Arizona Insiders: Myths and Facts About Election Fraud

me he needs the links so I'm sending it to him. Hopefully won't have to switch to my phone during this because my cat broke my power cord about an hour ago. So my laptop might die before this ends. Should we invite Brian to be the speaker? I just did. Okay, now it's six pm. Yep, I say we go ahead and start. Great. Okay, let's start. Good evening and welcome to Arizona Insiders Live. I'm Charlie. Tonight's show is Arizona Insiders' myths and facts about election fraud and I am joined by my co-host, Rachel Alicadandre. A quick note before we start. This space is being recorded. Our guests views are their own. Tonight we are going to stick to statutes, court rulings and public records. And when something is acclaimed rather than an established fighting, we will say so. One more thing, hosts are open tomorrow. Please go vote for official voting times and locations. Check your account in elections website. So Rachel, over to you. All right, thanks Charlie. Most of you guys probably know who I am former Maricopa County Elections attorney, former Maricopa County prosecutor and now a political journalist and I write extensively about election fraud. So today we're going to be talking extensively with Carrie Lakes former attorney Brian Blem who helped her with election lawsuits and we're going to dig into those a little bit. But first of all, I want to give you guys all a bunch of meat first, a bunch of background. One of the biggest myths out there is that nothing can be done about election problems unless someone is already proven widespread fraud. That was never the legal standard before 2020. Courts used to overturn or redo elections for far smaller irregularities like long lines, machine problems or violations of election procedures that merely cast doubt on the integrity of the result. You never had to prove it would have changed the election. So after 2020, a lot of people started treating widespread fraud as the only thing that matters. Elections are no longer being overturned for irregularities the way they used to be and tonight we are going to go over why we'll unpack why that's wrong. What kinds of evidence courts have traditionally accepted and what actually happened in places like Arizona. So one quick thing this Friday morning, November 6th, our free Arizona Insiders newsletter will bring you the replay of tonight's show plus a one page guide called election fraud claims versus court findings and get it sign up free at Arizona Insiders.com slash join and we pinned the link to that at the top of this space. So we're starting with myth one of widespread fraud being the standard. So I wrote an article for town hall about this recently. I would district court judge Patrick taught and dressed it in one of the 2020 election cases. He said fraud is not the standard much less widespread fraud. He pointed out that requiring plainist to prove fraud has already occurred before they can even bring a case is backwards, especially with mail and ballots. Because once fraud happens with those, it's often too late and nearly impossible to detect. He said he also noted that certain practices like pre-pring voter information on absentee ballot quest forms make fraud easier rather than harder. The plaintiffs in that case had standing because they had a direct interest and a uniform election system that falls the law. They were Republican party plaintiffs, which other courts, as you know, have said didn't get standing even though they were the Republican party. These other judges, there's been other judges too, including the federal H circuit court of appeals and a Minnesota case, they made similar points about late ballot and executive actions that ignore state election statutes. So I laid out a list of these cases where the courts have overturned elections for very minor things. In Germany of all places in 2021, Berlin's court avoided the entire state and district elections in order to full rerun merely for long lines with weights of several hours, wrong remissing ballots, temporary polling place closures, and voting after 6pm at about half of the polling places. The court found the errors could have affected seat allocation. It did not require proof of fraud or intent. In Georgia House District 28 race, a judge boided a 2018 election because of merely four illegal votes. Three voters who had moved out of the district, one who had voted twice, because there was more than two illegal votes. That was enough for him because it cast doubt on the result. There was an election in Patterson, New Jersey in 2019 where the judge invalidated the city council race and ordered a new election because of mail and ballot procedural violations. There were 200 uncounted ballots found in a mailbox in a high rejection rate. And again, he never said there was any fraud. And here in Phoenix in 2024, a judge blocked certification and ordered a new all mail election merely because Maricopa County printed ballots telling voters to pick two candidates. He said the mistake made impossible to clear with any confidence that the winners of a legally conducted election would be. Again, no fraud alleged. In a North Carolina congressional district race in 2018, the state board of elections voted five to zero for a new election, merely over an absentee ballot operation tied to the Kamala Harris campaign. So it can happen occasionally. So Brian, I want to ask you the phrase that we hear constantly. There was no white stood fraud. Well, you know, I've written that this was never the standard for deciding election cases. What was the traditional legal standard and how has it shifted since 2020 in your opinion? Brian, need to fall asleep. Okay, sorry about that. I'm here. Thanks for waking me up, you believe this is late. Sorry about that. No, you know, widespread fraud. Here's what's happening, right? It's been since Trump took office in 2016, the left has made significant inroads to trying to alter our election or not alter our elections, but alter our language. So democracy comes to mean something different. We've got to have these bureaucrats at the federal level, micro managing everything we do. That's what they say is democracy. And then you so you look at what's happening in the election context. This is this is Democrats out there saying, oh, you got to prove widespread fraud. Why what what they're attempting to do is they're attempting to do two things, a to convince people that the standard is widespread fraud. And and to condition people to accept less than widespread fraud. Does that make sense to you? So this isn't a change in our judicial system in the legal standards imposed by our court. This is I think a fundamental effort by the left to change our language. And so, you know, I think like, for example, the you brought up the court in in Germany that overturned the statewide elections, you know, and then I was just agree with one of the words you used. You sort of used an adjective that or an adverb, I'm sorry, that minimized what had taken place in those elections, right? And I would argue that what could place in those elections were were were significant, right? You can't minimize what was taking place. You got long lines and waits for several hours. You know, also significant is wrong or missing ballots. Okay, that means people can't vote. That is just straight out disenfranchisement when you're giving people votes or ballots or you're not giving them ballots because you don't have them, right? Temporary polling place closures. And so we're starting to see a lot of that in Maricopa County, right? Right? Everybody's blaming the flooding. Well, you got sliding. Well, Maricopa County is supposed to have an emergency action plan that entails a little bit more than telling people to go look at its website and find a different place to go vote. But we'll see how things will see how things pan out tomorrow because like Yavapai, Yavapai County of Pam Verde, you've got huge issues. And so if people haven't already voted, that's a huge problem, potentially for tomorrow. But if you look at that election in Germany, there were all two. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Is this better? You cut out again. I'm sorry. Did somebody shut me off? Hello? No, no, not you guys. I mean, somebody else sort of screwed up my phone. But anyway, so I'm not sure what you heard or not of that. But I don't think it's a change in our legal standard. I think it's a change in our language.