Ken Blackwell, former Secretary of State and State Treasurer of Ohio and the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, on election integrity and using our agency to change the course
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Dan Proft: All right. Well, we need to move on to a few other matters that are afoot, including, and this is, you know, pronounced after the special election in Long Island, which was secured by the Democrats, as we know. What sort of preparations are being made by the Republican Party now in advance of sort of the Labor Day to November election sprint to prevent some of the things that are well-documented that occurred in 2020, 2016, and also to set up the sort of infrastructure here that’s required to get a couple of more points in terms of turnout of Republican voters in swing states like Wisconsin or Georgia or North Carolina or Arizona. In other words, vote by mail programs. Some of the reporting, the postmortem on that special election in Long Island. Yes, the Republican candidate was problematic. Not a very good candidate. But here again, we had the problem of vote by mail program for the Democrats was reportedly much more robust than it was for the Republicans in a special election, low turnout election. And that certainly stretched out the Democrats victory there, didn’t it? That seems to be part of the story. For more on this topic, and there are many, many aspects to it, please to be joined again by Ken Blackwell. He’s a former Secretary of State and State Treasurer of Ohio. Also, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Ken, thanks for joining us again. Appreciate it.
Ken Blackwell: Hey, Dan, Amy, good to be with you this morning.
Dan Proft: So I know you’ve given testimony recently and you posted on social media about it. So, you know, tell us what your focus is and sort of the assessment of the threat level of those challenges you see still that still persist with respect to election integrity?
Ken Blackwell: Well, you know, one of the big differences between 2020 and 2022 is that in 2022, we had more eyeballs on the process. The left has made a mockery out of transparency and they’ve worked very, very hard to advance the concept of making it easier to achieve as opposed to making, you know, the encouraging people to try to get involved in all aspects of the process from poll workers and poll watchers and what we concentrated on in 2022 and we’ve stepped up our game in 2024 is to reach … is to make sure that we’re out there recruiting people to be engaged in the process at every aspect of it, from, again, poll workers to poll watchers to in fact, people who can put eyeballs on the on the ballot tabulation process. That is that is so, so, so very important. And what we’re running into is that if we if we don’t encourage that sort of participation, this whole notion, this pessimism, that it’s no use being engaged because the system is rigged. Well, the best way to make sure the system is not rigged is by getting involved. So that’s what we’re concentrating on. And the other thing that we’re doing is we’re going on the offense in terms of lawfare and litigation. You know, we’re involved in some very key litigation across the country. I just was part of a team that put together litigation out in Arizona to make sure that their efforts out there to ban citizens from, you know, to minimize citizens from protecting and watching those drop boxes. We in fact are saying, no, we’re going to we’re going to sue the Secretary of State out there to make sure that, you know, non-citizens are not voting. And when you particularly when you have a border state like that. So that’s what we’re trying to do, is to be very aggressive and make sure that we’re on the side of transparency and making it harder to cheat.
Amy Jacobson: Well, is there any way to get rid of drop boxes? I mean, it just seems so fraught with danger and just too vulnerable.
Ken Blackwell: You’re absolutely right. And so we have to … you know … One of the blessings of our system when it’s working is that it is decentralized. One of the more difficult aspects of it is that it is decentralized. So where drop boxes are legal in this election, we must make sure that, they are, you know, available for transparency, that these are not unguarded drop boxes or like in Arizona, rules and regulations, promoted by the Secretary of State and the governor can be, blocks to citizens keeping their eyeballs on the process. So, yeah, I think that, you know, when, when we have a chance to outlaw drop boxes, we ought to do that. But as long as they are legal, we, in fact, have to make sure that we’re advancing transparency and keeping eyeballs on the process.
Dan Proft: Yeah, and we, we need to be, you know, talking about, monitoring ballots being tabulated. We need to also, as I mentioned, with the vote by mail programs, make sure that Republican ballots are getting in to get counted, and I’m a little unclear about the Republican Party’s program when it comes to vote by mail programs nationally, even in the swing states that we know will be determinative. I mean, can you speak to that at all? Because my sense is … my sense is that is not where it needs to be.
We can’t be asleep at the switch, and we can’t lose the game in the early innings because of our inattention to opportunities to score runs.
Ken Blackwell
Ken Blackwell: Well, you know, we have room to grow. You’re absolutely right on that. But at least in this election, they have a real solid ballot chase program and they are aggressively pursuing a vote by mail. What happened in New York was that, you know, we the Republican Party was slow on the draw and, you know, it’s no. And lo and behold, the advantage that the Democrats had gained in early voting, prevailed. And that’s why we’re, as you’re just suggesting, we can’t be asleep at the switch, and we can’t lose the game in the early innings because of our inattention to opportunities to score runs.
Dan Proft: But does the RNC have somebody riding point on this or maybe when the new leadership comes in?
Ken Blackwell: What they do, they do now? Yeah. And and believe me, I’ve done a lot of work with Lara Trump. And the new chairman, he was, in charge of, he was newly in charge of their election integrity operation. Yes, so I can say with confidence that they are better prepared this time around nationally, but there are opportunities in different states to up our game.
Dan Proft: And what about the other wildcard and you sort of alluded to it is given what’s happened at the border, which is the elimination of border security and all of the gotaways and people in this country illegally, as we all know. How do you put eyes on people who can register day of and vote, day of election and do not have to present any proof of citizenship in states like Arizona?
Ken Blackwell: That’s where you have to have, more eyes on the process. That’s why we can’t afford to have folks dropping out and or giving up, and sort of surrendering to that sort of, political operation where you have non-citizens voting. Look, I have, I have crisscrossed this country opposing automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration. It is just crazy. Look, we spent a lot of years making sure that there were not false barriers to access the ballot box. But we really have to put a lot of emphasis today, on making sure that it is hard to cheat and that only citizens are voting. Look, the left has tried to destroy the whole concept of citizenship. They see us as being a nation without borders. And so in their operations, there are voters without borders, and we have to push back. You know, Frederick Douglass, the great Frederick Douglass, once said those who are whipped easiest are whipped most often, and we just got to stop.
Amy Jacobson: Well, what about what happened in Arizona? I met somebody and on a flight. She lives in Maricopa County. She said she went to vote that day, you know, during their gubernatorial race for Kari Lake, and she said 27 machines were down. Are we ever going to find out what that was all about?
Ken Blackwell: Yes, we are aggressively pursuing litigation. And that’s why I said, what happened was that the Secretary of State became the governor and there is this, this, this veil of darkness that has been put across that process. You know, and I … let me just go Biblical for a minute. You know, we’re told in John 3 that those who would do evil love to darkness, but we’re also told that, you know, we, we in fact, can’t just sit around cursing the darkness. We have to light candles and punch holes in that darkness. And that’s, again, I might sound like a broken record, but this is this is constructive redundancy. We, in fact, have to make sure that people are involved and asking and pressing questions are. You know, history is not a snapshot. And I’ve been crisscrossing the country trying to make people understand. It is a process. And the only way that you change the direction or the arc of history is by being engaged. What we have and we can’t have too much more of a people who are sideline sitters. You know, with history, you’re either in shaping and moving and directing it, or you’re made by history. And that that’s something that we just can’t tolerate. We have to be involved. We have to use that agency that God has given us, to in fact, change the arc of history in a positive direction.
Dan Proft: I love when Ken Blackwell goes biblical. Ken Blackwell, former Secretary of State and State Treasurer of Ohio, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission as well. Ken Blackwell, thanks for your efforts and for joining us. Appreciate it.
Ken Blackwell: God bless you both.