RNLA Board of Governors member and former FEC Chairman Matthew Petersen and RNLA member and former EAC Chairwoman Gineen Bresso, both currently attorneys with Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC, wrote in The Hill about how Democrats in Washington are trying to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to federalize election administration and overwrite many state laws, systems, and rules before the election this fall.  They describe how important our decentralized election system is:

Shame on you, Speaker Pelosi.  At a time when Americans were coming together, she blew up the bipartisan coronavirus relief package for her legislative desires. 

Senate spends all weekend negotiating a bipartisan deal. Agreement reached. Pelosi flies in from California, whips out her unrelated “wishlist,” and says no. Senate Democrats then vote against proceeding on a bill they negotiated.

Jaw dropping.

— Ben Williamson (@_WilliamsonBen) March 22, 2020

The novel coronavirus is threatening to disrupt elections along with schools, events, travel, grocery shopping, and every other aspect of our lives outside the front door.  Three states are proceeding with their presidential primaries tomorrow, with extra precautions for everyone's health, and Georgia and Louisiana have both postponed their primaries that were originally scheduled for later this month. 

As NBC reported last night:

The number of early votes cast in the Democratic primaries for Super Tuesday contests is 4 million, according to figures as of Monday provided by TargetSmart, the National Election Poll and state secretaries of state, which were analyzed independently by NBC News.

The total includes 1.6 million in California, where 415 delegates are at stake, or 30 percent of the Super Tuesday total.

Many of those voters, however, cast their ballots before three of the candidates withdrew: Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer. That led to frustration on the part of some of their supporters on Monday and Tuesday when they learned that their early votes had been wasted on candidates who were no longer in the race. (In almost all states, an early vote is final once it is cast.)

While the Iowa Caucus debacle played out as a national embarrassment to the Democrat Party, the Nevada caucus also had problems according to Mayor Pete Buttitieg’s campaign:

In the letter [from Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign], a copy of which was obtained by The Nevada Independent, the campaign says that the process of integrating early votes on Caucus Day was “plagued with errors and inconsistencies” and that the campaign had received more than 200 incident reports from precincts around the state, including “a few dozen” relating to how the early vote data was folded in. 

Those issues, according to the campaign, include early vote data not being delivered or delivered after the caucus began, early votes not being used to calculate viability or the strength of each preference group, early votes being allocated to the wrong candidate and, in at least one case, early vote data from the wrong precinct being used.

In response to the draft and the Vietnam War, America passed the 26th Amendment. The thought was if you are old enough to be drafted, you are old enough to vote. However, today California Democrats have exposed that their attempts to allow 17-year-olds to vote are not for the noble reasons of the 26th Amendment but cynical attempts to get more Democrat votes.

A major piece of news happened yesterday, or at least it should be news.  Foreign actors have changed ZERO votes on American voting machines.  The Committee on House Administration held a hearing entitled: 2020 Election Security-Perspectives From Voting System Vendors and Experts.  In a panel of the three manufacturers of virtually all the voting machines in the United States, the following exchange happened (emphasis added):

Ranking Member Rodney Davis (R-IL):  To your knowledge, has a foreign state ever successfully breached or hacked your vote tallying election machines?

Mr. Tom Burt, President and CEO, Election Systems & Software, Omaha, NE: No

Mr. John Poulos, President and CEO, Dominion Voting Systems, Denver, CO: No

Ms. Julie Mathis, President and CEO, Hart InterCivic, Austin, TX: No

Despite Virginia's status as a solidly blue state, a recent poll reported that Virginia’s Presidential election next year may be close, with President Trump narrowly beating all Democratic Party presidential candidates but one.  President Trump is only behind Joe Biden, and he is within the margin of error in a race with Biden.  How do some Democrats in Virginia respond to news of President Trump becoming competitive in the blue state of Virginia?  By trying to create "new voters" by allowing imprisoned felons and the mentally handicap to vote, as the Daily Caller writes:

Democratic lawmakers in Virginia, who recently won control of the state’s legislature, proposed altering the state’s constitution to allow prisoners and mentally handicapped individuals to vote.

While the Left continues to push the narrative that our elections are under attack by foreign actors, fraud and malfeasance are actually happening here at home. Most recently, a Democrat party leader and city clerk in Southfield, Michigan, Sherika Hawkins, has been accused of altering hundreds of votes and has previously been involved in other close elections.

After the hotly contested election in 2000, Republicans and Democrats came together to pass the bipartisan Help America Vote Act ("HAVA").  HAVA was a response to the chaos of the 2000 Florida recount.  HAVA was not perfect but it represented a good faith effort on all sides to come together and passed 357-48 in the House and 92-2 in the Senate.  This should be the way all election reform is done.  Unfortunately, it is not true anymore.