Election Integrity Report Outlines Key Reforms Ahead of 2024 Presidential Election

Voters cast their ballots in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Jan. 23, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

In a comprehensive analysis, a non-partisan organization that monitors election integrity has laid out more than a dozen “critical reforms” that they assert U.S. states must implement before the 2024 election to “secure voter integrity.”

Jason Snead, Executive Director of Honest Elections Project (HEP), offered a statement about the report (pdf), released on Jan. 26, saying, “The Safeguarding Our Elections report provides a wide array of policy recommendations that would help secure elections, boost voter confidence in election outcomes, and increase voter participation.

“As we head into a presidential election year, it is more important than ever to pass laws making it easy to vote and hard to cheat in all 50 states. This report provides a blueprint to do exactly that.”

With a demand for “honest rules for honest elections” and a list of fourteen key points that states should tackle, the report concludes that states should outlaw ranked choice voting, alleged monetary influence over the election, non-citizen voting, consolidating election dates, requiring voter ID, and safeguarding vulnerable mail ballots.

“Elections should be accountable to the public, not to special interest groups and liberal megadonors,” the report states. “In 2020, left-wing nonprofits pumped more than $400 million from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg into thousands of election offices, giving more money to places that ultimately voted for Joe Biden.

“Dozens of states have banned or restricted private election grants, but the same left-wing group behind ‘Zuck Bucks’ in 2020, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), has already created a new $80 million program, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, to skirt these laws and influence election offices across America.”

Previously, HEP has spoken out against aggressively partisan nonprofit organizations, primarily left-wing groups, pushing money toward elections across the country. Recently, the group’s report called readers’ attention to what critics have called “ZuckBucks 2.0,” and how they believe it could impact the 2024 election.

Ranked-Choice Voting

Also included in the report is a discussion of ranked-choice voting (RCV), which, according to HEP, ought to be prohibited by every state.

According to the document, the use of RCV makes it more difficult to cast a vote, more difficult to comprehend the outcomes of elections, and more difficult to have faith in the voting process. However, HEP asserts that there is a coordinated campaign that is being pushed by left-wing megadonors who are promoting RCV in order to tilt politics to the left. States across the country are making it illegal to use RCV, and cities that are unhappy with it are repealing it.

“We’ve seen at this point possibly a dozen states are facing ballot measure fights to bring ranked choice voting to future elections,” Snead told Fox News Digital. “We’ve seen Zuck Bucks 2.0 launch in earnest, and they’ve got the new $80 million program. We wanted to make sure that those issues were elevated for policymakers and for folks in the media as well, so that they can understand what these new threats and challenges are.”

The HEP reports that despite the fact that there are laws in place that prohibit foreign influence in elections, the vast majority of Americans are opposed to it. Recent polling has shown that this is the case.

“Federal and state laws bar candidates and campaigns from receiving foreign donations, but these laws generally do not apply to ballot measures,” the report states.  “Left-wing groups like the 1630 Fund routinely pour tens of millions into ballot measure campaigns while simultaneously accepting substantial donations from foreign nationals such as [Swiss billionaire] Hansjörg Wyss.”

More Election Concerns

This allegation comes on the heels of newly released documents that indicate the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) knew it was unethical to censor concerns about the security of mail-in voting prior to the 2020 election, but it proceeded to do so anyway.

On Jan. 22, a collection of documents that were revealed by America First Legal (AFL) made the allegation that the CISA of the Department of Homeland Security was aware that mail-in ballots were less safe than voting in person prior to the election in 2020.

“Common sense dictates that ballots submitted via mail are inherently less secure than verified, in-person voting by a citizen who shows identification before casting his or her ballot,” Gene Hamilton, AFL’s vice president and general counsel, said in a press release. “The American people were lied to, and there must be accountability.“

A lawyer for America First Legal (AFL), Michael Ding, stated to The Epoch Times that the new documents were released after the AFL filed a lawsuit against the CISA in November of 2022.

CISA admitted that mail-in voting held more severe risks than in-person elections, but it collaborated with technology companies to restrict what it deemed misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation surrounding the 2020 election. However, the records that were just recently disclosed reveal how CISA did this.

A wave of legislative amendments was enacted in 23 states and the District of Columbia in order to allow Americans to vote by mail. These reforms were implemented in response to the alleged dangers that the COVID-19 virus posed to voters in 2020.

Austin Alonzo contributed to this report.