Jason Snead is the executive director of the Honest Elections Project, an organization that fights to preserve the integrity of our democracy through free and fair elections. Snead works to ensure all Americans are able to exercise their Constitutional right to vote without any obstruction, and to ensure proper guardrails to support that right.

Transcribed by Otter.Ai

You know, the job was dangerous when you’re talking for him, I have a question for me. One might even go so far as to say, he’s mediocre. I guess I should salute you with a worthy adversary and all that. But the truth is, I really did. He had guts, he still struggles for podcasts you know, I’m gonna go with failure. I’m gonna go with failure, even though frankly, folks, I don’t believe failure describes what the Texas GOP House leadership did the state of Texas, I don’t think failure does it. I think they did it intentionally. I think it’s what their hearts and their wallets commanded them to do. Because I think a lot of these people are having having their palms greased by special interests. And I think that’s what’s leading him to do terrible things to us. In the state of Texas in the name of republicanism. Let me give an example of one of the many we’ll call it a failure because they failed to protect us. They succeeded in enriching themselves, and giving themselves more power, but they failed in their chief mission. The mission they they told us they were going up there due to Austin, which is to protect us. I mean, from the power grid. We’ve we’ve talked about this significantly already in the podcast this week, but from the grid to diversified power, to, to parental school choice to the vote. That’s right, kids. There was no significant legislation that passed in the Texas legislature that addressed the myriad voting problems that we had, for example, in Harris County. Now they they did focus in on Harris County, they got rid of the elections administrator there. But that was just one county, it should have applied a blanket application to all of Texas, and actually put these elected leaders back on the hook for how these elections are conducted, because by the Constitution, by the standard of the Constitution, they are responsible. But another failure of theirs was the impeachment of Ken Paxton. Now, let me explain this, because I’m gonna go whoa, wait a minute, what is what is impeaching? Ken Paxton? What does that have to do with anything with the vote? Well, folks, the the individuals who should have been up for impeachment, where we should have been dedicating the lion’s share of, of resources, where the eight justices in the criminal court of appeals, who came down with that outrageous ruling that everybody agrees was outrageous, absolutely asinine from Governor Abbott, to Lieutenant Governor Patrick, to the attorney general, all the statewide, every conservative has said it is just insane, that you would say the Attorney General of the State of Texas has no authority to prosecute voting fraud. It’s just nuts. But instead of impeaching those people, the Texas House run by Republicans who are devoted to Democrats devoted to Democrat ideology devoted to Democrat policies, those Republicans, instead of impeaching the, those wayward justices in the criminal court of appeals went after the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton. It’s unconscionable. And, frankly, folks who’s going to pay the price. Now granted, Ken Paxton is not able to do his job while he’s under quote unquote, impeachment. But really the the long term impact will be Democrats ability to cheat in perpetuity, here in the state of Texas, and that’s the way Republican leaders in the House want it. Because really, as you all know, the leadership in the Texas House is chosen by Democrats, the only state in the Union, where you have the majority speaker, elected by the other party, where they actually get a say in it. So you’ve got truly a bipartisan speaker who is devoted to Republicans and Democrats, but only one problem of that the majority of Texans put Republicans in charge. So the very existence of a speaker that is elected with Republican and Democrat votes, the very existence betrays the very foundation of democracy, the very foundation of our representative Republic. And that’s what the Texas speaker has stood for not just for this current Texas speaker, all of them. That’s what they have stood for, in stark contrast to the Constitution in stark contrast to our democratic principles, the only politician and that type of power in the entirety of the United States elected in that way, folks, we dig deep into another aspect that the Texas House punted on, as I just stated, the Republicans want to continue the ability of Democrats to cheat at the ballot box. And one big thing they didn’t address comes your way next on the Salcedo storm podcast. And now a word from our sponsor, are you sick of all these Medicare commercials? Well, what if you’re under 65 and need quality affordable health coverage American medical plan specializes in under 65 health insurance plans that have zero co pays at the doctor and no deductible on all outpatient services including surgeries, you pick your doctors and hospitals. There are private plans and rolling the time and there are 30 to 60% less than Obama care if you’re paying too much for your own health insurance call American medical plans they will customize a plan manage and chosen by you not the government I liberty loving American takes on Washington, Hollywood and the whole media establishment is Chris Saucedo, join his fight. Tune in to the Chris Saucedo show. Every weekday afternoon on Newsmax. The establishment media is out of touch with the real things real Texans care about real news for real Texans. That’s what Texas scorecard does every day. Learn more and subscribe for free, Texas scorecard.com/chris. Folks, I think it’s a little late but I guess Better late than never a lot of Americans are starting to question legitimately the validity of the vote in the United States. And unless you live in a state like California where they don’t give a damn or Illinois but they don’t give a damn. Jason Snead is the executive director of the honest elections project an organization that fights to preserve the integrity of our democracy through free and fair elections. Sneed works to ensure all Americans are able to exercise their constitutional right to vote without any obstruction and to ensure proper guardrails to support that right, Mr. Sneed. Welcome to the Salcedo storm podcast. Well, thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. Now, you have a point of advocacy here that you’re aiming directly at the Texas Legislature, you’re saying that you want the Texas Legislature to ban something called ranked choice. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this the the system that Alaska switched to just to make sure that Lisa Murkowski and then Murkowski family could be elected in perpetuity? Well, this is the system that Alaska adopted and that they used in 2022. For the first time, it’s a fundamental transformation of election, where instead of voting for a single candidate in a race, now you have multiple candidates running and you the voter are asked to rank those candidates in order of your personal preference from first to last. So if you have five people running, you’d have the opportunity or the obligation, depending on on which pro RCV group you’re talking to, to pick it first, second, third, and so on, candidate and then what happens is, when all of the votes are cast, and the tabulators gather all of the ballots, they look to see if anyone has got over 50% of the first place votes. And if that doesn’t happen, they proceed through a series of rounds of elimination, that get rid of the lowest performing candidate, distribute their votes based on each voter second place choice. And then they run the numbers again, and they do that over and over again, until someone gets over 50% of the remaining vote. And I say that because in the process of these rounds of elimination, you aren’t just eliminating candidates, you’re also eliminating ballots, If a voter only voted for, say one or two people, and then those candidates get eliminated, their votes are tossed as well. So it’s a complicated system that is extremely difficult to explain. It’s hard to use as a voter, it actually makes voting more difficult. And it’s only used in a few places. But yes, it is used in Alaska. And guess what the very first time they use it in a special congressional election. 11,000 votes were thrown out in that election. And the person who won didn’t actually win a true majority. They only got a plurality, which has me scratching my head wondering, why are we changing the system to deliver a majority when it doesn’t actually do that? Simply simply put, it’s complicating the vote. Well, we don’t need to complicate it, and it advantages statists it advantages those who don’t get popular support, which in my mind is the definition of left wing extremism, collectivism, socialism, communism, the political the political system memes that devolved from those economic systems of, of socialism and communism. And it makes no sense to me. It makes it it is it is anti American. And I hope that our legislature gets rid of that. What are you hearing about the possibility of that? Well, there is a piece of legislation that would actually banned rank choice voting in Texas. So far, it’s bottled up in the house, we don’t see it actually moving at this point. There are a few other election bills that are including a constitutional amendment to ban non citizens voting, which is another thing which we see the left trying to do is push for non citizens to be able to vote in the election. But unfortunately, the rank choice voting ban has not yet moved. Now, it’s important to note that even though rank choice voting is not currently used any place in Texas, it actually is the law in Austin. Austin just hasn’t implemented it. And this is a threat, which is getting pushed all across the country. So I talked to people in states, from Texas to Idaho who think that rank choice voting is not a threat, because it’s not currently being used. But what they don’t realize is that there are groups pulling millions of dollars from out of state dark money, special interests, trying to push rank choice voting at the local level, at the county level, and then at the state level. So it’s far better to preemptively ban it and wait for it to come to your state and then try to unwind that clock. Amen to that. No, you have probably researched in the wake of the 2020 election, states that are doing it right states that are doing it wrong to correct the wrongs in 2020 and 2022, which I will expand on here in a minute. But it tells me which state is doing it right and which states are doing it wrong. Well, in terms of election reform, generally, I think Texas is a great example of success. I think Georgia is as well and Florida as a model in many areas for election integrity. And Florida story is also one which I think other states need to learn from. If you rewind the clock to 20, excuse me to 2000, Florida was the butt of every joke in the Bernie Gore election. And they picked themselves up off the mat and over the next two decades built a system that was robust, secure, and could handle something like a global pandemic getting thrown at it. And it still was able to count millions of votes on election night deliver winners. And we all went to bed knowing who won Florida in the 2020 presidential election. And so that is a story that I think other states need to learn from, because it’s not the case where you can improve election integrity once every 20 years or once every 10 years. It’s not a silver bullet type policy. This is an area where you need constant iterative updates. Every election produces new issues, we learn new lessons, we need to implement new solutions. And there are always best practices that are evolving. The other way to look at this is that you can plug one hole in the election integrity area. But the left is always looking for other ways to get around the rules that you’re putting in place like it’s up bucks, for instance. Yep, it got six bucks 2.0 now because they could ban private election funding, so they’ve come back with something new. So not only do you need to constantly be improving your elections after every single election cycle, you also need to recognize that the left is constantly changing, constantly adapting. And you cannot treat this area as solved, because they won’t treat it as as fixed Ibis. That’s funny. I have referred to the left wing, the worldwide left as the Borg and you just described a Borg constantly evolving, constantly adapting, always trying to assimilate, always trying to steal people’s rights and their autonomy. And boy, Jason, you you swerved right into that description. Jason Sneed is our guest. He’s the Executive Director of the honest elections project. Kerry lakes case in Arizona, the judge has it now. And this judge was forced to retake this case after a higher court said, Dude, you can’t dismiss this. You’ve got to you’ve got to hear this. It’s got to be put in open court. What do you think of her case and its chances of success in Arizona? Well, I’ll say this. The reality is when you’re doing post election litigation in this space post election challenges, remedies like overturning elections are extremely uncommon, and it is very, very difficult to prove. This is part of the reason why I think some judicial changes need to be made, because you’ve got tight timelines between an election and an election certification. And you know, these sorts of cases are extremely fact intensive, and require time to work out and sometimes judges will kick the can down the road. But it is not uncommon to see a post election challenge that winds up falling flat because of the fact that it is extremely difficult to prove fraud or malfeasance. There were clearly issues in Maricopa on Election Day with printers, not producing balance that could be read by machines. That was a problem which frankly, should have been caught pre election during all of the testing and certification systems. And it’s not clear to me why that That was not caught in that process. But nevertheless, this is another reason why it’s so important to continue to go back as a legislature and pass laws that fix problems that emerge because what happened in Maricopa is an example of exactly what we’ve been talking about, you know, what can happen, will happen eventually. And it’s always important to make sure that you are showing the voters that you are acting to ensure the integrity of the system, you are learning from mistakes that were made. You are holding officials accountable, and you are correcting the system for future elections. I am glad you said it. Because you took me right where I wanted to go. It is the legislators that are imbued by the Constitution with the power and authority to change elections. Not governors, not Supreme Courts of the various states, the legislatures. The Arizona Senate Majority Leader Sunday were really citing yesterday, their concurrent resolution 1037, which bypassed their racist Governor out there, the Democrat who runs it, that state banning foreign voting machines and requiring source code, ballot images, chain of custody documents and log files to be made public for all voting machines. They say they have plenary authority under the Constitution as the legislature to make these changes. What say you? Well, there is no doubt that the US Constitution gives power to state legislatures to write the rules that govern our elections for for federal office. That’s what the Constitution of the United States says. And that’s something which is an issue that we’ve seen Get, get get fought in courts all across the country, you know, who actually writes the rules? Is it a judge? Is it a governor? Or is it the legislature, I’m on the legislature side, I think that it’s important to note that there is a process here. So you write, you write bills, you pass them, and then governor signed them, then you have the opportunity to override vetoes and so forth. But there is no doubt in my mind that the primary organ of government that is responsible for writing election law, is the legislation. And that, unfortunately, is a controversial concept these days, in part because the left has a multimillion dollar litigation operation run by a gentleman named Mark Elias, who has access to virtually unlimited numbers of attorneys unlimited resources, and can plug himself into a vast web of left wing groups. And they frankly, go to courts with activist judges, and they ask them to change the rules for partisan advantage. And they have made this concept that lawmakers make law into a very controversial topic for that reason alone because it threatens that operation. But I very much believe that the American people understand that just like that old song that we all learned in school, I’m just a bill that works for elections, too. We need lawmakers who get elected by the people to write the rules that govern our democracy, not unelected judges, not governors. It’s the lawmakers who do this job. And that’s oddly enough, we don’t see Schoolhouse Rock on the on the TVs anymore, because the left successfully drove that off of television. You don’t want the American people at a young age to know what their rights are. Last thing I’m going to bring our discussion back to Texas, Houston, as you know, k h o u here locally discovered that 121 voting centers did not initially receive enough paper ballots to cover the voter turnout in 2022. Now these revelations have prompted many to call for a new election in Harris County, because by outside observers and folks who have looked into this, it doesn’t seem that the election in Harris County was on the up and up. What what is your research revealed? Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Harris County struggles to run a competent election system. This is hardly the first time that you’ve seen issues emerge in Harris County factors County has been the subject of a prior audit of the 2020 election. And I believe undergoing an audit right now for the 2022 election. And in the 2020 election audit the report that was produced sick, and it found a number of problems, irregularities, failures to follow the law and so forth. So I don’t believe there’s any doubt in my mind that Harris County is at the very least, often in competently run when it comes to elections. And I have to say that maintaining enough ballot paper at a polling location is the most basic thing that is required of an election office. Right. It’s right up there with turning the lights on and making sure that you’ve got a person to to welcome voters. It’s a very basic thing. And the fact that they were not able to maintain enough ballot paper in so many locations, raises very significant questions in my mind about how well that system is being run. And I think it would be worth further investigation to see what steps might need to be taken in order to ensure that you have accountability in the in the election system itself. Well, according to state Senator Paul Betancourt SB 1750 will get rid of Harris County’s current process and put elected officials back in charge and accountable for elections and that’s what the Harris County has been missing is accountability. A couple of election cycles have gone through where there’s been none. And they want to restore accountability, which is good news for the people of Harris County. Jason Sneed, Executive Director of the honest elections project. If folks want to help you and your team, where can they go? Well, you can check us out online, honest elections.org. Or you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook at honest elections where we are constantly updating everyone on the latest news on election integrity. Alright, Jason, thank you very much for the time man appreciate the conversation and ask you to put a wrap on this edition of The Saucedo storm podcast to me and you a favor. Get onto a couple of websites once you please Texas scorecard.com, Texas scorecard.com. If you want the rundown of everything the Republican Party leadership and the Texas House betrayed their voters on that is the place to go they’ll give you a complete listing of complete accounting. That’s why Texas scorecard is loved by those who are citizens of Texas and despised by those who are pro politician and pulling the wool over the people’s eyes. Also go to Chris salcedo.com That’s Chris salcedo.com to find Well, all of our social media hookups were on Twitter yes back there. Truth social a robust community there were on ghetto run rumble on me we and I know I’m forgetting one. Oh yeah, gab. Don’t forget. So it’s all there. Plus, you can drop me an email and a voicemail to let me know what’s on your mind. Until we visit again, my friends remember this. A society’s worth isn’t measured by how much power is stolen by an out of control government. It is rather measured by how much power is reserved for you and me. We the People. You stay safe out there my friends

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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