Latest news with #ElectionIntegrityScorecard
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Red state tops annual Heritage Foundation scorecard for strongest election integrity: 'Hard to cheat'
FIRST ON FOX: The Heritage Foundation released its annual Election Integrity Scorecard on Tuesday, which ranks the states it believes are strongest in terms of election integrity, in a review that resulted in Arkansas topping the list. Arkansas, led by GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, moved up from No. 8 and earned the No. 1 ranking in the new report that was compiled by looking at factors including voter ID implementation, accuracy of voting lists, absentee ballot management, verification of citizenship and other attributes. In a press release, Sanders touted several accomplishments in a recent legislative session, including Act 240, Act 241 and 218, which the state said "strengthened protections on Arkansas' ballot amendment process so that bad actors cannot influence and change the Natural State's Constitution." Sanders also signed legislation to prevent foreign entities from funding state and local measures. Election Investigation Uncovers Alleged Illegal Voting By Noncitizens And Double Voters In Multiple States "My goal this session was simple: make it easy to vote and hard to cheat," Sanders said in a statement. "I was proud to work with my friend, Secretary of State Cole Jester, to make Arkansas ballot boxes the safest and most secure in America and end petition fraud to protect our Constitution. Today's announcement shows that all our hard work paid off." Read On The Fox News App In a statement, Jester said, "As Secretary of State, I have said from day one we would have the most secure elections in the country." Gov. Sanders Announces Plan To Empower Parents To Sue Big Tech For Role In Teen Mental Health Crisis "I'm proud of the work my team has completed implementing new procedures and technology. None of this would be possible without the great work of Governor Sanders and the men and women of the Arkansas legislature." Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told Fox News Digital that Sanders and the state of Arkansas "deserve serious credit" for their efforts at election integrity. "States across the country should follow Arkansas' lead by implementing these critical election reforms that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat," Snead said. Red states made up the entirety of the top-10 ranking and included Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Oklahoma. The last of the states on the list included Oregon, Vermont, California and Hawaii. Earlier this year, Snead's Honest Elections Project released a guide, first reported by Fox News Digital, outlining what it said are must-needed reforms to be taken up in states across the country to ensure election integrity. The report listed more than a dozen "critical" measures ranging from voter ID to cleaning up voter rolls to banning foreign influence in elections. "Election integrity ballot issues passed with flying colors across the board on election night," Snead said at the time. "Now that state legislative sessions are starting up, lawmakers have a duty to fulfill the mandate the American people gave to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat."Original article source: Red state tops annual Heritage Foundation scorecard for strongest election integrity: 'Hard to cheat'
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Did Utah's vote-by-mail reform really make elections safer?
Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz said Tuesday the state's new vote-by-mail process is 'a huge step' toward better election security despite the major changes made from the original proposal he supported. Over the course of the session, HB300 underwent a dramatic transformation from initially demanding in-person voting with photo identification to ultimately requiring ballots be turned in along with the last four digits of government ID. The bill also requires voters to renew their request for a mail-in ballot every eight years, after initially opting-in. Leaders framed the final package as a 'Utah Way' resolution to a contentious national issue. However, key stakeholders have remained skeptical for different reasons. County clerks, who came out as neutral on the final version, worried the legislation opened up more problems than it solved. While some conservatives, like Schultz, expressed frustration that more stringent voter identification requirements were not included. 'If you look at that bill it's better than the current system,' Schultz, R-Hooper, said. 'But I think we need to spend more time focusing on voter ID. We will keep working on it.' Schultz told the Deseret News that lawmakers worked 'closely' with the nation's most influential conservative policy think tank, the Heritage Foundation, on HB300, which Gov. Spencer Cox has signaled he will sign into law. Schultz mentioned the group — known for its Project 2025 policy proposals — repeatedly during a legislative wrap-up event hosted by the Herbert Institute for Public Policy and the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. Echoing a central talking point from the seven-week 2025 legislative session that wrapped up earlier this month, Schultz emphasized that Utah is currently tied for 33rd on Heritage's 'Election Integrity Scorecard,' largely due to a lack of identification and opt-in requirements for mail-in ballots. 'Utah ranks at the top in many areas but elections is an area we needed to work on,' Schultz said. In an interview with the Deseret News, Heritage Foundation's manager of election law reform, Hans von Spakovsky, said that by implementing ID requirements similar to the ones Georgia passed in 2021, Utah has enhanced its system, which will likely boost trust and turnout. 'When you improve the security of the election process by doing things like putting in an ID requirement ... that increases public confidence,' von Spakovsky said. 'Every state that has done that ... has seen not decreases in turnout, but increases in registration and turnout.' Vote by mail is even more secure when an ID number is paired with signature verification, making it extremely difficult for 'large-scale ballot fraud' to occur, von Spakovsky said. But from Heritage's point of view, he explained, universal vote by mail has the basic problem of relying on voter rolls, which are notoriously difficult to keep accurate, and relying on the U.S. Postal Service, which frequently struggles to deliver ballots in a timely fashion. By directly addressing these concerns flagged by Heritage's metrics, Schultz said Tuesday he hopes the Legislature's election reforms will bump the state to the top ten in the country on the scorecard. The Legislature's vote-by-mail compromise was framed as a response to complaints from the 2024 election cycle, particularly the 2nd Congressional District primary, where a razor-thin recount hinged on the judgement of election workers and the ballot cure process that accompany signature verification. HB300 will completely replace signature verification with the last four digits of a voter's drivers license, free state ID or Social Security card as the means of confirming voter identity. A signature affidavit will continue to be an option for voter identification until Jan. 1, 2029. HB300 will also replace universal vote by mail with an opt-in program. Beginning in 2029, voters will only receive a mail-in ballot if they have requested one when registering to vote, renewing their license or visiting the lieutenant governor's website. Mail-in ballot status will expire after eight years or after a voter fails to participate in two consecutive general elections. Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch agreed that the new opt-in requirements will make 'minor improvements' to election security by helping to clean up voter registration lists but said the new identification process could be counterproductive. 'Replacing the signature with the four digits does not make the election more secure,' Hatch said. 'It's a lot harder to forge somebody else's signature than to grab the last four of their ID, particularly within the same household.' While scanning four digits instead of comparing signatures could save clerks time by not having to reach out to voters to cure their rejected ballots, Hatch predicted the bill's provision requiring mail-in ballots to be received by 8 p.m. on election night could 'disenfranchise voters through no fault of their own' because of postal service delays. The status quo is already secure, Hatch said, and additional changes could complicate election administration and confuse voters. But, according to Schultz, HB300 is just as much about preventing the perception of fraudulent elections as it is about fixing faults in the system. 'We have good elections in Utah because we have good people,' Schultz said. '(But) as trust is eroding in government, we can't let that happen on our elections.' The bill also requires the lieutenant governor, who oversees election administration, to analyze voter registration databases at least 90 days before every regular election, to identify ways to scrutinize households with a disproportionate number of registered voters and to enter federal programs that notify states of noncitizens and criminals who cannot legally vote. The Sutherland Institute, a Salt Lake City-based conservative policy think tank, believes that what Utah's 2025 election reform did is balance the prudence of incremental reform with voters' demand for convenience and the urgent need to shore up trust amid political attacks on elections. Utah's efforts to balance these competing values showed that election policy does not have to be constrained by a false choice between security and access, said Sutherland's chief growth officer Derek Monson. This aligns with a Sutherland survey showing that most Utah voters say enhanced ID requirements will increase election confidence more than anything and that same-day voting requirements will do the opposite. And, from Monson's point of view, if a change can increase trust in the current political environment without sacrificing ease of access, it's well worth the effort. 'If you have a perfectly solid system, but a large chunk of people have a perception that it's not protecting the integrity of our elections, then you still have a problem,' Monson said.
