The Republican National Committee (RNC) is reportedly asking prospective employees what they think about the 2020 election — as they should.
Citing unnamed sources, The Washington Post reported that job applicants at the RNC have been asked about whether they believe the 2020 election was “stolen,” although the Post acknowledged the questions were “open-ended.”
The Post tried to spin the story as the RNC “demanding fealty” to former President Donald Trump, using the words of President Joe Biden’s rapid response director. But beating Democrats — who showed in 2020 that they are willing to ignore the rule of law in order to change how elections are fundamentally run, to their advantage — starts by acknowledging what happened in 2020.
“Potential staffers who worked on the front line in battleground states or are currently in states where fraud allegations have been prevalent were asked about their work experience,” RNC and Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement to The Federalist. “We want experienced staff with meaningful views on how elections are won and lost and real experience-based opinions about what happens in the trenches.”
So what did happen in the “trenches”?
For one, unelected officials usurped the authority of the legislature to unilaterally change election laws and fundamentally alter the electoral process.
Then-Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar serves as a prime example, having bucked not only the legislature but guidance from the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court declined to expedite Pennsylvania Republicans’ challenge to a state supreme court order that permitted ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but received during the three days following Election Day — and also ballots lacking a postmark but received during the same period — to be counted, based on the understanding that Boockvar would segregate ballots received during the three day extension.
Republicans argued the state supreme court’s decision violated state law that stipulates ballots must arrive by Election Day. Any move to extend the deadline for accepting ballots, they contended, should belong to lawmakers.
Boockvar initially issued guidance on Oct. 28 ordering all ballots received after Election Day be kept separate in the event the high court ruled the ballot extension unconstitutional. Justice Samuel Alito noted that guidance the same day, in a statement on the court’s decision not to take the case. But just days before the election, Boockvar issued updated guidance ordering the segregated late ballots be counted “as soon as possible upon receipt of the ballots.”
Boockvar was later rebuked by a state court for additional guidance she put out that allowed voters missing proof of identification to “cure” their mail-in ballots until Nov. 12, nine days after the election. Trump’s campaign and the RNC argued Boockvar lacked the authority to change the law and only the legislature had power to legislate election changes.
“[T]he Court concludes that Respondent Kathy Boockvar, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, lacked statutory authority to issue the November 1, 2020, guidance to Respondents County Boards of Elections insofar as that guidance purported to change the deadline … for certain electors to verify proof of identification,” Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote.
Other battleground states had issues that undoubtedly affected the election, such as Georgia, which saw Democrats sneak in a major change to mail-in voting months before Election Day. As part of an agreement with the Georgia Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, state election officials agreed to permit “ballot curing.”
Ballot curing allows voters whose ballots were rejected a chance to “cure” or correct the issue on their absentee ballot so that it can be counted. But as The Federalist’s John Davidson pointed out, there was a less-publicized provision of the agreement that had consequences for the election. Prior to the agreement, the signature on an absentee ballot had to match the signature in Georgia’s voter registration database. Ballots were rejected if the signatures did not match.
But the new agreement made sure that an absentee ballot signature simply had to match the signature on the absentee ballot application. This means if someone filled out an application fraudulently, that same person could then sign the ballot itself and both signatures would match.
Or take a state like Wisconsin, where two years after Trump lost by roughly 20,000 votes, the state Supreme Court ruled unelected officials did not have authority to usurp the legislature the way it did when it issued guidance permitting the use of ballot drop boxes in direct contradiction of state law. Milwaukee, like other left-leaning cities in the state, had more than a dozen of these illegal drop boxes. President Joe Biden beat Trump by more than 100,000 votes in the city.
Unlawful changes to election laws were only one of the ways the 2020 election was rigged — or “fortified,” as leftists would say. From Big Tech censorship of conservative speech and bombshell news (like the Hunter Biden laptop story), to media interference, to the infiltration of election offices by private donors via “Zuckbucks,” the 2020 election was rife with alarming issues that Republicans would be foolish not to learn from.
“Allowing just one of these attacks to infect our electoral system would be a crisis,” Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway told the House Administration Committee last month. “Allowing all of them at the same time is an existential threat to our system of self-government.”