Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. It is Tuesday at noon and that means
we chat with Andrew Dunne. He is the publisher of
long Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com. He is also a
contributing columnist over at the Charlotte Observer. Welcome Andrew, how
are you sir?
Speaker 2: You know, every time I hear that introm you mix
my day just a little bit brighter.
Speaker 1: I have heard that from a number of people. They
it's like the it's the led Zeppel. I can't look.
I just picked the song. They made it, you know,
but I will use it and it gets people psyched,
even if they hate me. All Right, So you have
a big writeup, but I wanted to focus on this
exclusively today because you did a lot. You did a
deep dive into data that I think would probably cause
many people to jim pencils up their noses. But you
looked at a voter out of state voter data. You
reviewed hundreds of thousands of absentee by mail ballots from
the last election in twenty twenty four, and you found
a pool of nineteen thousand voters that you say deserve
greater scrutiny. But you're not accusing anybody of anything. But
you found this pool of nineteen thousand voters. So who
are these voters?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let me take a step back first. You know,
we talk a lot about election security, but usually when
we do it's in terms of voter id or paper ballots,
or making sure that the voting machines aren't connected to
the internet and stuff like that. But there's a whole
other realm to consider, and that has to do with
our election policies. You know, the law in North Carolina
is clear you have to live in North Carolina to
vote in North Carolina elections, which sounds obvious, but you know,
in practice, there's a lot of edge cases and it's
not always so clear cut. And the State Board of Elections,
over a period of years has kind of cobbled together
policies around who gets, you know, who counts as a
resident in North Carolina. So what I wanted to do
is really answer the question do we have people voting
in North Carolina elections who don't actually live in North Carolina.
You know, anybody who works in politics will look at
absencey by mail requests, and when you do, you'll see
that there's a lot of these requests are being made
and the ballots are being sent out of state. So
what I did is I kind of worked my way down.
You know, from the overall voter file, four and a
half million votes were cast before election day. Now, most
of those are early in person voting, and so I
threw all those out of my analysis, and then I
started working my way down, all right, So then I
excluded ballots that were sent to a person's home address
or the same address where they're registered. That seems pretty legit.
And then I took it a couple steps further. If
it was in the same zip code, I didn't worry
about it. Even if it was being mailed to an
address in North Carolina, I didn't consider that either. And
what I was left with was about nineteen thousand ballots
that were being sent out of state to people who
are older than twenty five because I didn't want you know,
people who are going to college out of state are
able to still vote in North Carolina elections if their
home is still here. And then I also excluded people
older than sixty five to account for retiree who may
be you know, splitting time half in half. So that
left nineteen thousand people with no real clear explanation of
why they would need their ballots to be sent out
of state. Now, like you said, you know, I'm not
accusing anybody of wrongdoing, and when I did some quick
spot checks, you know, some people have perfectly valid reasons
for getting their ballots and out of state. There was
you know, one in particular I saw was sent to
RV Park in Colorado. I think they decided to take
a big road trip and I wouldn't begrudge them that,
and another couple were sent to federal law enforcement training facilities.
That's perfectly legit. But there's a lot of people in
there who look like they have started careers in blue
cities like New York City or Chicago, but still wanting
to cast their ballots here in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Because they were from North Carolina. They've relocated to a
different place and maybe they haven't updated their registration or something.
I don't know they but I mean, ostensibly they would
have to convert everything over to like a new driver's
license and all of that. Although I've known people who
have moved here from different states and they drive around
with their their license from that other state until it expires. Basically,
I don't know, Like, I don't know how people navigate
these systems by not complying, because I've always complied, you know,
like when I moved to a new address, I go
and I change the address, I do all of that stuff.
So I don't know how people get by like these
thirty day dirty thirty tags that I see on cars
all over the place. Like, I don't know how people
are beating the system like that so easily. It's you know,
I don't know. I'm afraid I would get caught. And
let me back up. Also, first, I guess we should
define what does it mean to live in North Carolina?
To reside here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like it should you know, you shouldn't
need a definition, right, it sounds so obvious, But Basically
what the law is and what the policies are is
you have wherever, essentially wherever you hang your hat, right,
you know, you have to actually live there. If you leave,
you have to have a you know, set time period
where you're coming back, you know, an intent be where
you actually live.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like because this came up years ago when
there were a bunch of homeless people that voted in
our County Commission election and it changed the outcome, and
there was this big challenge from Republicans about these homeless
people that were busted to the polls and they all
listed the men's shelter as their address or and like
some of them, they don't actually reside there. They live
like under a bridge or something, and they're supposed to
actually draw a map of like where they where they
intend to return. I think was the was the legal
definition where you intend to return, which I don't even
know how one goes about proving such a thing, especially
as you note in this piece, there isn't any mechanism
for me to challenge you. Let's say I'm aware that
Andrew moved out of state, and then I see on
the voter on the voter dashboard that you've been voting
still in Psyche. Well wait a minute, I'd like to
challenge Andrew, but I can't. There's no mechanism for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. You know your listeners are probably
familiar with candidates being challenged. You can challenge a candidate's residency,
and that happens from time to time, where you know,
an opponent will say, well, this person doesn't actually live
in the district they're trying to represent, and there's a
whole process for that, and you know candidates will hire
private investigators to tail them and all that. But there's
no actual mechanism to challenge voters in this instance. So
you can challenge a voter's residents in limited ways. So
you could challenge that they never lived in North Carolina,
but you cannot challenge whether a person once lived in
North Carolina and no longer does. That is specific spelled
out in North Carolina Board of Elections documents that you
are not allowed to do that, and county boards are
instructed not to hear any such challenges.
Speaker 1: You point out in the piece that these nineteen thousand
voters tend to skew young, female, white, and left leaning,
but then you also, because you know me, I'm all
about solutions. You have some ideas, So go over a
couple of these ideas that you think might actually get
at this problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what I'm proposing is just some common
sense ways to add double checks on the front end.
You know, I don't think the right way to do
it is to open up voter challenges on the back end.
I think that's a whole can of worms that it's
just not worth going down. But right now, on the
absencee by male ballot portal, when you're requesting your ballot
to be sent to you, you are allowed to just
specify any address and in the world, really but it's
really easy to send your balot anywhere in the United States.
And what I'm saying is there just needs to be
a couple safeguards at that step in the process. You know,
at the very least, a checkbox that says, you know,
here's what it means to be a North Carolina resident,
and if you don't fit this and you continue voting,
you are committing a crime. I think that could you know,
even that small step could solve a lot of problems.
But I also think that there needs to be some
documentation that if you are requesting your ballot to be
sent out of state. I don't think it's unreasonable to
fill out a little form that explains why you're asking
your ballot to be sent out of state, and that
creates a paper trail that down the line. You know,
county boards are able to take a look at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in case it's needed. You've got the evidence collected
on the front end. If people want to read more
about this, they can go to your website longleafpol dot com.
That's long Leaf Politics. Andrew Dunn always appreciated, sir. Here's
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a message from the text line from Eric, who says,
we have fought them having a bunch of people registered
addresses that are nonprofits and such are nonprofits and such
that serve the homeless with zoning. So that's how they've
been fighting. Eric says, they've been fighting with zoning. If
it is a commercial property that is not zoned for
people to live there, and people are registered to vote there,
then either the registration is fraudulent or they are violating
the zoning and building safety codes. So if you make
a formal complaint of the violation, the organization letting them
use the address must go on record saying that the
person doesn't actually live there. That's a very clever mechanism.
Then you have proof the registration was fraudulent because either
the individual committed fraud claiming it was their residents, or
the organization is violating building and fire codes allowing people
to live on the property. That is a that's very clever.
Eric Stan wants to know what's to stop me from
registering to vote in every state? Well, some states share
their voter information with one another. Most Democrat states do
not do this. They do not want other states to
know if there are multiple registrations, and there have been
cases of this. This was the whole point behind the
interstate what was it called the interstate Vote Check or
something like that I forget, or interstate Compact I think
maybe was what it was where all states would enter
into this compact and you would share some data of
your voter roles like name, address, a voter ID number
or last four of the Social Security something like that
in date of birth. And I remember covering this this gosh,
this would have been ten years ago, I want to say,
maybe longer. And I remember there was a big, you know,
fact check from the official fact checkers at McClatchy, and
they were like, actually, there are a lot of people
who have the same names and dates of birth, and
that's the reason why there were people getting flagged in
some of these these these cross check these cross state
check systems. Yeah, well that's fine. So once you check
it and you make sure, okay, that is a different person. Cool.
If it's not a different person, then bad. Right, That's
why you do it. That's why the administration of this stuff,
it is so important, even though it's so boring, you know,
trying to do a news story about this, trying to
get your assignment editor to allow you to pursue a
story like this is difficult because there are no visuals TV.
People think in terms of the video, which I understand,
and you know my experience doing TV, I understand why.
It's the old axiom that my mass com professor, the
late Haini how said the great thing about TV is
that you get to use pictures. And the worst part
about TV is that you have to use pictures. So
what ends up happening then is that you start looking
for stories that have good visuals and you start sacrificing
stories that don't. So, yeah, a story about redistricting and jerrymandering.
That's why nobody would cover this stuff for so long.
The TV news stations wouldn't cover the stuff because it's
just boring video. You got the you know, the video
of a bunch of people standing up on the legislative floor.
You got some video and then you know usually these
like cutaway shots or you know, just b roll that's
running in the background while the anchor is talking or something.
And that's when you see people, you know, walking down
the hall or reading the piece of paper, or the
zoom in close up of somebody writing something on a
piece of paper but you can't really tell what they're writing.
And you know, the shuffling, you know, people coming through
a presentation or something. That's what you're you're left with
because people can't figure out a way to you know,
tell the story, and you're giving only a couple hours
to turn the story, and so you have to just
stick a bunch of bee roll in there and it's boring.
Or you can go cover the story of you know,
the three legged puppy, miracle baby or whatever, and they're
gonna send you to that story because it's gonna make
better video. Because who doesn't love to see the little baby?
Who doesn't love to see the three legged puppy? Right,
he's biggest watermelon. The apartment fire, the car crash, that's
what people. It's more visually attractive for people to see that,
And that's the way TV news thinks. Again, I understand
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on the text line says if you live in a
solid blue state like New York, for example, it's attractive
to keep voting in a swing state like North Carolina.
That is exactly right in fact, from Andrew Dunn's piece
at long Leaf Politics, from what he reviewed of the
nineteen thousand out of state voters in the twenty twenty
four election, he says, there are a lot of different
reasons why you might fall into the group, but he
does notice some patterns. Again, no accusations of illegal activity
here directed at anybody, but when you have a pool
of nineteen thousand voters, you start looking at some of
the addresses. Where are they going? You look at some
of the people and it's like, okay, just and he
says he did a spot check. He would just pull
random people, random voter names out and take a look
and see who they might be. And he says of
this population, though they skew younger, female, white, and left leaning,
more than three quarters are Democrats or unaffiliated. The votes
mostly head out from Mecklenburg Wake and bunk them. Where
do they go? Those ballots mostly go to New York,
Northern Virginia. That's number one and two of the top
locations for where the ballots go, followed by California, Florida,
which that actually makes sense. Florida makes sense because you
may have a lot of people that have a second
residence in Florida, right a home, a winter home in Florida,
snowbirds and such. Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Tennessee, and Massachusetts.
He mentioned this in the interview that a few of them,
a few of these went to RV parks in picturesque locations.
So you know, people going on a road trip for
a couple of months or something needed out of state
ballot or they're ballot mailed out of state. They do
intend to return, They're going off to do training. Others
are in graduate school, stuff like that, he says, But
a lot of others looked exactly like permanent out of
state life with a North Carolina ballot still arriving every fall. Again,
he says, I'm not accusing anybody of breaking the rules,
but the concept of this is what Travis is talking about.
Living in a solid blue state where your vote for
president probably doesn't matter, but your vote in North Carolina,
if you're a Democrat, does, so you would want to
keep voting in North Carolina because we are a swing
state and look, by and large, this is kind of
a this is a new thing for North Carolina to
have to deal with because we haven't always been a
swing state, right, So this is a new phenomenon for
North Carolina to be dealing with, and it seems to
me like we probably should adopt some policies to deal
with it better. Yet maybe law, maybe law, because the
policies of the State Board of Elections can be changed
by the State Board of Elections, and that's why we
have this mish mash of rules cobbled together over the
course of the last. Well, now, I guess nine years
or so under Democrat Roy Cooper and his appointed body.
Now you've got Republicans that are in charge of the
body after the legislature passed a law to make it
an appointed body by the Auditor's office, right because before
it was the governor, and he would put his own
political partisan appointments in there. They would change these rules
ever so slightly to allow certain things to occur. And yes,
strategic voting is a well documented thing. People do it.
The legal test should be simple. It is simple. If
New York or Illinois or California is now your real home,
then your voting home is not North Carolina anymore. However,
the problem is there earned any ways to verify whether
a person still actually lives in North Carolina before election day.
It's essentially the honor system with no follow up. That's
a problem. I did get another message here, Oh, it
was in my email Pete at the Pete calendershow dot
com from John. Another aspect of voter residency issues, I'll say,
are college students registering to vote in North Carolina. I
think it's pretty simple. If you pay out of state tuition,
by definition, you are not a resident of North Carolina.
I think that's a pretty good standard. This really came
to a head in when I was working up in Ashville,
where we had some legislative and county commissioner races decided
by I'm trying to remember. I think it was unc Asheville,
but it may have been Warren. Oh, it was Warren Wilson,
Warren Wilson College, Liberal College. Small, but they split the lines,
so they basically diffused the student lefty population into two
different districts in order to pad the votes for Democrats.
And they were listing their residents at like the student
dorms as their residents, and that's I don't think that's appropriate.
Like when I lived in the student dorms when I
went to college, like they moved us on a year
by year basis. You didn't get your same dorm room
every year. Now maybe that's changed, and maybe that was
just my school. But I also remember in South Carolina
they would not let me vote until I registered and
got legal residents, you know in South Carolina, which I
eventually did before I graduated school and I started getting
in state rates and whatever. So like that was the
like it was much more difficult I remember I had
to do a mail in ballot back to New York
for the first election, which I forgot to do, so
I didn't even vote in nineteen ninety two, the first
election presidential election I could vote for. I did not
get that done. So I know, I know, not that
I vote would have mattered. Now it might have, No, not,
probably not not New York. Meanwhile, do you remember Cleita Mitchell,
North Carolina based election integrity activist Cleita Mitchell. She wants
a federal judge to reject requests from liberal groups to
try that are trying to compel her testimony for a
trial this month in Winston Salem. So, when I was
a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died,
my mom and my dad took care of him as
he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments
and not much support for caregivers and family. But things
are different today because of the work of so many people,
including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great
organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a
supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot
to me. I participate in the annual w to end
Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year
and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign
up and you can join the team and walk with us.
It's on October eighteenth that truest field. Sign up at
alz dot org slash Walk and then you can search
for my team name Pete's Pack. There's also a link
at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the
description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the
Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make
a team and join that one too, or make a
donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars.
If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a
bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can
go to alz dot org slash walk for all the
dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's.
Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me?
For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments.
This is why we walk. Mitch Kokai, writing at The
Carolina Journal about this case against Cleta Mitchell, North Carolina
based election integrity activist who is urging a federal judge
to reject requests from leftist groups. My word, he called
them left of center leftist groups to compel her testimony
at a trial in Winston Salem. This month, Mitchell filed
court documents suggesting she has no relevant information in the
case that challenges a twenty twenty three state law it
changed rules linked to same day voter registration or SDR
same day registration. Plaintiffs contend that Mitchell was quote somehow
instrumental in achieving passage of the legislation, which is wholly
inaccurate and which plaintiff's council now knows is inaccurate, according
to Mitchell's filing. Plaintiffs have further not produced a single
public presentation from or by Miss Mitchell to support their
contention that Miss Mitchell influenced the SDR provisions in the legislation.
See this is the lie that the left told about
Cleta Mitchell being involved in getting this getting these rules changed.
At the time, they just promoted this lie and they
had no evidence for it, and everybody in the legislature
was like, uh no, she didn't help us do this,
and she was like, no, I didn't help them do this,
but nobody cared. They just kept advancing this lie. Mitchell
faced a September twenty twenty four deposition that lasted more
than five hours. Her sworn deposition testimony revealed to plaintiff's
council that their contentions regarding Mitchell as a central figure
who influenced the legislation are not true. In fact, Mitchell
testified in that deposition that her role in the passage
of the law generally and specifically as it relates to
same day registration was quote non existent. There was nothing.
She didn't help them, She didn't do anything with them.
In a separate declaration, Mitchell wrote that former Governor Roy
Cooper publicly and falsely identified her in his veto statement
regarding the challenged legislation, stating incorrectly that I had been
a primary advocate for SB seven forty seven, which is
not true. Is not true. Mitchell founded the Election Integrity Network.
She serves as senior Legal Fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute,
and previously chaired the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Since twenty twenty.
She says I have been attacked and maligned by leftist
media and organizations and by Democratic leaders. But I repeat
myself opposed to me and my work in the field
of election integrity, and I've received multiple threats against me
for my work and my views on the integrity of
America's elections. The plaintiffs in this case are all organizeds
that engage in public policy advocacy on issues, matters, and
policies in direct opposition to my election integrity work. Plaintiffs
in the case are also seeking in order to compel
her to appear at the trial on October twenty first,
So why would you be doing that? Think about this
if you are one of these groups like the Southern
Coalition for Social Justice, which is the left wing activist
legal firm that or nonprofit I guess they would call themselves.
That was founded by Supreme Court Justice Anita Earles and
who was most recently run by Oh my gosh, I'm
drawing a blank on her name. Now, she's also Rigs
Alison Riggs, right, she just won the race against Griffin
and Jefferson Griffin, so she was their last leader. So
like these, the two leaders out of this Southern Coalition
for Social Justice are now on our state Supreme Court.
These are radical left wing lawyers, that are the two
Democrats on our state Supreme Court. Why would if you
were the plaintiffs in this case from the Southern Coalition
for Social Justice, why would you want Cleeda Mitchell testifying
when she has no information for you. She's already been deposed,
You've gotten nothing from her because she doesn't know anything.
She wasn't involved in it at all. But why then
would you need to bring her in front of the
court for the trial publicity? That's it's it's the smear, right,
It's a smear tactic. Is you drag her to court,
you make her sit in the court, you make her testify,
and then the headlines are you know, Trump ally in court.
That's it. That's the only reason. Now. The judge set
an October twentieth trial date in the case after he
rejected requests from state legislative leaders and the state Board
of Elections to dismiss the case. This lawsuit challenges one
part of the Senate Bill seven forty seven, called the
Undeliverable Mail Provision. This provision looks to change how elections
officials deal with ballots from voters who are registered to
vote on the same day that they cast their early
voting ballots, so during the early vote period they registered
that very same day. At the most basic level, the
plaintiffs want a return to the scheme that predated the
passage of Senate Bill seven forty seven, which required, among
other things, that a same day registrants vote not be
discarded unless the US Postal Service returned as undeliverable a
second mailing addressed to the registrant before the canvas deadline.
And here's the problem is that the Postal Service can't
get two mailings to somebody before the ten day canvas expires.
That that's the problem. All right, that'll do it for
this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could
not do the show without your support and the support
of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if
you'd like, please support them too and tell them you
heard it here. You can also become a patron at
my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.