March 27, 2024 • 29 mins
The other day, The Heartland Institute's Chris Talgo, Editorial Director and research fellow at our Socialism Research Center, was a guest on "Unleashed with Marc Morano" on TNT Radio. Chris was on to talk about the how regular election laws, designed to make it secure, were thrown out in the 2020 election.
He talked about the poll Heartland and Rasmussen Reports released late last year in which one in five of Americans who mailed in their ballots admitted to at least one form of illegal voting. We have to make sure election integrity is paramount in the 2024 election, and not let cheating and illegal balloting happen to the level it happened in 2020.
See the poll, as well as analysis and media coverage of that poll: https://heartland.org/who-really-won-the-2020-election/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jim Lakely (00:00):
This is the Heartland Daily Podcast. The
other day, the HeartlandInstitute's Chris Talgo,
editorial director and researchfellow at our Socialism Research
Center, was a guest on Unleashedwith Mark Marano on TNT Radio.
(00:20):
Chris was on the show to talkabout how regular election laws
designed to make it secure wereall thrown out for the 2020
election. Chris talked about thepoll the Hartland Institute and
Rasmussen reports released latelast year in which 1 in 5
Americans who mailed in theirballots admitted to at least one
form of illegal voting. We haveto make sure election integrity
(00:40):
is paramount in the 2024election, not let cheating and
illegal balloting happen to thelevel that it happened in 2020.
Have a listen.
Announcer (00:51):
Without c o 2, the world stops breathing. C 02
sustains all life on earth.Government, the WEF, and the
elite believe humans are thecarbon they really wanna be rid
of. Today's news talk, TNTRadio.
Marc Morano (01:08):
Welcome back to Unleashed on TNT with Mark
Marrano. Alright, well joiningus now is Christopher Talgo, the
editorial director and socialismresearch fellow. He's a managing
editor for stoppingsocialism.com, a well, very
needed, resource and publicationin today's world of 2024.
Welcome to the program, Chris.
Chris Talgo (01:28):
And thanks for being here, Mark.
Marc Morano (01:30):
Alright, let's, you know, let's talk about
elections. Joe Biden, accordingto the narrative, got more votes
than any other president in UShistory in 2,020. And beat
Donald Trump in key swingstates, and the election was
fair, there was no problems, andanyone who says otherwise is an
(01:53):
election denier, who's guilty ofmisinformation, disinformation,
and therefore should becensored. How much of how much
of that official narrative iswrong? Let's start.
What what exactly happened withthe 2020 election, and was it
part of a long trend, or was itsome kind of big rapid
acceleration that a lot ofchanges occurred, you know,
(02:14):
because of COVID that happened?They never could have got away
with this, say, 2016, 2012. Solay out the case. What happened
in our election in 2020? Who wonthe election?
Donald Trump or Joe Biden inyour view?
Chris Talgo (02:26):
Well, I think it was much more the latter. So
what happened in 2020, has neverhappened before. Under the guise
of the pandemic, we had,governors, we had secretaries of
state go and change the electionrules, which is unconstitutional
because only state legislaturescan do that. So they did that
under the guise of the pandemic.And then what happened was they
(02:47):
sent out mail in ballots acrossthe board to almost every point
on their election roll.
If they didn't send them aballot, they sent them a request
for a ballot, which is basicallythe same thing. So what we had
happened in 2020 was, 65,000,000people vote by mail. That was
more than double the amount ofpeople who voted by mail in
2016. But like you were alludingto earlier, this has been part
(03:09):
of a trend. In 1992, forexample, 91% of Americans voted
in person on Election Day.
By 2020, that had decreased to30%. 70% of people voted well
before Election Day because nowyou can vote 6 weeks before
Election Day in several states,or they voted by mail. So what
(03:29):
we're, you know, what we'retrying to do is we're trying to
make sure that states, solvethis problem in anticipation of
the 2024 elections upcoming. Butwhat also happened in 2020 was
you had this flooding of thezone with mail in ballots.
States also went andintentionally did away with a
(03:50):
lot of the common senseguardrails, such as, signature
verification or, you know,presenting a photo ID and all
that kind of stuff.
So they made it so they madethey made it so much easier to
cheat. Now what we found in ourpoll, we, we conducted a poll
with Rasmussen Reports in,December of 2023. We asked a
1,085 voters, did you vote in2020 election? Yes or no? And
(04:13):
then did you vote by mail?
Yes or no? Among those who votedby mail, we found that 28.2%,
more than 1 in 4, admitted tocommitting at least one type of
election fraud. So that couldhave been something like, well,
you know, I lived I didn't livein the state in which, you know,
I'm a permanent resident, but Ivoted anyways. I filled out a
ballot for someone else. Isigned someone else's ballot.
(04:35):
Even 8% to a admitted, whichjust blows my mind, 8% admitted
that they received a bribe inreturn for their vote. So what
we did was we then said, wow,this is, you know, pretty
stunning stuff. 28% of femalemale voters, you know, cast a
ballot legally. Wonder if thatwould have impacted the results
of the 2020 election. So what wedid was we took the state, data
(04:59):
that was available to us, forthe mail in votes.
And in some states, likeArizona, for example, it was 90%
of people voted by mail, which,again, is just mind boggling to
me. And we, then we, you know,we extrapolated the data from
the breast mucin survey. Andwhat we tried to do was we tried
to determine if you were toeliminate the mail in ballots
that were cast fraudulently,whether that was 28% of them all
(05:21):
the way down to 1% of them, whatwould have happened in the 2020
election? Under almost everysingle scenario that we did,
that we, you know, performed,Donald Trump would have won the
2020 election. Because in those6 swing states, those 6 crucial
swing states, Joe Biden won eachof them by less than 20,000
votes.
Marc Morano (05:42):
Wow. So if you look historically, the argument will
be, well, we've always had mailin votes, military members.
What's wrong with a mail invote? I mean, don't you trust
people in the country to votecorrectly? Or what's the problem
with the mail in vote?
Tell us why that's such a bigdeal overall.
Chris Talgo (05:59):
Okay. So the the the biggest problem with mail in
voting is that they send theballots or they send the
absentee requests for a ballotbased on outdated, notoriously
inaccurate voter rolls. So as wesaw in the 2020 election, states
do not clean their voter rollson an annual basis or even
semiannual basis, even every 10years or so. So whoever's on the
(06:21):
voting roll, whether they'redead, whether they've moved,
whether they're no longereligible to vote, whatever their
circumstances, they're gettingeither a ballot sent to that,
address or they're getting arequest for a ballot. Now that's
a big major, major, majorproblem because in several
states, there are tens ofthousands of people who should
not be on that voter rollanymore.
(06:43):
We'll never know what happenedto those tens of millions of
ballots that were sent to thosepeople across the country and
what happened to them in 2020,which means that whoever lived
at that, address that the personno longer lives at, they could
have just filled out theirballot, thrown it in the mail,
and there you go. There's a, youknow, bow cast. So it's it's
very difficult to prove afterthe fact. But, you know, what
(07:04):
we're really interested in doingis making sure that it does not
happen again in 2024.
Marc Morano (07:09):
Alright. Well, let's do so a balance of that.
Now, obviously, each stateelection law is different
because here in the UnitedStates, you know, it's not like
a federal standard that all thestates have to comply with.
Right? They can pretty much dowhatever they want.
Is there is there any limit onthat? Is the Supreme Court
ruled? Are there any federalguidelines? Like, can a state
just say, you know, we're gonnahave people click a mouse and
vote, or they can send a text ontheir phone? Is there any limit
(07:32):
that the federal governmentwouldn't accept for voting for
federal office?
Chris Talgo (07:36):
Well, what what what happened in 2020 in
particular is that the SupremeCourt of the United States and
the state supreme courts, theythey refused to to rule on these
because they were under theassumption that, hey, it's a
pandemic. Emergency declarationswere in place. As you know,
almost every state governordeclared some sort of, you know,
emergency in light of thepandemic. And in light of those
(07:59):
emergency, declarations, theywere allowed to to go above and
beyond, what they ordinarilywould be able to do. However, it
still doesn't matter becausethis constitution specifically
designates that only statelegislatures can, conduct or
make rules on how electionsshould be conducted.
So, you know, to answer yourquestion, yeah, we do have a
(08:21):
smorgasbord across the nation ofdifferent, you know, voting
rules by, you know, each eachstate. Some are much more lax
than others. You know,California, they love ballot
harvesting. They love ballotstuffing. They send everyone,
every single person on theirrolls, a ballot versus other
states, like Georgia andFlorida, for example, where they
don't do that anymore.
(08:42):
So, yeah, there's definitely aspectrum there. But what
happened in 2020 is even thosestates that you would have
thought, whether it's Arizona,Wisconsin, Michigan, that would
have had, you know, decent, met,you know, methods in place, all
of them were eliminated. So itwas just like anything goes in
2020.
Marc Morano (09:02):
Well, then the question is when these states
and again, the state laws areall different. How do they
verify a mail in ballot? Isthere a policy procedure they're
failing to do, or is this thevery idea unverifiable? Like,
if, you know, if they're gettingall these ballots, isn't there
someone to go through and say,okay, no, this person died. This
person left the state.
They're no longer eligible. Isthere what toward especially in
the 6 states, what sort of voterverification for the mail in
(09:25):
ballots existed or were supposedto exist?
Chris Talgo (09:29):
So, one of the one of the best, things that they
can do is do a, signatureverification. However, they did
away with that. Like you said,you know, there are a bunch of
other guardrails in place,whether it's, you know, making
sure that the person is eligibleto vote after the fact or
whatever. But these were alljust done away with willy nilly.
(09:51):
So they made it they made itbasically an invitation to fill
out illegal mail in ballots.
You know? And there's also a,you know, bunch of, anecdotal
stories, in the months leadingup where ballots were found,
like, just bags of ballots foundin ditches or just all over the
place. I live in a, you know,pretty big apartment complex in
the Chicagoland area. And in2020, in the months in the weeks
(10:12):
leading up to the election,because Illinois is one of those
states that did send out aballot to every single person on
their voter rolls, there wereseveral ballots just sitting
around in our in our mail roomon the counter because no one
knew, hey, this person doesn'tlive here. And and, you know,
that happened on a massive levelacross the country.
Marc Morano (10:30):
Well, so was there there was a I don't know the
year, but it was maybe 2,005 orsomething. Wasn't there a
presidential commission withJames Baker, and I wanna say
Jimmy Carter, who advisedagainst mail in balloting in the
first place? Do you have anyinformation on that commission?
I think it was maybe 15 yearsbefore about 2,005 or so.
Chris Talgo (10:49):
You are spot on. 2005, former president, Jimmy
Carter and former secretary ofstate James Baker, produced a
report, which we cite,throughout our policy study,
which said that there's ampleevidence to prove that voting
voting by mail is much moreprone to fraud. There are so
many reasons why, and they said,you know, we should we should
try to minimize this as much aspossible. Obviously, there are
(11:11):
exceptions, you know, people whoare disabled, like you said,
people who are serving overseas,people who might be living
abroad. But, you know, what'shappened since 2005 in
particular is the notion thatyou have to have an excuse to
vote by mail has been justcompletely done away with.
And it's all about convenience,convenience, convenience. That's
how they wanna make it, youknow, appear to be. But as we
know, yes, the convenience alsomeans that it's much more, easy
(11:32):
to commit voter fraud.
Marc Morano (11:35):
Now at the time, you know, and I wanna get into
the COVID restrictions playafter the break, but at the
time, there was a lot of focuson the voting machines. And I
think, you know, initially, youknow, in terms of, like, I
guess, from the Trump campaign,all we heard about was the
voting machines, theirregularities, the software,
the lack of security. And didthat all not pan out as anything
(11:58):
to be concerned about, or was itoverblown and the real issue was
mail in, or is the mail inrelated somehow to the,
electronic voting machines? Howdo you what's your stand on that
and your investigation look intothat at all?
Chris Talgo (12:10):
We didn't really focus on the, the voting
machines. But, you know, whatwhat our research showed is
that, paper ballots are by farand away the best possible way
to make sure that the vote isaccurate. You know, those voting
machines, you know, they theythere's been lots of stories of
them, double counting votes and,you know, changing votes and all
that kind of stuff. Once again,I can't, you know, confirm that
(12:33):
or not. But what what, you know,what we are recommending is that
everyone votes using a paperballot because those have a you
know, those you can count afterthe fact and you can, confirm
and verify, the the the votingmachines.
You know, that's that'ssomething that you cannot, you
know, trust.
Marc Morano (12:53):
Well, we saw you know, the the old expression is
that voting, counting votes ismore of an art than a science.
Right? So you go back toFlorida, 20, 2000 with Bush and
you had the hanging chads, andthey were going through with all
the voters, and the people theyclaimed, accidentally voted for
Pat Buchanan, which would havebeen a margin in some county.
Anyway, so the question reallyis then, when you have these
(13:15):
mail in ballots, these 6 states,let's focus on those. A couple
of questions.
Are the ballots still around?Number 1. Number 2, is it
possible that even today,someone could gather up all of
these ballots, and actually tryto trace them or find out, or
are the ballots actually blank?In other words, are there is
there a name associated to themail in ballots when they get
(13:35):
them, or is it just a officialballot with an anonymous vote on
it, and on these 6 states inparticular? And is there a way
ever to truly audit that andrecount the election with
someone going through and sayingthis person's dead, this person
doesn't live here, this person'snot eligible, this person
doesn't exist?
Is there any hope for that, orare these mail in ballots thrown
(13:55):
away, like, 24 hours afterelection day or incinerated or
something?
Chris Talgo (13:59):
So it's a combination of those things.
Some of the states have have aballot with with no one's name
on it, and they discard theenvelope immediately after fact.
So once the envelope's gone, youdon't know who the who the
person was. Arizona, forexample, they perform multiple
audits audits after the 2020election. And, you know, reports
came out that, ballots weremissing, that they were burned,
(14:20):
that they were misplaced.
So there's a blood there's a lotof stuff like that happening the
fact. And the and, you know,another big problem that I think
the people of America understoodwas happening in real time
before the very eyes was thelack of transparency with the
voting process. Whether it waswhat happened in, Atlanta with,
you know, this pipe burst andthen they just quit counting in
the middle of the night or someof the stuff in Detroit where
(14:41):
they put, you know, paper overthe windows so you couldn't see
what was going on there. Therewas a lot of funny business and
a lot of weird stuff that wasgoing on. I stayed up that night
until, you know, the wee hoursof the morning.
You know, at one point, itlooked like it was a complete
lock that Donald Trump was gonnawin reelection. And then all of
a sudden, we gotta stopcounting, and then we see trucks
coming with more ballots and allthis just crazy stuff. And then,
(15:03):
you know, a couple days later,they say, well, after now, you
know, counting all these mail inballots that just magically
appeared sometimes out of thinair, it just so happens that
that, Joe Biden won by the mostminuscule of amounts in those
crucial swing states.
Marc Morano (15:18):
Well, the other thing you'll hear is well, every
court that's looked at theseclaims that you're making that,
you know, that there's a lot ofirregularities, Said there was
nothing there, and they weredismissed, and that no judges,
no court in any state has everagreed with this in the Supreme
Court. And they used that as away of saying there's a no there
there. Can you tell us the storybehind what were all these court
(15:39):
cases? Why didn't any of themget full hearings? Why didn't
anything go that way?
Why didn't the Supreme Courtlook at these irregularities?
What's the I know there's a lotof federalism as well there, and
also other jurisdictionalissues. But explain, because
you'll almost invariably, ifyou're having a conversation
with a Biden supporter, thefirst thing out of their mouth
is no court agrees with anythingyou've said. Every court
(16:00):
dismissed these, but there'snothing there. So how do you
respond to that?
Chris Talgo (16:04):
Okay. There's there's there's 2 main points
that I wanna make on this. Sofirst of all, as I, you know,
said earlier, it is verydifficult, if not impossible, to
prove some of these after thefact because whether the the
belt was discarded, whether the,the envelope was discarded, It's
literally impossible to prove.The other thing that, a lot of
the courts, I think, werereluctant to make somewhat
(16:26):
controversial rulings on thisbecause they didn't want to be
the arbiters of the election.You know, you talked about
2,000, and I remember 2,000.
I remember that the SupremeCourt did make that call in
Florida, and there was a lot of,you know, people in the country
that were really angry aboutthat. No. The Supreme Court
should not, you know, declarewho wins and doesn't win. So I
think, you know, the RobertsCourt said, you know what? We
(16:47):
wanna stay away from this, but Idon't think that that was the
best decision.
It was a short term politicaldecision. But what it what it
did was it emboldened a lot ofthese states to say, oh, we got
away with it in 2020. We'regoing to get away with it again
and again and again.
Marc Morano (17:02):
So the other courts, you know, I think I
think, like, the local, statecourts, how come there was
never, were they justjurisdictional issues, or how
were the judges, you know, like,Democrat operatives, they just
wanna see the cases? Is that thesame thing on the lower courts
as well?
Announcer (17:15):
Same thing in the lower courts, and a lot of
Chris Talgo (17:17):
this was, you know, they it was done under the
emergency declaration. So theemergency declaration just gave
these Secretaries of State andthese governors wide ranging
powers to do things that theyordinarily could not do. And
the, you know, the state SupremeCourt, even the lower courts in
a lot of the states, they, youknow, they just went along with
that. They went along with thatnarrative. Even though, as you
I'm sure you remember, therewere many instances in the
(17:39):
summer of love of 2020 in whichpeople were said, you can go
protest.
That's fine. So it's like, youknow, if it's a social justice
cause, you can go and doanything you want. But by
November, you know, well afterthe pandemic, you know, really
had, like, hit hard, they weretelling us, if you go and vote
in person, you might die, whichis just patently absurd. But it
just goes to show that they werepushing as hard as they could to
(18:02):
make mail in, voting, you know,the new normal. And to some
degree, they are succeeding.
And that's why we're trying tomake sure that the American
people understand that this mailin voting thing, which they're
trying to say is that this is,like, you know, the the the new
way of voting. No. This is notthe new way of voting. Well, I
Marc Morano (18:20):
well, that's why I'd like to talk to you about
some of these emergency powersthat they used to make this
happen. We have to take a break.We're talking to Christopher
Talgo, editorial director forsocialism research, and
socialism research fellow at theHeartland Institute, who has a
new study out, looking at the2020 election. And basically,
you're saying that Donald Trumpactually won based on your
(18:41):
analysis. Am I correct in sayingthat?
Chris Talgo (18:44):
Absolutely. You're correct in saying that.
Marc Morano (18:45):
Okay. And so so we'll be right back to continue
this discussion. This isUnleashed with Mark Marrano on
TNT. Stay tuned.
Jim Lakely (18:53):
Before we get to the rest of this podcast, I wanna
let you know about 2 fantasticlive podcasts Heartland produces
every week. We'd love for you tojoin us every Thursday at 1 PM
EST, noon CST, live for ourflagship in the tank podcast.
You can watch on the stoppingsocialism TV channel on YouTube,
where you can participate in theshow in the chat with other fans
(19:14):
and also ask questions thatwe'll address on the air and put
up on the screen. And everyFriday, also at 1 PM EST and
noon CST, you can go toHeartland's main YouTube
channel. Just search for theHeartland Institute on YouTube
for the new Climate RealismShow.
Heartland's climate team ofAnthony Watts, Sterling Burnett,
and Linnea Lukin cover the crazyclimate news of the week, debunk
(19:35):
mainstream media myths about theso called climate crisis, dig
into energy policy, and muchmore. The show often features
guests that include some of theleading climate scientists and
energy policy experts anywherein the world. There is no show
like it, So become regular liveviewers of both of these
programs if you are interestedin smart, lively, fun, and
(19:56):
interactive conversations. Wehope to see you there every
Thursday Friday afternoons at 1PM EST and noon CST at the
stopping socialism TV and theHeartland Institute channels on
YouTube. Oh, yeah.
We're also on Rumble. See youthere.
Announcer (20:16):
Fearless, informative, and unfettered.
Mark Marano is unleashed ontoday's news talk, TNT Radio.
Marc Morano (20:26):
Welcome back to Unleashed on TNT with, Mark
Marrano. We're continuing ourdiscussion with Christopher
Talgo, editorial director of insocialism, a research fellow,
managing editor of stoppingsocialism.com for the of the
Heartland Institute. Alright,Christopher or Chris, the
pandemic, 2020, it's almost Ialways say, like, what happened
with COVID was the same way guncontrol advocates wait for a
(20:50):
school shooting, or the waybiosecurity people who wanna
take away our freedom and have asurveillance state wait for a
terrorism attack. There'scertain things waiting and and
waiting in the wings forsomething bad to happen so they
can exploit the politics. Do youthink the, the write in ballot
advocates were waiting forsomething like COVID to have an
(21:10):
excuse to impose this.
And what exactly happened inCOVID? How did this how did they
how did they get to the pointwhere there's a huge jump in
mail in ballots in 2020? You youalluded to it. It was all about
fear and saying you would die.But just how bad was it, and how
how ready were the proponents ofwrite in ballots, which they
(21:30):
probably wanted for decades, tonow move in and and make it
happen?
Chris Talgo (21:34):
Yeah. So like I said earlier, this this trend
of, trying to increase, mail invoting has been happening
basically since 2000, and it'sbeen, you know, slowly but
surely climbing every singleelection. But water, 2020 was a
watershed moment because we hadmore than doubled the previous
amount in, 2016. And like yousaid, this was all based on fear
(21:55):
mongering. This was all based oncontrol.
This was all based on states whoknew that going and voting in
person was not going to be ahealth hazard, literally trying
to instigate, you know, justpanic among the people to say,
You can't go and vote. You can'tgo and do anything. You must
stay at home, vote by mail, and,you know, just trust us. That is
(22:19):
not the way that elections, youknow, should be run. You know,
it it's also interesting to notethat, you know, Europe and most
of the other OECD countries,they've done away with mail in
voting for decades.
They know how how fraud what'sfraud it is. So why is the
United States moving theopposite direction of all those,
you know, other countries? Imean, there's so many, pitfalls
with mail in voting. So many.And these states, I think,
(22:43):
knowingly said, well, it allowsus to flood the zone with, you
know, ballots.
And once those ballots are outthere, it's just all about
getting them back in, and thenit's just a numbers game. And
they think that they have abetter ground game, the
Democrats, the left, than theRepublicans do. The Democrats
have a much they do have a muchbetter ground game. They have a
much better, you know, way of,you know, getting voters to the
(23:05):
polls. They have a much betterway of, you know, making sure
that those, mail in ballots aregetting, you know, put into the
drop boxes.
Ballot harvesting is one oftheir, you know, their best art
forms. The GOP, the Republicans,the, you know, right, just they
don't embrace it, you know, asmuch. And one of the things
that's, you know, happening nowis there's this, this this
(23:26):
debate saying, well, should weshould we, you know, everyone
just embrace mail in voting? Youknow? And I'm saying no.
No. No. No. And we're saying nobecause it's gonna be it's then
it's just gonna be whoever cancheat, you know, the most will
win the election. That's not howelections are supposed to be
run.
Marc Morano (23:41):
Yeah. Wow. If you look, at what happened with
Carrie Lake in Arizona when shelost that race, she was crying
foul. Was that right in ballots?Was that voting machines?
Was that what was the issuethere? And what are your what is
your just I know you didn't doan in-depth analysis on Arizona
race, but what exactly do youthink may have happened there?
Announcer (24:01):
Yeah. So, actually, the the the
Chris Talgo (24:02):
state of Arizona was, I think, one of the most,
you know, in in incrediblestories of 2020. In Arizona,
more than 90% of people voted bymail. Less than 1 in 10 went and
actually voted in person. That'seither voting on Election Day or
in the early voting period. Ithink that Carrie Lake has a
(24:24):
very good argument to say, Waita second.
All these, you know, peoplewere, sent, you know, mail in
ballots, absentee ballots. Just,you know, it was it was such a
mess in Arizona. It took themdays days days to get the count
right. There have been multiplerecounts. There have been
multiple audits.
It just keep the numbers keepcoming back differently. Yeah.
There was a lot of talk aboutthe Dominion Voting Machines and
(24:46):
other voting machines, you know,playing with the numbers there.
But just across the board,Arizona was a complete dumpster
fire in terms of the 2020election.
Marc Morano (24:54):
Alright. And then what about Georgia, the runoff
election? I can't even remember,that's actually, I can't
remember what year. If it was a2020, but the, or 2021, the
runoff election. And I rememberthat the, governor Kemp's, like,
top aide or someone in hisoffice was an executive on
Diebold.
There was a lot of questionsabout that. I remember people
(25:15):
saying, like, don't even vote inthat special election. And, of
course, the Democrat won. Butwhat was going on in Georgia
during those runoff electionswith the voter integrity?
Chris Talgo (25:23):
Yeah. So, the the Georgia case is another great,
you know, example of, you know,something going horribly wrong,
but then them actually fixingit. So like you said, there was
the there was there was thedouble run up. It was, Warnock
and, Ossoff, both were wererunning because in in Georgia,
you have to have, you know, the50% to to win the election. So
they did the runoff, and, yes,there was a lot of, you know, I
(25:45):
think, dismay among, you know,GOP supporters by saying, you
know what?
We just don't trust electionsanymore and all that, you know,
stuff. But what happened afterthe, runoff election is what
really, you know, caught ourattention. So Georgia and
Florida really went out of theirway to say, we need to clean up
our elections. We need to makesure that, you know, that people
who are voting by mail actuallyhave an excuse to vote by mail.
(26:08):
We, you know, wanna make surethat the voter rolls are getting
cleaned up, and we want to makesure that ballot harvesting is
not happening and just all thatstuff.
What happened, as I'm sure youremember, was the media went
just completely crazy saying,this is all about voter
suppression. This is all aboutJim Crow. This is all about, you
know, trying to deny, minoritiesthe right to vote. But
(26:32):
interestingly, in the 2022midterms in both Florida and
Georgia, the data showed thatminority voters actually
participated at a higher ratethan they did in 2020. So it's
just complete and utternonsense, this notion that is
being brought out there to saythat this is all about trying to
suppress the vote.
No. It's actually actually it'sreally about trying to make sure
that people are notdisenfranchised because every
(26:54):
single time someone votesillegally, that's
disenfranchising someone's, youknow, rightful vote.
Marc Morano (27:00):
Alright. Well, we couldn't have a complete
conversation without at leasthaving you address what the left
says that was the real problem,like in 2016. Russian
interference in elections, andwe had many election deniers of
2016 on the Democrat side, CNN,MSNBC. How much of a factor was
Russian interference in 2016?I'm trying to get a straight
(27:20):
face.
Chris Talgo (27:22):
0. 0. You know, they keep playing the Russia
card just like they've beenplaying the race card again and
again and again. They're doingit now. They're doing it again.
And it's just preposterous atthis point. It's just ludicrous
for for them to gaslight theAmerican people to this degree
and think that we don't knowbetter than that. I I think that
the American people are reallygoing to make their voice heard
(27:43):
in 2024 as long as the electionis on the up and up. I'm
confident that, we're going tohave a, you know, landslide,
1980 style, you know, just youknow, huge victory. I am.
Yep.
Marc Morano (27:55):
Okay. Why would you be let's then we only have about
a minute and a half left or so.Tell us what reforms are needed,
and what reform first of all,what's happened that gives you
that confidence? And how do theythe 6 states, let's focus on it.
What's changed now going into 2024 that's different?
Are there is there a severe Iwish we could have an honest
(28:21):
election and win, but peoplesort of resigned that they
can't. Why are you so confidentin what has been done and what
can be done on the state levels?
Chris Talgo (28:28):
Well, my my first, I'm very confident because there
there's gonna be no pandemic asfar as we can tell. You know?
Obviously, there could besomething that that comes out,
you know? Yeah. But but as as ofright now, like, their whole,
you know, pandemic excuse is outthe window.
So, you know, the the theAmerican people are, you know,
well aware that all that crazystuff that happened in 2020, no
(28:48):
way are they gonna, you know, beable to repeat that again. Some
of those states have passed, youknow, some election reforms.
That's great. You know, we stillhave a lot of work to do, but I
am confident that, you know, thestate of the economy,
immigration, and all the primeis going to produce a huge
Donald Trump victory in 2024.
Marc Morano (29:05):
Alright. Well, thank you very much. That's
Christopher Tago, editorialdirector, stopsocialism.com of
the Heartland Institute. Thankyou for joining the show. Thank
you for watching.
This is Unleashed with MarkMarrano on TNT. See you next
time.
This is the Heartland Daily Podcast. The
other day, the HeartlandInstitute's Chris Talgo,
editorial director and researchfellow at our Socialism Research
Center, was a guest on Unleashedwith Mark Marano on TNT Radio.
(00:20):
Chris was on the show to talkabout how regular election laws
designed to make it secure wereall thrown out for the 2020
election. Chris talked about thepoll the Hartland Institute and
Rasmussen reports released latelast year in which 1 in 5
Americans who mailed in theirballots admitted to at least one
form of illegal voting. We haveto make sure election integrity
(00:40):
is paramount in the 2024election, not let cheating and
illegal balloting happen to thelevel that it happened in 2020.
Have a listen.
Announcer (00:51):
Without c o 2, the world stops breathing. C 02
sustains all life on earth.Government, the WEF, and the
elite believe humans are thecarbon they really wanna be rid
of. Today's news talk, TNTRadio.
Marc Morano (01:08):
Welcome back to Unleashed on TNT with Mark
Marrano. Alright, well joiningus now is Christopher Talgo, the
editorial director and socialismresearch fellow. He's a managing
editor for stoppingsocialism.com, a well, very
needed, resource and publicationin today's world of 2024.
Welcome to the program, Chris.
Chris Talgo (01:28):
And thanks for being here, Mark.
Marc Morano (01:30):
Alright, let's, you know, let's talk about
elections. Joe Biden, accordingto the narrative, got more votes
than any other president in UShistory in 2,020. And beat
Donald Trump in key swingstates, and the election was
fair, there was no problems, andanyone who says otherwise is an
(01:53):
election denier, who's guilty ofmisinformation, disinformation,
and therefore should becensored. How much of how much
of that official narrative iswrong? Let's start.
What what exactly happened withthe 2020 election, and was it
part of a long trend, or was itsome kind of big rapid
acceleration that a lot ofchanges occurred, you know,
(02:14):
because of COVID that happened?They never could have got away
with this, say, 2016, 2012. Solay out the case. What happened
in our election in 2020? Who wonthe election?
Donald Trump or Joe Biden inyour view?
Chris Talgo (02:26):
Well, I think it was much more the latter. So
what happened in 2020, has neverhappened before. Under the guise
of the pandemic, we had,governors, we had secretaries of
state go and change the electionrules, which is unconstitutional
because only state legislaturescan do that. So they did that
under the guise of the pandemic.And then what happened was they
(02:47):
sent out mail in ballots acrossthe board to almost every point
on their election roll.
If they didn't send them aballot, they sent them a request
for a ballot, which is basicallythe same thing. So what we had
happened in 2020 was, 65,000,000people vote by mail. That was
more than double the amount ofpeople who voted by mail in
2016. But like you were alludingto earlier, this has been part
(03:09):
of a trend. In 1992, forexample, 91% of Americans voted
in person on Election Day.
By 2020, that had decreased to30%. 70% of people voted well
before Election Day because nowyou can vote 6 weeks before
Election Day in several states,or they voted by mail. So what
(03:29):
we're, you know, what we'retrying to do is we're trying to
make sure that states, solvethis problem in anticipation of
the 2024 elections upcoming. Butwhat also happened in 2020 was
you had this flooding of thezone with mail in ballots.
States also went andintentionally did away with a
(03:50):
lot of the common senseguardrails, such as, signature
verification or, you know,presenting a photo ID and all
that kind of stuff.
So they made it so they madethey made it so much easier to
cheat. Now what we found in ourpoll, we, we conducted a poll
with Rasmussen Reports in,December of 2023. We asked a
1,085 voters, did you vote in2020 election? Yes or no? And
(04:13):
then did you vote by mail?
Yes or no? Among those who votedby mail, we found that 28.2%,
more than 1 in 4, admitted tocommitting at least one type of
election fraud. So that couldhave been something like, well,
you know, I lived I didn't livein the state in which, you know,
I'm a permanent resident, but Ivoted anyways. I filled out a
ballot for someone else. Isigned someone else's ballot.
(04:35):
Even 8% to a admitted, whichjust blows my mind, 8% admitted
that they received a bribe inreturn for their vote. So what
we did was we then said, wow,this is, you know, pretty
stunning stuff. 28% of femalemale voters, you know, cast a
ballot legally. Wonder if thatwould have impacted the results
of the 2020 election. So what wedid was we took the state, data
(04:59):
that was available to us, forthe mail in votes.
And in some states, likeArizona, for example, it was 90%
of people voted by mail, which,again, is just mind boggling to
me. And we, then we, you know,we extrapolated the data from
the breast mucin survey. Andwhat we tried to do was we tried
to determine if you were toeliminate the mail in ballots
that were cast fraudulently,whether that was 28% of them all
(05:21):
the way down to 1% of them, whatwould have happened in the 2020
election? Under almost everysingle scenario that we did,
that we, you know, performed,Donald Trump would have won the
2020 election. Because in those6 swing states, those 6 crucial
swing states, Joe Biden won eachof them by less than 20,000
votes.
Marc Morano (05:42):
Wow. So if you look historically, the argument will
be, well, we've always had mailin votes, military members.
What's wrong with a mail invote? I mean, don't you trust
people in the country to votecorrectly? Or what's the problem
with the mail in vote?
Tell us why that's such a bigdeal overall.
Chris Talgo (05:59):
Okay. So the the the biggest problem with mail in
voting is that they send theballots or they send the
absentee requests for a ballotbased on outdated, notoriously
inaccurate voter rolls. So as wesaw in the 2020 election, states
do not clean their voter rollson an annual basis or even
semiannual basis, even every 10years or so. So whoever's on the
(06:21):
voting roll, whether they'redead, whether they've moved,
whether they're no longereligible to vote, whatever their
circumstances, they're gettingeither a ballot sent to that,
address or they're getting arequest for a ballot. Now that's
a big major, major, majorproblem because in several
states, there are tens ofthousands of people who should
not be on that voter rollanymore.
(06:43):
We'll never know what happenedto those tens of millions of
ballots that were sent to thosepeople across the country and
what happened to them in 2020,which means that whoever lived
at that, address that the personno longer lives at, they could
have just filled out theirballot, thrown it in the mail,
and there you go. There's a, youknow, bow cast. So it's it's
very difficult to prove afterthe fact. But, you know, what
(07:04):
we're really interested in doingis making sure that it does not
happen again in 2024.
Marc Morano (07:09):
Alright. Well, let's do so a balance of that.
Now, obviously, each stateelection law is different
because here in the UnitedStates, you know, it's not like
a federal standard that all thestates have to comply with.
Right? They can pretty much dowhatever they want.
Is there is there any limit onthat? Is the Supreme Court
ruled? Are there any federalguidelines? Like, can a state
just say, you know, we're gonnahave people click a mouse and
vote, or they can send a text ontheir phone? Is there any limit
(07:32):
that the federal governmentwouldn't accept for voting for
federal office?
Chris Talgo (07:36):
Well, what what what happened in 2020 in
particular is that the SupremeCourt of the United States and
the state supreme courts, theythey refused to to rule on these
because they were under theassumption that, hey, it's a
pandemic. Emergency declarationswere in place. As you know,
almost every state governordeclared some sort of, you know,
emergency in light of thepandemic. And in light of those
(07:59):
emergency, declarations, theywere allowed to to go above and
beyond, what they ordinarilywould be able to do. However, it
still doesn't matter becausethis constitution specifically
designates that only statelegislatures can, conduct or
make rules on how electionsshould be conducted.
So, you know, to answer yourquestion, yeah, we do have a
(08:21):
smorgasbord across the nation ofdifferent, you know, voting
rules by, you know, each eachstate. Some are much more lax
than others. You know,California, they love ballot
harvesting. They love ballotstuffing. They send everyone,
every single person on theirrolls, a ballot versus other
states, like Georgia andFlorida, for example, where they
don't do that anymore.
(08:42):
So, yeah, there's definitely aspectrum there. But what
happened in 2020 is even thosestates that you would have
thought, whether it's Arizona,Wisconsin, Michigan, that would
have had, you know, decent, met,you know, methods in place, all
of them were eliminated. So itwas just like anything goes in
2020.
Marc Morano (09:02):
Well, then the question is when these states
and again, the state laws areall different. How do they
verify a mail in ballot? Isthere a policy procedure they're
failing to do, or is this thevery idea unverifiable? Like,
if, you know, if they're gettingall these ballots, isn't there
someone to go through and say,okay, no, this person died. This
person left the state.
They're no longer eligible. Isthere what toward especially in
the 6 states, what sort of voterverification for the mail in
(09:25):
ballots existed or were supposedto exist?
Chris Talgo (09:29):
So, one of the one of the best, things that they
can do is do a, signatureverification. However, they did
away with that. Like you said,you know, there are a bunch of
other guardrails in place,whether it's, you know, making
sure that the person is eligibleto vote after the fact or
whatever. But these were alljust done away with willy nilly.
(09:51):
So they made it they made itbasically an invitation to fill
out illegal mail in ballots.
You know? And there's also a,you know, bunch of, anecdotal
stories, in the months leadingup where ballots were found,
like, just bags of ballots foundin ditches or just all over the
place. I live in a, you know,pretty big apartment complex in
the Chicagoland area. And in2020, in the months in the weeks
(10:12):
leading up to the election,because Illinois is one of those
states that did send out aballot to every single person on
their voter rolls, there wereseveral ballots just sitting
around in our in our mail roomon the counter because no one
knew, hey, this person doesn'tlive here. And and, you know,
that happened on a massive levelacross the country.
Marc Morano (10:30):
Well, so was there there was a I don't know the
year, but it was maybe 2,005 orsomething. Wasn't there a
presidential commission withJames Baker, and I wanna say
Jimmy Carter, who advisedagainst mail in balloting in the
first place? Do you have anyinformation on that commission?
I think it was maybe 15 yearsbefore about 2,005 or so.
Chris Talgo (10:49):
You are spot on. 2005, former president, Jimmy
Carter and former secretary ofstate James Baker, produced a
report, which we cite,throughout our policy study,
which said that there's ampleevidence to prove that voting
voting by mail is much moreprone to fraud. There are so
many reasons why, and they said,you know, we should we should
try to minimize this as much aspossible. Obviously, there are
(11:11):
exceptions, you know, people whoare disabled, like you said,
people who are serving overseas,people who might be living
abroad. But, you know, what'shappened since 2005 in
particular is the notion thatyou have to have an excuse to
vote by mail has been justcompletely done away with.
And it's all about convenience,convenience, convenience. That's
how they wanna make it, youknow, appear to be. But as we
know, yes, the convenience alsomeans that it's much more, easy
(11:32):
to commit voter fraud.
Marc Morano (11:35):
Now at the time, you know, and I wanna get into
the COVID restrictions playafter the break, but at the
time, there was a lot of focuson the voting machines. And I
think, you know, initially, youknow, in terms of, like, I
guess, from the Trump campaign,all we heard about was the
voting machines, theirregularities, the software,
the lack of security. And didthat all not pan out as anything
(11:58):
to be concerned about, or was itoverblown and the real issue was
mail in, or is the mail inrelated somehow to the,
electronic voting machines? Howdo you what's your stand on that
and your investigation look intothat at all?
Chris Talgo (12:10):
We didn't really focus on the, the voting
machines. But, you know, whatwhat our research showed is
that, paper ballots are by farand away the best possible way
to make sure that the vote isaccurate. You know, those voting
machines, you know, they theythere's been lots of stories of
them, double counting votes and,you know, changing votes and all
that kind of stuff. Once again,I can't, you know, confirm that
(12:33):
or not. But what what, you know,what we are recommending is that
everyone votes using a paperballot because those have a you
know, those you can count afterthe fact and you can, confirm
and verify, the the the votingmachines.
You know, that's that'ssomething that you cannot, you
know, trust.
Marc Morano (12:53):
Well, we saw you know, the the old expression is
that voting, counting votes ismore of an art than a science.
Right? So you go back toFlorida, 20, 2000 with Bush and
you had the hanging chads, andthey were going through with all
the voters, and the people theyclaimed, accidentally voted for
Pat Buchanan, which would havebeen a margin in some county.
Anyway, so the question reallyis then, when you have these
(13:15):
mail in ballots, these 6 states,let's focus on those. A couple
of questions.
Are the ballots still around?Number 1. Number 2, is it
possible that even today,someone could gather up all of
these ballots, and actually tryto trace them or find out, or
are the ballots actually blank?In other words, are there is
there a name associated to themail in ballots when they get
(13:35):
them, or is it just a officialballot with an anonymous vote on
it, and on these 6 states inparticular? And is there a way
ever to truly audit that andrecount the election with
someone going through and sayingthis person's dead, this person
doesn't live here, this person'snot eligible, this person
doesn't exist?
Is there any hope for that, orare these mail in ballots thrown
(13:55):
away, like, 24 hours afterelection day or incinerated or
something?
Chris Talgo (13:59):
So it's a combination of those things.
Some of the states have have aballot with with no one's name
on it, and they discard theenvelope immediately after fact.
So once the envelope's gone, youdon't know who the who the
person was. Arizona, forexample, they perform multiple
audits audits after the 2020election. And, you know, reports
came out that, ballots weremissing, that they were burned,
(14:20):
that they were misplaced.
So there's a blood there's a lotof stuff like that happening the
fact. And the and, you know,another big problem that I think
the people of America understoodwas happening in real time
before the very eyes was thelack of transparency with the
voting process. Whether it waswhat happened in, Atlanta with,
you know, this pipe burst andthen they just quit counting in
the middle of the night or someof the stuff in Detroit where
(14:41):
they put, you know, paper overthe windows so you couldn't see
what was going on there. Therewas a lot of funny business and
a lot of weird stuff that wasgoing on. I stayed up that night
until, you know, the wee hoursof the morning.
You know, at one point, itlooked like it was a complete
lock that Donald Trump was gonnawin reelection. And then all of
a sudden, we gotta stopcounting, and then we see trucks
coming with more ballots and allthis just crazy stuff. And then,
(15:03):
you know, a couple days later,they say, well, after now, you
know, counting all these mail inballots that just magically
appeared sometimes out of thinair, it just so happens that
that, Joe Biden won by the mostminuscule of amounts in those
crucial swing states.
Marc Morano (15:18):
Well, the other thing you'll hear is well, every
court that's looked at theseclaims that you're making that,
you know, that there's a lot ofirregularities, Said there was
nothing there, and they weredismissed, and that no judges,
no court in any state has everagreed with this in the Supreme
Court. And they used that as away of saying there's a no there
there. Can you tell us the storybehind what were all these court
(15:39):
cases? Why didn't any of themget full hearings? Why didn't
anything go that way?
Why didn't the Supreme Courtlook at these irregularities?
What's the I know there's a lotof federalism as well there, and
also other jurisdictionalissues. But explain, because
you'll almost invariably, ifyou're having a conversation
with a Biden supporter, thefirst thing out of their mouth
is no court agrees with anythingyou've said. Every court
(16:00):
dismissed these, but there'snothing there. So how do you
respond to that?
Chris Talgo (16:04):
Okay. There's there's there's 2 main points
that I wanna make on this. Sofirst of all, as I, you know,
said earlier, it is verydifficult, if not impossible, to
prove some of these after thefact because whether the the
belt was discarded, whether the,the envelope was discarded, It's
literally impossible to prove.The other thing that, a lot of
the courts, I think, werereluctant to make somewhat
(16:26):
controversial rulings on thisbecause they didn't want to be
the arbiters of the election.You know, you talked about
2,000, and I remember 2,000.
I remember that the SupremeCourt did make that call in
Florida, and there was a lot of,you know, people in the country
that were really angry aboutthat. No. The Supreme Court
should not, you know, declarewho wins and doesn't win. So I
think, you know, the RobertsCourt said, you know what? We
(16:47):
wanna stay away from this, but Idon't think that that was the
best decision.
It was a short term politicaldecision. But what it what it
did was it emboldened a lot ofthese states to say, oh, we got
away with it in 2020. We'regoing to get away with it again
and again and again.
Marc Morano (17:02):
So the other courts, you know, I think I
think, like, the local, statecourts, how come there was
never, were they justjurisdictional issues, or how
were the judges, you know, like,Democrat operatives, they just
wanna see the cases? Is that thesame thing on the lower courts
as well?
Announcer (17:15):
Same thing in the lower courts, and a lot of
Chris Talgo (17:17):
this was, you know, they it was done under the
emergency declaration. So theemergency declaration just gave
these Secretaries of State andthese governors wide ranging
powers to do things that theyordinarily could not do. And
the, you know, the state SupremeCourt, even the lower courts in
a lot of the states, they, youknow, they just went along with
that. They went along with thatnarrative. Even though, as you
I'm sure you remember, therewere many instances in the
(17:39):
summer of love of 2020 in whichpeople were said, you can go
protest.
That's fine. So it's like, youknow, if it's a social justice
cause, you can go and doanything you want. But by
November, you know, well afterthe pandemic, you know, really
had, like, hit hard, they weretelling us, if you go and vote
in person, you might die, whichis just patently absurd. But it
just goes to show that they werepushing as hard as they could to
(18:02):
make mail in, voting, you know,the new normal. And to some
degree, they are succeeding.
And that's why we're trying tomake sure that the American
people understand that this mailin voting thing, which they're
trying to say is that this is,like, you know, the the the new
way of voting. No. This is notthe new way of voting. Well, I
Marc Morano (18:20):
well, that's why I'd like to talk to you about
some of these emergency powersthat they used to make this
happen. We have to take a break.We're talking to Christopher
Talgo, editorial director forsocialism research, and
socialism research fellow at theHeartland Institute, who has a
new study out, looking at the2020 election. And basically,
you're saying that Donald Trumpactually won based on your
(18:41):
analysis. Am I correct in sayingthat?
Chris Talgo (18:44):
Absolutely. You're correct in saying that.
Marc Morano (18:45):
Okay. And so so we'll be right back to continue
this discussion. This isUnleashed with Mark Marrano on
TNT. Stay tuned.
Jim Lakely (18:53):
Before we get to the rest of this podcast, I wanna
let you know about 2 fantasticlive podcasts Heartland produces
every week. We'd love for you tojoin us every Thursday at 1 PM
EST, noon CST, live for ourflagship in the tank podcast.
You can watch on the stoppingsocialism TV channel on YouTube,
where you can participate in theshow in the chat with other fans
(19:14):
and also ask questions thatwe'll address on the air and put
up on the screen. And everyFriday, also at 1 PM EST and
noon CST, you can go toHeartland's main YouTube
channel. Just search for theHeartland Institute on YouTube
for the new Climate RealismShow.
Heartland's climate team ofAnthony Watts, Sterling Burnett,
and Linnea Lukin cover the crazyclimate news of the week, debunk
(19:35):
mainstream media myths about theso called climate crisis, dig
into energy policy, and muchmore. The show often features
guests that include some of theleading climate scientists and
energy policy experts anywherein the world. There is no show
like it, So become regular liveviewers of both of these
programs if you are interestedin smart, lively, fun, and
(19:56):
interactive conversations. Wehope to see you there every
Thursday Friday afternoons at 1PM EST and noon CST at the
stopping socialism TV and theHeartland Institute channels on
YouTube. Oh, yeah.
We're also on Rumble. See youthere.
Announcer (20:16):
Fearless, informative, and unfettered.
Mark Marano is unleashed ontoday's news talk, TNT Radio.
Marc Morano (20:26):
Welcome back to Unleashed on TNT with, Mark
Marrano. We're continuing ourdiscussion with Christopher
Talgo, editorial director of insocialism, a research fellow,
managing editor of stoppingsocialism.com for the of the
Heartland Institute. Alright,Christopher or Chris, the
pandemic, 2020, it's almost Ialways say, like, what happened
with COVID was the same way guncontrol advocates wait for a
(20:50):
school shooting, or the waybiosecurity people who wanna
take away our freedom and have asurveillance state wait for a
terrorism attack. There'scertain things waiting and and
waiting in the wings forsomething bad to happen so they
can exploit the politics. Do youthink the, the write in ballot
advocates were waiting forsomething like COVID to have an
(21:10):
excuse to impose this.
And what exactly happened inCOVID? How did this how did they
how did they get to the pointwhere there's a huge jump in
mail in ballots in 2020? You youalluded to it. It was all about
fear and saying you would die.But just how bad was it, and how
how ready were the proponents ofwrite in ballots, which they
(21:30):
probably wanted for decades, tonow move in and and make it
happen?
Chris Talgo (21:34):
Yeah. So like I said earlier, this this trend
of, trying to increase, mail invoting has been happening
basically since 2000, and it'sbeen, you know, slowly but
surely climbing every singleelection. But water, 2020 was a
watershed moment because we hadmore than doubled the previous
amount in, 2016. And like yousaid, this was all based on fear
(21:55):
mongering. This was all based oncontrol.
This was all based on states whoknew that going and voting in
person was not going to be ahealth hazard, literally trying
to instigate, you know, justpanic among the people to say,
You can't go and vote. You can'tgo and do anything. You must
stay at home, vote by mail, and,you know, just trust us. That is
(22:19):
not the way that elections, youknow, should be run. You know,
it it's also interesting to notethat, you know, Europe and most
of the other OECD countries,they've done away with mail in
voting for decades.
They know how how fraud what'sfraud it is. So why is the
United States moving theopposite direction of all those,
you know, other countries? Imean, there's so many, pitfalls
with mail in voting. So many.And these states, I think,
(22:43):
knowingly said, well, it allowsus to flood the zone with, you
know, ballots.
And once those ballots are outthere, it's just all about
getting them back in, and thenit's just a numbers game. And
they think that they have abetter ground game, the
Democrats, the left, than theRepublicans do. The Democrats
have a much they do have a muchbetter ground game. They have a
much better, you know, way of,you know, getting voters to the
(23:05):
polls. They have a much betterway of, you know, making sure
that those, mail in ballots aregetting, you know, put into the
drop boxes.
Ballot harvesting is one oftheir, you know, their best art
forms. The GOP, the Republicans,the, you know, right, just they
don't embrace it, you know, asmuch. And one of the things
that's, you know, happening nowis there's this, this this
(23:26):
debate saying, well, should weshould we, you know, everyone
just embrace mail in voting? Youknow? And I'm saying no.
No. No. No. And we're saying nobecause it's gonna be it's then
it's just gonna be whoever cancheat, you know, the most will
win the election. That's not howelections are supposed to be
run.
Marc Morano (23:41):
Yeah. Wow. If you look, at what happened with
Carrie Lake in Arizona when shelost that race, she was crying
foul. Was that right in ballots?Was that voting machines?
Was that what was the issuethere? And what are your what is
your just I know you didn't doan in-depth analysis on Arizona
race, but what exactly do youthink may have happened there?
Announcer (24:01):
Yeah. So, actually, the the the
Chris Talgo (24:02):
state of Arizona was, I think, one of the most,
you know, in in incrediblestories of 2020. In Arizona,
more than 90% of people voted bymail. Less than 1 in 10 went and
actually voted in person. That'seither voting on Election Day or
in the early voting period. Ithink that Carrie Lake has a
(24:24):
very good argument to say, Waita second.
All these, you know, peoplewere, sent, you know, mail in
ballots, absentee ballots. Just,you know, it was it was such a
mess in Arizona. It took themdays days days to get the count
right. There have been multiplerecounts. There have been
multiple audits.
It just keep the numbers keepcoming back differently. Yeah.
There was a lot of talk aboutthe Dominion Voting Machines and
(24:46):
other voting machines, you know,playing with the numbers there.
But just across the board,Arizona was a complete dumpster
fire in terms of the 2020election.
Marc Morano (24:54):
Alright. And then what about Georgia, the runoff
election? I can't even remember,that's actually, I can't
remember what year. If it was a2020, but the, or 2021, the
runoff election. And I rememberthat the, governor Kemp's, like,
top aide or someone in hisoffice was an executive on
Diebold.
There was a lot of questionsabout that. I remember people
(25:15):
saying, like, don't even vote inthat special election. And, of
course, the Democrat won. Butwhat was going on in Georgia
during those runoff electionswith the voter integrity?
Chris Talgo (25:23):
Yeah. So, the the Georgia case is another great,
you know, example of, you know,something going horribly wrong,
but then them actually fixingit. So like you said, there was
the there was there was thedouble run up. It was, Warnock
and, Ossoff, both were wererunning because in in Georgia,
you have to have, you know, the50% to to win the election. So
they did the runoff, and, yes,there was a lot of, you know, I
(25:45):
think, dismay among, you know,GOP supporters by saying, you
know what?
We just don't trust electionsanymore and all that, you know,
stuff. But what happened afterthe, runoff election is what
really, you know, caught ourattention. So Georgia and
Florida really went out of theirway to say, we need to clean up
our elections. We need to makesure that, you know, that people
who are voting by mail actuallyhave an excuse to vote by mail.
(26:08):
We, you know, wanna make surethat the voter rolls are getting
cleaned up, and we want to makesure that ballot harvesting is
not happening and just all thatstuff.
What happened, as I'm sure youremember, was the media went
just completely crazy saying,this is all about voter
suppression. This is all aboutJim Crow. This is all about, you
know, trying to deny, minoritiesthe right to vote. But
(26:32):
interestingly, in the 2022midterms in both Florida and
Georgia, the data showed thatminority voters actually
participated at a higher ratethan they did in 2020. So it's
just complete and utternonsense, this notion that is
being brought out there to saythat this is all about trying to
suppress the vote.
No. It's actually actually it'sreally about trying to make sure
that people are notdisenfranchised because every
(26:54):
single time someone votesillegally, that's
disenfranchising someone's, youknow, rightful vote.
Marc Morano (27:00):
Alright. Well, we couldn't have a complete
conversation without at leasthaving you address what the left
says that was the real problem,like in 2016. Russian
interference in elections, andwe had many election deniers of
2016 on the Democrat side, CNN,MSNBC. How much of a factor was
Russian interference in 2016?I'm trying to get a straight
(27:20):
face.
Chris Talgo (27:22):
0. 0. You know, they keep playing the Russia
card just like they've beenplaying the race card again and
again and again. They're doingit now. They're doing it again.
And it's just preposterous atthis point. It's just ludicrous
for for them to gaslight theAmerican people to this degree
and think that we don't knowbetter than that. I I think that
the American people are reallygoing to make their voice heard
(27:43):
in 2024 as long as the electionis on the up and up. I'm
confident that, we're going tohave a, you know, landslide,
1980 style, you know, just youknow, huge victory. I am.
Yep.
Marc Morano (27:55):
Okay. Why would you be let's then we only have about
a minute and a half left or so.Tell us what reforms are needed,
and what reform first of all,what's happened that gives you
that confidence? And how do theythe 6 states, let's focus on it.
What's changed now going into 2024 that's different?
Are there is there a severe Iwish we could have an honest
(28:21):
election and win, but peoplesort of resigned that they
can't. Why are you so confidentin what has been done and what
can be done on the state levels?
Chris Talgo (28:28):
Well, my my first, I'm very confident because there
there's gonna be no pandemic asfar as we can tell. You know?
Obviously, there could besomething that that comes out,
you know? Yeah. But but as as ofright now, like, their whole,
you know, pandemic excuse is outthe window.
So, you know, the the theAmerican people are, you know,
well aware that all that crazystuff that happened in 2020, no
(28:48):
way are they gonna, you know, beable to repeat that again. Some
of those states have passed, youknow, some election reforms.
That's great. You know, we stillhave a lot of work to do, but I
am confident that, you know, thestate of the economy,
immigration, and all the primeis going to produce a huge
Donald Trump victory in 2024.
Marc Morano (29:05):
Alright. Well, thank you very much. That's
Christopher Tago, editorialdirector, stopsocialism.com of
the Heartland Institute. Thankyou for joining the show. Thank
you for watching.
This is Unleashed with MarkMarrano on TNT. See you next
time.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com