As new terms and legislative sessions begin, Republican politicians from the local level to the White House are focusing on passing and implementing various election integrity efforts, from banning ranked-choice voting to ending “Bidenbucks.”
With a trifecta Republican government at the federal level, Republicans are prioritizing issues such as ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections and that the private funding of U.S. elections is prohibited. Meanwhile, Republican-led state and local governments are focusing on banning the ranked-choice voting system and cleaning up voter rolls.
Congress
Steil has also laid out congressional Republicans’ plan to pass election integrity legislation.
In an episode of the “John Solomon Reports” podcast last week, the Wisconsin congressman said that with Republicans leading both chambers of Congress and the White House, legislation such as the SAVE Act and the ACE Act can be enacted.
“So, front and center are two major pieces of legislation: the SAVE Act, which says U.S. elections are for U.S. citizens only; and then what has been called the ACE Act, American Confidence in Elections Act, which is a broad, comprehensive, conservative election integrity bill that is far-reaching,” Steil said.
States
Several states, with their legislative sessions just starting, are also focused on passing various election integrity laws.
Banning ranked-choice voting (RCV) is one of the issues that some states are prioritizing. RCV is an election process whereby if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, then a runoff system is triggered. When voters cast their ballots, they rank each candidate in order of first-to-last.
If one candidate doesn’t reach the 50% plus-one vote threshold, then the candidate with the least amount of first-choice votes is eliminated, then second-choice votes from those who voted for the last-place finisher are reallocated among the remaining candidates and tallied – in a process that continues until a candidate receives the majority of the vote.
Alaska and Maine use RCV for both federal and statewide elections, while Hawaii uses it for some statewide elections.
