Crom Carmichael Dissects Legislature in Regards to Absentee Ballots, Vote Harvesting and Drop Boxes

Crom Carmichael Dissects Legislature in Regards to Absentee Ballots, Vote Harvesting and Drop Boxes

 

Live from Music Row Friday 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 Arizona and Georgia State Legislature in regard to HB2023, absentee ballots, voter harvesting, and drop boxes.

Leahy: We are joined in studio by the original All-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom good morning.

Carmichael: Good morning, Michael.

Leahy: Well, you told me you were listening.

Carmichael: I was listening as I was driving in.

Leahy: How I spent my Thursday morning.

Carmichael: Dive a little deeper because right at the end, you were talking about what you thought was the key phrase in the 5,000-word opinion. And there are in all Supreme Court cases, there are always in the rulings key phrases. I think Breyer wrote the descent. Is that correct?

Leahy: Kagan wrote the decent. But Breyer dissented along with Kagan. And you know who the other one was.

Carmichael: Sotomayor.

Leahy: What a surprise.

Carmichael: And now you see with Merrick Garland, he’s really showing himself to be a political hack.

Leahy: Total political hack.

Carmichael: The Supreme Court, it’s amazing how often times they do vote nine to nothing or eight to one. It really is. It’s over a majority of the time that they vote either nine to nothing or eight to one.

But there are a few cases where they tend to divide along with ideological lives. I’m not going to necessarily say political lines, but in this case, when I say finally, I’m not saying that in a good way or a bad way.

But this is the first time where the lines break where you have Democrat-appointed judges and you have Republican-appointed judges who regularly broke and voted with the Democrat-appointed judges.

Leahy: Let’s elaborate on this. There were two issues that the court decided in favor of the state of Arizona. One had to do with a statute called HB 2023 which banned ballot harvesting.

In other words, if there was an absentee ballot it had to be delivered in almost every case by the individual who had the ballot not collected by a friend.

Carmichael: Who voted. Not who just had it, but who voted.

Leahy: Exactly.

Carmichael: The legislature in Arizona voted or ruled and created legislation that said that it’s Arizona that said that if you have an absentee ballot, you have to deliver it yourself. You can’t let somebody else gather up a bunch of them and bring them in. And Arizona voted to outlaw the harvesting process. Arizona did. So the Supreme Court didn’t outlaw harvesting.

Leahy: It was the state of Arizona. It was actually a bill called HB 2023. It was a past in 2016, as it turns out, the state Senator did. Last night I spoke with the state Senator who was the primary sponsor of that bill, wrote a story about that at Breitbart as well. And her name is Michelle Ugenti-Rita. That’s her name.

And she basically said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart with me last night, she said, ‘the Supreme Court found the exact opposite of what Democrats have claimed. Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling in Brnovich v. Democrat National Committee affirms that. As the primary sponsor of HB 2023, that’s state Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita and my colleagues in the legislature who voted for it, did not do it with discriminatory intent. That’s what Democrats have been saying for five years. Democrats owe Arizona voters an apology.’

Carmichael: Let me ask you a question. So that bill passed that you could not do vote harvesting in Arizona in 2,016, right. Did they do vote harvesting in 2020?

Leahy: You know, that’s a little bit of what this audit is Maricopa County is attempting to find out. I don’t think so. I think they’re looking into whether that law was violated.

Carmichael: Okay. So what you’re saying is, let me be sure I’m clear here to give a comparison. The Secretary of State of Georgia, in his capacity, believed that he had the authority to settle lawsuits and give the Democrats and Zuckerberg the right to do things that the legislature of Georgia did not authorize?

Leahy: Specifically, it was the state election board that he chairs that put an election code rule in that allowed the use of drop boxes for the deposit of absentee ballots which was not statutorily authorized, as it should be by the state legislature.

Carmichael: And they were private drop boxes. In other words, they weren’t Post Office boxes controlled by the post office.

Leahy: No.

Carmichael: They were private drop boxes.

Leahy: Controlled by the county election administration.

Carmichael: Which you’d have to assume is a form of vote harvesting because anybody who wants to could bring a pile of ballots and dump them in one of those private drop boxes correct? There’s nothing that would keep somebody from doing that.

Leahy: Supposedly Crom, that’s what all of our reporting has been. Supposedly they had 24/7 cameras on that. Nobody looked at it and it’s a massive task to look at it. Nobody’s really taken all those records. But in Georgia now the chain of custody has not been established for more than half of those ballots placed in drop boxes. We’ve shown that at the Georgia Star News.

Carmichael: But if you did that with a post office box, if you dumped a bunch of illegal ballots into a post office box, that would be federal mail fraud.

Leahy: Yes.

Carmichael: And that would be a big deal. But if you drop it in a Zuckerberg box, that’s not federal mail fraud because you didn’t use the U.S. Postal Service.

Leahy: You’re exactly right.

Carmichael: And the Secretary of state in Georgia did something that he had no legal right to do, but he did it and got away with it.

Leahy: The state election board of which he chairs did that.

Carmichael: Did that. Thank you for the clarification. So in Arizona, you have a law that was passed in 2,016. That law has been passed. It was 2,016. And it’s taken this long to get to the Supreme Court.

Leahy: Correct. It took five years to get to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, it’s supposed to have been enforced in Arizona. They have a different dropbox mechanism. In Georgia, the drop boxes are all over the place. You could go miles and miles and miles from the collection center. In Arizona, I think they just placed drop boxes outside of election offices. So it’s a little different. And I think they had a number of them, but they were right inside of voting locations.

Carmichael: Okay. Now, according to this ruling then, if a state wants to allow vote harvesting and the legislature passes legislation for vote harvesting within that state, vote harvesting would be legal correct?

Leahy: Well, I don’t know the answer to that question because that wasn’t exactly the issue that was tried here. The issue wasn’t can any state pass vote harvesting? The issue is the ban on harvesting legal. Is a ban a violation of section two of the Voting Rights Act? According to them, it wasn’t.

Carmichael: So Alito ruled in favor of the States of Arizona’s right as a state to pass election laws under the Constitution that are non-discriminatory.

Leahy: Yeah, exactly.

Carmichael: But Alito didn’t rule one way or the other on whether or not vote harvesting itself is discriminatory one way or the other or legal. Aren’t there some states that have passed laws that allow for vote harvesting?

Leahy: Actually, there are a total right now when you talk about there are two elements to vote harvest. You talk about depositing absentee ballots and drop boxes. That’s one thing. But there’s also in North Carolina, which is very controversial.

It has been common practice not to vote harvest in a different way. In other words, what the Democrats did for many, many years there. They would send absentee ballots off to nursing homes and various places like that.

Then they would put their operatives and that’s a kind word. And they would go to the nursing homes, and they would go to people and make sure that they had signed them. They would collect them and they’d take hundreds at a time and place them back.

Carmichael: Now, in North Carolina, there was a Democrat who did that for many elections, who got mad at the Democrat Party.

Leahy: Yes. Exactly.

Carmichael: And then did exactly what he had been doing for the Democrat Party, he did it for the Republican Party and got somebody elected by doing it. And then that person, the election was overturned.

And that individual, I don’t remember his name, but that individual was then arrested and ended up indicted and convicted.

Leahy: I think he’s serving a little time for them. It was a common practice, but it was often violated in practice by usually Democratic operatives. But in one case, when a Republican operative got caught doing it he was indicted.

Carmichael: Now because of that case, it must now be in North Carolina, must be illegal because the person was criminally convicted for doing it for the Republican Party.

Leahy: It was illegal before they just got away with it. (Chuckles)

Carmichael: All right, well, now the question is whether or not if the Democrats go back to doing it again, whether or not the authorities…

Leahy: You mean selective prosecution might be a possibility? Just ask Donald Trump’s, CFO, if the idea of selective prosecution is a possibility.

Carmichael: When we get back, I want to talk about that and compare it to Bill Cosby.

Leahy: Let’s do that.

Listen to the full second hour here:

– – –

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.
Photo “Voting Booths” by Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crom Carmichael Talks Democrat Flip Flop Filibuster When It Suits Their Purpose

Crom Carmichael Talks Democrat Flip Flop Filibuster When It Suits Their Purpose

 

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 filibuster in the Senate and the convenience and importance of rules and laws when it’s convenient for Democrats.

Leahy: So Crom the news of the day we’re talking about in Washington. I can barely even talk about it sometimes. It’s so awful. Everything up there is awful. In particular, now, there is an effort by the Democrats to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate. What you take on all that?

Carmichael: Well, the rules of the Senate, and I learned this literally yesterday in listening to McConnell and his speech after he quoted Schumer and Durbin from just three years ago.

Leahy: And previously, Harry Reid.

Carmichael: All these leading Democrats saying how important the filibuster is to the Senate and to the institution of the Senate and how it makes it different from the House and all these hyperbolic expressions. And now the Democrats are saying the opposite, which means that they’re just liars. And that’s so sad. I’m not going to say Republicans are pure as the wind-driven snow.

But Republicans in the Senate have always respected the rules of the Senate until the Democrats break those rules. And then after the Democrats break them, then the Republicans use the same broken rules that the Democrats did because the rules will have then been changed. But they will have been changed by the Democrats. They weren’t changed by the Republicans. And that goes to judicial nominees when Harry Reid blew up the filibuster on the judicial nominees.

Leahy: And lived to regret it.

Carmichael: But now they want to blow up the filibuster. But the reason they want to blow up the filibuster now is to fundamentally change our election laws so that cheating becomes the way of elections.

Leahy: Yeah. That’s why they want to do that.

Carmichael: And the Democrats are willing and I will say this because it’s true, Democrats are willing to cheat to win.

Leahy: Oh, Yeah. They did in 2020. No question about it in my view.

Carmichael: When you look at all of the evidence that we all agree on that happened, all the evidence that we know that we all will agree happened to believe that there wasn’t cheating going on is absolutely ridiculous. So having said that, let’s go back to the filibuster issue. What Mitch McConnell pointed out was that the Senate can only operate if there is a quorum and that if the Democrats persist in trying to blow up the filibuster, then what the Republicans will do because, in order to have a quorum, you have to have 51 senators. Are we going to have to go talk about this afterward?

Leahy: Let’s just hold on to that. We want to grab our caller Don who wants to talk a little bit. He’s right on point. Don you’re? Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.

Caller Don: Good morning, guys. Yeah. And it’s funny you all mentioned Harry Reid just now. The news media has done what Harry Reid did about….Well, he didn’t pay his taxes and talking about Trump’s phone call. And you go back and ask him. And he said, well, it served the purpose of what we were trying to do.

Leahy: Harry Reid at the time, a majority leader, in the Senate, when Mitt Romney was running for president, he went on to the floor of the Senate, you may recall this, and asserted that Mitt Romney had paid no taxes.

Carmichael: In 10 years.

Leahy: In 10 years. Well, that was a lie.

Carmichael: That’s correct.

Don: Right.

Leahy: It’s a flat-out lie. And he responded after he was called out for the I tell our listeners what Harry Reid said about that Don.

Don: And he said, well, it served its purpose. And I take that is what they’re saying about Trump in the phone call. Well, it served its purpose, so it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s held accountable. It’s absurd.

Carmichael: Well, there’s one other thing. Because of the location that Harry Reid said that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes in 10 years, he could not be sued for slander.

Leahy: He said it in the Senate.

Carmichael: He said it in the Senate. And anything said in the Senate cannot be used in a court of law to prove a point. That’s pretty interesting. It’s pretty interesting that a fake phone call of Donald Trump can be used as evidence of obstruction. But an actual statement on television cannot be used because the statement is made on the floor of the Senate.

Leahy: We got about 10 seconds here Don for your response.

Don: And my response is, if you got a D by your name, the law don’t apply to you.

Carmichael: There you go. A whole separate set of laws.

Leahy: I love that.

Don: Amen.

Leahy: If you’ve got a D by your name, the law don’t apply to you.

Don: Thank you, guys.

Carmichael: It’s what led to the French Revolution. There became two systems of justice. One for the kind and his court, and one for everybody else.

Listen to the full second hour here:


– – –

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.