By Mike Huckabee
November 10, 2022
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff! Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
Day 3 of counting
Welcome to day three and counting of Tuesday's midterm elections. America not only has a banana republic-style politicized justice department, now we have a Third World ballot counting operation, too.
As of this writing early on Thursday morning, the Senate stands at 48 Democrats and 49 Republicans, with the Georgia race between Warnock and Walker apparently headed for a run-off. Walker is favored if Republicans turn out and he can get the votes that went to the Libertarian candidate. The House stands at 184 Democrats and 207 Republicans with 218 needed for a majority. The Republicans are still favored to take the House, but only by a slim margin.
If that happens, I hope their leaders won’t be bamboozled by the Dems and their media sycophants into thinking that with such a narrow majority, they have to compromise and share power. Instead, they should ask themselves, “WWPD: What would Pelosi do?” Then proceed accordingly.
Since yesterday, one of the more satisfying D-to-R flips in the House came in New York’s 17th House District where Mike Lawler defeated Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who was the chairman of the powerful Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It’s the first time in decades that the chair of that committee from either party has lost a race for reelection.
https://www.westernjournal.
Otherwise, we wait, and wait, which I assure you youngsters never used to be the situation back before we had technology that was supposed to make this process faster.
Why it was more of a ripple than a wave...
Robert Spencer at PJ Media reports that CNN exit polls show there would have been a red wave, but it was blunted by a turnout of voters aged 18-29 who voted for Democrats by 64%.
Or as Spencer puts it, “The voting group with the least life experience and the most recent subjection to the Leftist indoctrination that dominates America’s educational system ended up voting as it was brainwashed to do.”
It’s a further argument for the urgency of Republicans paying more attention to cultural outlets like social media that young people follow and GOP legislatures rooting leftism out of schools. Why do red state leaders continue letting their public schools and universities act as radical left indoctrination centers? They control the purse strings, and they could force them to return free speech and ideological balance to campuses, but they don’t act on it.
Example: why do 99% of political donations by professors at the top four universities in Ohio, where J.D. Vance just scored a decisive victory, go to Democrats? That doesn’t sound like “diversity” to me.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/
What you can accomplish when you fire the right people
Of course, not every state takes weeks to count ballots. Florida was razzed over its “hanging chads” for years until Ron DeSantis became Governor. He told Fox News that one of his first acts was to fire the people responsible and overhaul the elections system. Florida somehow managed to count over seven million ballots in less than two hours. That’s a good lesson in what can be accomplished if you fire the right people.
Another wildly inaccurate poll
Speaking of people who should be fired, President Biden announced that “everyone wants me to run for reelection.” Wow, another poll that's wildly incorrect!
At Biden's first post-election press conference, as expected, he crowed about the lack of a red wave, taking that as a sign that Americans approve of his top-to-bottom disastrous policies and unconstitutional overreach. One reporter pointed out that surveys show 75% of Americans think the country’s heading in the wrong direction and asked, “What do you intend to do differently?”
Clueless Joe’s response: “Nothing, because they’re just finding out what we’re doing.”
I think that actually outdoes Stacey Abrams’ claim that black males weren’t supporting her because they were “misinformed” as the most arrogant, condescending quote of this election season. Most of us are keenly aware of what he’s been doing because we’ve had to deal with $5 gas, empty store shelves, 5 million illegal immigrants, political prosecutions, rampant crime and drugs, and hostile nations who sense our weakness ramping up aggression against their neighbors.
He might be correct that all the young people who blunted the red wave by voting for Democrats because they have little life experience and heads full of leftist mush put there by college professors haven’t figured out what he’s doing yet. But if you read this newsletter, you’ve known from day one, when he kicked off his Administration by reversing border security measures, shutting down the Keystone XL Pipeline project and declaring war on our domestic oil and gas industries.
And he is correct in the sense that a lot of people who voted for Democrats are about to get a rude awakening as to what he’s been doing. For instance, those low gas prices he bragged about were due to draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s now at record lows and has to be refilled, so expect gas prices to start rising again. Also, good luck if you’re on a limited income and need to buy heating oil this winter. Oh, and that train strike that he managed to kick down the road a bit? It’s threatening to flare back up and disrupt the supply chain just in time for Christmas. That is, if the urgent shortage of diesel fuel doesn’t do that first. So yeah, Joe, some of us already know what you’ve been doing.
He also raised eyebrows by dismissing Republican plans to investigate his son Hunter’s shady foreign business deals and his alleged profits from them, scoffing that “it’s almost comedy.” I admit to doing my share of Hunter Biden jokes, but there’s nothing funny about the staggering amount of corruption at the highest levels of government that the evidence on his laptop suggests.
However, I do think it’s funny that so many commentators were aghast at Biden's comments and stunned that “he seems to have learned nothing.” Come on, man! One of Joe’s most famous traits is that he’s been in Washington for over half a century and learned nothing! Why would he start now?
DeSantis' Election Day stand-off with the DOJ: how that went
Yesterday we reported that Biden’s ‘Justice’ Department had announced it was sending officials from their Civil Rights Division to 64 jurisdictions around the country to “monitor for compliance with federal voting rights laws” on Election Day. The list of jurisdictions included the Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach.
This prompted quick action by Florida. By now, you probably know that DeSantis –- to his credit –- has stood up to the feds on this, but now we have details on how it went down, plus analysis by law professor Jonathan Turley. Here’s how it unfolded...
Garland’s planned intrusion looked to Florida officials like the massive exercise in control it was. The State of Florida did not need babysitting, especially in their own polling places as had been specified, so Brad McVay, general counsel to Florida’s Department of State, wrote to John “Bert” Russ, Deputy Chief & Elections Coordinator of the Voting Section in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, noting that the list of jurisdictions “seemed to indicate” that these monitors would be positioning themselves inside the polling places. McVay went on to note that “Section 102.031(3)(a) of the Florida Statutes lists the people who who ‘may enter any polling room or polling place’...Department of Justice personnel are not included on the list.”
He told Russ that the DOJ had not explained “the need for federal monitors in these counties. None of the counties are currently subject to any election-related federal consent.” And, indeed, that is true. Elections are run by the states. At the very least, the feds should be able to articulate a good reason for sticking their noses in, and they didn’t do that.
The law McVay quoted back to Russ says, “No person may enter any polling room or polling place where the polling place is also a polling room, or any early voting area during voting hours,” with certain exceptions, one of which is “law enforcement officers or emergency service personnel there WITH PERMISSION OF THE CLERK OR A MAJORITY OF THE INSPECTORS.” (Emphasis ours.)
H wrote: “Even if they could qualify as ‘law enforcement’ under [the Florida statute], absent some evidence concerning the need for federal intrusion, or some federal statute that preempts Florida law, the presence of federal law enforcement inside polling places would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence in the election.”
https://www.scribd.com/
As Prof. Turley explains, the DOJ could still argue that even without a pending order relating to some issue at the polls, “it has federal jurisdiction to investigate possible election fraud or voter suppression.” (Well, wouldn’t they have to provide evidence of THAT?) He also says the law doesn’t actually require a pending order. “It simply allows,” he says, “for ‘law enforcement officers’ (and not just state law enforcement officers) to enter these polling places.”
McVay’s letter doesn’t actually say, “Just try it, you jackboots, and we will bar you from entering.” That’s probably because he legally wouldn’t be able to bar them without first obtaining an injunction to have them removed. So, what would happen if the DOJ just showed up at the polling places, demanding to be let in? Florida would have to run to court to seek that injunction, and the feds, according to Turley, would have “an edge” in such a challenge, though he doesn’t explain why and I would really like to know.
He does note that President Trump’s Justice Department sent monitors to some polling places in 2020, but they remained outside, just to monitor general conditions. Biden’s DOJ apparently was planning to station their monitors INSIDE the polling places. Big step.
Biden’s ‘Justice’ Department could always go down to Florida, set up outside, and then try to go in if they found some pretense to do so. Turley said he “would be surprised if the state would seek to bar entry in such a cases given the concurrent federal jurisdiction in elections.”
Now, as I have said many times, I am not a lawyer, nor is anyone on my research staff, but if we were in Prof. Turley’s class, we would have to raise our hands and ask what he meant by “concurrent federal jurisdiction in elections.” The Constitution gives the states the power to run their elections. Absent some serious, overriding issue, the feds shouldn’t just be showing up outside polling places expecting to be let in. And the state law says they can’t come in unless the clerk and a majority of inspectors agree. So, to know how this should play out, let’s start by asking the clerk!
As one reader replied to Turley: “I live in Florida and I would not ‘be comfortable’ with them anywhere inside or outside my polling place!”
A more strident reader said, “The governor should have armed state agents keep the DOJ agents at bay. If DOJ resists, then they should be taken into custody and held until the election is complete.” Perhaps the mere prospect of being put in that spot –- or even the possibility, however remote, of starting another Fort Sumter –- has kept the DOJ from running roughshod over the state of Florida..
So, how did it play out on Election Day? Well, the Florida Secretary of State’s office sent monitors of their own to monitor the feds who were monitoring the election –- presumably from outside.
That’s how crazy things re getting, but at least DeSantis knows he has the voters of Florida behind him, especially after his sweeping re-election. If only we could say, “As Florida goes, so goes the nation!”
https://www.theblaze.com/op-
QUESTION: Is Maricopa County accepting banned "Zuckerbucks"?
If you want to know which political party is focused on competent administration in 2022, just compare and contrast vote-counting in Florida with vote-counting in Arizona.
There’s no need to go into the Election Day issues in Florida, because essentially there were none. Voting and counting were handled smoothly, the counts are in and the outcomes known. I remember the days when elections used to be like that everywhere. But this year in Arizona, particularly (once again) in Maricopa County, we get a very different picture.
Unbelievably, Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, who is charged with running the elections in her state while also being the Democrat candidate for governor, chose not to recuse herself from overseeing her own race. Problems arose right away on Election Day when 20-30 percent (accounts vary) of Maricopa County’s tabulation machines had “issues,” and this led to two-hour lines at some polls. (Arizona voters use paper ballots, but these machines are used for counting those ballots.) If Hobbs’ handling of the elections in Arizona is any indication of her competence to be governor --- and surely it is --- Arizonans had better hope and pray her opponent, Kari Lake, wins.
In an update Wednesday evening from ARIZONA REPUBLIC, Maricopa County, the main population center in the state, still had some 300,000 more votes to count. The early vote count had favored Hobbs by 14 percent, but of those that came in on Election Day, Lake had carried a whopping 70 percent. Hobbs’ lead narrowed to less than 1 percent. It was looking very good for Lake on Wednesday night.
“There’s very much still a path to victory for Katie Hobbs,” said Democratic Governors Association Political Director Marshall Cohen. “And the truth and the summary here is that this election will be determined by the numbers of votes cast, not by the volume at which an unhinged former television reporter can scream conspiracy theories.”
No, I’ve been watching Ms. Lake as this counting unfolds, and have to say that she’s been calm and professional when I've seen her. She radiates confidence. She is perfectly well hinged. Her brutal take-downs of the media have been masterfully articulate --- and well deserved. She has the goods on them and shows them for what they are. But still her critics fume: how dare she question or criticize the inefficiency of the vote count, just because the state says it could take weeks to do what should be finished in a day? And how dare she bring up the possibility of ulterior motives, just because she’s dealing with the bizarre situation of having her own political opponent running Election Day?
A poised and relaxed Kari Lake told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night that Arizona still had 650,000 votes that hadn’t been counted. She was confident she'd overtake Hobbs.
Tucker also spoke with GOP lawyer Harmeet Dillon, who was in Phoenix (that is to say, Maricopa County), on Wednesday evening. She explained that recent covid-era changes in voting procedure had dropped the number of polling places in Arizona by two-thirds. They also don’t use pre-printed ballots, instead printing them individually for each voter, and that takes time. And it’s the responsibility of county officials to test the tabulation machines ahead of time; these machines should have been working fine on Election Day. The long lines, she said, disenfranchised some voters, and a judge had denied the GOP’s request to keep the polls open longer on Tuesday.
All of that was known, but one other thing Dillon said almost in passing really grabbed our attention: that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is “still [through organizations] giving in-kind contributions to the recorders’ offices in Arizona, even though ‘Zuckerbucks’ had been banned.” She said she was hopeful that new leadership in Arizona will get things turned around.
Zuckerberg’s use of his money to fund illegal dropboxes in Wisconsin in 2020 through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) has been well reported (at least in conservative media) and is widely known (at least by readers of conservative media), but not so much his similar generosity in Arizona. We did some digging and found that Arizona –- secretary of state Katie Hobbs, in fact –- had accepted that money through the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) and used it on an ad campaign “telling voters when and how to vote, encourage signup for the permanent early voting list, recruit poll workers and combat misinformation before and after the election.” (Where would we be if we didn’t have the government to combat our “misinformation”?) CTCL was generous, too, funneling $5 million into 9 Arizona jurisdictions, with more than half of that going to Maricopa County.
After the disastrous 2020 election, the Republican-led state legislature had passed a law saying state election departments could no longer accept private money. (Hilariously, it passed in both the legislature and state senate by straight party-line votes, with no Democrat voting against taking the “Zuckerbucks.”) Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed it into law in April 2021, making Arizona the first state to ban private election funding.
The governor wrote this at the time: “With public confidence in our elections in peril, it’s clear that our elections must be pristine and above reproach --- and the sole purview of government.” That was a laudable goal, but too bad; they didn’t reach it this time.
The Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society had written at the time that the money from CTCL and CEIR “improperly influence[d] the 2020 presidential election on behalf of one particular candidate and party.”
If Zuckerberg is still funneling money to Arizona for elections in violation of a legislative ban, that sounds serious indeed. But state law bans private contributions to state ELECTION departments. Dillon said this involves RECORDERS’ offices. The Maricopa County recorder is Stephen Richer, whom you might remember from an extremely contentious live-streamed election board meeting that we reported on at the time. Not sure if it’s possible to see that video now, but here’s Mr. Richer trashing President Trump and election “conspiracy theorists” as liars on MSNBC, May 18, 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
As you can see from the following county webpage, Richer’s duties include “maintaining voter files for more than 2.6 million active registered voters for Maricopa County. The Recorder’s Office partners with the Maricopa County Elections Department to plan and hold jurisdictional, county, state and federal level elections for all Maricopa County voters.”
https://recorder.maricopa.gov/
It goes on to say that the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office is widely recognized as a leader in recording services, voter registration and elections in the nation.”
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