Old North News

On June 29, Gina Swoboda, executive director of Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), appeared on the Live Free TV podcast to discuss election integrity with former military officer and Republican congressman Allen West. Learning from situations that occurred across the country in the last presidential election, Swoboda told voters to educate themselves and hold their local county election officials accountable.

“So we need to verify that compliance exists in your county,” Swoboda said when asked to give advice to voters in the upcoming election season. “And when you don't follow the law that is there for a reason to ensure the quality and the controls, […] then if there is chaos, there's room for for bad things to happen. So people need to know what are the rules that are in place for the election and are they following them and have they followed them? And then if they haven't, you need to go to your elected officials and and have them make these at least county election officials comply with the statutes.”

Swoboda is the executive director of Voter Reference Foundation. The VRF is an organization and informational website dedicated to educating and providing access to information about how elections work across the country. “Our goal is to encourage greater voter participation in all fifty states,” VRF says on their website. “We believe the people have an absolute right to a transparent elections system, including elections data and elections procedures.” The website includes resources like absentee ballot trackers, scorecards for each state based on their data transparency and election operations, and state guides to voter registration.

Swoboda and West also discussed the recent Supreme Court decision in the Moore vs. Harper Case. The verdict, coming out of a North Carolina State Supreme Court case in which the state court prevented the state legislature from enacting a new jurisdictional map in 2021. The U.S. Constitution places authority in the state legislature over federal elections, however a 6-3 vote from the U.S. Supreme Court determined that “the federal elections clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections,” meaning states and state legislatures can be overruled by the federal government.

According to SCOTUSblog, the ruling from this North Carolina case was argued to be moot by Justice Clarence Thomas because later state developments overturned the state court’s original verdict of gerrymandering after Republican legislatures challenged it. He also issued his dissent against the six justice majority, which included an even split of conservative and liberal figures, saying he was fearful because with the ruling “the winners of federal elections may be decided by a federal court’s expedited judgment that a state court exceeded ‘the bounds of ordinary judicial review’ in construing the state constitution.”