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The Heartland Institute’s Jim Lakely, Chris Talgo, Justin Haskins, and S.T. Karnick present episode 459 of the In the Tank Podcast. Heartland recently commissioned some polls with our friends at Rasmussen Reports – together, among the only organizations doing serious polling research on election fraud. Our latest finding: No less than 62% of likely voters are concerned that cheating will affect the outcome of the 2024 election in November. And why might that be? Maybe because nearly 20% of those same voters said they received multiple ballots in the mail in 2020. Committing voter fraud has never been easier in America. It’s a national crisis few are brave enough to talk about, and fewer with the power to fix our elections are lifting a finger to stop.
PRIMARY TOPIC – WORRIED ABOUT ELECTION CHEATING
PRIMARY TOPIC – WORRIED ABOUT ELECTION CHEATING
New Poll Shows Americans Are Very Worried about Election Integrity
Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: Large Majority of Voters (62%) Are Concerned Cheating Will Impact 2024 Election
Heartland/Rasmussen Poll: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Admit to Committing at Least One Kind of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election
Heartland Institute Poll Shows Nearly Three in 10 Voters Would Vote Illegally in 2024 Presidential Election
Exclusive: 2024 Georgia Election Poised To Explode Thanks To Secretary Of State’s Inaction
Creators & Guests
Host
Host
What is In The Tank?
The weekly flagship podcast from The Heartland Institute features in-depth policy discussions connected to current news. Host Donald Kendal leads the discussion with the usual crew of Heartland Institute Vice President Jim Lakely, Socialism Research Center “Commissar” Justin Haskins, Editorial Director Chris Talgo, and others at this national free-market think tank. The entertaining and informative discussions often hit topics such as the environment, energy policy, Big Tech censorship, the troubling rise of socialism, globalism, health care, education, that state of freedom in America and around the world, and much more.
This podcast is also available as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast, the “firehose” of all the organization’s podcasts that take deep and entertaining dives into public policy.
And we are live with finger guns for Donnie Kendall, who is not here to host today. I'm Jim Lakeley, vice president of the Heartless Institute, hosting In the Tank podcast today. And today, we will look at some recent polling by the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen reports about how worried Americans are about election fraud. Here's a hint. There are a lot of Americans that are pretty darn worried, and they have good reason to, and we will discuss that.
Jim Lakely:Also, the Olympic games are going on and are causing controversy, and we're not just talking about that bizarre opening ceremony. We will talk about all of this and more on episode 459 of the in the tank podcast.
Kamala Harris:I can imagine what can be and be unburdened by what has been. You know?
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Yeah. You know? Thank you, Kamala, for our new intro drop, which we probably have to keep now for a little bit. Welcome to the podcast episode number 459.
Jim Lakely:I'm Jim Lakeley, vice president of the Heartland Institute, your substitute host for today as Donnie is taking a well earned vacation up in the wilds of Minnesota. He should be back next week. Before we get into, what's gonna be a great show today, I want to ask you all for a bit of a favor, and remind you that big tech and the legacy media do not like the topics that we cover on this channel and on this show, especially because they've demonetized. YouTube has. Google has.
Jim Lakely:You demonetize our YouTube channel. So, if you wanna support this program, and I really hope you do, you can visit in the you can I'm sorry. You can visit heartland.org/inthetank, and that helps us keep making this show happen every week. That's heartland.org/inthetank. Any support you can give us is greatly appreciated.
Jim Lakely:But you can also support the show without opening your wallet by smashing that like button right now, subscribing to this channel, and also hitting that notification bell. And, you know what? Old fashioned marketing works as well. Tell your friends about the show and have them join us here live every Thursday at 1 PM, EST where we have a good time and talk about some pretty important topics. With that, let's bring in our, almost regular crew, that being Chris Dalgo, the, editorial director here at the Heartland Institute.
Jim Lakely:Well lit now, I think, for the first time ever. Thanks to a little bit of a little bit of work in that office. How are you doing today, Chris?
Chris Talgo:I'm doing good. Good to be here. Looking forward to it. Lot of lot of, interesting stuff happening past week or so. So, yeah, let's just get right to it.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. And, we're leaning into some of the topics that got this channel demonetized, which is, people being concerned about the integrity of the past election and the election coming up as well. With us also, today, back, I think, for the second time in 3 weeks is Sam Carnic. He is the publications director here at the Heartland Institute and always has some good opinions. How are you today, Sam?
S.T. Karnick:Doing good. Thank you very much for having me on the show.
Jim Lakely:Very happy you are here. And, of course, we also have with us Justin Haskins, with his stand up desk in an undisclosed location somewhere on the West Coast, not quite in the wilds, but it's a little greener there than it is, in most places. How are you today, Justin?
Justin Haskins:No. I'm I'm doing good. I made it. I made it here. Jim was sweating it out.
Justin Haskins:He's texting me, sending me some Slack messages. I had a I had a little bit of little bit of problems getting getting in, but I made it. I I got here. I wouldn't leave you in the lurch, so I'm I'm ready to go.
Jim Lakely:You you did make it. Thank you very much. 4 seconds before, before airtime. So, that's actually not the latest you've ever been. So I'm very appreciative of you doing your best with me as a substitute host today.
Jim Lakely:So, alright. So, you know, as we we like to just kind of maybe open the show with something a little lighter or just something a little different than the than the main topic. And it's great that Justin did make it to the show today because, he is the one who, commandeered the poll. The poll the latest poll we did with Rasmussen reports about election integrity and the worries about cheating, and that's all, very important stuff. And and Justin could talk about it better than anyone.
Jim Lakely:But, you know, the Olympics are going on, and I'm and I'm actually starting to watch it a little bit this year. I didn't watch, I don't think, a minute of the 20 the Tokyo Olympics on the last one. That was the COVID Olympics. I'm like, why watch when there's nobody cheering? It's just so bizarre, and so I didn't have any interest in it.
Jim Lakely:But I have been watching the Olympics this year, and so we had, I didn't actually watch the opening ceremonies. I was busy that night, but then I looked on Twitter and people were losing their minds about, how offensive it was. We can maybe get to that, in a minute. But the big buzz today is that there are 2 biological males competing in the women's boxing competition in Paris. And, the I think one of the bouts was yesterday, and it's been all the buzz this morning.
Jim Lakely:Now I'm gonna play a video here. You're gonna see, the Italian boxer's name is Angela Carini, and she was up against Algerian boxer, Iman Khalif. And, you know, you you watch this, and it's basically there's I've seen 2 of the bouts with a man fighting a woman in the in the female or the women's boxing competition. And they just get their faces pummeled, and it made me think of if you guys remember, there was an episode of South Park where Randy Macho Man Savage competes in all of the and I think it was, like, the strongest woman competition. And one of the one of the events was, was boxing.
Jim Lakely:And as usual, the absurdity of South Park, reality catches up to it. And in this case, it it caught up a lot faster than anyone could have imagined. So let's let's have a look. So this I took the sound off. This is Randy Bunchman Savage.
Jim Lakely:Alright. Now here's here's the bout. It's the, the the man on the on the left in the red. One straight right hand to, Karimi's face, and she says, that's it. I'm done.
Jim Lakely:The bout lasted 46 seconds, and here it is in slow motion. She says this is the hardest she has ever been hit in her life, and it was just one shot, boop, right on the chin. I mean, right on the chin, that's a knockout blow in in in a lot of matches. And so there there she's standing. She's like, get your hands off me, referee.
Jim Lakely:You're not gonna I'm not participating in this farce. She She doesn't even look at him, then kneels down and cries. She she worked her whole life for this moment, and her Olympic dream is stolen but a nice pat on the back to get away from me. Alright? So so, you know, she's trained her whole life, guys, for this moment.
Jim Lakely:In fact, I saw another video where her she competed in the Tokyo Olympics, and her father had passed away shortly after that, and she kept training and training and training. And remember that her father told her, it's like a cyclist. When they see the last kilometer, they pedal harder. So you just keep training as hard as you can and never quit never quit. And, her father passed away, and she had to quit this bout.
Jim Lakely:That's why she was crying because of the farce, the absurdity of biological human males competing in in female sports. I mean, this this is really just kinda blown up on social media. A lot of people are talking about it. I saw this and too, and I was like, this is this is absurd. But in my mind and, Justin, you start off maybe.
Jim Lakely:You're shaking your head a lot. But, you know, we've seen this, and and to me, this is the reason we have biological males competing, for instance, in collegiate swimming, and now in in boxing and in other places is because of a leftist ideology that has infected every single institution in the world to the point where now it's on the world's biggest sporting stage that perhaps this is, I think, maybe a tipping point where this absurd ideology is no longer gonna be tolerated and then we reverse field.
Justin Haskins:Yeah. I mean, if I was if I was advising this this woman boxer who unfortunately was put up against this biological male and punched in the face and had her dreams crushed. If if I was if I knew her personally and I was giving her advice, I would say that, look. You know, obviously, you've trained your whole life for this. You get to the Olympics.
Justin Haskins:Your dream is to to win a gold medal at the Olympics, this is what you've been dreaming for. And all and and I and, you know, you've been dreaming for that for your whole life probably, and it's tragic that this happened to you. But lots of people have won gold medals in women's boxing. Lots of people have won gold medals into other things. Very few people find themselves in an opportunity to actually make a significant impact on all of society through sports.
Justin Haskins:And in this particular moment, this is going to be used as prime evidence of why this entire ideology is completely absurd and should be deconstructed and destroyed and thrown into the the trash bin of history and never brought out again in civilized society. And this is one of the best pieces of evidence that we have of this. It's all on camera. It's very emotional to watch. It's hard to watch, and that's good.
Justin Haskins:That's what we need. We need something on a big grand stage that we can show people and say, do you really think that this is right? Like, do you really think that this is a good thing that's happening here? That we should be celebrating the biological guy in red and not the the woman crying on the ground. That that that this is this makes sense to you.
Justin Haskins:And I'm willing to bet that this one event actually changed some people's minds about this Because it's one thing in theory to say, to buy into this ideology, and theoretically, you you believe in in transgenderism, and you you don't see a distinction between a transgender man versus an actual man and vice, you know, a biological man and vice versa. Like, you you like, it's one thing to buy into that theoretically, but then to actually have to watch it play out and see a person's dreams get crushed on a international scale, I don't know how a a reasonable person seeing that can continue on believing that this all makes sense. So the law the the impact of this, I think, transcends the Olympics. It transcends this one event, and I think she hopefully will be part of something a much larger, more important conversation and correction, and maybe her legacy ends up being ends up being that. The the and and, hopefully, she has a chance to compete in the Olympics again in a in a way that is a fairer, you know, situation.
Justin Haskins:But this could be part of her legacy, and I think she should be proud of that because we're fighting a much bigger idea here than just one person, one, boxing match, one person losing or winning or whatever. It isn't really about that. It's about much bigger ideas. And and so that that would be the advice that I have for her. I'm sure she's not watching the show, but, I hope someone is saying that to her.
Justin Haskins:I I really do.
Jim Lakely:I'm sure they are. I mean, she's a hero. I mean, to me, she's one of the heroes of the Olympics because she got into that ring. She did try, and she saw literally face to face. You know, she faced down the absurdity of, you know, of of basically the misogyny of of female sports today.
Jim Lakely:You know, I I played I played a lot of tennis. I play league tennis, and, I play mixed doubles as along with, men's doubles. Mixed doubles and men's doubles are are very much completely different kinda games. And Serena Williams, to her credit, years ago was on, I think, either, the tonight show or one of those late night shows. And she was asked, you know, do you think you could beat, you know or John McElroy made some controversial remarks about how, you know, Serena Williams wouldn't stand a chance against maybe the 200th ranked men's player in the in the men's game.
Jim Lakely:And, they were expecting a reaction out of her, like, you know, oh, well, I could probably kick their ass. You know, I'm the number I'm the greatest female tennis player of all time. She didn't say that. She said that that man would crush me, that that the women's tennis and men's tennis are completely different sports. I mean, they play the same game under the same rules, but they are completely different sports.
Jim Lakely:And so I think, yeah, this this woman, Angela Carini, is a is a hero. She is going to go down in history. People will remember this if this sort of thing gets turned around. Chris?
Chris Talgo:I'm I'm having trouble even accepting that this happened. You know, this this is just so symbolic of postmodernism. There is no, you know, objective truth. Everything is subjective. I think what stands out to me in this particular episode, unlike the Riley Gaines swimming, is, this is a contact sport.
Chris Talgo:People can get really hurt, and I think that that is gonna resonate with, people around the world because I've seen many videos of, high school, male athletes participating in female sports and, you know, like pummeling. The the women have seen things in volleyball where a man goes and spikes it right in the female's face and, field hockey where they, you know, whip the the ball and it, you know, shattered someone's teeth. I think that this is just getting extremely dangerous, and I think that there is going to be a, a backlash for this. And I really hope that it comes because it's long overdue. Riley Gaines has been one of the, you know, I think, best supporters of trying to make the common sense argument that women should compete against women, men should compete against men.
Chris Talgo:And, I just think that this is this hopefully is a turning point in this absurd discussion that we've been having in recent years because some people just want to say that they can in you know, just, pretend to be a a woman and go in there and dominate women's sports. It it's it's it's it's so absurd.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Sam, I'll I'll kick it to you. You know, as I wrote in some notes to us in in Slack, you know, our internal Heartland Slack, I mean, you know, as I mentioned in the setup, this is this is what happens when, leftists take over institutions. They hollow them out.
Jim Lakely:You know, they wear their hollowed out skin as a as a skin suit and demand respect for it. But in in this case, and I think in a lot of cases, I mean, Chris brings up the the Riley Gaines. Riley Gaines was is a was a top 1% collegiate swimmer from the University of Kentucky, and she went to the, NCAA's, women's swimming finals, which was dominated by a biological male named, who calls himself Leah Thomas, and that was kind of the first kinda high profile thing. But, you know, a lot of people don't really follow collegiate swimming, especially if we have, you know, female, you know, women's collegiate swimming, in particular. But this is on the the largest sporting stage in the world.
Jim Lakely:This has the the largest audience, global audience of any sporting event anywhere. But what's happened, Sam, is that these these ideologues, who insists that there are no, there are no differences at all between a biological man and a woman to the point that it's even needs to be adhered to in the sporting world. They've taken advantage of the of the good natured tolerance of normal people, of of the rest of people, and have exploited that to brutally enforce an ideology on society. And when I see something like this, and as absurd as as it is, I think the absurdity in a large in a large way is the point. It's a it's a statement.
Jim Lakely:It says, this is ours now. We own this. You don't have this anymore. The left, the ideologues, you know, the future, we own this now, so you cannot even have women's sports anymore.
S.T. Karnick:This incident and so many others prior to it are emblematic of the takeover of our institutions by, frankly, crazy people. One of the central I think a central element of this is that they say that this is all about fairness and equality. But this shows you what fairness looks like in their minds. That what fairness amounts to is the erasing of all distinctions that are in reality. So and this is very much connected, I think, to the opening ceremony.
S.T. Karnick:We all there there's a a widespread thought as to, what that opening ceremony was to was intended to convey, which is as a certain kind of mindset, and in fact, a sort of spiritual reality. And that this reality is behind the erasing of distinctions in all the institutions of the west. Remember that, in, in the great, the great poem by John Milton, epic poem, Paradise Lost, what is the central, element of it? The central dramatic element of it is the is Satan's, attempt to erase distinctions between himself and God. And and Satan says, I can do a better job of managing this creation you've made, so give it to me.
S.T. Karnick:Reality bites, you know, as the old saying goes, when you see what the the consequences of meant of attempting to erase distinctions in other people's minds, the consequences are destructive. You're trying to say, well, okay, there's no difference between men and women. There, again, erasing a distinction. There's no difference between, a female boxer and a male boxer. Well, as soon as that guy enters the as soon as you see them the 2 of them come together, the the the one boxer is so much taller than the other one, so much more muscular, and you know immediately where this is going to go.
S.T. Karnick:And yet they did it. Why? Because as you said, Jim's, Jim, as you said, the, institutions, the people behind it believe that they can just force this through and that reality will somehow conform. And that even if reality doesn't conform, the people will conform. But that's not what's going to happen.
S.T. Karnick:Reality will win in the end, and all this destructive, mind all this destructive brainwashing, of trying to erase distinctions in other people's minds is going to is going to, you know, sort of be like an ouroboros eating its own tail.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. Jim, I just wanna add something to this. So this is what I was just thinking about. I, had just moved to South Carolina after the whole North Carolina bathroom debate, if you if you guys remember that from, like, 20 16, or 2015, you know, 14 era, whatever it was.
Justin Haskins:Mhmm.
Chris Talgo:And I remember that there was, you know, 22 distinct sides to that debate. 1 of the debate was, you know what, the slippery slope argument. If we let this happen, then that's just going to further, you know, like, cloud the distinction between man and woman and and and all these societal norms that we've had in place for literally 1000 of years. But then there was the other side of the argument that's saying, no. This is about you know, let let let's appease them on this one little point, and it'll end there.
Chris Talgo:And I remember I I was adamantly opposed to it. And here we are less than 10 years later, and now it's kinda the point where we have a a grown man, beating a, grown woman in the Olympics. It's just I I cannot believe that we have come to this, you know, level here. And this is, I think, why we should just say from from day 1, you know what? There are there are 2 genders.
Chris Talgo:There's men and women. You can't just automatically say you want to be another one. You just can't do that. Okay? It's just like, I mean, at at at what point do we say, you know what, there are certain, you know, unequivocal facts of life.
Chris Talgo:If you are born with certain, you know, organs, you are that for life. Now if you want to when you're later in life, like, pretend that you're someone else, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that you are afforded all of the privileges and the exceptions that come along with with that group because here's another example of how awry this has become. In California, you know, Kamala Harris was actually, one of the people that, emphasized this. If you're a, a man in a in a male prison, you are you you have automatic access to a sex change operation paid for by the state of California.
Chris Talgo:Why would a man wanna do that? Oh, because then he could go and and be in a a female prison and, you know, do whatever it is he wants to do there. And the fact that we have, like, just blurred the line between there's a man and there's a woman. And if you want to pretend you're a a woman when you're really a man and vice versa, that's fine. No one's saying you can't do that.
Chris Talgo:But you cannot go in and say, okay. I wanna now compete against someone who is not of my actual sex, and you cannot I mean, it's just it it's so preposterous. I remember when we were having the debate about men can get pregnant. No. They can't.
Chris Talgo:No. They can't. And I think we seem to take a firm line of some of this stuff and just say a lot of these things are black and white. There is no gray area. Okay?
Jim Lakely:I wanna for for to you, Justin, for a last comment. I just wanted to make a point here. And is that this this it's, I guess, ironic that it tends to be conservative or right leaning men that are the most vocal and active in trying to defend women's sports. At least it seems ironic to a lot of people in the media. It's also controlled by leftists.
Jim Lakely:But none of this is going to stop unless and until women walk out of these events. I mean, it would make a huge statement globally if every single female competitor left in the women's, Olympic boxing said, we are not participating anymore. We are not even showing up. They all gather outside for a press conference, and they say, let the 2 men that are in this competition duke it out for gold and give the bronze to nobody. And it's and unless and until women start to do that, I think, you know, conservative men can't take women's sports back, but women can.
Jim Lakely:The women who are participating in it can, and it just takes somebody, I guess, brave and maybe organized enough enough of them to just walk out and refuse to participate. And then perhaps this madness will end and normalcy may return.
Justin Haskins:Yeah. I think that's a I think that's a good point. I I hope that happens. It's starting to happen, in America, at at certain levels. Hopefully, it becomes more widespread because, obviously, this is this is obviously insane.
Justin Haskins:I mean, it's just obviously insane. However, I think the the bigger issue here is regardless of what happens on this particular topic, The bigger issue is what that there's a root cause to all of this. You know? Sam alluded to to some of that. Chris alluded to it.
Justin Haskins:There's a there's a root cause behind all of this, that's happening with women's sports and a whole bunch of other things as well. And that root cause is that there really is no such thing as an objective truth or an objective standard for truth on the left. The left has blown that up. They've blown it up. They've destroyed it in their quest to remake society.
Justin Haskins:They have decided that they don't need to have or that they they don't need to have a truly objective standard of right and wrong, of good and evil, of true and not true. Everything is subjective. And once everything becomes subjective, then almost anything is possible, which is something that people on on the right have been arguing for 100 of years. Like, you can't just move away from the concept of an objective truth. You can have debates over what is objectively true.
Justin Haskins:That's what science is. That's what mathematics is. Various religions competing with each other, for adherence is that ideological battle. There are a lot of different ways that you can get to objective reality, but you have to believe that it exists. And the problem with the left is they don't believe that it exists.
Justin Haskins:Not really. They they they I think in some sense, they do, but in in reality, they they they don't wanna do that. And a lot the roots of that, goes back 100 of years, but it really I think the modern foundation for it is in Marxism. You know, if you read Karl Marx, one of the things that strikes strikes you is a commune in communist manifesto, is that there are parts of communist manifesto where Karl Marx is dealing with the people who are objecting to communism, so people who are opposed to it. And they're saying things like, if you do this, you're going to end the distinctions between men and women.
Justin Haskins:You're going to destroy the family. You're going to, eliminate, parental rights. You know, he deals with a bunch of these different objections that he's hearing. And rather than saying, no. No.
Justin Haskins:No. No. Like, you're misunderstanding. That's not what I'm saying. He says, yeah.
Justin Haskins:You're right. That's exactly what we're going to do. Because all of those things, the whole concept of of, family, traditional family, the whole concept of, what women and men the differences between men and what. All these kinds of things that you're you're worried about. That's all that all flows out of this sort of conspiracy that he had about, the the the ruling class being the capitalists, the people who controlled capital, and then building out these ideas about religion and objective truth and all this stuff, and none of that is real.
Justin Haskins:It's all fake. It's just a big conspiracy that they created, and we should just undo the whole thing is essentially what he's saying. And all leftist movements have, to varying degrees, adopted those that that idea and, and reworked it in different ways. And sometimes they've gone all in on it, and sometimes they haven't. And where we're at right now in history in America and much of Europe is they've gone all in on that concept of we we we need to burn down society and everything we know to be true to rebuild it in our own image.
Justin Haskins:We have to eliminate all vestiges of the past and start all over again. This is why they wanna tear down statues of Abraham Lincoln. This is why they wanna take down statues of of of, you know, heroes. Right? Like, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, people who even have it did did weren't even involved in slavery and things like that.
Justin Haskins:Why do they wanna do that? Because the past must be erased All understandings that we've had that have come before have to be done away with because that's the only way to get people have to completely change their framework, their their way of thinking about everything in order to adopt far left wing ideas about society. And I'm not talking about gender and things like that. I'm talking about, like, you know, economic ideas and political ideas and things of that nature. And so, this this is the root of all of these problems.
Justin Haskins:And until we deal with this fundamental issue of do we have an objective reality? Is there such a thing as objective truth? Where do we find it? How do we find it? Which version of objective truth is actually true, and which is just false but claiming to be true.
Justin Haskins:Until we until we have those conversations as a society, which at at present, most of society doesn't even care about these questions. They're not even asking them. They're not looking for that at all, which is a new thing in Western civilization. Western civilization has always been interested in that idea, and it's only recently that the left has taken over all these institutions that now they don't care about it. Until we have that conversation, the issue the the the the symptom is gonna change.
Justin Haskins:So right the disease is not gonna go away. So the symptom right now is women's sports and a whole bunch of other things. That might change. Maybe that gets treated. Maybe we don't have that problem anymore, but then a 1000000 other new ones will pop up.
Justin Haskins:We have to deal with the fundamental issue that underlies all these other problems. And the left is completely incapable of dealing with it because they are the ones creating this chaos. They want the chaos. They thrive in it. Chaos is their ladder to the top.
Justin Haskins:And the right, sometimes is focused on this, but a lot of times is not. And until we all get on the same page on the right and say, no. We're the we're the ideology that's presenting reality and truth and science and mathematics and biology, and we're the people who maybe we don't always get it right, but at least we're trying. And the other side has completely given up on this, And it's just whatever they want, whenever they want, morality and truth and justice and science, it shifts with the wind until we make that the focus. The absurdity of the other side and the emphasis on discovering the truth on our side and upholding it and defending it, what is good and true and virtue.
Justin Haskins:Until we make that the focus, the symptoms will change. The disease will not go away. That needs to become a focus for our side.
Jim Lakely:Yep. And and this sporting event may be one of those clarifying moments, maybe a tipping point because it is indicative of everything you just mentioned. Yep. So alright. Well, thanks for that.
Jim Lakely:I mean, we did go a little longer on that topic than I thought, but as you've mentioned both well, all of us mentioned that this is more. It's about more than just, you know, a single Olympic event that and and it's absurdity, but it's it's indicative of a much larger problem. Before we get to our main topic, I need to make an announcement that is, really great, and I'm just gonna play a video that'll help announce it. Friend of mine, a lot of people say one of the most powerful men in Europe, Nigel Farage. He's a very noncontroversial person here.
Jim Lakely:Right?
Justin Haskins:Fight for patriotism. Fight against
Jim Lakely:globalism. He's very shy. That's right. It is our annual benefit dinner, and it is on. It is on here in Chicago at the, Hilton Chicago, downtown in Chicago, Illinois.
Jim Lakely:Nigel Farage is our keynote speaker. He is a fantastic and really peerless and one of the most important defenders of freedom anywhere in the world, especially, of course, in the UK and in Europe. And, also, doctor Larry Arne, the president of Hillsdale College. He's getting the Heartland Liberty prize. He will also be giving a presentation.
Jim Lakely:It could be that we also have, doctor Jay Bhattacharya is also gonna be there to maybe speak. You may know him from fighting for our our liberties during the whole COVID nonsense and the, progenitor of the Great Barrington Declaration. So it's going to be a fantastic, fabulous night. It's, September 13th. That's a Friday.
Jim Lakely:That's in 6 weeks. You can get your tickets. Go to heartland.org heartland.org, and you'll see a link there to get your tickets. I really hope a lot of the viewers and listeners of this, of this show will be there. Nigel is, is coming, and he's going to give a presentation, a speech that nobody in the room will ever forget.
Jim Lakely:I guarantee that. So hope to see you all there. Alright.
Justin Haskins:So invited, Jim?
Jim Lakely:Go ahead, Justin.
Justin Haskins:Am I invited?
Jim Lakely:You are you invited? Well, it's a long way to come. You should, you better load up the oxcart now and get on the Oregon Trail and get your ass back to the Midwest.
Justin Haskins:That's true. It probably will take me a couple of months to get there. So 6 weeks or whatever.
Jim Lakely:So Yeah. You better hustle. You better hustle. Get a fast get a fast ox, I guess. Alright.
Jim Lakely:So so our main topic today, is and, thank you, Bob, engineer engineer guy, s e. I know your real name is Bob, and that's fine. I won't tell anybody else what your name is beyond that, but, yes, we're gonna get on to our main topic, which is right now. And so just a little background, the Heartland Institute, say I guess starting in December, Justin, started commissioning polls with Rasmussen reports just to address, election integrity. We figured there must be a way, and nobody else seems to have really thought about it or done it.
Jim Lakely:There must be a way to poll how much election shenanigans have been going on over the last couple of election cycles. And so we came up with some questions that Rasmussen was like, wow. Those are great. I that's a great idea. Let's do it.
Jim Lakely:And so this is the second or third of a string of, of questions that we had commissioned through Rasmussen reports to gauge election integrity. And so, Keely, if you can bring up that web page, we're gonna talk about the the first one, really, the the headliner one. And, Justin, you can you can give it a start here. But we released this just, a couple well, about a week ago. And that's 6 more than 60%, actually 62% of likely national voters said they were concerned about election integrity with 37% saying they were very concerned and 27% somewhat concerned, about cheating in the in the upcoming 2020, 2024 election in November.
Jim Lakely:Justin, this was, I guess, every time we get the election integrity results back, and we can kinda go back in time and go through some of the others and and why this is important, we we are sometimes shocked at the results. 62% is a little higher than I thought we may have gotten back. I thought maybe closer to half the country would be would express concern about the integrity and and about cheating that's that they think was going to happen in in November. But I think 62% is a pretty is a pretty significant number, obviously. And if you look around the country and you look around what's happened in our elections over the last several cycles, they have good reason to be concerned about cheating.
Justin Haskins:Yeah. Then I mean, what's amazing about this is it feels like the most important story in the universe, because really, for Americans, anyway, what what is the point of having a free society if the the people in the society don't trust the elections? What's the point if the elections really aren't worth being trusted? You have to fix this problem before you can deal with anything else. And it seems to me that politicians and much of the media wants to pretend as though this really isn't an issue.
Justin Haskins:And anybody who says that it is is a conspiracy theorist, is a terrible person, is a MAGA, you know, biased person or whatever. But then when you actually ask voters questions about whether they're concerned about it, 6 in 10 say yes, as this poll says. Yes. I am worried about cheating, including slightly more than half of Democrats. Was, like, 51 or 52% of Democrats said that they're worried about cheating.
Justin Haskins:So we're talking about huge numbers, but pretty much the the voters have spoken, Republicans and Democrats alike. Yeah. We're worried about cheating, and politicians don't seem to care. What makes this even more stunning is, as Jim alluded to earlier, we ran a poll in December. It was late November, end of December 2023, so this past November, December, where we asked people about election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Justin Haskins:What we did was we asked them a series of questions, that that, was about them and people that they knew regarding mail in balloting. And so we asked them things like, did you fill out a ballot for someone else that you knew? Did you have someone else fill out a ballot on your behalf? Did you vote in more than you know, in a in a state where you're no longer a permanent resident? Like, these are the kinds of questions we ask them.
Justin Haskins:Now these are these are trying to get at fraudulent activities. We're trying to ask people, did you commit voter fraud without asking them that question directly? So we're asking about behaviors that typically there are some exceptions, but typically amount to voter fraud and then and and to see what people said. Right? And what we found was unbelievable.
Justin Haskins:It was it was essentially when we did the final analysis, it was around 1 in 4 voters, between 20 28%, depending on how you look at the numbers, said that, yes, I did one of these things that would amount to voter fraud. Okay? So we're talking about a huge percentage of mail in balloting that could have been fraudulent. Even if we were off by a lot, even if we were overstating it by 50%, we're still talking about numbers that would have changed the election results potentially. Right?
Justin Haskins:So these are huge, huge numbers. So then we ran another poll earlier in 2024, and this time, we asked by the way, that that 2020 poll blew up. It was covered all over the place. Donald Trump said it was the most important story of the year, the most important poll in, I don't know, a decade or 20 years or something like that. So it was a huge, huge, huge, massive, massive story.
Justin Haskins:So then we decided to run another poll. This time, let's not ask about 2020. Let's ask about the 2024 election. Let's ask if you're going to commit fraud in the next election. Let's see what people say to that because I couldn't believe that people admitted that they did fraudulent activities in the presidential election.
Justin Haskins:So let's see if they're gonna admit that they'll do it in the future. So we asked them even more explicit questions outlining fraudulent activity. Like, would you secretly alter a family member's ballot without them knowing it to change it? Things like that. Would you steal ballots, destroy ballots?
Justin Haskins:What would you be willing to do to stop the other side? We asked them a series of questions like that, and guess what we found? Almost the exact same percentage said as we got in the 1st poll in 2020, that they would do this election fraud in 2024. So huge numbers of people. So then we ask people in this latest election, are you worried about it?
Justin Haskins:Are you worried about fraud? And overwhelmingly, people say yes. Now none of this is really that shocking, is it? If people committed fraud at a high rate in 2020 and then say they're gonna commit fraud again in 2024, it stands to reason that a lot of people would say, yeah. I'm worried about fraud.
Justin Haskins:And yet the vast majority of the mainstream media has totally ignored all of these polls. Even though a presidential candidate was talking about them on daily basis for a while, they completely ignored our our weekly basis. They completely ignored it. Even many people on the right are not spending enough time talking about this. This is the what is the point of this election?
Justin Haskins:Why do we even care about this election if we can't trust the results? Like, that should be the first thing that we're asking ourselves here. And then in addition to all of that, in addition to all of that, one of the biggest takeaways from this poll was we asked people if they are so this is a poll of likely voters. Okay? This is a poll of likely voters.
Justin Haskins:So these are people who are saying, yes. I'm gonna vote. And there's also a poll overwhelmingly full of people who said they voted in the last election. It was, like, over 90% or something. So one of the questions we asked them was, are you a citizen?
Justin Haskins:Now are you a citizen? Now these are so what we found was, obviously, citizens if you're not a citizen, you can't vote in a federal election. Okay? So we're talking about presidential elections, federal election. We're asking people if they're citizens.
Justin Haskins:Now you would think every pollster would ask this question, but they don't. This is actually a fairly new concept because the assumption was just of course, people are only answering these questions that are citizens. So we at Rasmussen dared to ask on our behalf, are you a citizen? And what we found was depending on what state you're looking at and whatever, it's about 5% or slightly higher of voters say, no. I am not a US citizen, And yet many of those same people are saying they're gonna vote in the election.
Justin Haskins:So these are noncitizens openly admitting that they didn't that they voted in a previous presidential election, which was illegal, and that they plan to vote in the next one, which is also illegal. Now how is this not headline news everywhere? Like, how is that possible? And and then you wonder why so much of our society doesn't trust institutions, doesn't believe the system is fair, thinks things are rigged, doesn't think the country's on the right track, doesn't trust congress, doesn't trust anybody. Why is that?
Justin Haskins:I don't know. Maybe because there's a really high likelihood that all of these elected officials, you know, were put in there by fraud at least in part. At least it's a question we should be asking and they're not even investigating that. I mean, these are massive, massive, massive, huge, huge stories, and it is shocking, shocking that this is not the focus of every single nightly newscast. It should be the focus.
Justin Haskins:What are we doing to fix this problem? Voters are worried about it. We've got substantial reports from voters themselves saying that they did this, substantial reports from voters saying that they're gonna do it again, and enough people who are not even citizens saying that they're also taking part in it, that it could alter the outcome of the election, and everyone is just sitting there acting like nothing has changed. It is unbelievable that this is happening. So biggest story I could possibly imagine, these 3 polls, you add them all up, just an incredible.
Justin Haskins:And I can't wait. We haven't talked about this, Jim, but what I really would love to do is, is is do one more poll at the end the next election. Election ends 2024, I wanna do this one more time, one more time only. We ask the exact same questions we asked in this in in the, April poll where we asked them, are you going to do these things and sees how many people actually followed through on doing those things. And let's see what the results show.
Justin Haskins:But and then I'm hoping we're gonna package all this together at some point, bring it to state lawmakers, and say you gotta fix your election laws because this is an unbelievable. But so far, we've had very little luck in getting real solutions passed at the state level. So if you care about any of these issues at all, it might be a good idea to reach out to an elected official and let them know that you care and that there is substantial evidence that this is a problem and it isn't just some crazy conspiracy theory.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Well, I have a couple of I have a couple of stories I'm going to share when we go around the horn here. Progress on fixing our broken election system, and they're obviously broken, is slow in coming. It's it's a a little bit here and there, but not much. Chris, you were you also had a lot to do with, this these poll results.
Jim Lakely:Your thoughts would be valuable to know.
Chris Talgo:First, I just wanna address the question that Justin posed, why the media is not reporting on the story. It's very simple. Because this benefits Democrats, because this benefited Joe Biden immensely in 2020. And the media, by and large, and you guys know that I spend a lot of my time watching the mainstream media, not only Fox, but, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC, and, they are just not willing to even report on this story because they know that, generally speaking, ballot harvesting, no, IDs for voting, and all this kind of stuff helps Democrats much more than it helps Republicans. And that is the simple reason why they are not going to report this.
Chris Talgo:Now if it was the other way around and somehow, someway, the Republican party had, used ballot harvesting and, they had a great ground game of the Democrats to, go in there and and get, you know, votes, at, old people's homes and all this kind of stuff, you know, very shady stuff. The media will be going crazy about it, saying how unfair this is, how this is, you know, white supremacy, blah blah blah blah blah. But this is simply because the media is rooting for the Democrat party because mostly because of their just hatred. They're just, like, just unequivocal hatred of all things Donald Trump, and that's why they will just do whatever it takes. And, yeah, a couple states have, actually done some things after the 2020 election, Georgia in particular.
Chris Talgo:And what was the media's reaction to Georgia? Racism, racism, racism. What did Joe Biden do? He said, oh, this is Jim Eagle. This is Jim Crow on steroids.
Chris Talgo:Blah blah blah. What did, the Major League Baseball do? They pulled the all star game from Atlanta because they said having a a person, present an ID to vote is racist, which is in and of itself racist because what they're implying is that, minority people, for some reason, are incapable of actually getting an ID. So that just goes to show how politicized this is. The left, generally speaking, you know, has, I think, run the the cost benefit analysis.
Chris Talgo:And they say, you know what? We're probably gonna, you know, bank a couple million more votes by doing this. Probably gonna win some swing states by doing this. So yeah. Yeah.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. We want no holds barred elections. We want anything goes. We want, no IDs to vote. We want just mass mailing of ballots.
Chris Talgo:I mean, Justin, and and, Jim, you and you you you've seen the the data. The data shows, and this is, you know, going back 2020 years now, that state voter rolls are notoriously inaccurate, filled with people who are no longer living there, people who have died, people who are no longer eligible to vote. So then why why would states like Michigan and Wisconsin and then all these others in Illinois say, well, we don't care about that. We just wanna flood the zone with as many ballots as possible. Possible.
Chris Talgo:Why why would they do that? The only the the only logical conclusion is that they have made the decision that this is going to benefit them come election day, And that's what they care about. You know, all this stuff, early voting, all this. This benefits Democrats. If you were to say, you know what?
Chris Talgo:Let's have a a national day of voting. We'll make it an election holiday. You gotta go and vote in person. I think the Democrats would oppose that with every single inkling of their body because they just know, uh-oh. Uh-oh.
Chris Talgo:That's gonna probably benefit them. So it's just it's just crass politics as as always.
Jim Lakely:Yep. Yep. Sam, you've been sitting there very patiently. Appreciate that. You know, your your your thoughts on this.
Jim Lakely:I mean, I'm not gonna say anything until you're done.
S.T. Karnick:Well, thanks, Jim. Doubling off of of Chris's point, federal election law actually makes it very difficult for states to clean up their voter rolls. And so but why does this happen? Why do we have cheating? The biggest reason is that and and also here's another question.
S.T. Karnick:Why do we have cheating, and why does it affect us one party more than the other? The reason we have cheating is that there is so much of our lives that is controlled by government that it's very tempting for people to try and get control of that government. So the more government power there is over people's lives, the greater the temptation to grab that power, and the greater temptation there is therefore to cheat. And so that is why the cheating tends to go in a in a direction of the party that is for greater concentration of government power. So that's why you get federal laws that, tell the states, well, you can't really clean up your voter rolls for for a variety of reasons.
S.T. Karnick:States are trying to do that within the limits of the law. So that's one element of it. The other element of it is think about how this all started. Really, cheating started on the local level because the local level had the most power over your life. And if if if people have looked back in history and say, woah.
S.T. Karnick:What was government like back, you know, couple, a few decades ago or or in the 18 forties or something when, when de Tocqueville was writing, it was power was concentrated much more on the local level. And so cheating was concentrated much more on the local level. But then what happens? You cheat on local level, big cities are going to have much more effect by way of cheating, and that will affect the state level because that will affect the the con, the, what the government is made of, on the state level. And so when it affects the states, then the states take more power.
S.T. Karnick:And you you you see that in our history. And then you get to the point where power is much more concentrated on the federal level starting with the progressive movement in the around the 18 nineties and and on through that, through the subsequent decades and really until now. So what you have is that as power gets concentrated in at at any particular level, the cheating moves there. But it's always it always has to originate on the local level. And so what what the one way to stop the cheating is to disempower big government.
S.T. Karnick:Well, good luck with that. But I'd like to see it.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. But, Sam, I do think that there are a bunch of common sense ways that we can reduce, you know, the the the level the amount of cheating. I mean, just common sense stuff like they've done in Florida and Georgia where they're saying, hey. To vote, you gotta present an ID. Hey.
Chris Talgo:If you wanna vote by by absentee ballot, you have to have an excuse to do so. But we have done away with those, not not not we, states have. And I I I can't help but wonder if it's intentional. Because why why would so many states say, no. No.
Chris Talgo:No. We don't wanna protect, the integrity of elections. What what other what other reason could there be?
S.T. Karnick:Oh, it is intentional, and it's intentional in order to consolidate more power in the federal government. The centralization of power, the centralization of power is the purpose of the system, because the system is what it does. And when you when you look at a system and see that, it's continually centralizing power, it can't be an accident. So what's happening there is that states that are, controlled by governments that want consolidation of power, those states will flout the the all efforts to, make elections more more free, fair, honest, and just. So they're going to do that.
S.T. Karnick:So some states are going to cheat no matter what. Well, then you have a problem there because California, for example, has so many electoral votes, and its its it's voter rolls are just absolutely catastrophic. There is one way to fix this. If you look at the what the Constitution says about the elections, it says this, the states run the elections. And, and interestingly enough, conservatives tend to say, well, we believe in in federalism, we believe in in states, having states using their authorities.
S.T. Karnick:But it says, the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof. But the congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations except as to the places of choosing senators, which is not particular the the last clause isn't even relevant anymore because, they they changed that, to make create direct election of senators. So the federal government could do just what they did to stop, segregated schools in But
Chris Talgo:but that's
S.T. Karnick:on the Arkansas and and and and step in and and make sure that these things are done properly. The federal government doesn't because this is working to their advantage.
Jim Lakely:Right.
S.T. Karnick:It's working to the centralization of power in the federal government.
Chris Talgo:But the predicate for the federal government having any involvement in this is civil rights issues because they then argue, well, hey. Look what happened in the South and Jim Crow. The the states passed laws that were, you know, intentionally, formed to prevent, you know, certain groups from voting, but we don't live in that place, in that place and that time anymore. And, you know, one of the things that always happens is when you question some of these, civil rights legislations that were passed something like 50, 60, 70 years ago, it's like, no. Those must be in place and you can't do anything.
Chris Talgo:I do remember that some of those, had elapsed, and some of the states said, okay. Now we are going to it. It was, southern states in particular because they were still held under the, the Department of Justice civil rights, you know, authority somehow. So the fact that that's that that has lapsed and that these states do actually have, total control over the, the elections taking place in their states, Georgia being a prime example of that, They went and changed the laws. I think there's I think there's not that's not gonna happen across states like, you know, other swing states, whether it be Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, or the rest because the media is not doing their job of holding this these people accountable.
Chris Talgo:So so we're we're we're doing our best to try to tell American people, hey, everybody. Cheating is a, was a problem in 2020. People are saying it's gonna be a problem in 2024. They said they're gonna do it in 2024, And the media is just saying nothing to see here nothing to see here because they've already made the, the the the equation that, hey. This is gonna benefit our guys, and we will do anything possible to benefit our guys, to cover up for our guys.
Chris Talgo:And even if that means lying about the, prospect of election integrity and and the fact that the future of US elections could be in jeopardy, well, they're willing to to to take that gamble because they think it will help them come November 5, 2024.
S.T. Karnick:Yeah. I mean, look look. Repealing the Voting Rights Act, if you wanna change or make changes of it, alter it, that's fine. Go ahead and do it. The the the the problem is that nobody recognizes that the the corruption of our government is massive, and and voter fraud is an endemic part of it.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. A 100%. I mean, what what's you know, we we started this podcast talking about how the the left takes over the institutions and, distorts them, and, and they've done that with, elections. And even to the point where even if the state like Georgia is controlled, there's a Republican secretary of state, for instance, and that sort of things. The the pressure outside pressure from our media and our and our political culture against doing anything about stopping, you know, trying to prevent election fraud is so great that even the Republican secretary of state, in Georgia will basically tell, you know, Donald Trump to go pound sand.
Jim Lakely:Everything's fine. There's nothing wrong with our election system, election systems. Yet, we see, this is a a, exclusive story at the Federalist. It was just published yesterday, that a, a complaint filed simultaneously with the Georgia Secretary of State and the State Election Board obtained by the Federalist exclusively reveals tens of thousands of potentially illegal votes were cast in the 2022 midterm election. The revelation comes after the Georgia secretary of state ignored a similar complaint highlighting evidence indicating that nearly 35,000 potential illegal votes may have been included in the final tally certifying Joe Biden as the winner by just 11,700 and 79 votes.
Jim Lakely:And now it's they they know that just 4 months until the November election, the state's refusal to address the problem ensures chaos will ensue unless there's a complete blowout by one of the candidates. Just to again, I mean, we should pat our own back here, but Hartland and Rasmussen reports should be commended for trying to do some public polling that exposes the the breadth and depth of this problem. Look. Chris and I live in Chicago. We know that there's election cheating, and I think most Americans accept that there is a certain level of cheating going on.
Jim Lakely:I mean, Chicago's where, you know, they get a lot of votes out of cemeteries. Right? And so we understand that, but that's the the scale and escape and and the the scale of the of the shenanigans, of the cheating that has been going on in our elections is only now starting to come to realization. People starting to realize it, and the polling that we've done with Rasmussen helps expose it. And that when you're talking about, a such an evenly divided country, when you're talking about swing states, just a handful of them, in which, you know, 10,000 votes, 8,000 votes can decide who's going to be the next president of the United States.
Jim Lakely:And then that these very states are the ones that just continue counting for a week that, you know, shut down counter or or board up the window so you can't see the count, that that screw it up. I mean, there's human error, and then there's malice. And, you know, the reason why 62% of Americans, including as you mentioned, Justin, almost half of Democrats think there's going to be cheating in the 2024 election is because there has been cheating in all of our elections, all of our life, and that they saw the 2020 presidential election and a lot of stuff did not add up, a lot of stuff really smelled bad, And, you know, here we are going into 2024, and most states, a lot of these swing states, there's Republican influence, if not control, of the legislature to fix the election system, which the states are constitutionally, instructed to run, and hardly anything has been done to to stop this. And it leaves you with just one conclusion. Both parties are fine with elections being rigged.
Jim Lakely:Whether, whether they're rigged or not, they're fine with the possibility of it because not only have they made our elections infinitely easier to rig, they have taken almost 0 steps, including in the state of Georgia. Michigan is another one that are starting to take a few steps. They have taken almost zero steps to ensure the integrity of the election, which is the most important thing in a supposedly constitutional republic in which the people govern. If you cannot trust the results of the election, you are not a people with a government. You are it's the other way around, and we are serfs.
Jim Lakely:We are not, we are not, citizens anymore.
Justin Haskins:Right. Yeah. And that's and that's a 100% true. And I think that you're always going to have a degree of cheating in in any sort of large scale system. I mean, it's it's impossible to get rid of all of it.
Justin Haskins:But once you have widespread mail in balloting, it becomes very, very difficult to stop cheating. There are there is at least one way that I can think of that you could do it. There are 3 states in the country, I don't have them off top of my head, although I think Oklahoma is one of them. That's, requires a notary signature if you're going to vote by mail. So when you sign your ballot, send your ballot in in order for it to be valid, you gotta go to a notary and get the notary stamp of approval.
Justin Haskins:Yes. This person really is who they say they are, who they're voting. So now the notary would have to be in on it as well in order to have a a a ballot, stolen or someone voting twice or things of that nature. And so I think that's a really good, easy, common sense, solution. You could make notaries free.
Justin Haskins:You know, government buildings have notaries. Banks offer notaries for free, typically, for their customers. They're widely available. It's not hard to find 1. I think that's a common sense way to do it, but the the most common sense way is just don't allow widespread mail in balloting.
Justin Haskins:There's no reason for it, and we didn't have it throughout most of the country for 200 plus years. This is a recent innovation that emerged out of COVID. And in that year, although I didn't think it made sense then, at least I understood why people thought it was a good idea in that year, but we are not in COVID 2020 lockdown hell anymore. We've escaped, and we don't need to live under those ridiculous rules. So we're not in any other part of our lives except for this.
Justin Haskins:This is the one vestige that we've kept. And why? Why keep this? Of all the things we've gotten rid of, why keep this? Well, it for exactly the reason that has been said over and over and over again, because elites want this to be in existence.
Justin Haskins:And then why do they want this to be a problem? Why would they want this happening? There must be a reason for it. They must benefit from it in some fashion, or else they wouldn't want it. And and I think it's it's obvious.
Justin Haskins:And even in Republican states where they control the overwhelming majority of of political power, they're in the vast majority case, not doing anything about this or very little. Even when they're cleaning up voter rolls and doing the best they can on on some some other issues, they're not necessarily stopping mail in balloting. Most states are still gonna do mail in balloting in this election, and it's completely insane. Sam, earlier, I'm glad he brought this up. This really does not ever get brought up by anybody.
Justin Haskins:Sam read from the constitution of the United States of America, which very clearly indicates that the federal government has a right to regulate federal elections in the states. And the idea is states should run their own elections, and they should do a good job of it, and the federal government really, ideally, wouldn't need to be involved. But if they need to be involved, then they should get involved. That's that's really the context of what's going on there. That part of the constitution that Sam read, if I remember correct correctly, is not an amendment, a later amendment to the constitution.
Justin Haskins:This was written by the founding fathers. So this is pre civil rights era. This is pre all of that stuff. So this is this was the founding fathers understood. Yeah.
Justin Haskins:There is a threat potentially that states could have corrupt elections, and we don't want that. So the federal government has the right to step in and correct it. And I think at the very least, although I never want the federal government involved in in really anything, At the very least, in this case, I think the federal government should step in and say no more mail in balloting. Because if you just got rid of that alone and except for in, you know, you could say disability, you could have a handful of exceptions that make sense. Right?
Justin Haskins:Military service, things like that. But you'd step in and you say no mail in balloting without a really good excuse, and the states can make all the other rules. But at least on that, we're all gonna be in agreement that in this nation, our elections do not depend on mail in balloting. Because as bad and this is what our poll really tried to get at. As bad as as mail in voting of of of of as of, voter fraud has been, and there's all sorts of issues related to voter fraud, stolen ballots, people voting twice, all kinds of other things.
Justin Haskins:The mail in balloting piece is the worst of it because it really isn't. And I try to stress this whenever possible because people don't fully grasp this. It is impossible. I'm not saying difficult. I'm saying impossible to catch the vast majority of mail in ballot fraud because a lot of the mail in ballot fraud that happens is probably happening within a household or amongst people who know each other.
Justin Haskins:And so if you live in a household and you're married to someone, for example, who doesn't vote, doesn't care, doesn't pay attention, and the mail in ballot comes in the mail and it arrives at the doorstep and you really care, you're a politically active person, it is extremely tempting for you to sit there and fill that ballot out. You may even have them sign it. That's illegal. Most people don't know that. It's actually illegal to do that.
Justin Haskins:But you may fill it out for them, and then they just sign it. You plop it in the mail and mail it in. Now if we had in person balloting, could you show up at the ballot? Could you show up at the poll the polling place and bring your spouse who doesn't care about voting, and your spouse can walk up to the pollster and say, you know, I don't wanna vote. So my spouse over here, she's gonna vote for me, and so she can have my vote.
Justin Haskins:She gets 2 ballots. No. No. That's illegal. Right?
Justin Haskins:We all agreed. No. You can't do that. And yet that is exactly what's happening with mail in ballots all over the place. Now how do I know that?
Justin Haskins:Because we asked people in these polls, are you doing this? Are you letting other people fill out your ballot for you? Are you filling out other people's ballots for them? And people overwhelmingly said, yes. Lots of people said this.
Justin Haskins:We got huge percentages anywhere from 10 to, you know, up 20 percent of people are saying this far more than what would be needed to change the outcome of a lot of really important elections. So you're never all the investigations of the world aren't gonna catch that because in order to catch it, someone would have to turn in their own family member or friend and say, yeah. I wasn't. And then some people, just to tie a bow in all this, would say, well but what about signature requirements? We've got signature required.
Justin Haskins:They gotta sign it. Well, as I said, you could ask your friend or family member to sign it. Now you don't have that problem anymore. Or, in many cases, the signature requirements in in swing states, especially those run by Democrats, were were relaxed very deliberately. There were sometimes they were handed down orders, like in Michigan, for example, they did this where they said, you're gonna we're gonna relax the signature requirements in this state.
Justin Haskins:And just as long as it's if it's close, tie goes to the, you know, for the runner. Right? Like, that's that's the the way we're gonna handle this. In in other places, you have just local officials who who knows if they're doing a good job of checking the signatures or not? What's their incentive to be accurate?
Justin Haskins:Who's making sure they're doing a good job? Right? Many of the people are reporting to politicians whose side is winning as a result of this occurring. So are they going to be cracking down on people? No.
Justin Haskins:Of course not. And then there was all kinds of crazy things as it was alluded to earlier where, people who are supposed to be independent poll watchers were kept out of ballot counting and things of that nature illegally in some cases. And so we don't really know. You can't know. And then the worst of it is this.
Justin Haskins:In many states, even if you flag a signature and it says not all of them that do this, but in many of them. Even if you flag a signature and say, you know, I don't think this is the right person, what they do they have they often have laws that require that the state reach out to the voter and say, are you the voter? Did you do this, or did someone else vote for you? Now if if, like, a a person down the street stole your mail in ballot and voted on your behalf and you didn't know, you would probably say, yeah. No.
Justin Haskins:I didn't vote. But if you know that your spouse did it, you're not gonna say, oh, yeah. You know what? You're right. That was my, spouse who did that and and, lock her away.
Justin Haskins:Now maybe you would.
Jim Lakely:I guess Take us away. You're they're both criminals. Take us both away.
Justin Haskins:Right. Right. You're not gonna do that. You're not gonna do that. So the so, again, all of this where do you end up with all of this?
Justin Haskins:We don't we can't know how much voter fraud there is under the current system. The system is so bad. It's not even possible to know how corrupt it is, and so we have to fix this. And if ever there was a time to have the federal government come in and say, okay, very similarly to how they were doing all kinds of ridiculous things post civil war in the South to keep black people from voting on purpose in the 18 eighties and whatever, and the federal government eventually came in and said, no. You can't do this.
Justin Haskins:In that same way, we need to have the federal government step in and say, states, we want you to be in charge, but you can't have a a an election system that is so easy to commit fraud in that we have no way of even knowing if it's happening. We can't have that. And I think that that should be the the the starting point of all discussion going forward. Now when was the last time you heard a Republican politician stand up and say any of the things that I just said? And the answer is you haven't because they don't.
Justin Haskins:They don't ever ever do. The closest you'll get is Donald Trump, who obviously has a a very personal reason for wanting to do that, and and that's the closest you'll ever get to it. So we need a massive grassroots movement to fix this problem. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. All the other things we're doing become meaningless because we will never if we can't trust our elections, we can't have a free society.
Justin Haskins:And if the people don't believe the elections are are valid, then the whole the whole the the the system of trust that exists with the government completely breaks down. Eventually, you you end up with, like, civil war. Like, eventually, that's where you end up. You follow that road long enough. So they have fixed this problem now.
Jim Lakely:Venezuela right now where, you know, Maduro just says, oh, no. Actually, I won.
S.T. Karnick:One quick point in in one quick point in support of, what Justin has just said. There are numerous counties all across the country where there are more registered voters than live adults
Jim Lakely:Mhmm.
S.T. Karnick:That live there. And in fact, in 2017, the the United States as a whole had 3,500,000 more registered voters than live adults. So that's obviously a a a a a real support for cheating. If you have that many people who are registered to vote, well, who are these people? Well, part of it is that that the the federal law actually makes it difficult to, get them off the voter rolls, for obvious reasons.
S.T. Karnick:But the point is that there's all kinds of, ability to cheat out there, And in fact, we have the evidence. You can you can look at it. And and I've actually documented this in my newsletter, Life, Liberty, Property. Give you a plug. But the the point is that there is so much cheating going on, and people just don't know about it.
S.T. Karnick:And as Justin said, it's vital that politicians refuse to talk about this stuff. And as Chris said, it's vital that the the press refused to talk about this stuff. So we're here doing it. We're demonetized, so we're doing that. And and this has got this has got to start, I think, at this point from the grassroots level that that, that people who are frankly courageous or can somehow make their way in the world without the the YouTube money from Google, will will will have the nerve to say, look, this is really happening.
S.T. Karnick:These, this cheat is visible. You can see that there are way more registered voters in this, county than live adults. That can't be right. That can't be moral. It can't be fair.
S.T. Karnick:So let's start to publicize these things while we're doing that.
Chris Talgo:Just a couple couple, yeah, like, closing thoughts on this.
Jim Lakely:Let's have the last word.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. Of course. So, we've done 3 polls on this. We also, produced a policy report. I have pitched several op eds on all the polls and the policy report.
Chris Talgo:And I can tell you, that the mainstream outlets are unwilling to even touch it, and only the, conservative media outlets would even think about, publishing such pieces. That just once again shows that the, the mainstream media just don't want this to even, you know, resonate with the American people. And, you know, just one other thought that, you know, occurred to me while we were talking about all this stuff. So I remember back in 2000. I remember how contentious that election was.
Chris Talgo:I remember how incredibly, frustrated and angry the Democrats were when the Supreme Court said, hey. You know what? Florida's gonna go to, George w Bush. He's gonna become the next president of the United States. 2004 was close, but, George w Bush won pretty convincingly.
Chris Talgo:Then 2008, 2012, Obama wins. 2016 comes out of nowhere. Donald Trump wins this this this election that no one even thought he could have any chance of winning. So what did they do? They start saying, you know what?
Chris Talgo:We're gonna just make sure that we're gonna do everything we can in 2020 to prevent him from winning. And the reason I say that is because in 2000, if I remember correctly, 93 93 percent of Americans voted in person. Now it's less than half. So what changed from 2,000 to 2020 aside from COVID, obviously, that made it so difficult for people to vote in public? We've also got currently voting now weeks weeks ahead of elections even before some of the debates occur, well before some of the big news events of the last few weeks, you know, might change their votes.
Chris Talgo:Look at the Hunter Biden laptop story, how that was handled. I mean, there's just so many examples of this where you've got the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, trying to do everything they can to dispel the notion that, you know what? We have a problem with election integrity in United States of America, and we need to solve it because they, you know, they have determined that it helps it helps their side. And this whole two sides thing and either side just doing anything to win, that is also a recipe for disaster. And that's what could lead to civil war because we just wanna say, you know what?
Chris Talgo:We wanna have a free and fair election. Whoever gets the most votes, they win.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Well, you're, you're called a conspiracy theorist. We're all conspiracy theorists now. Or as we like to say, you know, yesterday's conspiracy theorist is today's, news, and it's just a spoiler alert for what's going to happen. So, yeah, so, definitely visit heartland.org.
Jim Lakely:We have, links there to the polls that we've done, with Rasmussen, especially the latest one. Because that 62% of likely voters from both parties believe that, there will be cheating in the 2024 election, and I think this podcast pretty well why and how that will happen. And we are not gonna be able to trust our institutions if we can't trust our elections. This is the most important issue. It seems not enough people are talking about, but we talk about it right here on the podcast brought to you by the Heartland Institute.
Jim Lakely:I wanna thank all of us, all of you out there that watch the show live, on YouTube and Rumble and x. Thanks so much for participating in the chat. Thank you, Keeley, for producing behind the scenes. Great job. Thank you, Justin t Haskins.
Jim Lakely:Thank you, Sam Karnick. Thank you, Chris Talgo, and I am Jim Lakeley, vice president of the Heartland Institute. Donnie will be back next week, and so I will get to sit in a panelist chair and not in the host chair. Thanks a lot for watching and listening. We will talk to you next week.
Jim Lakely:Bye bye.
Chris Talgo:He's a lion dog faced pony soldier.