The Critical Election Integrity Battles That Will Define 2026

And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge. As always, you can email the show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit FDRLST, make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and of course to the premium version of our website as well.

Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.

Absolutely, we have a lot of ground to cover. As they used to say in the Smoky and the Bandits song, We've got a long way to go, but a short time to get there, or something like that. We're beginning our conversation today with the big story, a Supreme Court decision that I think will have a significant effect moving forward. It addresses standing of political candidates. The Supreme Court ruling

Yeah, So it's the Boss case was decided by the Supreme Court effectively, I think four to two to two. And the big issue there that's important is who can sue for violations of election law.

Good news.

There's good news and bad news, just so we can do both. The good news is this expands the universe of people who can bring a lawsuit to candidates. In other words, if you're running for Congress and an election law is being broken, then you can sue. I get that. That's a good thing that the Supreme Court ruled the

The public.

Interlegal Foundation files lawsuits. We filed a lawsuit exactly like this case actually in North Dakota challenging their acceptance of mail balance late and we lost on standing just like Judicial Watch did in Illinois. On today's case, and ours is not a candidate. It was essentially an election official. So the standing issue at is a big deal. It needs to go further. Today was a good step in the right.

To It is a huge issue. And I'm thinking too, it wasn't settled today, but there were lawsuits in the last election cycle about state senators or lawmakers having standing in these issues, and we saw a pretty famous Pennsylvania case stalled out on that front. Where do you think that is heading for these others like lawmakers who file lawsuits in these election cases.

Yeah, well that's what the Supreme Court resolved.

It's settled now in the Boss case bost by the way that a candidate would have standing. That's what the big opinion was the Supreme Court. Now, it was a fractured opinion. Amy Cony, Barrett and Kagan disagreed with it and said, yes, they're standing for this particular person, but it's because they're wasting and spending money after.

The election to make sure the law was followed to you know.

Send observers and that kind of So they kind of had dollar bill standing in the concurrence, and of course two justices dissented said there is no standing. You're going to open up the floodgates to crazy people like the normal stuff.

And so it was essentially a four too two opinion.

Yeah. No, I think I didn't ask that question correctly. I know that the candidates now have standing according to the Supreme Court. But in the last elections, and we've seen this before, legislatures have sued collectively or many members of a state legislature have sued in an election dispute,

Yeah, terrific question. My apologies. I'd assumed in your question the legislators were on the ballot, right, and that's the difference.

So you're exactly right.

This case does not say legislators have standing simply because they're legislators. If they were candidates, they would have standing. But if there's simply legislators who aren't on the ballot that is unchanged.

All right, gotcha? And again the Supreme Court kind of paused on that. One would say, maybe bulk at that and we'll see perhaps down the road. Now we are in another critical It sounds hyperbolic to say that every election cycle is critical. If you look at it from the point of view of do you want to save this republic? That's pretty critical. So all of that said, what do you see at PILF as being the biggest election integrity issues as we head into the twenty twenty six mid term election year.

Yeah, I got to tell you it's related to the Supreme Court case, which this case didn't reach the bigger issue. It only reached the small issue of whether Cannon set standing, And that's the federal law that requires male ballots or ballots to be received by election day. That's the underlying litigation and boss that was not touched by the Supreme Court. And I think that late arriving ballots that cause late announcements of winners is the single most destabilizing component of

Yeah, that is critical. I know that you folks have been dealing with this for a long time. Ask some of the candidates in Nevada how critical that was. There's a gentleman who ran for Senate a few years back who can tell you all about that. But it's not just there, it's California, it's in so many different states. Where do you think that case will end up given what you've seen so far.

Yeah, it's a great question, and it's a statutory text question. The question is does federal law require all ballots to be in by election day? That's the issue before the Supreme Court, and the statute says election day they have to be cast by election day.

And so it's going to turn on what the meaning of cast is.

And I think that cast means you're gets dropped in the official basket.

It doesn't mean it gets dropped in the mailbox, are given to.

Some contractor who comes to your front porch and takes the mail away.

And so I think that it's huge.

I think it's probably going to come out the right way, but I certainly won't want to bet put all my chips.

In the center of the table.

At the same time, we have to think about the dirty voter rolls out there. That's something the Public Interest Legal Foundation has thought a lot about over the years. You've got a lot of cases in motion right now. We have seen some really awfully dirty voter rolls and the fruits of those voter rules. Of course in the last couple of years. In particular, where does that stand and where do your legal actions stand on that front?

Well, I got some bad news there the Six Circuit Court of Appeals in the case we brought against Joscelyn Benson in Michigan, we're having twenty five thousand dead people on the active voter rolls, which is barely subject to dispute. It's lock solid evidence. The Sixth Circuits said, Hey, states don't really have to be effective in how they clean the roles. They just have to try to. And we're like, Nope, that's not what the law says. And this we have

Of Appeals that says states really.

Don't have an obligation to keep clean voter rolls, and so this is a huge issue. I think some Republican Party groups helped us, but we didn't get enough. We didn't get it much in the way of broad energy on this. Nobody from Michigan. Nobody, And it's sort of sort of discouraging because this is the ballgame whether we're going to have clean voter roles or not.

Why is that? Why didn't you get that energetic response? I mean, is really where the rubber meets the road in terms of election integrity?

I don't know, I really don't.

Maybe that's something you can do a show on and ask the people who should have But it's discouraging. Look, all we can do is try as hard as we can. We litigated this. We went to the grave sites of the voters. We visited them in the graveyard with video. You can go to Public Interest Legal Foundation and google Michigan video graveyard.

We actually went to the site.

Some of these people have been dead since the nineties and they're still in the active voter rolls.

Well, what is the argument from Joscelyn Benson. I'm again, like a mediocre attorney. I know the answer to this, But what is the answer from the Joscelyn Benson's of the world, who, by the way, want to move from Secretary of State to be the next governor of Michigan. Keep that scary thought in mind, But how do they justify these dirty voter rolls?

So there's two ways they do. The first is the proportionality way. They say, hey, this is only twenty five thousand dead people on the active roles out of six millions, so we're and we removed one hundred and fifty thousand dead people last year, so we're making a reasonable effort to keep the roles clean.

Go away.

That's the first argument. It's a tiny fraction of the problem, and they removed a bunch of people. The second argument they're making is the law doesn't require them to be effective. It just requires them to give it the old college try and if they fail, oh well they're not liable. And so those are the two arguments. And you could see how if these two arguments got legs, which they're getting, it's going to affect the entire country, not just Michigan.

Yeah, no doubt about it, because every state that doesn't value election integrity and quite frankly, Let's be honest here. They want to use dirty voter rolls to the advantage of their political favorites. They're going to not only can you need to do this, but they're going to, you know, expand the issue, and that becomes very critical in twenty

Yeah, Look, the good news is I don't think we're ever going to see anything like we did in twenty twenty. We didn't see it in twenty twenty four, we didn't see it in twenty twenty two.

Twenty twenty is going to go down.

In history as the year the guardrails were taken down and all of the nonsense that occurred in violating state laws, suspending state laws. You know, sometimes courts signed off on that. But the point is, I don't think we're going to see that again. The Left pulled off and inside right that year, and too much effort has gone into making sure it never happens again.

What is the status of the save Act that certainly ties into the voter roles. And yeah, the Save Act. You know, the idea that the vast majority of Americans agree with is that you have to be a US citizen to vote in a US election, and it requires you know, documented proof of that fact. Is it has passed in the House. It has been stalled in the Senate. Do you know why and what is the status of the Save Act right now as we get closer and closer to voting in this midterm.

Well, my understanding is it just doesn't have the votes in the Senate, that it just doesn't have the votes necessary to pass. And so, you know, I'm not close enough to Senate issues on this that I can tell you why that is. But at least my understanding is it's just a game of math.

I am curious though, I've heard that there are some Republicans who do not support this basic constitutional issue, this basic election integrity issue, and that baffles me as well.

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What are the other big issues that you will be fighting in court this year? I know you have sent out a number of warning letters and letters too. Your lead researcher, Logan Churchill has written plenty of these saying hey, we can help you with this. A secretary of state elect state election official, we can get you in compliance with election law election integrity. What kind of issues are you you're delving into.

Yeah, so one is we're dealing with the race base for districting in California. We have a lawsuit against California there where the new congressional maps are jerry rigging the system to create race districts. We're also looking at a secret ballot in Texas. We have a lawsuit being argued this week there as to whether you have a right to actually have a secret ballot. I know that sounds shocking, but it hangs in the balance. And then there's the

Where does that California issue stand? And I asked that in the main, there are a lot of liberal states looking to you know, rig their maps so that they can they can grab more congressional seats. Where does your lawsuits stand? Where does the issue stand? In general?

Yeah, it's it's in the hands of a federal court, three judge panel. Actually, when you do a challenge like this, you get three federal judges and.

You know where it stands.

As like, we're in the middle of combat with litigation with California, and hopefully, you know, we get some good news from the Supreme Court on another redistricting case shorty called Louisiana versus Cala, which has a brief in there, and hopefully redistricting law moves in a better direction this calendar year.

You bet.

Our guest today is Jay Christian Adams, President and General counsel for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, talking election integrity, all the battles ahead in this critical midterm election year. Will A lot has changed since the election of twenty twenty. We are seeing citizen only voting laws in place or amendments to constitutions, a growing movement on that front. Are we going to see the movement at least in these

Yeah, great question, And two things of note. First of all, a PILF has been doing a deep dive into the personnel in a very blue state's election offices, and we've been harvesting resumes and we will eventually have a more comprehensive report, but I can tell you from a preliminary standpoint, it really makes it hard to have a lot of

Well, let's go into detail on some of those, because what these politicians and these activist groups are calling voter rights acts is just a lot of times and end around to you know, basic election integrity rules, basic integrity laws. What are they trying to do in some of these states.

Well, two things they do, of note they do a lot more than that, but I'll just give you two. One is they make race the center of state election law.

In other words, you can bring.

These cases to demand race based districts like I want a black district for Congress, I want to well Congress and even down to school board, and they dispense with the federal rule. They get rid of the federal rule, which is really hard to satisfy. It's a really complicated way to do it, and they make it really super easy. So what happens is you create all these race based

Well, now, wait a minute, I thought liberals Democrats weren't all that keen on states' rights. It seemed like it. For a long time. It was always federal central authority. What changed there?

Well, look, they know that in places like New York and Massachusetts and California and Minnesota, they love state power because they're always.

Going to be in power.

Right Maryland, These are places where progressive is a culture and there's no there's no competing political ideology. It's a one party state, and so why not be in favor of state power when you got the power.

Yeah.

Indeed, here's the headline from the Associated Press as we talk today. Democrats will spend millions to shift voter registration strategy ahead of the midterm elections, kind of what we were talking about before. The Democratic National Committee will spend millions of dollars to cement control of voter registration efforts that have traditionally been entrusted to nonprofit advocacy groups and individual political campaigns, a shift that party leaders hope will

Yeah, Look, this has been going on in small measure all around the country. I mean, one example, the fight was Texas where pardon these people went out to do voter registration and they were putting on bad registrations, like the fake registrations, and Texas passed the law that said, if you want to sign people up to vote, you have to go through training, you have to show you know the law. And of course what happens next, Texas got sued over this law like hey, this is suppression.

And we've gone down this road before, where you know, you have activist groups trying to you know, trying to register voters, trying to register the kind of voter they want to turn out. But at one point, of course, they were deeply embedded in some of our election offices. You know, we saw that certainly in twenty twenty where you had a Democrat Party operative in Wisconsin working inside Green Bay Office election office there and working alongside with

Oh for sure.

I mean, look, some of these election offices in Richmond, or at least they were, are populated by volunteers parachuted in from activists left as five to one C three groups to work inside the election offices.

This is not a shocker.

This is the standard operating procedure in a bunch of state capitals around the country. And I know people were shocked, like, well, who would ever do that for free? Well, they do it for free. They parachute people in.

That leads us to ballot harvesting. You know has dealt with this in the past. How big a role will ballot harvesting play in the twenty twenty six midterms.

Well, it depends on which state. A lot of states have curtailed it. A lot of states it's a culture. Some states have made changes, like Mississippi has it is less of a problem than it was in the past.

You're hearing a lot, interestingly from liberals from the Democrat Party about twenty twenty six and how the election might not just be fair because you have Donald Trump in office. You know, according to the left, he's the biggest threat to democracy out there. And they're certainly using terms like fascist and what have you. You know, they're talking about the R word here, Christian. They're saying, we're really worried that the twenty twenty six mid terms could be rigged

I really sincerely hope as we move forward as a country that these sorts of claims become very out of fashion. It's like a slinky or a I don't know. I want to do some cultural fun here, like stuff that's no longer popular, like some of the records I have at home, like the Bay City Rollers.

S A t U R Day, my friend right right.

Right, right, right, right, The point is that I'm looking forward to the day that the confidence in the system is restored, and you know that the pendulum doesn't swing back and forth between one and the other.

Yeah, I think that has changed. I think the polling shows it that there still is a good deal of distrust in the system. But people feel a lot better today than they did a few years back, and understandably so. How much does Congress have Let me ask it straight here, how much culpability does Congress have in you? The failure to bring election integrity to the forefront?

Well?

Limited, because remember Congress has limited jurisdictions. Sure, that's how the founders wanted it. The founders didn't want Congress involved in state elections. You know there's a reason for that too. It wasn't just they flipped the coin, do we want Congress involved or not? Go ahead and mister Adams flip the coin. No, it was because they knew centralized authority throughout human history brings disaster. It might start out as a really good idea, it might start out as really

I'm just rattling off some great laws Florida.

Florida passed a lot of great stuff that these laws are being passed. And look, I know people listening in Minnesota or Massachusetts or Maine might be saying.

What about US.

I get it, But this is a decision made in seventeen eighty seven and the founders were worried about not holding elections, and so they put the Election's clause in the Constitution. We should use that power very sparingly.

Indeed, are there some areas though, in that Congress does have authority and they've kind of stepped aside or abdicated that authority.

Well, one area that the congressional authority is going to impact the country is this election day. Is election day case that's going to Supreme Court. Congress passed a law and said ballots must be cast by election day. Okay, there you go. They've used that power under the elections

Yeah, how is that going? By the way, because PILF has been very instrumental in a number of states dealing with the high cost of obtaining voter roles. If let's be honest, if we can't see those voter roles, it is very hard to you know, talk about where election integrity stands, hard to gauge that you have dealt with some very very expensive costs associated with the voter roles, both in red and blue states. Where does that stand right now? And where do you see the fight ahead?

So some good news. PILF has brought and won an outcome in New.

Mexico where we got the outrageous fee dramatically reduced by thousands of dollars, and so you can get these records without paying a king's ransom. Now in New Mexico. I'll give you some bad news Alabama. Alabama fought really hard so they didn't have to turn over electronic records, and they got an eleventh Circuit decision saying so that they don't have to turn over electronic versions.

Of voter rolls.

And so we said, okay, fine, you won this case called Greater Birmingham Ministries. By the way, we'll take the voter roll records in pay per form the way you said that you prefer it. Well, guess what, they couldn't do it. They don't have enough paper to print, right. And so that's a real bad place that I hope sorts out. But it's one of these examples where you know, just because it's Alabama, just because it's New Mexico, don't think that the outcome is good.

Yeah, there are a lot of states too. I remember, and I'm speaking as an investigative reporter, Wisconsin was an extremely expensive place. I remember trying this was fifteen plus years ago, trying to track dead voters on the voter rolls. And I said, well, sure you can do that, but it's going to be ten thousand dollars plus a pop. Well that's very difficult because voter rolls are indeed subject

Yeah, and there's something Congress can fix too, if you're looking for something to fix Wisconsin. By the way, the reason I say that is Wisconsin's one of six states exempted under the National Voter Ilellustration Act from transparency. And we just made arguments in the Seventh Circuit about this Court of Appeals.

We had a similar case.

In Minnesota that just got argued in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals as to whether or not this exemption from transparency election transparency under federal law is valid, and we.

Argue it isn't.

We ought to be able to get the records cheap, But Wisconsin and Minnesota took the opposite argument, and by the way, so did the US Justice Department. I might add, they were in court opposing pill on the question of cheap transparent voter rolls.

Why why on earth ask them? Yeah, I think we should. I think that I think that the Trump campaign would certainly appreciate cheaper voter roles like every other campaign on the right and the left, you know, and obviously government watchdogs like yourself. Well, end with this final question for you, as we look ahead at this critical midterm election year. How confident are you in election integrity in America as we get closer and closer to election day?

A whole lot more than I was years ago. A lot of progress has been made. There's so many good things happening in this space. I have confidence in my vote being counted, and I think most people hopefully share that view.

Very good, sir, Well, it's always good to check in with you. You've got your your finger on the pulse of what's happening out there in election integrity because you're dealing with it every day, and I am sure we will talk often this year. All right, thank you for having mesolutely anytime. Our guests today, Jay Christian Adams, President and General Counsel for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, about the election integrity battles ahead. You've been listening to another edition