Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And of course, election integrity and security is a very hot topic. In fact, the Senate is finally debating that topic starting yesterday and could go on, I don't know, they even talked about pausing it, starting it again, I dunno, I know exactly how it'll end up happening, but it's still the hot topic and so Seth Keshel is our guest today. We're going to talk about his book on election integrity. And his efforts, across the country to educate people on these things. But David, Tim, of course, this has been a hot topic since not just since the 2020 election and, and, and bein' a historical show, I think we should, you know, do the Solomon thing, say nothing new under the sun. We've had major election integrity battles in the 1800s and multiple sets of electors many times. So, nothing new, under the Sun. There's always a desire for people to justify their means because of the end and everybody thinks they're stopping, you know, the worst person from winning. So anyway, not new but important for sure 

David Barton [00:01:09] Yeah, it's not new, but it really is a big deal because we now are at a position where states are not enforcing their own laws. And so, you get into the situation of where there is absolute definite fraud out there, there always has been, but now it's organized at levels that have never been seen. And so, this is where the SAVE Act would require that the states have to share their voting roles with the federal government, which allows the federal governments to step in and say, wait, you've got two million more people voting than you have registered in your state, how is that happening? Right now, there's no outside scrutiny on a lot of what's happening. And it's really believed by both sides that there's fraud. Nobody's questioning that. Well, some are questioning it, but most people, polling shows that they believe this fraud. But that's as you just said, Rick, that's nothing new. So yesterday they did start the debates, but those debates are supposed to go several days if John Thune's prediction is right. And it's interesting because even in just starting debates, it was a 51 to 49 vote. So. Just getting the debate started. And you already have Republicans said, now, I'm willing to debate it, but I'm not gonna vote for this act. And so that's where it gets interesting is can this thing be passed? 

Tim Barton [00:02:19] And Dad, I think it was actually 51 to 48 because Tom Tillis set out and it was Murkowski, the Republican from Alaska who joined the Democrats because they have 47 Democrats. She made 48, but Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina said he was going to abstain. He just happened to not be there when the vote took place. And there are other Republicans like Mitch McConnell who said that he opposes the SAVE Act, which is just crazy for lots of reasons. So, this is one of the thoughts of why is it taken so long for the Senate to bring this up and we've talked about before we knew there were some squishy Republicans that would potentially be against it now it seems like there's even more squishy Republicans than we realized, that are in opposition to some of this. But initially just to even have a conversation the vote was 51 to 48 with Republican senator and Republican I use that term very loosely with Lisa Murkowski but she sided with the Democrats to oppose even having the conversation about the SAVE Act on the Senate floor. 

David Barton [00:03:22] Yeah, and it really is a pretty simple thing. It just operates... There's a 1993 Voter Registration Act that we've got, we've had it for a while, obviously since 1993, and they're updating that and saying, hey, you have to submit this stuff, you know, live and in person. We're not gonna do mail-in voter registration, we're not going to do these community-based registration drives, you're gonna have to submit something like a driver's license, a RealID, passport, a birth certificate, you gotta prove you're a U.S. Citizen. At federal level, only U.S. Citizens can vote. That's all, just U. S. Citizens. Not all the states have that requirement. In the states, they allow non-citizens to vote in some states. So, this is just saying at the federal level you have to be a citizen and you've gotta prove you're a citizen. And you gotta do it with a genuine government ID, not because somebody went out and registered 500,000 names and added those names to the voter rolls. That's not what it takes. So, this really an effort to cut down on fraud. And it's interesting, I found this really interesting article from the Bren Center now that's really far left and they're you know here here's the hyperbola they're using the other side; the SAVE Act is the bill that would disenfranchise more than 21 million Americans from voting according to our research and on and on they go through the numbers. And no, it does not disenfranchise 21 million Americans it may disenfranchise 21 million who are living in America but that doesn't make them Americans. And so that's what the SAVE Act is all about is, hey, let's get back to just Americans voting. And if you want to vote in America, go become a citizen. And then you have a vested interest in doing this. But at this, and that's essentially what this, this debate is all about. So, the SAVE Act is on its face, such a big indicator of people who are willing to let non-Americans decide the course of America, which is just a stupid idea on its face. And the fact that you can't get Republicans to agree that it should be Americans who determine the direction of America is just, Tim, as you said, Murkowski, others, it's just fascinating that they're not willing to stand up for something as simple as voter integrity.  

Tim Barton [00:05:25] But one of the good things about the way the Founding Fathers framed the Constitution, is they did give power to the states, known as federalism, and there have been states taking some good action to try to secure elections in their states. Of course, when you look at a place like Florida that Florida had always traditionally been known as a toss-up state from really most of our lives guys for decades and decades and decades. When Governor Ron DeSantis first won the governorship his one of his top initiatives was to secure the elections and to try and remove fraud. And when he enacted some very basic bipartisan supported laws in Florida, it went, it changed Florida from being what was considered a toss-up state, for again, for decades and decades and decades, and they are now one of the fastest reporting states, and they one of most strongly Republican/conservative states in the nation, just by changing to the bipartisan supported voting laws, and I say bipartisan meaning Democrats  and Republican support them. Not that Democrat elected officials support them, but people in the state that identify as Democrats saying, look, you ought to be able to have a driver's license to be to vote, et cetera. And so there are things states can do and have done to help secure elections in the states in spite of the fact that our federal government is refusing to act on some of this. 

David Barton [00:06:46] You know, it's interesting too, on the House, the House side is exerting its muscle in a way I haven't seen in a long time. Yesterday, for example, 40 Republicans now. So, we're not gonna pick up a single thing from the Senate that comes to the House until you guys vote on the SAVE Act. And so, they've already, those 40 have already stopped a few dozen measures that have come over from the Senate to the House. But they're not willing to even consider anything, even the refunding of agencies that need funding right now. They're not even gonna authorize the refunding of agencies until the Senate has a vote on the SAVE Act. So now the House has put a lot of pressure on the Senate. We'll see what happens with that. But this is a pretty remarkable time. We haven't had this kind of a face-to-face confrontation between the two bodies and the President in a long time. So, we'll see happens. 

Rick Green [00:07:36] We're gonna take a quick break when we come back Seth Keshel will be our guest We'll be talking about his book The American War on Election Corruption. Stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show 

Rick Green [00:08:49] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us, Seth Keshel with us. The American War on Election Corruption. Seth, good to have you, man. Thanks for coming on. 

Seth Keshel [00:08:57] Hey, Rick, great to see you too. 

Rick Green [00:08:59] Well, you've been at this, pretty heavily for at least the last four or five years. The book, of course, Newt Gingrich doing the forward on it. We love Newt. I've had him on quite a bit. In fact, a lot of my political theory and philosophy comes from, from years of reading Newt and studying under Newt so, anyway. But this this is a critical moment for the country and so more important than ever that that you have the book out and, that you can talk about why the SAVE Act's important and, and the state battles are important. So anyway, appreciate your time today. We've got a lot to cover. Tell us what you think is most important in saving our election process. 

Seth Keshel [00:09:35] It's interesting you brought up Newt and I asked the Speaker to write the forward specifically to widen my appeal towards the standard Republican audience that's followed him for years. Most of the Republicans have gotten around to the fact that elections are pretty sketchy. Some people refer to them as quasi-elections. They can be won, but in the last 10 years, Newt would tell you the elections aren't stolen, they're rigged. And when you look at the laws in the states, automatic voter registration, universal or expansive vote by mail, or ballot harvesting. You have the recipe for permanent blue wall. Tony Schupp, of course, our mutual friend is from there in Pennsylvania and they can very clearly point to Act 77 in 2019 passed with the help of a Republican legislature to allow for no excuse mail-in voting. And that allowed for two candidates to surpass Barack Obama's record vote total in a year with the biggest presidential margin landslide since Lyndon Johnson in '64. So, our elections are way different than they were even 10 years ago. 

Rick Green [00:10:32] Yeah, and, and it seems like we're playing such catch up. Like the other side has been, you know, in this particular battlefield or on this particular battle field for decades. And we've just been asleep at the wheel. Like you said, you know, reaching that entire GOP base that honestly hasn't wanted to admit that this is a real problem. I still talk to Republicans all the time that'll say, oh, that's just all hyper, you know, they're just exaggerating, blah, blah blah. They just don't want to acknowledge how serious this is. 

Seth Keshel [00:11:02] That's why I struggle with the loyalty to an ideology called conservatism. I'm more of a pragmatist than anything else, but the standard American conservative is trained to not trust government, which is a good way to start. Then they don't trust vaccines, which was fine. They don't, trust education. They don't trust the media. They think that everything that comes out against Trump now is a lie, which they've evolved to, but they're not going to go as far as to think that men in power wouldn't do anything possible to stay in power, even though, even American history, my book goes all the way back to the 1800s with instances of election fraud widespread, including the 1864 presidential election using, guess what, mail-in ballots. 

Rick Green [00:11:39] You know, it's funny you bring that up because when we talk about that and even, I mean, literally in November of 2020, I was trying to say, look, this is nothing new. I mean we had South Carolina turning in what three different sets of electors in one of those elections. I can't remember if it was the one you're talking about or one of those 1800 elections. I mean this is, this has nothing new. This is human nature. People that have the opportunity to cheat and, and, you know, they're always like; end justifies the means, they're stopping some evil in their mind, they are stopping the next Hitler or whatever. It's just the nature of man, which is why the system has to benefit all parties and, and, as best as possible, prevent cheating. And, I think more people are waking up. I mean, you're talking about this subject all the time everywhere you go, what do you think? Are they, are they finally waking up enough to do something about it? 

Seth Keshel [00:12:26] It's a lot of people. Rasmussen reports had it at 66% a couple of years ago who didn't trust the 2020 election was legitimate. That's still over 60%. I saw 62% just last week, which is a massive number if we really boil it down to what the most fundamental problem with that is. It's that people do not trust that our system of electing leaders is valid. Therefore, that threatens the existence at all of a constitutional republic. So yes, the base that I speak to are all on board with elections being manipulated. There is still the muddy middle that is gonna argue to the extent of that. They'll point to a couple of votes here and there, but then they'll say, well, it's not big enough to throw the results of an election. I'm telling you; Pennsylvania has 600,000 or more votes that make no sense in my models. 

Rick Green [00:13:10] Wow! That's huge, it's huge man. Now I'll tell you, I'm a simple guy. My first race for the legislature, I lost by 20 votes out of 30,000. We had a recount, put our hands on every single ballot. I won by 36. Nobody claimed cheating. Nobody claimed manipulation. You know, we were able to look at all of it. My opponent could have had a second recount under Texas law at that time to make sure. And he said, Rick, that's a waste of our time. We looked at every vote. I don't like the fact you won, but you won. That's what we've got to get back to. We've got get back where both sides will say at the end of the day, I may not like the results, but I know I can have some confidence, at least a 95% confidence that it was at least legitimate. Is that really the, is that the answer? Paper ballots, get rid of the machines? I mean, what would you be your like top five things that you would say? 

Seth Keshel [00:13:58] It could definitely be the answer. If we wanted to run transparent elections that people trusted in, we could. Look at the difference between Arizona and Florida. Florida is three times the size of Arizona by population, has 99% of the vote tabulated by bedtime. Arizona, a third the size as Florida, takes weeks to count the election results. So, if Pennsylvania and Michigan would have gone to Harris, then America would have waited for 10 days on Arizona to determine the winner, which is a very dangerous thing. So, to come back to your point... The top reforms that are needed is number one is to clean out the corruption of voter registration. And this is why you see all these states, including some red states, withholding their voter registration data from the DOJ. When you look at the laws with automatic voter registration, 18 out of 20 states with automatic registration and 2020 voter for Biden, 243 electoral votes to nine. That's 90% of the votes that one party needs to win the College. Then in 2024, Trump won the votes of states without automatic registration, 248 electoral votes to five. There is a massive correlation with the quality of voter roll. Michigan had 83 and a half percent of its population registered to vote three months before the election. The problem with that is only 78% of any population is over the age of 18 and therefore eligible to vote. So, when you pair that with the expansion of mail-in voting, which by the way, most of the world is running completely the opposite direction from. 34 out of 47 European countries forbid that practice. Then you have Mexico, Russia, Japan. 

Rick Green [00:15:29] Wait, say that number again. 

Seth Keshel [00:15:30] So that's 34 out of 47 European nations ban mail-in voting. And the ones that allow it usually only allow it for overseas citizens. So, we're talking about a few thousand votes. And then you have other big nations, Mexico, Japan, Russia. Israel, they don't allow mail- in voting either. So why is it that American blue states are rushing to expand mail- in voting if it's not the hold power, because all the voter registration statistics suggest that Democrats are dying as a party. 

Rick Green [00:15:56] It's amazing to me that other countries figured this out before we did and that we still refuse. When you say, and I'm assuming you say the same thing, people say, you know, yeah, but voter ID this, and mail-in ballot that. And I just always say, look, if you're against having a requirement for voter ID, you're just for cheating. I mean, there's no good reason to be against requiring a voter ID. When you say that, what do people say? 

Seth Keshel [00:16:22] Well, that's the amazing part about, we go back to the SAVE Act. It's an 85 to 15 issue where uniformly nobody truly believes that it is racist to require IDs in elections. Nobody. So, when Chuck Schumer gets up there and gives a rant on the Senate floor about how this is going to suppress tens of millions of votes, you're basically trying to say that that a large portion of your Democrat voting base is too dumb to get an ID, which it just, it simply is not true. And most of the people on the right are like, fine, let's give out IDs for free, but you see the same thing with mail-in voting. You know, somehow people can go out and get their hair done in person. They can go on black Friday shopping trips in person, they can go drive golf balls in person or go drop kids off at school or go to ball games in person but they can't once every two years show up in person and cast a vote. So, there's a number of practical reforms. My wife is a member of the Arizona state legislature, state rep, and she's pushed forward several reforms that of course can't get signed with Katie Hobbs in the governor's office, but one of them is to bring the precinct size down to 2,500 registered voters. There's a lot of precincts in our larger counties, Pima, Maricopa counties, for instance, that have more than 5,000 registered voters. So, the disease requires the cure of mail-in ballots to keep people from getting in these big long lines. And then with there's mail- in balloting in urban areas, there's ballot harvesting happening. And that's why Mark Elias sues everyone to make sure that you can't even watch a drop box. But I'm pretty sure that I have a camera on me when I walk up to an ATM and pull out some cash. 

Rick Green [00:17:44] That's right. That's exactly right. So actually, yeah, drill down on that a little bit. I hadn't thought about that. So, if you had a requirement for, you know, for every 2500 voters, the state or the county or whatever's got to provide a voting place, so that now you've got, you know, less than 100 people at the polling place every day during early voting and maybe even on election day, only a few hundred people. I mean, seems like that just makes sense. And that's a legitimate function of even if it does cost us more, right? Even if we've got a man more polling places, that just seems worth it to me. 

Seth Keshel [00:18:18] That's when we had elections 30, 40 years ago, where everyone knew the results of a national election at bedtime. This is because you had manageable sizes of the polling places that usually didn't have more than 1,500 registered voters per precinct. So pretty much everybody could cycle through there on election day. Maybe there's a limited window of time for legitimate early voting, or there's absentee, not no excuse mail-in voting for your doctors, nurses, pilots, election workers, people who aren't gonna be able come through the poll on election day. But then you tally the results by hand at the precinct and you report up. That should be a manageable task if there were effort designed into making that happen, because that would provide the ultimate transparency. No, it wasn't that, it, wasn't, that Biden won the 2020 election that most, most people were upset about over time. You get over your guy losing over time, but it was the fact, it was the fact that, you know, if they finally beat Donald Trump for real, then you would think that they would glory in that in a way that was so obnoxious that they never stop talking about it. Just like when Trump wanted Clinton to recount the big three in the Midwest in 2016. So, the fact that nobody has any transparency. So, there's the machines are another problem. You have to trust that a black box voting system is tabulating votes according to the intention of the voter. And we have plenty of examples that are proven, I wrote about them in the book, where that is true that the machines have inaccurate vote tally. It doesn't go as far to say that this nation flipped all of our votes. But we should be able to run an election like a kindergarten teacher does when she's trying to get her students to decide if they want pizza or chicken nuggets for lunch. But we don't. 

Rick Green [00:19:53] That's good, yeah, that's good. The American War on Election Corruption, Seth, before I let you go, what would you hope would be the action people would take after reading your book? 

Seth Keshel [00:20:04] People need to get on the same sheet of music as to the fundamental changes that can and should be pushed. The SAVE Act is a very popular bill because it's such an easy sell. Look, we have people that are registered on the rolls that aren't citizens, so we need to be able to prove their citizenship. We need to force certain federal voter ID requirements, period. Now, if it would have gotten too big and too unmanageable or cost too much money, then you would have all these skeptics on the right as well. So, this is a couple of licks at the ice cream cone. I did an event in Davenport, Iowa last year, and a guy came out to me, he'd been following my work on elections. I didn't recognize him. It happened to be the treasurer from the state of Iowa who had been a state senator and he knocked out a 40-year Democrat incumbent treasurer from Iowa. And he had sponsored a number of election reforms in his time in the Senate that took bites at the election corruption before Trump's 2020 race. So this wasn't so controversial. Tightening the early voting window, which I believe is the seven-week window in Pennsylvania from which to go gather ballots, making elections an adult Easter egg hunt, rather than a game of involved citizen voting. And then he put other restrictions on mail-in voting. The best example that we have so far is Florida. Nobody was told they couldn't vote by mail, but you have to send a postcard in, verify your address and request your ballot. No more automated mail list. And the result has been in four years that Florida has gone from a one-point race between an ice cream cone and a kick in the neck. To a 15-point Republican blowout. So Arizona is next in line to be able to pass reforms like that if and only if Andy Biggs becomes the next governor with a Republican legislature. 

Rick Green [00:21:37] And that's, is that this year or two years from now? When the governor's race? 

Seth Keshel [00:21:41] This fall. 

[00:21:42] This fall is the governor's race. So this is the Andy Biggs, former Senate majority leader there and a congressman. And then running against Katie Hobbs, who I don't know anybody in the country that thinks she actually beat Kerry Lake in the last election. Insane, insane. 

Seth Keshel [00:21:58] No, she hid and she ran her own election and four years after she took office, most Arizonans couldn't even pull her out of a lineup. 

Rick Green [00:22:06] It's insane, man, and your state, I mean, Arizona is a state we should absolutely be winning big in. And those governor races, I mean what a change that can be. I mean look at what DeSantis did in Florida in just a short period of time. I think Andy would do the same thing and Arizona love him. So, man, wish you guys the best there for that, for sure, but thank you for also being a champion for the rest of the country as well. The American War on Election Corruption. Seth, just anywhere books are sold, you wanna send them to any particular website? What's your recommendation there? 

Seth Keshel [00:22:34] Well, right now, so, so they're going to wind up in bookstores. This, I knew the book would be successful in election integrity circles. I did not necessarily know that it was going to become a number one bestseller in three categories, including a lot of modern history categories. So, I'm happy about that, but the best place to get it now is on Amazon, paperback, hardcover, audible, and Kindle. 

Rick Green [00:22:56] Seth, appreciate it, man. Let's get you back soon. 

Seth Keshel [00:22:58] You bet, Rick. Thank you. 

Rick Green [00:23:00] Stay with us, folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Baryon. 

Rick Green [00:24:09] We're back. Thanks for staying with us here on The WallBuilders Show. And thanks to Seth Keschel for joining us back with David and Tim Barton. And David, you said it, you know, at the top of the hour here that just so important, this is a huge issue. A lot of people very concerned about it as they should be. We've got to have faith in our elections. You know, there's been a big part of the Trump administration is restoring faith in the institutions. And of course, elections is one of those areas we need to restore that faith. 

David Barton [00:24:31] I thought his point Seth said so well, the elections are not stolen, they're rigged. And there's such a big difference between that because the rigging is the structural side and what this bill does is it deals with the structure and that's where you lose the elections. It's not that you lose a thousand votes. It's that you have a system that is structured to not count certain things and, and over count others. And so, I thought that was a brilliant point. They really elections are not stolen. It's, not a stolen election. It was a rigged election. And the way that the machines were set up and who you let vote and who you counted and who didn't exclude. And so, I, I just thought that was brilliant. And he's right. We can't just get discouraged over this stuff. This is a fight worth engaging in however long it takes to get it done. And you know, maybe we'll see something surprising. Maybe the American people sound off and they'll come out of the Senate actually agreeing to something or maybe the House pressure will have an effect on the Senate and who knows. But this thing is definitely not over, but it's sure good to see it moving in the right direction as far as discussion goes. 

Tim Barton [00:25:32] And guys, it's something too we have talked about a lot. There's a lot of things states can do. What we often mention, elections have consequences and it matters who we elect on the local level. And part of why is because they can help change some of these things where there has been maybe not stolen elections, maybe just rigged elections. And I know we're getting nuance and semantics. We might have other thoughts as well but certainly it makes a difference. States can get involved. They can help secure elections in their state. It does matter, and we should be taking every effort we can to have secure elections here in America. 

Rick Green [00:26:07] Hey, as we're signing off, just a quick word on a lot of folks out there had been concerned about this guy that resigned from the Trump administration yesterday, Joe Kent, you know, claiming that his policies were wrong in Iran and all that, I'm just telling you, we called this guy out years ago when he ran against our friend, Heidi St.John, we knew he was trouble. There's nothing surprising here. Reports are saying he had already been frozen out of all intelligence briefings because he was a leaker. So anyway, this is not some kind of dominoes are going to fall in Trump administration kind of thing. Just getting rid of a bad apple and Trump's already announced he thinks it's good that he's gone. So, if anybody was concerned about that, just letting you know, not as big a deal as you might have thought it was. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.