Ambassador Randy Evan’s Confirmation: It’s About Time, But for the Left It’s Not About Facts

Today former RNLA Chair Randy Evans was finally confirmed to be Ambassador to Luxembourg after his nomination first was announced last September. The delay in confirming Ambassador Evans was part of the Democrats' general obstruction of President Trump's nominees.

The stated reason for the delay and opposition to Ambassador Evans was stated by Senator Bob Menedez on the Senate Floor today:

I oppose Mr. Evans nomination . . . my concerns center around his tenure on Georgia’s state election board from 2002-2010 . . . In March of 2005 Georgia passed a controversial new law requiring voters to show a photo ID. . . Multiple voices accused the Board of a deliberate attempt to mislead voters and possibly suppress minority turnout. 

The problems with this are numerous.  The Board of Elections of Georgia is bipartisan.  Ambassador Evans was hardly acting alone.  Is Senator Menendez saying the Members of the Commission who were appointed by the Georgia Democrats of working to “suppress minority turnout?” Ambassador Evans was merely working in a bipartisan fashion with the Democrats to implement a law pasted by the Georgia legislature.  It was the duty of all commissioners.

Second, the numbers tell a very different story on “voter suppression.”  In the 2008 election in Georgia, African-American turnout was up an amazing 7.5%.  And it was not just 2008 when President Obama was first on the ticket, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution stated in 2012 on the voter ID law:

Turnout among black and Hispanic voters increased from 2006 to 2010, dramatically outpacing population growth for those groups over the same period. . . .

Elections data reviewed by the AJC show that participation among black voters rose by 44 percent from 2006 — before the law was implemented — to 2010. For Hispanics, the increase for the same period was 67 percent. Turnout among whites rose 12 percent.

It was expected that African American turnout would spike in 2008, when Barack Obama became the first person of color to win the presidency. And it did rise to historic highs in Georgia.

Black participation fell in 2010, as it did for all demographic groups. Still, a far greater share of black voters turned out in 2010 than in 2006, showing that Obama was not the only factor driving turnout.

It is incredible that Democrats used a bipartisan commission’s work as an excuse to oppose Ambassador Evans.   Does anyone believe they would have opposed one of the Democrats on that Georgia Election Commission at the same time if they were nominated by Hillary Clinton? 

The larger issue is the terrible games that Democrats are playing with nominations.  The Democrats also opposed the first openly gay Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, for a similar length of time.  He was finally confirmed less than a month ago.  America needs its Ambassadors and Democrats need to accept that Trump won and stop attacking worthy nominees.

Halloween Special: Zombie Voters

In honor of Halloween, we are going to do something a bit different and highlight a candidate for Georgia’s Secretary of State's ad. 

Unfortunately the punchline of the “dead voting in California” is not a joke.  A number of reports from TV news groups in California have documented real “zombie” voting.  

Forget the Russians: According to Democrats, Microsoft Word Hacked into States

RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen wrote today about the election hacking story that has largely been ignored by the media:

Cybersecurity experts have confirmed that the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security attempted to hack into states’ voter registration systems in Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, and West Virginia. . . . Back in December of 2016, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp went public with findings from his office that a “third-party cybersecurity provider detected a ‘large unblocked scan event’ on the morning of Nov. 15, several days after the election.” He further alleged that the event began as far back as February of that year.  The “scan event” turned out to be one of 10 unsuccessful attempts to penetrate Kemp’s firewall, the same one protecting his election systems. 

What’s more, the hacking attempts occurred on key election dates and also happened to coincide with Kemp’s public statements pushing back against a DHS plan to designate state election systems “critical infrastructure.” . . . Kemp felt the effort was an intrusion into the sovereignty of state elections and said so publicly. The timeframe for the hacking attempts matched up with key dates in the 2016 electoral process and with Kemp’s pushback, including when he testified to Congress about election security and against the critical infrastructure designation. 

The Obama adminstration attempted to deny this but kept changing their story, at one point blaming an old version of Microsoft Word:  

Most damning? The cybersecurity firm discovered the hacking attempt originated not from some foreign country far away but from a workstation located under the umbrella of DHS . . . .  Federal agencies were not allowed to access state databases at the time without permission from the state. . . . All of this led to an investigation by the DHS Inspector General and a series of different explanations from DHS.  On December 9, DHS suggested the attempted hack originated with an employee’s misconfigured workstation.  On December 12, Sec. Johnson wrote that the attack was nothing more than a contractor accessing public portions of the Georgia Secretary of State’s website through “normal Microsoft Internet Explorer interaction” and that no scanning occurred. On December 16, DHS held a conference call with all state election officials and claimed the attack against Georgia was caused by a contract employee at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers using an older version of Microsoft Word that created an open option call against the Georgia firewall.  In other words, Microsoft Word did the hacking?  These excuses rank up there with the dog ate my homework excuse of a child. 

Kemp found these varying explanations unsatisfactory and wrote a letter to Trump asking for a review.  Likewise, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called for an investigation by the DHS Inspector General. 

While the media speculates and focuses on what influence Russia may or may not have had in the 2016 election (which is a serious problem worthy of inquiry, as Thielen notes), there are verified instances of attempted hacking of state election systems by the federal government under Obama that have been largely ignored.  The results of the congressional inquiry and DHS IG investigation remain to be seen, but we trust that DHS under Secretary Kelly and President Trump will respect state sovereignty and state power over administration of elections and not threaten the integrity of state election systems through unauthorized and unlawful attempts to hack into them.

House Panel Demands Explanation of DHS' Attempted Hack of GA Election Systems

A House Committee has asked the Department of Homeland Security to explain attempts to breach Georgia's election systems from a DHS IP address last year:

The leader of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants a fuller accounting from the Department of Homeland Security about complaints of the agency "rattling of doorknobs" on the state of Georgia's network firewall. 

Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sent letters on Jan. 11 to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and DHS Inspector General John Roth asking about "unauthorized scans" and "unsuccessful attempts to penetrate" the Georgia Secretary of State's  firewall from last February into November's election season. . . . 

In his letter to Roth, Chaffetz requested the IG open an investigation into DHS' activities with the Georgia system. In his letter to Johnson, Chaffetz requested all of the DHS secretary's correspondence with [Georgia Secretary of State] Kemp. 

According to Chaffetz' letter to Roth, Johnson informed Kemp the attempt to gain access to the state's network had been "normal…interaction" by a DHS contractor with the Georgia Secretary of States' website." Johnson, according to Chaffetz, assured Kemp that "'there was no scanning,'" or security assessment of the network by DHS. . . . The official explanation, Chaffetz wrote, is dubious and requires an independent investigation.

We thank Rep. Chaffetz for taking this issue seriously and trust that DHS under the newly confirmed Secretary Kelly will fully investigate this attempted breach and reign in DHS' overreach into state election administration.

ICYMI - DHS IP Address Attempted to Hack GA Secretary of State

Shortly after the election, there was an attempted hack of the Georgia Secretary of State's network, which was traced to the Department of Homeland Security:

Georgia’s top election official this week accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of trying to hack a computer network containing the state’s voter registration database. 

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, demanded information about the alleged intrusion attempt in a letter sent Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. 

“On Nov. 15, an IP address associated with the Department of Homeland Security made an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the Georgia Secretary of State’s firewall. I am writing you to ask whether DHS was aware of this attempt and, if so, why DHS was attempting to breach our firewall,” Mr. Kemp wrote. 

“At no time has my office agreed to or permitted DHS to conduct penetration testing or security scans of our network,” he added. “Moreover, your department has not contacted my office since this unsuccessful incident to alert us of any security event that would require testing or scanning of our network. This is especially odd and concerning since I serve on the Election Cyber Security Working Group that your office created.”

Not having received any satisfactory answer or explanation from Obama's DHS, Sec. Kemp is now asking President-elect Trump to investigate when he takes office:

Kemp said he is not satisfied with the response from current DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.  

"Since contacting DHS with these concerns, we have collaborated with the agency and provided extensive, additional information," Kemp wrote. "Last night I received a letter from Secretary Johnson which lacked any specific information as to the attacks' intent or origin despite the fact that many questions remain unanswered." . . . 

DHS has offered several different, yet unconvincing, reasons for the attempted breach of Georgia's systems, leaving Sec. Kemp to wonder if his opposition to DHS overseeing elections was the reason for the attempted breach:

Kemp, who sits on a DHS-managed election cybersecurity working group, has also been the most vocal critic of the idea of adding elections to DHS’s portfolio of critical infrastructure systems. 

“The people of Georgia are very concerned about what exactly happened here, and they are demanding transparent and honest answers,” Kemp told Trump. “It appears that will not happen with the current administration.”

We trust that the Trump DHS under Secretary Kelly will take this breach seriously and investigate the source.

Voter ID on Super Tuesday - Record Turnouts Despite Voter ID Laws

The opponents of voter ID are eerily silent after record-setting turnouts occurred yesterday in states with voter ID laws. It’s now exceptionally clear that the alleged claims of mass voter disenfranchisement are overstated fiction. The five Super Tuesday states with voter ID laws -- Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia -- experienced record-breaking turnouts.

Alabama anticipated high turnout, and it was high:

"We expect [turnout] to be as high as 750,000 people in the Republican primary and 350,000 in the Democratic primary," [Secretary of State John] Merrill said. Turnout could be "higher than every election that we've seen since 2000, with exception of the 2008 race, where it was a very competitive Republican primary" and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama boosted turnout in the Democratic primary, he added.

Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas also experienced much higher than average primary turnout.  Virginia had 30% of eligible voters cast a ballot in the primary:

Elections officials say turnout in Virginia's Republican presidential primary was substantially higher than it was in 2008, the last primary in which no incumbents were running.

The Virginia Department of Elections said approximate figures late Tuesday show that about 800,000 Virginians cast votes in the Republican presidential primary. About 575,000 people voted in the Democratic primary.    

In 2008, roughly 489,000 people voted in the Republican primary, while about 986,000 people cast votes in the Democratic race.

The left's claims of confusion and mass disenfranchisement if voter ID laws are passed should now fall on deaf ears. On Super Tuesday, voters turned out, disenfranchisement was non-existent, and electoral integrity took a huge step forward. The left will likely continue to assert absurd claims of voters being disenfranchised but, on the heels of many record-setting primaries in states utilizing voter ID, everyone should know better.