Buckeye Reporter

Gina Swoboda and U.S. Rep. Allen West (R-TX) recently discussed election integrity during a Live Free TV broadcast.

Swoboda, executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), told voters to educate themselves and hold their local county election officials accountable. She pointed to the last presidential election, saying it provides some teaching points about the matter. Swoboda and West, a former military officer, discussed cleaning up voter registration roles and more. The VRF has a mission to acquire the voter roles from every state and publish them online, she said.

“So we need to verify that compliance exists in your county,” Swoboda said when she was 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 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 have them make these at least county election officials comply with the statutes.” 

The VRF is 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 50 states,” VRF says on its website. That goes beyond publicizing the voter roles. “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 talked about the Supreme Court decision handed down recently in the Moore v. Harper case. The case stemmed from 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 their legislatures can be overruled by the federal government. 

Swoboda feared that restricting the election power of the state legislature could lead to more fraud and corruption. She brought up the lawsuit filed by former Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin regarding events with the 2020 election. 

“The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election,” Paxton wrote in the lawsuit. Six other states joined with Texas in that lawsuit.