump, Jr. for crudely mocking the Pelosi assault, but he unfortunately followed a precedent long set by others.

She’s Back!

Hillary Clinton is occasionally asked to weigh in on the midterm campaigns, but never in a swing state or hotly contested race. Her presence, like that of Joe Biden’s, would immediately lose the endorser a critical 1-2 points. 

Clinton recently warned that the 2024 election likely will be illegitimate due to Republican instigated “voter fraud.” 

Her outburst can be translated into something like, “The midterm left-wing wipeout may be just a preliminary to a 2024 Democratic disaster.” Hillary preempted Biden who, in his third and latest McCarthyite speech, warned that the “Mega Maga” people are planning devilry years in advance and so, like Hillary, he can now cast doubt on the legitimacy of future elections the Democrats will lose. 

In truth, no one has done more in the last century to impugn the integrity of U.S. elections than Hillary Clinton. She has questioned the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections, on the theory that any election Democrats might lose is an “attack on democracy.” 

Her sins go way beyond feloniously destroying subpoenaed emails and devices or leveraging her New York senatorial run by Bill Clinton’s presidential pardons or using her office to enrich her family’s foundation as in the case of Uranium One. 

When we return to sane times, historians will assess her 2016 efforts to destroy her opponent, his transition, and his presidency as the greatest election scandal in modern memory. She used three paywalls to hide her efforts to hire foreign national Christopher Steele (who was simultaneously working with the FBI). 

On spec, she used her own contacts such as Charles Dolan to fabricate a phony hit dossier against her opponent and then to seed it within the media and the Obama bureaucracy to smear Trump.

Not content with that failed and likely illegal effort, she then declared the duly elected president illegitimate and the 2016 election all but stolen. 

Her Hollywood friends cut videos begging electors to renounce their constitutional duties, ignore their state tallies, and vote instead for Hillary. Had they gotten their way, the entire federal election system as we know it would have been destroyed.

Then her surrogate, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, sued to overturn the election. Clinton bragged of joining #TheResistance in mock-heroic terms. As an arch-denialist, she urged Joe Biden under no circumstances to concede to Trump if he lost the 2020 vote. 

And now she warns us of others who might emulate her own denialism? 

What does Hillary fear in 2024? That a Trump or DeSantis will hire a Steele-like fraud to fabricate Democrat-Chinese collusion and smear a Democrat nominee? That the loser will not concede as she once urged, or the winner is illegitimate as she once insisted?

Good Old Joe Is Just Old Joe

Instead of a list of supposed communists, Joe Biden apparently has a roster of “election denialists” who he says are running for Senate and Congress and whom he fears will win next Tuesday. And he sets the example for others like House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.)—himself a 2004-05 election denialist—who now smears his opponents as Nazis who, he fears, by democratically voting Democrats out of office nationwide will “destroy democracy.” 

What will Biden not lie about? The death of his son, the circumstances in which his first wife died in a car wreck, the fantasy congressional vote on his student-loan forgiveness scheme? The number of states (Joe says, 54, Obama used to swear there are 57)? The very century we are now in? Where he went to college? 

Joe, our own Walter Mitty, has variously been a semi-truck driver, an arrested South-African street protestor against apartheid, a surrogate Puerto-Rican child, a black college enrollee, a Ciceronian populist orator, a coal miner’s scion, an honors student, a blue-chip collegiate athlete, a defender against inner-city Corn Poppers, and absolutely ignorant about the Biden family syndicate.

Recall that a non compos mentis Biden was nominated solely as the thin veneer to a hard Left agenda whose avatars were unelectable. Biden was to feign being the colorless, stand-in “moderate” who would “unify” the fractured country, tone down the Trump rhetoric, and let the Trump record sort of proceed on autopilot. 

Then when he played out that part and won, the leftist minders in this Faustian bargain took over to push through, on a one-vote senatorial margin, the most radical left-wing agenda in U.S. history. 

Biden, however, took his role too seriously. He reverted to the mean-spirited, pre-senile blowhard Joe—the obnoxious messenger thus now making the noxious message even more toxic. 

A retiring, silenced, good old Joe from Scranton was the script, not a doddering, incoherent, ”get off my lawn” old man shouting for the need of socialist policies that were the exact opposite of his previously supposed convictions. 

The Left got their Biden. And yes, he turned over the reins of government to them. And yes, they got their neo-socialism for two years. And yes, they are destroying America as we knew it. But in doing this, the people had the rare occasion to see fully and experience the nihilist Left. And they are now about to express their loathing for what the Left has wrought. 

The problem with the ossified Democratic Pantheon is that they are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their own radical ideology over the past two years that was finally enacted and wrecked the country. And all the shrieks about abortion, semi-fascists, and democracy dying cannot put back together what they shattered. 

If Republicans Win On Tuesday, Thank The Election Integrity Movement

Against a hostile propaganda press, many Americans have poured themselves into restoring election integrity — and it’s working.

posted by Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist

If Republican candidates do as well as expected on Tuesday, they can credit the new, widespread, and coordinated effort to begin securing U.S. elections, helping give candidates the best opportunity possible to win a fair fight in the new voting environment of mail-in balloting.

The Republican National Committee, other party entities, and dozens of public interest election nonprofit groups built over the last two years a multimillion-dollar election integrity infrastructure that passed laws improving voter ID and other election security measures, defended those laws from legal attacks by Democrats, and sued states and localities that failed to follow the law. They also recruited, educated, trained, and placed tens of thousands of new election observers and other workers throughout the long midterm voting season.

And they did it all in one of the most hostile propaganda environments on record.

2020’s Wake-Up Call

The 2020 election was a massive wake-up call for many Americans on the right. In the months leading up to it, Democrats forced through changes to hundreds of laws and processes governing how elections are conducted. 

The rule-change scheme was run by Marc Elias, a Democrat election attorney who also ran his party’s Russia collusion hoax, which falsely claimed Donald Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia. Sometimes Democrats’ 2020 changes were instituted legally. Frequently, though, they were effected by other means, such as getting a friendly state or local official to change the rules unilaterally.

The 2020 election plan, some of which was admitted to in a flattering Time magazine story, sought to flood the zone with tens of millions of unsupervised mail-in ballots, historically understood to be riper for fraud and other election irregularities than supervised, in-person voting. The plan also involved the private takeover of government election offices to run Democrat-focused get-out-the-vote operations. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men, financed the project, doling out $419 million to two left-wing groups that focused grants and assistance to government offices in the Democrat areas of swing states.

This radical change — “practically a revolution in how people vote,” as Time put it — included the widespread practice of placing ballot drop boxes predominantly in Democrat areas of the country, mailing out unsolicited mail-in ballots or applications for mail-in ballots, using well-funded teams of ballot harvesters both inside and outside of government, lowering and changing the standards for mail-in ballot acceptance, and fixing or “curing” ballots that were improperly filled out. 

Corporate media and other Democrats claimed the election was the best-run in history. In reality, it was a mess. Big Tech and the media ran coordinated disinformation campaigns to benefit Democrats by suppressing news that hurt the party. Big Tech also deplatformed effective conservative voices and media outlets, suppressed fundraising emails from Republicans, and elevated certain information to help Democrats. 

There were other problems. Candidate debates occurred long after mail-in and early balloting began. Poll observers were sidelined under the guise of a Covid “emergency.” The counting of ballots cast via unsupervised, mail-in voting resulted in curious and confusing results. It took days and sometimes weeks to find out how many ballots were cast, much less for whom. In the end, Americans learned that Joseph Biden, who had spent most of his campaign at home, had become the most popular American president in history, collecting an astounding 81 million votes.

Many Republican voters wondered how things were allowed to get so bad with elections.

GOP Spent 40 Years on the Sidelines

Part of the reason Republicans hadn’t more effectively fought the election integrity battle before now is somewhat shocking. The 2020 contest was the first presidential election since Ronald Reagan’s first successful run in 1980 in which the Republican National Committee could play any role whatsoever in Election Day operations. For nearly 40 years, the Democratic National Committee had a massive systematic advantage over its Republican counterpart: The RNC had been prohibited by law from helping with poll watcher efforts or nearly any voting-related litigation.

Democrats had accused Republicans of voter intimidation in a 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial race. The case was settled, and the two parties entered into a court-ordered consent decree limiting Republican involvement in any poll-watching operation. But Dickinson Debevoise, the Jimmy Carter-appointed judge who oversaw the agreement, never let them out of it, repeatedly modifying and strengthening it at Democrats’ request.

Debevoise was a judge for only 15 years, but he stayed 21 years in senior status, a form of semi-retirement that enables judges to keep serving in a limited capacity. It literally took Debevoise’s dying in 2015 for Republicans to get out of the consent decree. Upon his passing, a new judge, appointed by President Obama, was assigned the case and let the agreement expire at the end of 2018.

The effect of this four-decade hindrance on GOP poll-watching cannot be overstated. Poll watchers serve many functions. They deter voter fraud, but they also help with getting out the vote. Poll watchers can see who has voted, meaning campaigns and political parties can figure out which areas and voters to call and encourage to vote. They also can observe who was forced to vote provisionally or who was turned away at the polls. 

“Without poll watchers, the RNC would have no good way to follow up with its voters to help ensure a provisional ballot is later counted, direct confused voters to their correct polling place and document irregularities, such as voting equipment malfunctions and other incidents that are important flash points in a close election or recount,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has explained. 

For decades, Democrats built up expansive coordination efforts that the Republicans were prohibited from developing. Republican candidates and state parties could do things on their own, but not with help from the national party. In 2012, the Obama-Biden campaign bragged about recruiting 18,000 lawyers to be poll watchers, providing more than 300 trainings to ensure the observers understood election law. The volunteers would collect more than 19,000 problematic incidents at polling locations that were resolved with or without legal intervention. 

The consent decree also meant the RNC was kept out of almost any litigation related to Election Day. In fact, one main part of the RNC’s legal efforts was training staff to stay away from Election Day operations, including recounts, and fending off litigation that arose from the consent decree. 

It paralyzed the RNC’s political operations, as the slightest misstep would result in getting sued by Democrats. For example, when former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in an interview with GQ magazine that he’d watched 2016 returns in an oversized utility room on the fifth floor of Trump Tower, Democrats deposed him to show he’d violated the order by being on the wrong floor, one tied to Election Day outreach. 

The Democrats used that trivial fact to try, unsuccessfully, to get the new judge to extend the limitation on their political rivals for another decade. Even though the decree was finally lifted after nearly 40 years, it didn’t mean Republicans were on even footing with Democrats in 2020. Democrats had spent decades perfecting their Election Day operations and litigation strategy while everyone at the RNC walked on eggshells, knowing that if they so much as looked in the direction of a polling site, there could be another crackdown. 

Thus there was no muscle memory about how to watch polls or communicate with a campaign. They had spent decades not being able to organize or talk to presidential campaigns, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or the National Republican Congressional Committee about any of these efforts. 

What a change, then, when McDaniel announced in early 2020 her “intention to be the most litigious chair in history.”

But First, Election Reforms

Before mounting successful lawsuits, however, better laws had to be passed — a difficult task in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, when Democrats claimed any criticism of how that election had been run was unacceptable and possibly criminal. That campaign, designed to suppress efforts to bolster election security, continues to this day. Nevertheless, Republican lawmakers in dozens of states began pushing for election reforms. 

For example, bans on so-called Zuckbucks, the private takeover of government election offices, were passed and signed into law in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Six Democrat governors vetoed attempted bans, understanding how key Zuckerberg’s funding was to Democrat success in 2020. The governors of Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all vetoed the bans. Wisconsin’s governor, currently in a tight election, vetoed twice. The Kansas legislature overrode the veto.

The resulting contrast between election integrity in some of these battleground states could not be clearer. Take Pennsylvania, for instance, a pivotal swing state where the Democrat governor vetoed the legislature’s attempted reforms. Its partisan Supreme Court meanwhile issues conflicting guidance, resulting in disparate treatment of ballots depending on the county they’re cast in. Elections here are high in irregularities and low in voter trust.

Not so in Georgia. Recall that despite tremendous pressure from Democrats who alleged massive GOP-led voter suppression, including Biden who smeared election integrity efforts as “Jim Crow 2.0,” Georgia passed much-needed reforms related to voter ID, mail-in voting, and drop boxes, in addition to the Zuckbucks ban. The result has been record-breaking early, in-person voter turnout, across demographics, surpassing 2 million voters this week.

Meanwhile, the Foundation for Government Accountability worked with states to make policy changes to clean voter rolls, ban ballot trafficking, secure ballot custody, roll back Covid waivers, enact penalties for election lawbreakers, require chains of custody, secure drop boxes, pre-process absentee ballots, improve absentee voter ID, and dozens of other types of reforms.

Florida has been working steadily to improve its election system since the disastrous 2000 election. Last year, that meant banning Zuckbucks. This year, those changes included “requiring voter rolls to be annually reviewed and updated, strengthening ID requirements, establishing the Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate election law violations, and increasing penalties for violations of election laws.”

Incidentally, the Center for Renewing America filed a complaint with the IRS over the tax break that Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan received for their 2020 election meddling. 

Litigate, Litigate, Litigate

While the RNC and the Trump campaign did achieve some legal successes in the lead-up to the 2020 election, it was nowhere near sufficient against the well-funded and coordinated Democrat effort. Republican donors and grassroots demanded more. 

The RNC got involved in 73 election integrity cases in 20 states for the midterms, with plans to expand. They won a lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for restricting the rights of poll challengers; got Maricopa County, Arizona, to share key data about its partisan breakdown of poll workers; won an open records lawsuit against Mercer County, New Jersey, for refusing to share election administration data; won a lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections for restricting the rights of poll watchers; and reached a favorable settlement against Clark County, Nevada, in which the county agreed to share information about its partisan breakdown of poll workers on a rolling basis.

“I’m so grateful the RNC is back in the system after 40 years. They’re so needed,” said Minnesota State Senator and former Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer.

Ken Cuccinelli, the former Virginia attorney general and acting deputy DHS secretary who now runs the Election Transparency Initiative, agreed. “They’ve been a game changer in the litigation arena to keep elections clean.”

The RNC wasn’t the only big change in the litigation battle. Hotelier Steve Wynn, strategist Karl Rove, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and top Republican election lawyers launched an election litigation group, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), in July 2022, and within three months chalked up several major victories.

For instance, RITE sued over controversial Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance that conflicted with state law, telling election clerks to accept ballots that had been spoiled, and won the case. It was also part of the group that successfully sued Pennsylvania over whether ballots that failed to be dated, as required by state law, could be counted. 

“It goes to show what responsible and tireless lawyering can do for election integrity,” said Derek Lyons, the president and CEO of RITE.

Groups with lengthier histories of battling for election integrity, such as the Public Interest Legal Foundation, also had successes. A Delaware court ruled that the state’s newly passed mail-in balloting scheme violated its constitution.

Monitoring Polls

U.S. elections used to occur on one day, requiring just one day of poll observations. Now that elections can spread out over days, weeks, or even months, many more workers are needed to monitor the casting of ballots.

The RNC hired 17 in-state election integrity directors and 37 state-based election integrity counsels in key states. They conducted more than 5,000 election integrity trainings, recruited more than 70,000 poll watchers and workers, and worked with more than 110,000 unique volunteers nationwide. They set up an issue reporting system and distributed copies of Poll Watcher Principles for states. If voters encounter election issues, they can file a report, and attorneys will be dispatched to resolve the issues. Sites were set up in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Congressional Republicans also got in on the action. Rep. Rodney Davis, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, notified all 50 states that he would be deploying dozens of specially trained election observers to protect the integrity of the ballot box.

The move occurred after Democrats nearly seized a seat won by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa in 2020. She won her election by just six votes, leading Democrats to attempt to unseat her using parliamentary shenanigans. The Republicans of the House Administration Committee just released a mini-doc about Democrats’ attempt at literal election denialism.

With tens of millions of voters newly concerned about election integrity, other groups also took part in massive training operations. The Election Integrity Network, which started with a podcast on election integrity issues hosted by longtime election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, grew into state summits, which then built out into coalitions in states, attracting people to weekly meetings. The network has trained 76,000 poll workers.

The network’s North Carolina Election Integrity Team covers 95 percent of that state’s priority areas with poll observers. It has more than 30 local task forces, with representatives in 75 of 100 counties. More than 2,000 North Carolinians were individually trained. The group has established a strong working relationship with the state General Assembly to overhaul legislation and built relationships with local election officials. Similar groups are operating in Georgia, Virginia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and other states. 

The Vulnerable Voters Working Group meets to develop and implement ideas to protect nursing homes from left-wing ballot harvesting. The American Constitutional Rights Union is one coalition partner working to protect seniors from illicit activities.

Part of the benefit of an aggressive legal strategy is that it incentivizes election bureaucrats and officials to follow the law, which helps restore trust in elections, Election Integrity Network Director Marshall Yates says. “What these people do is provide transparency and accountability to the system that was previously just run by unaccountable bureaucrats. They may or may not see something but just their presence is a check on making sure there is some accountability to the system, and it should restore confidence in seeing how elections were administered.”

What Remains

While reforms were passed in more than two dozen states, key lawsuits were filed and won, and poll workers are being deployed nationwide, many problems remain. Even with the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court victory, that state remains essentially lawless when it comes to election integrity. North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, and other battleground states retain problematic election processes and guidance. And inflated voter rolls, combined with unsolicited mail-in ballots, are a recipe for disaster.

The new election integrity groups have much work to do in the years ahead. But many Americans, from establishment Republicans to grassroots conservatives, have poured themselves into restoring integrity to elections nationwide. They have begun to achieve major successes in lobbying for election security, litigating against a well-funded activist opposition, and training poll watchers. And they did it all in the face of a hostile propaganda press that maliciously disparaged them as election deniers.