Live from Des Moines Tuesday morning on The Simon Conway Show with Matt Kittle – broadcast on Des Moines, Iowas, 1040 WHO (4p-7p weekdays) or in the Quad Cities on 1420 WOC (4 p.m.-6p.m. weekdays) – guest host Kittle welcomed former Arizona Governor candidate Kari Lake to the show to promote her upcoming event in Iowa and America First policies.
Kittle: I’m tickled pink to have her on the show with us, Kari Lake. A lot of people will tell you today, she should be right now, the governor of the great state of Arizona. She’s coming to her own home state! It’s a homecoming call, of course. Kari Lake, good to have you on the show. How are you?
Lake: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Matt. I’m so excited to be coming home. And we’re going to be talking to people in Des Moines and then, of course, in Scott County, where I grew up while I’m there, kind of killing two birds with one stone, as they say, while I’m there.
I’m always trying to get the word out about how critical it is that we reform our elections. And even in a state like Iowa which has pretty good secure elections, when other states are running banana republic-style elections, it affects the folks in Iowa, Missouri, Montana, and Alabama, because everyone in this country wants a secure border. They don’t want illegal immigration out of control.
They don’t want people being trafficked. They don’t want fentanyl pouring across. And when we sit back and allow the kind of crazy elections that they run here in Arizona to happen, it affects every single state. And so we’re going to talk about that. I’m just looking forward to connecting with my family, first of all, and seeing some folks from Iowa.
Kittle: Absolutely. Let’s get the details. You’re going to be in Bettendorf, and then you’re going to be in Ankeny as well. Give us the times, the dates, all of that good stuff.
Lake: Yes, we’re coming in; we’re doing an event in Scott County on Friday the 10th, and we’re looking forward to that. That’s through the Scott County Women’s Republican Women’s Club. And then we’re going to be in Ankeny at the district venue, which looks really nice, I must say. And we’re going to be doing that on Saturday the 11th. And doors open at 4:15 p.m. And if you want to get free tickets, you can go to karilake.com/events.
Kittle: Excellent. Kari Lake joining us. Just a minute left. What’s at stake in 2024?
Lake: Everything. I feel that 2022 was really important. And we led such a movement here, and we still lead the movement here in Arizona. People want a secure border. They want the fentanyl poison to stop pouring into this country. They want safe streets. They want their kids to learn something at school so they can get out and be ready for the world. They want sanity.
And my campaign, my candidacy threatened the status quo so much here in Arizona that they sabotaged Election Day. There’s no other way to put it. And that’s why my election case is in the appellate court here in Arizona. We’re fighting on that front. But 2024 is critical. I believe that America First policies are the way out of the mess that this political class has gotten us into.
Kittle: You’re absolutely right. What we learned more than anything is the swamp isn’t just in Washington, D.C. It happens to be in Capitol cities across the country. You know that better than anybody. Looking forward to it Saturday in Ankeny, and I think I’ll be there. So we’ll meet you then.
Lake: Looking forward to meeting you in person.
Kittle: Absolutely.
Lake: See you guys on Saturday.
Kittle: You bet. God bless. Safe travels to you.
Lake: Thank you. Thank you.
Kittle: Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor. What a mess that whole thing is election integrity so critical, and Arizona showed exactly that.
Listen to the interview:
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Photo “Kari Lake” by The Kari Lake. Background Photo “Iowa Capitol” by Billwhittaker. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed creator of the Huey Report and direct mail expert, Craig Huey, in-studio to explain ballot harvesting and the threat facing states and individuals in defense of election integrity.
Leahy: In studio, digital marketing expert, California refugee now living in state income tax-free Tennessee. Brought your businesses. Doing great here. Craig Huey.
You know Craig, Clay, Travis, and Buck Sexton have their show on here now from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. They have been great in promoting The Tennessee Star Report. We really appreciate that.
Huey: Awesome.
Leahy: You’re talking about the possibility of voter fraud in the California recall election.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: I’ve got a story for you kind of related to it. Since you were last here. You can’t stay away from us for too long, Craig, (Huey chuckles) because we’re opening up state-based conservative newspapers.
Huey: I’m so excited about that. That’s great.
Leahy: At a rapid pace. We launched The Arizona Sun Times on June 24.
Huey: Perfect.
Leahy: Headline by Rachel Alexander, our state house reporter in Phoenix. Twitter Bans Official Arizona Audit Account and Other Audit Accounts.
Huey: Not shocked. Not shocked.
Leahy: Do you have a story to tell us?
Huey: I do. Because what has happened is this, the Democrats are running scared because voter fraud is going to be recognized because of the audit in Arizona and hopefully in other states.
Leahy: Various levels of audits are currently undergoing. There is the Fulton County, Georgia audits with absentee ballots going on now.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: And the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Joe Biden was certified the winner in Arizona by less than 11,000 votes out of 3 million cast. Certified the winner in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast. Fulton County – there’s so many problems there.
It looks like you can’t rely upon Fulton County results. Arizona, they’re doing this audit. The Arizona State Senate has the authority to subpoena county records because in our constitutional government of the United States of America, we have two entities that have sovereignty. The national federal government and the state government.
Huey: Correct. Federalism.
Leahy: The state government, the state legislature have sovereignty over the counties which have been created by the state government.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: So they started this audit of the Maricopa County election results. Maricopa County, two million votes cast in Maricopa County, as Phoenix. It’s the biggest county in the state. Three million total cast.
They started the audit on April 23. Everything you see in the establishment media and Democrats since even before that has been nonstop criticism of the audit for spurious reasons. They don’t want the results to come out.
And you’ve got a little story to tell us about how far the Democrats and basically the highly partisan U.S. “Department of Justice.” I say that in quotes with Merrick Garland and Joe Biden. It’s the Department of Injustice as far as I can tell.
So tell us what’s going on there. Let’s put the big picture first. The Democrats’ number one thing is to be able to have mail-in ballots and be able to have ballot harvesting so that they can do voter fraud.
Leahy: Remember that 2005 bipartisan commission I talked about, it was headed up by Jimmy Carter, the Democratic President in 1977-1989, and by former Secretary of State James Baker in the George H.W. Bush administration. That bipartisan commission said, don’t do mail-in ballots because it’s prone to fraud.
Huey: That’s correct. Here in Tennessee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett has said, we’re not going to do any of that stuff. And our elections are pretty solid.
Huey: They’re pretty solid. So here’s the thing. You’ve got 19 states who have outlawed ballot harvesting, and you’ve got 28 states that allow it.
Leahy: Briefly describe ballot harvesting for our listeners.
Huey: Ballot harvesting is not voter fraud, but it leads the voter fraud. Ballot harvesting, usually for the Democrats and the unions is a paid person, can get data of who their voters are and go to that door multiple times until they find the person at home.
Talk to them about getting their ballot. They hand them the ballot. They give them a voter guide as to who to fill out. And then they take that ballot from them and take it to the poll. Now, they can do this to 100, 500, a 1000 different homes.
One person can bring those ballots in, and there’s no audit trail. There’s nothing to say who brought those ballots in. That person can throw away Republican ballots and nobody would know it.
That person can alter the ballot and nobody would know it. And get this, Michael, they can go to a nursing home, what’s called granny farming, go bed to bed, pick up the ballots, fill them out and nobody would know the difference.
If you’ve been to an apartment complex, people when they get their ballots by mail, if they do not want that ballot, they just leave it there. People can pick it up.
Leahy: It’s just prone to fraud all over the place.
Huey: Everywhere. I could go on and on about this. SB1 and HR1 is the first bill in Congress that the Democrats had that they thought they could have passed, which would have nationalized ballot harvesting. And basically, the Republicans could never win ever again.
Huey: And they failed in that attempt, though they’re still trying. They failed in that attempt. In Arizona, they outlawed ballot harvesting. The Democrats did what the Democrats do. They took the Republicans to court to try to overthrow that bill. It went up to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court just a couple of months ago said Arizona has the right to outlaw ballot harvesting. Democrats lost a major, major court case that affects everything in the United States.
Leahy: And that’s a very important case. I wrote a story about it at a Breitbart, Brnovich, the attorney general, the Democratic National Committee. In that six to three decision, Justice Samuel Alito wrote the following.
He wrote that states have the right to limit fraud in their states and simply by limiting fraud according to their own rules, they are not violating Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which is the entire basis of the Department of Justice’s attack on the state of Georgia.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: The Merrick Garland highly partisan Department of Injustice.
Huey: You’re being too nice.
Leahy: I know. I’m being too nice.
Huey: Michael, what we have right now is a war on election integrity. Right now we have Merrick Garland, the attorney general, directing an army of ideological left-wing Democrats who have unlimited time, unlimited money, and unlimited resources.
They have an army of people going after to intimidate any state that questions the last election and that will try to put into place voter ID or anything to protect the ballots.
Leahy: Not just any state but any private individual who participates in that. You’ve got some stories on that.
Huey: I do. So what happened is about three weeks ago, the attorney general made the announcement that they were going to investigate the states like Arizona.
Leahy: By the way, mercifully, I don’t always say many things about Mitch McConnell, the current Senate minority leader. But when he was a majority leader and in the last year of the Obama administration, they nominated – when Justice Scalia passed away, they nominated Merrick Garland to be on the Supreme Court. And Mitch McConnell because he knows the rules and said, I’m not doing it. I’m not going to hold the hearing. Mercifully.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: Mercifully, instead we got Neil Gorsuch.
Huey: That’s exactly right. And going back to that Arizona decision that upheld the outlawing about harvesting, if Garland was on the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court would have decided against Arizona.
Leahy: So you know what would have happened? Let me tell you. See, if you see this is the case. So Garland would have voted against Arizona.
Huey: Correct.
Leahy: That would have been five four before they announced the decision.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: You know what I’m going to say next.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: In their conferences, the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, because Crom was in here yesterday talking about a Kimberley Strassel article who said, basically, Justice Thomas, Chief Justice Thomas is fretting about Democrats attacked on the legitimacy of the court.
He’s making political decisions and has for some time since the 2012 NFIB Sebelius decision that allowed Congress to unconstitutionally pass Obamacare tax versus no tax. In that conference committee, old fretting Chief Justice Roberts would have flipped his vote.
Huey: That’s right.
Leahy: Do you agree with that?
Huey: I totally agree with that.
Leahy: So, by the way, thank you, Senator Mitch McConnell, thank you.
Huey: I can’t believe you are saying that.
Leahy: You give everyone their due.
Huey: – Everyone their due. But going back to Garland here he has unleashed an army against election integrity. It’s a war on these states and individuals. And here’s the thing in Arizona, they’re going to prove fraud. There are so many ballots that are questionable. So what they have done is they have written threatening a lawsuit, but not only a lawsuit, Michael, one year in jail.
And they had threatened a thousand dollar fines to the people who basically are like you and me. We don’t have lawyers to back us up and to intimidate them. And they’re saying, you are violating the Voters Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act and intimidating the voters by checking on the last election and ballot integrity. So the opinion of the Department of Justice is the stop the audits in Arizona, Georgia, any other state.
Leahy: Contravene justice.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: This is Orwellian. War is peace, peace is war.
Huey: Authoritarian. I can’t believe it. And not only this, the individuals who are involved in the audit have received a letter from the Department of Justice.
Leahy: Arizona.
Huey: Yes, Arizona. If you get a letter from an attorney, man, you get scared.
Leahy: What if it comes from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Huey: You’re doubly scared cause, you know, you can’t fight them.
Leahy: Well, you can, asterisk. Okay, what does it take to fight them?
Huey: Money?
Leahy: Huge amounts of money.
Huey: And here’s what they’ve asked. Get this. This makes me so upset. I think it’s going to make you upset, Michael. They have written to them and saying, were you part of the January sixth insurrection? Were you at the capital? Are you part of any domestic terrorist groups? Are you affiliated with any voter fraud?
Leahy: When did you stop beating your wife? Are you a Communist? This is McCarthyism.
Huey: Yes. They’re asking for text, telephone numbers, voicemails, emails, and every correspondence from these individuals.
Leahy: It’s none of their business.
Huey: No.
Leahy: They’re using this as an excuse.
Huey: Yes.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss the ranked-choice voting system mistake Tuesday night during the NYC Democratic Mayoral primary.
Leahy: Crom Carmichael, the story that broke last night in New York City, you’re gonna start smiling when I tell you this. Joel Pollak from Breitbart, my colleague. New York City’s Board of Elections, withdrew its latest vote count in the Democratic primary for mayor Tuesday evening after 135,000 test ballots were mistakenly included in a tally earlier in the day under the ranked-choice system.
Carmichael: How is that possible?
Leahy: How is that possible?
Carmichael: How is it possible that there might be voter fraud? My goodness.
Leahy: My goodness.
Carmichael: I thought that there was never, no matter what the circumstance, that no matter what the circumstance an investigation or a relook was always wrong. Always wrong. Checking to see if you did it right (Leahy laughs) in voting, according to Merrick Garland, is always wrong.
Leahy: I wonder if he’s going to do an investigation of New York City. Now, Here’s what’s interest.
Carmichael: That is the natural next question. And it’s the only one that’s actually still a live issue.
Leahy: Exactly.
Carmichael: So if he’s going to investigate any of them, it ought to be this one.
Leahy: By the way, you know who’s been hurt by this?
Carmichael: Who?
Leahy: The Black candidate, Eric Adams, who was leading in the first tally when they introduced these 135,000 bad test ballots that corrupted the system. His lead virtually disappeared. What does that sound like to you?
Carmichael: That might have corrupted the system.
Leahy: Might have.
Carmichael: Might have. In other words, we don’t know that. That’s why we’re supposed to do an audit.
Leahy: So actually, the Associated Press in that, let me read their lead sentence. They’re lefties.
Carmichael: Oh yes.
Leahy: Here’s what they said. They use the word corrupted. The Democratic primary, premier of New York City, was thrown into a state of confusion Tuesday when election officials retracted their latest report on the vote count after realizing it had been corrupted by test data never cleared from a computer system. That’s their words, not mine.
Carmichael: My goodness. This is going to be fascinating. Remind me and our listeners, of the Black guy who’s running. He was a former policeman, is that correct?
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: And the second place person is a wild leftist, is that correct?
Leahy: Wild leftist.
Carmichael: Making Bill DeBlasio look like Thomas Jefferson.
Leahy: That is funny. That is funny. (Laughs)
Carmichael: So describe what’s the name of the alternative? Ranked voting is where nobody gets a majority?
Leahy: They eliminate the bottom person, and then they go to the second choice and add them to the vote. It’s a big mess.
Carmichael: And so in this case, the did you say they were 135,000 test balance that they did to test the integrity, this is great, the integrity of the voting process. And then they left them in there.
Leahy: They left them in there. And they reported the results yesterday. And then they said, whoops! We forgot to take those out.
Carmichael: We forgot to erase the test.
Leahy: And the Black guy went from a big lead to almost tied because of that.
Carmichael: Okay, so the election has not been overturned.
Leahy: No.
Carmichael: Are they going to be able to identify the 135,000 ballots specifically?
Leahy: I don’t know. I don’t see how they’re going to do it.
Carmichael: They can’t do an audit.
Leahy: That would be evil. (Laughs)
Carmichael: It would be evil to do an audit.
Leahy: But wait. But wait. There’s more Crom. I know this would surprise you, but President Trump weighed in on this about an hour ago.
Carmichael: What did he say? Let me read this state and then get your reaction.
“Just like in the 2020 presidential election, it was announced overnight in New York City that vast irregularities and mistakes were made, and that Eric Adams (he’s the Black guy) despite an almost insurmountable lead, may not win the race. The fact is, based on what has happened, nobody will ever know who really won. The presidential race was a scam and a hoax with numbers and results being found that are massive, shocking, and determinative. Watch the mess you’re about to see in New York City. It will go on forever. They should close the books and do it all over again the old-fashioned way when we had results that were accurate and meaningful.”
Carmichael: That might as well have been said by De Blasio (Leahy laughs) about his own city because what Trump said there is entirely accurate about the election in New York City. It’s entirely accurate.
Now give us an update, because Mr. Garland is now trying to insert the Justice Department not only in whether or not there will be a recount, isn’t he now trying to do it in Fulton County? Isn’t he trying to stop that recount using the Justice Department, do that as well as overturn?
Leahy: If that’s happened, it’s recent. But he might have. I wouldn’t put it past him.
Carmichael: Or maybe it was a judge. Maybe it was a judge. Maybe I’m speaking out a step here. There was something about Fulton County where an audit is going to be able to proceed.
Leahy: That was from last week. Last week Merrick Garland, mercifully not on the Supreme Court, basically is suing the state of Georgia for passing an election integrity law that they’re claiming was intentionally designed to keep Black votes away. I don’t know how they see intent out of this.
Carmichael: They won’t be able to find that.
Leahy: But the audit of the absentee ballots, that review is proceeding under a few little complications, but we don’t know when it’s going to start, but it is scheduled to proceed.
Carmichael: And that’s in Georgia as well as in Maricopa County. Is that audit still ongoing?
Leahy: They’ve actually completed the audit. Now they’re writing the report from what I understand in Maricopa County. That report will come out in August. And so we’ll see what happens.
Carmichael: And did Arizona also pass election law reform?
Leahy: They are the leader in election reform. So the next thing you are going to see is Merrick Garland sue them. What a shock.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed The Star News Network’s Senior Reporter Laura Baigert to the newsmakers line to discuss her recent story regarding the investigation and request into chain of custody documents from Fulton County, Georgia’s Board of Registration and Elections Board.
Leahy: On our newsmaker line now, Tennessee Star, Star News Network, The Georgia Star News ace reporter Laura Baigert. Good morning, Laura.
Baigert: Good morning, Michael. How are you today?
Leahy: Well, you know, it’s been a very busy week for you, hasn’t it?
Baigert: Well, for all of us. (Laughter)
Leahy: So the big news was a week ago Monday you had a groundbreaking story and tell us what you discovered in that story. And then I will follow the chain of events from that story.
Baigert: For six months, we’ve been trying to get the chain of custody documents for the absentee ballots that were deposited by voters into drop boxes in Fulton County where Atlanta is located.
And we’ve got a bunch of documents from Fulton County, but not all of them. So we’ve followed up and followed up as a team to Fulton County asking for those documents. Finally, they came back and said, we have to admit that there are a few forms missing due to COVID and some quarantining that they back in October, that they misplaced documents.
This was after we showed them how many documents were missing and how many ballots they represented. But they disagreed with us on some of our numbers. But this is the first time that someone had any elections official had admitted that there have been any irregularities with their elections.
Leahy: Exactly. Their official spokesperson, Mariska Bodison, who’s the board Secretary for the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections, said a few forms were missing and paperwork may have been misplaced. (Chuckles) Procedural paperwork. That’s what she said.
Baigert: Right. And she really kind of dismissed in that terminology that these are critical chain of custody documents that go back to where those ballots even came from. And granted, anybody could do anything with these forms.
But the emergency rule that Secretary of State Raffensperger and the state elections board put into play in July, circumventing the legislature, which is what’s required by the Georgia Constitution, at least they should have followed that.
Leahy: And then the story gets more interesting because Monday afternoon, after our story, by the way, Mariska Bodison, the spokesperson who represented the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections admitted, a few forms may be missing.
We show that of the 1,565 transfer forms that should have been there to document chain of custody, they had only 1,100. So 385 are missing.
Leahy: It’s about 24 percent of them. But it’s a little bit more, right? (Chuckles)
Baigert: Right. It’s a little bit more than a few.
Leahy: So then that afternoon, Secretary eight Raffensperger announced that he’s investigating Fulton County for their absentee ballot chain of custody problems.
Baigert: Right after he exonerated them in April, three very tiny counties that only accounted for about a third of a percent of that absentee ballots were the only ones that were out of compliance.
Leahy: Then on Wednesday…
Baigert: Wednesday, the Georgia Public Broadcasting, the taxpayer-funded arm of NPR in Georgia, reports that they got all the documents between Monday afternoon or sometime Monday after our story came out and Wednesday in enough time for them to look at all of them and confirm that they received every one of the 1,565 documents.
And they evaluated them for no duplicates and everything else that they were able to publish a story and debunk as their fact check.
Leahy: That was their claim except they didn’t produce any of the transfer form documents as we did. We produced all of them that we got from Fulton County. And the other part of the story is the election director there, Richard Barron, admitted in public on Thursday that he dedicated 200 man-hours to finding these ‘missing absentee ballots,’ verifying your reporting, in essence.
Baigert: Right.
Leahy: Wednesday he gives a flash drive to this reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting and doesn’t give it to us.
Baigert: Right. And at the same time, he could have just sent that file over and said, hey, we have it here.
Leahy: I think it was on Saturday when this Georgia Public Broadcasting reporter, Stephen Fowler, puts a tweet out with a little partial image of two of these supposed 377 transfer forms.
We haven’t seen 375 of them, we just saw the top of them. And you looked at that form and what did you find out?
Baigert: In looking at that, compared to other documentation that Fulton County has provided us in the way of a spreadsheet where they tracked all of their 37 dropbox locations in the 41 days that they collected during early voting and Election Day that the numbers that they recorded on their spreadsheet don’t match up with what Stephen Fowler reported in his report.
And it was off by 21 ballots between the two locations. He may have been trying to help (Laughter) Fulton County, but I think he might hurt them even more.
Leahy: Yeah, because this is a discrepancy now and another discrepancy with this partial information. By the way, you’ve asked again, very politely on Friday for Fulton County to produce the flash drives that apparently have this data that they gave Georgia Public Broadcasting on Wednesday, but still haven’t given it to us.
Baigert: Right. And for an explanation as to how they got a 48-hour turnaround in getting the documents that we’ve been waiting months for. And in the same tweet by Stephen Fowler implies that it was his skills that allowed him to get the documents and not us. (Leahy laughs)
And if we could only tell Fulton County what documents were missing. Well, it would seem that the people who run the election would be the subject matter experts in how many documents they have to administer the election rather than us knowing how many documents they have.
Leahy: Yeah. That’s their duty. It’s a Secretary of State’s duty to obtain those before he certifies the election. That was way back in November. He didn’t do that. Where do you think this particular story is going to go? Will Fulton County respond to us?
Baigert: I would say not likely. If they didn’t voluntarily turn those over and say, hey, we located the documents you’ve been asking for.
And since, by the way, Steven Fowler at the Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that at the same time, he got a flash drive from Fulton County last week that the documents were turned over to state investigators who were now, as Raffensperger said, the Secretary of State was going to investigate this. So they turned it over to them, but not the people who originated the request.
Leahy: Yeah, that’s a little fishy, wouldn’t you say?
Baigert: Yes. (Leahy chuckles) I’d say it’s doubtful that they’ll respond to us today. We basically haven’t asked them for much at this point. By state law, they’re also supposed to reply to you within three days. They did give us an automated response last week.
Leahy: Yeah, we got your request. We’ll process it. (Laughter) They had a different response to Georgia Public Broadcasting. Okay, here they are but you can’t share them with anybody else, and you can’t make them public. And you can only put partial information about two of these 377 transfer forms. (Chuckles)
Baigert: And what’s really interesting about it is that there were six full days that we didn’t get documents for. It’s an interesting scenario and it’s obvious that not all public document requesters are treated equally. And I think that is something that Rasmussen pointed out in a tweet after Steven Fowler touted his prowess and his amazing skills.
Leahy: (Chuckles) Well, it’s probably illegal, actually, to treat different requests for records differently. And we just might have something to say to Fulton County about that. Wait, and stay tuned. Laura, thanks so much for joining us this morning. Great reporting.
Baigert: Thank you, Michael. Have a great day.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who referenced an article in The Wall Street Journal outlining voting laws in the state of New Hampshire and cited its efficiencies in response to HR1 proposed legislation.
Leahy: Crom, I see you’ve got your Wall Street Journal print out there.
Carmichael: I do. Kimberly Strassel.
Leahy: She’s great by the way.
Carmichael: She is fabulous. She wrote an article and it’s about HR1 and about a Democrat who is fighting HR1 with everything he has.
Leahy: Who is that?
Carmichael: And that is a Democrat named Bill Gardner, who is New Hampshire Secretary of State. He has been overseeing the Granite State’s voting since December second, 1976.
Leahy: He’s been Secretary of State since 1976?
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: That is 44 years.
Carmichael: Which is a week before Stacey Abram’s 33rd birthday. And they meet and he was called to testify and he was called by the Republicans. He was a Democrat, was called by the Republicans to testify about voting procedures and what they mean. He is vehemently opposed to HR1. And he has evidence to support his position of the HR1 is a crock if the goal is voter turnout.
Because in New Hampshire, here’s what he says. And this is really, really insightful. He says, just because you make voting easier does not raise the turnout automatically and it can actually have the opposite effect. The trust and confidence voters have in the process is key to New Hampshire’s evidence that their voter turnout is consistently among the highest in the nation.
But here are their rules. Mr. Gartner goes on and explains that some of these rules are in the New Hampshire State Constitution. The document requires that residents show up to vote in person unless they are physically disabled or out of town.
Leahy: See, I like that.
Carmichael: That is the only exception. You have to show up in person. That means there’s no mail-in voting.
Leahy: Mail-in voting is fraught with opportunities for fraud. Period.
Carmichael: No one has ever questioned the results of New Hampshire’s votes. They also have much higher voter turnout than Oregon, which has mail-out voting and the U.S. in general. And that is very consistent over every presidential election cycle. The New Hampshire Constitution requires that the final vote tally for each candidate be publicly declared at each polling place the night of the election after the polls closed.
Leahy: That’s great. I love that.
Carmichael: This is one reason New Hampshire doesn’t have early voting, which can cause the counting to stretch out. So let’s get this right. New Hampshire does not have early voting. New Hampshire does not have mail-in ballots, and they have higher voter turnout than Oregon, and they have much higher voter turnout than the U.S. in general.
And they have what Stacey Abrams would call racist policies. But Stacey Abrams has no answer to their voter turnout so she deflects and changes the subject. And this is really important that the Republicans say, look, the evidence shows that the most important thing to get higher voter turnout is that people trust the result.
Leahy: You had said something very important. Trust. And this is what evaporated in Georgia in the Special Center Election. That’s why the turnout was low.
Carmichael: I don’t know whether the turnout was low and, okay, good. But look at Russia. Putin wins going away. Does anybody in their right mind trust the elections in Russia? Do we know what the voter turn out actually was? And so this is what’s going to be very interesting. In Maricopa County in Arizona.
Leahy: Phoenix.
Carmichael: The Republican Senate there has now gotten the authority to go back and do an audit.
Leahy: They’re doing it now. Doing it right now as we speak, I don’t know what the results will be. I’m not sure what they want to accomplish, but it’s going on right now.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
