Conservative nonprofit Heritage Action for America plans to spend at least $10 million on a wide-ranging election integrity campaign to strengthen voting laws in eight swing states, according to a spokesperson.
Noah Weinrich told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the $10 million will be an initial investment “and we will devote whatever further funding it takes to accomplish our goal.”
The campaign will focus on Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin, and will involve digital and television advertisements, as well as direct lobbying of state lawmakers.
“Fair elections are the bedrock of democracy, and secure elections are important to every American,” Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson told The Epoch Times in a statement. “There is nothing more important than ensuring every American is confident their vote counts—and we will do whatever it takes to get there.
“We do that by holding lawmakers accountable to their promises to advance the conservative principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”
Election integrity came to the forefront in a dramatic way in 2020, with former President Donald Trump and his allies making claims that reduced security measures—primarily around mail-in ballots—led to fraud that cheated him out of victory.
Commenting on the election integrity campaign, Anderson said that “after a year when voters’ trust in our elections plummeted, restoring that trust should be the top priority of legislators and governors nationwide.”
In the broader debate about election security, conservatives—and Republicans in general—have tended to argue that casting a vote is a privilege of citizenship that should be safeguarded with secure processes and restrictions, and that lowering requirements around voting opens the process up to fraud and abuse.
Progressives—and their Democrat allies—tend to state that barriers to casting a ballot should be as low as possible and that the kind of security measures pushed by conservatives, such as stricter voter ID or proof-of-citizenship laws, amount to disenfranchisement. Progressives often frame the debate as between voter suppression and expansion, while conservatives tend to see it as election security versus vulnerability to abuse.
In the wake of the 2020 election controversy, Republican and Democrat lawmakers across the country have been pulling in opposite directions by introducing legislation that either reduces barriers—and guardrails—to voting or seeks to strengthen election integrity, which can also make casting a vote more effortful or burdensome.
A key law in this regard being pushed by Democrats is H.R. 1, or the For the People Act of 2021. It passed the Democrat-controlled House last week on a largely party-line vote of 220–210, with all Republicans voting against it.
The organization argues that the bill “interferes with the ability of states and their citizens to determine qualifications for voters, to ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, to secure the integrity of elections, to participate in the political process, and to determine the district boundary lines for electing their representatives.”
“The end goal of H.R. 1 is clear—to enshrine into law dubious electoral practices that enable and encourage fraudulent behavior, such as ballot harvesting, false voter registrations, duplicate voting, and ineligible voting,” Heritage Action states.
Biden has said he would sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk, which may be a tall order since the proposed legislation would need 60 votes to overcome the Senate filibuster, meaning 10 Republicans would have to buy in.
A previous version of the bill had passed the Democrat-controlled House 234–193 at the beginning of the 116th Congress in 2019 but ultimately wasn’t taken up in the Republican-controlled Senate.
