Photo: U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, R-North Carolina
Photo Credit: Woody Marshall / AP
The Center Square [By Bethany Blankley]-
Two Republican congressmen from North Carolina, U.S. Reps. Ted Budd and Dan Bishop, introduced the Combat Voter Fraud Act in the wake of multiple lawsuits in several states in which the plaintiffs claim election irregularities and voter fraud occurred on Nov. 3 and following days.
The bill would direct the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office to create a national strategy to combat and prevent voter fraud nationwide.
“The 2020 election has made clear that our country needs one national strategy to investigate and prevent voter fraud,” Budd said. “Under my bill, the Department of Justice will determine best practices for the prevention of common issues like voter intimidation, fraud, ballot systems glitches or sabotage, hacking, or election audits. Nothing is more important than the integrity of our ballots, and my bill takes a first step toward ensuring that our elections are completely fair and accurate.”
In a recent interview, Federal Election Commission Chairman Trey Trainor said reports of fraud in some battleground states are credible, “otherwise they would allow the [poll] observers to go in,” referring to claims made by President Donald Trump, the Trump campaign, and state GOP representatives about GOP observers and others being prohibited from doing their jobs.
“When you have claims of, you know, 10,000 people who don’t live in the state of Nevada having voted in Nevada, you have the video … they’re [poll workers] either duplicating a spoiled ballot right there or they’re in the process of just marking a ballot that came in blank for a voter,” Trainor told Newsmax. “That’s a process that needs to be observed by election observers.
“Our whole political system is based upon transparency to avoid the appearance of corruption,” he said in the interview, alleging that some states have not been transparent.
Despite the ongoing recounts and litigation underway in some states, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced that the Nov. 3 election “was the most secure in American history,” and that “election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.”
