We have breaking news: another fake midterm poll scandal breaks wide open. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments.
For call one eight hundred six eight four three one one zero. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. This is Logan Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at one eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten.
Once again, I always have to state this at the beginning. We are live. This is not a replay. But there's been another just breaking news story that again breaks down. Here comes Will Haynes.
He's a little late. Breaking down. I'm going to call you out on it on the on the air. There you. You can walk.
You can go. Go sit down. Go sit down. You know. Let's restate this.
There you go. He's going to have to walk in front of a camera. Oh look, he did a good job. Phone lines are open at one eight hundred six eight four thirty one. Tend to be on the air.
This is Wedgwood polls, which again would be being picked up and cited and sourced by the New York Times, by plenty of other major media outlets. MS Now featured one of these polls.
Well, they admitted to the public that this was all a social experiment to see how much the mainstream media was vetting. Because guess what? All of these polls were completely fabricated.
Now we can go into the morality of this, whether this was lying to the public, whatever it may be. Maybe even sort of the election interference nature of it. But what it does is a bit of a whistleblower way to say, "Hey, we need to actually be vetting media who we're sourcing." And in a world where you have to continually churn new content, you need to make sure your reputation stays intact. And thankfully, in some ways, I mean, part of me loves this—that they were able to expose that major organizations, again like the New York Times and MSN, were not vetting their sources properly and were relying on a brand new company that popped up, claimed all these numbers, including some pretty egregious ones, compared to some of the other polls that came in. And they were sourced and ran with, and now we need to go down to the details of what that means because it also shows the truth behind the mainstream media and what's happening.
I am sure between that and some of the election integrity issues we're going to have a little bit later because you're going to be shocked to hear. Probably not shocked, but everything is always a little surprising when they're out there and they admit it. But Los Angeles has admitted something pretty major. In terms of the way they're vetting people who are legally or illegally voting, or their inability to, of course, Rick Cornell is going to be joining us for that. We're also going to have Jeff Balaban on to talk about from ACLJ Jerusalem, talk about the most recent statements from Al Sayed, claiming again in a big statement that we need to reframe our thoughts on Israel, and then maybe, not even maybe.
That Israel is not our friend. That's his quotes, not mine. We're going to get into that a little bit later, but Will, why don't you take us through some of this polling scandal? That's right.
So if you'll remember back in August, there was another company, fake company, that did the same thing during the Democrat primaries, and they focused in on Wisconsin governor's race, the LA mayor, as well as the governor in Nevada.
Now those were just Democrat primaries, but it should have been a wake up call then. Yeah.
Now those weren't picked. Up by the media as much. Those were used by campaigns to try and tout. Look, we've got a we've got a lead, right? But what happened next?
This company, Wedgewood Polls, actually got picked up by sources like the New York Times and their poll tracker, the kind of king of all polls, Nate Silver. He used these and even in his polling data. We'll give weights to different polls of, like this one influences my model more. The Wedgwood poll for the Michigan Senate race with El Sayed and Mike Rogers. He waited at a one point one, which is a very high weight.
That means that it is getting a lot of influence in his prediction to the outcome.
Now we're going to get into this because it brings up a lot of questions: First Amendment questions, media questions, the press. All of these things are now starting to. We're peeling back the veneer that a lot of you have been saying the whole time: of don't trust polling; these are polls are fake. In some cases. They actually were just fake.
Yeah, they put out a statement. We'll read it. We get back, but just the opening is Wedgwood polling, an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry, makes this public statement.
So that is just the beginning of their statement. Saying, "Guess what? We were fake all along. This was to mess with you and mess with the media and to prove." The point that a lot of us have been sharing. We're going to get into the details of that.
Of course, what they plan to do with this experiment. Phone lines are open at one eight hundred six eight four three one one zero. We'll be right back with more on Sekulow. Don't go anywhere. With under thirteen days until the midterms.
Phone lines are open for you at one eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten. How are things looking in your area? But when you hear this, does this make you laugh? Does it make you your eyes open? Do you have a problem with it?
Maybe you have a problem with the fact that maybe this kind of thought experiment or experimental project, if you will, could mislead people, sway people's votes. How do we hold them responsible? But at the same time, I'm happy that it happened because I think it's good to show the vulnerabilities that sometimes the media portrays. Of course, I'm talking about this polling company, Wedgwood Polling, which again was cited by the New York Times, by Nate Silver, by MS Now, Newsweek, Decision Desk HQ, where a lot of people turn to for the current polls in election coverage, and they put out this statement. This, of course, they put out statement yesterday.
Wedgwood Polling, experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry, makes this public statement. Why do we do this? Having previously worked in polling and research sector, we watched as the public's trust in polling eroded alongside a rise in unverified, low quality methodology. We wanted to test a simple hypothesis: How easy is it? How easy is it for an entirely fabricated polling firm to gain traction, be taken seriously, and expose how little scrutinization exists in media and public commentary?
The short answer: far too easy. It goes through now. How far it went, the scope of the project, and now moving forward. Which their concept with moving forward is Wedgwood polling was never intended to sway an election or permanently mislead the public. It was designed as a wake up call.
If a fictional entity run by a small group of industry veterans can be integrated into major polling averages and cited by major news organizations, the standard for how polling data is vetted, aggregated, and reported must change.
Well, and also they they. Were very thoughtful in the way they did this, because they actually did one legitimate poll. And that was in Nebraska, and they used standard rigorous methodology to give a real baseline to compare against the synthetic data.
So to ensure that their synthetic data was indeed fake, fully synthetic, they did a real poll as well.
So this was a—I mean, this in some way they said it was a crowd-funded Nebraska poll.
So they obviously were using money for that that was used for a legitimate purpose.
So, I think they were very cautious to make sure that this wasn't something they were profiting off of. That when they did crowd fund to do a poll, it was spent for a real poll, as to not get in trouble with some sort of fraud claim. I think that those that are upset about this, mainly Democrats, probably are going to try and figure out if there is a way they can try to pursue a claim. I don't know under this Department of Justice if they will. But here's what's also interesting: is because it fooled the media, it fooled the New York Times.
They put it in their poll aggregator, Nate Silver, who runs the Silver Bulletin. Obviously, he gained fame by creating FiveThirtyEight, which was later bought by the New York Times. He was taking the The methodologies that were used in Moneyball, you know, that made the Oakland A's such a success story and that everyone heard about, he used that same methodology to apply to polling forecasting in politics and had some success for a while. But his his credibility and his ability to call things has fallen off of late, and I think a lot of that goes into the heart of this very story: is that are the Polls being vetted by the people that are saying that they know what they're talking about, and it turns out no.
Now there was pushback. How this kind of all came to fruition is that there was one organization, fifty plus one. That started to raise questions, and that prompted them to to put this release out. As finally, someone was pushing back on it, but not before all the legacy people ran with it. And we're seeing polls in which, like I said, El Sayed in Michigan had a big lead.
It was an outlier poll, but was weighted one point one.
So if you're over one point, you're one of the more blue blood polls in the Nate Silver analysis. That's Giving a lot of of credibility and weight to what your poll is saying, Nate Silver gave him a one point one.
Now in the main Senate race, he used it and it was only a point five. Still is factoring into what his prediction is for the Susan Collins and Troy Jackson race. But then you also start to see things like this. They release polls in Mississippi. Where Cindy Hyde Smith, who's the incumbent, is running, and and it's not even a race that people track because typically in Mississippi the incumbent Republican is going to win.
They released a poll, and I put that in quotes because it was a fake poll, showing that she was only four points ahead in a 511 likely voter poll conducted between October 12th and 14th. What did the Democrats decide to do in that? In Chuck Schumer is the head of The Democrat Senate Fund. They started spending money. In Mississippi, because it showed that the incumbent was only four points ahead in a race that should be well outside the margin of error.
They spent one point two million dollars after spending zero dollars in Mississippi, so there were real consequences. That and even the politicos weren't even doing the the. They were just reading it. What do you think about that? I want to know from you.
Do you you're happy that this? I'm happy that it was exposed. That they were able to admit this. This wasn't some like group of kids. Or even group of political operatives creating fake polls to help bolster their candidates.
This was an experiment to see if the media would attach themselves to fake poll numbers without vetting them. But what do you think about that from a political point of view? From a moral point of view, I think we have there's some blurry areas here for sure in terms of is this more of a whistleblower scenario? Is this a scenario where they could influence elections? Or you could see how it now if they had never admitted this or admitted this after the election, I think we would have had a bigger response here.
But they said that was never the plan.
Well, exactly. They're saying that the point was never to go to election day and then after it say we were a fake. It is two weeks out. That is close. It technically is election day every day in most of the country.
But at the end of this statement, they say we hope this experiment sparks a necessary conversation about data integrity, media literacy, and accountability across the political research landscape.
Now, I know our audience always tells us don't believe the polls. Right? What have we seen that the polls have not been right by an average about three and a half percent for Republicans over the last few cycles? But when you You start to bring your candidate was had a massive lead, maybe. You may not be as motivated to go wait in that line, right?
And once again, who who is who's at fault here? Is that one they were trying? As our producer will pointed out, they're begging for someone to catch them. They they wanted to not be trusted, but they had a hypothesis as well: is that they were going to be able to run with this and that no one was going to pay attention. And this is coming after another organization, which I think raises a lot of questions.
And hopefully, we'll find out and people will probe. This and try to see were these related to median strategies? The one that in the primaries was admitted to being fake and was putting out polls. Are these entities related? Are the people that were behind it related?
But at the end of the day. The media and the politicians—they use these as confirmation bias of what they wanted to be true. They wanted it to be a much bigger lead by the Democrat candidates than actual reality, or even if it is reality, there was no data behind this. This isn't real statistics. Could that hurt Republican candidates as well by saying, "Well, look, there's no chance their lead is down significantly"?
So you go, "Okay, well, what was the true motives of a Wedgwood polls? Can we take them at their word that this was not to influence elections?" Or is this more? They kind of got caught.
Well, and I think if you do take their statement at face value, that they were trying to get caught, they were trying to see if people would vet it. Then, yeah, you can believe that it. There's a way it could hurt both parties. I don't think that what we've seen here is a clear indication that this was partisanship. And and I think that the the First Amendment actually gives a lot of leeway in experiments like this.
Now, there, there. I think they have to be careful if they're looking at if if. People were making money off this experiment. Yeah, you could be charged with fraud or something of that nature if you had investors. But if they were running this and it was purely their own cash, except for the one legitimate poll they did use, it says that was crowd funded.
Then I think that yeah, this is an important wake up call for not just the American people. I know our audience don't trust polls, but the the media itself, if they're running with these polls and they're saying, look, everything we believe to be true, El Sayed is going to run away with it. Or Susan Collins is going to lose, or Mississippi could flip. We could have a Democrat senator like in Georgia. Then I think that it really should be a wake-up call and completely reform the polling industry.
I still think. In this day and age, and I know you and I disagree on this quite a bit about there is a place for legitimate statistical analysis in the world today, but we've been so far away from that for so long that this isn't even something that you can take at face value. That I have a problem with statistical analysis. I do. You know, you hate polling.
I just think that it has been well, well. Underserved to people, I think the people who are actually committed to doing polling right now are largely all pushing you one way or the other. I can't tell you the last time I felt like I had a legitimate pollster reach out that wasn't a biased push poll or something like that.
So, sure, do I think there could be places for polling? Do I think the idea of surveying less people that are watching this show on Rumble right now is going to give me a good statistical analysis? No, I do not. And I think we live in a world where you could update that significantly.
However, I am so thrilled that the light has been shined on the media, and saying look, when you because because even one it also tells the American people you got to be careful with who you trust and the sources that you trust because even those sources are sometimes not vetting their own sources. But I think we can go into the sort of moral gray area we have with creating a fake poll in general. I want to hear from you about it. One eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten. We're also going to move this conversation a little bit to Al Sayed coming up here in the next segment.
Jeff Balaban, ACLJ, Jerusalem is joining us. If you have a comment about that, or maybe you're in one of those areas, one of these highly contested elections, give me a call. Welcome back to Sekulow. Jeff Balaban from ACLJ Jerusalem is joining us, but before we do that, I want you to hear from the source himself. This is from ABC News, by the way.
Just a few days ago, we were going to try to get to this yesterday. By the way, if you were watching, you're wanting to know the update here, but we had such a crazy show, we had to move some things.
So today, though, we want to talk about this. Of course, the polls have been showing a much closer race in Michigan with Abdul. Al Sayed, running obviously, and now, though he has pushed back on a lot of the claims, the Muslim Brotherhood claims all the different things. has has taken a how dare you kind of approach. When he was asked about our current relationship with Israel, it could not be clearer.
So let's take a listen again. This from ABC News.
So you don't consider Israel to be an American ally. An ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn't be fighting is not an ally. It's like, I mean, you have kids. I do. And if you have a your kid has a friend who keeps bumming off their their their money and then talks about them behind their back and then gets them into into fights with other friends, what would you tell your kid to do with that friend?
You probably tell them maybe it's not actually a friend. I think it's time for us to realize that like Israel is not actually our friend. Jeff, when you hear this, and there's a lot to unpack there, obviously for many reasons. But I want to focus in on where the media, as we've been talking in the previous segment about the media not doing their job vetting polls, now the media not doing their job vetting candidates, because he uses this analogy of kids on on the playground and and and to use it and say Israel's not our friend. And he says this line.
He says, and clarify, I want to say this again. This is not used in in some sort of you know gray language of you know we need to start thinking about it. It's it's time for us. I think it's time for us to realize that Israel is not actually our friend. Is the end quote here?
Right? Yeah.
Go ahead. And he says, you know that that obviously this this friend of your kid is is bumming off their money, talks about them behind their back, and then gets them into fights with other friends. Where is the question from any respectable journalist that says, "Okay, who do you consider the United States' friends?" It one if Israel is not, but also what friends is Israel getting us into fights with that are our friends that you think are our friends? Here, his logic here is leading to something that no one is willing to follow up on, and I want to get your thoughts on it, Jeff. Right.
Well, there is a lot to unpack here. Let's actually look at this. Israel. Hey Jeff, we're going to reconnect with you. I think we're having a little bit of a difficulty here.
Check him to make sure. I just want to make sure that I be like, what you have to say is very important. I want to make sure it's clear.
So again, this is another moment we all have to be we're really checking in on what candidates you're potentially you know potentially voting for. I saw a lot of my more left leaning Christian friends sharing this sort of clip, are going back and forth when he was, you know, are you part of the Muslim Brotherhood? And then they had this whole debate and going, look how good he was at this response and. And calling him out for his own Christian bias and all of those things, so it's not unlike the fact that you will have people who may have not voted for for him. I mean, look, you had a major conservative figure saying, "Yeah, I would vote for him over current," but yeah, Jeff, I think we got you back.
Let's kind of restate where you were at. Sure.
So, I hope you hear me now, but the There is a lot to unpack, and let's start with this. First of all, what's the premise of this? We hear this argument from the radically most extreme, you know, fringe on the right, and now increasingly the mainstream on the left. Right, the extreme right, who are part of the Republican Party, leaving the Republican Party, same story. Story is that somehow Donald Trump.
And the United States of America, the Republican Party—they're dupes, and they don't know what's in America's interest. And they're fighting some other country's war, but it's an absurdity. Fact is, I've written about this, but you know, we've heard testimony about this over and over again in Washington for 20 years. In 2008, which was not quite 20 years ago, Iran tested a weapons delivery system that would literally wipe out our grid. Right, from two thousand and nine to two thousand and fifteen, no, still twenty five.
The Pentagon had a team. Their entire job was what to do about the threat to America's grid because if that happens. It is literally an existential threat the entire forty eight lower states because our grid is interlocked and it would shut down the grid, which will kill so many millions of people. I don't want to say it on air because it's terrifying. It's more than many multiples more than all the wars that that have been lost, all the wars fought by America since the beginning of the United States of America.
That's the threat. Iran has the delivery mechanism. That's the testimony from two thousand eight. The reason, the only reason, that America didn't take it out. Was too far.
One, they had bomb and body. You seem to want to throw money at them, watch what their what their goal was, while they were while they were developing nuclear weapons, and you had the Republicans who were saying they have to stop it, but they didn't come up with any plans because there was no delivery mechanism to actually drop the bombs because the Iranian air defenses were too strong, so America couldn't do couldn't drop the bomb we've had for over a decade, Israel. Israel, tiny Israel, launched its armada of airplanes. In a day and a half, it did what Russia couldn't do in Ukraine in over four years. It controlled the air over a distant enemy that's a thousand miles away from Israel, at the fire of Syrian, Iraq, or enemies.
It's extraordinary. By the way, when the American planes were flying, they were flying with Israeli systems to protect them. The Israel cleared the way, and General Kane, his staff, reported the next day after we bombed Kordel. That that no Iranian response, no planes rose up to meet them, no anti-aircraft defense, because Israel wiped it out. When America goes back again, Israel once again wiped it out.
Who's actually helping who? This is an incredible alliance. Both the hexad and Marco Rubio referred to the two most powerful air forces in the world, because they acted as one air force. And I'm here in Israel, see a lot of U.S. Air Force and U.S.
military, and to talk. And the experience they've had is extraordinary. They they they said they had no idea what to expect, and they couldn't believe how they integrated and how much they loved working with the Israelis.
So I'm just going to go on for a long time and I'll say very shortly: the narratives they lie. This is an American war that was not cleared by by Iran in 1979. From that day to this day, in the process, killed, named thousands, thousands of Americans, mostly military. The fact that we are waging a war on the other part of the world. That's not a bad thing.
That's the most America-first policy you can imagine. Instead of waging war on the American homeland, where things will be destroying America, waging war on terrorist homeland. Israel made that possible to literally save America. This entire thing is reversed. This entire thing is nonsense.
And the problem is, it's already in the mainstream among Democrats. And the fear is, it's getting mainstream now by extremes among Republicans. And Jeff, I think you're right on that. We're seeing it mainstream. You see it everywhere online now that they are not our friend.
That has become almost the the easy and accepted thing across that. We've only got about a minute and a half left, but I do want to quickly ask. You know, we talk about the midterms here, and that Iran may be quiet after that. But there's a warning in Israel. I want to let people know what it's like there because the Israeli elections are next week, and there's concern Iran may try to.
Do something. We got about thirty forty-five seconds here.
Okay.
So yeah, very quickly, Netanyahu did respond to questions on the Israeli. About rumors that there might be an attack, and he confirmed that there was inside intelligence that there may be an attack to interfere with the Israeli elections, which are coming up on October 27th next week. Very big elections, national elections, obviously to form a new government potentially. And and so there is some there is a warning now. He said he's not he's not planning a preemptive strike, although he's just saying that.
But they're they're on high alert here for people around. to to try and damage statehood on Thank you so much for joining us, Jeff. Apologize for some of the technical difficulties we had there, but I appreciate it. Thank you so much for spending some time with us, and go try to enjoy the rest of your night. With that being said, we only got 20 seconds here, but we have a second half hour coming up.
If you don't get us on your local station, we broadcast live each and every day, Monday through Friday, noon to 1 p.m. Eastern time. Join us live, or of course, catch us archived. Wherever get your podcast, but we're streaming now for another half hour. Be a part of it at aclj.org, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, or wherever get your podcast.
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Second of our Sekulow coming right up. I want you to be a part of the show as well.
One eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten, and always support the work of the ACLJ at aclj dot org. Rick Rennell's going to be joining us coming up a little bit later as we really uncover a major plot in Los Angeles. Not even a major plot. I mean, just like we say, it's all Los Angeles. A major plot point that has now been shown an admission of guilt in terms of how people are vetted to vote.
And maybe how they have the inability to vet who can vote. We're going to get into that a little bit later with Rick Cornell. You're not going to want to miss this one. Trust me. With that being said, we are still talking about the Israel situation as well with Al Sayed and everything that was just we were just discussing with Jeff Ballabon from ACLJ Jerusalem.
So, want to take a phone call about that? Let's go to Orrin in Pennsylvania. Orrin's watching on Rumble. Go ahead. Yes.
Hello. Yes, I am a very American, and I am very, very upset about the inroads that these Islamists are making. But I am also upset about Alina Haba taking fifty million dollars from the Venezuelan. I knew you were fake as soon as you started. I could, I could, I could feel it in my bones.
But you know it's okay.
So I used to be the phone screener, so maybe that's why you know used to talk to me, and I I can I can I can source out a fake accent.
Well, Logan's got a feeling I do. This is going to be a bad call. It was immediately, yeah, immediately. And look, I'm not even I got no problems with discussing any sort of topic. If you had actually just called and been honest, I would have been happy to discuss it.
But instead, you decided to try to fool our phone screeners and fool me. But you know what?
Sometimes things don't happen. That being said, phone lines are open for you if you're legitimate and. And nice to our phone screeners, you know, one eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten to be on the air. For some reason, also when I said it came from Rumble, I was like, "There's we got some Rumble callers that are good." Uh huh. There was just something about it.
I'm like, we need a new Rumble caller. New Rumble caller. We got some, you know, the the usual suspects over there on Rumble that like to call in and contribute to the show in a respectful way. We like them. That's Move on in the next segment.
You may be wondering, again, what's happening about voter fraud in the situation in terms of people who are not supposed to vote. And look, there is some issues. We're in local elections in certain places. People who are not here as citizens of the United States of America are still allowed to vote.
Okay, you know what? That's a local election law. What happens when it turns to then them trying to vote in a federal election or vote in the Presidential election? How are they vetting them? How are they vetting them in statewide?
How are they vetting them citywide in a city like Los Angeles?
Well, we found out that maybe they don't have the ability to do that, and they've admitted it themselves. But don't worry, they don't want any help. They don't want it fixed. They don't want thousands of people to not be able to vote, even if they have no way to make sure that these voters are legitimate, and have admitted that. Very, very specifically.
That's right.
And as we get closer, obviously, to election day, yeah, under two weeks. Just know the ACLJ is hard at work on election integrity and uncovering where we find problems and pointing it out and passing it along to the Department of Justice when needed. But this is interesting because we. I'll take you back to August, where we through our state FOIA requests found out that the Secretary of State. Doesn't track when they remove someone from the voter rolls based off of voting or trying to vote or registering to vote when they have sworn that they are eligible to.
And then aren't because they are not a citizen, and the attorney general has no way to track that whether or not they are going to try and prosecute someone for voter fraud in the state.
Now you've seen some things pop up overnight that you know the they've arrested 11 people in California for voter fraud. One of those individuals said, "I've never registered to vote, nor have I ever tried to, because I'm not eligible." So he's saying someone was using his name trying to do this, but then there's a court filing from the city of Los Angeles that we're going to break down for you when we get back from this break that admits everything we've been telling you, where they're saying we have no ability to verify that the people registering to vote. Are indeed eligible to register to vote, and Rick Grinnell is going to be joining us in the next segment. If there's been anyone who is working hard and tirelessly to try to save California, it is Rick Grinnell. We don't abandon states here.
We don't abandon cities here. I believe in a powerful Los Angeles. I believe in a powerful New York City, but we can't do it without some sort of change and making sure that we're you know abiding by the rules. I think Rick's going to have something to say. We'll be right back.
As we wait to connect with Rick Grinnell, as we are doing that right now, I think we got to restate the facts of this situation, and we'll bring him in in just a moment here of what's happening in California. And if you have a thought about this, I'll say out of that fake polling scandal. In the next segment, I want to take a ton of calls, and right now we have four open lines.
So one eight hundred six eight four three one one zero one eight hundred six eight four thirty one Because we're involved in this as well, the ACLU. That's right.
So, when we talked back in August about this, we sent state FOIA requests to the Secretary of State of California and the Attorney General's Office of California. The Secretary of State said they couldn't give us information on people they had removed from the roll or canceled their voter status because. They don't track it. Like that was their admission. They said, "Hey, we have no records because we don't do that.
We don't track that." Okay, surprise, surprise. But then we also got information from the attorney general's office that said they have no records containing or addressing policies that are specific to handling investigative referrals for illegal voting.
So the secretary of state doesn't track it at the state level, and the attorney general's office doesn't prosecute it at the state level. But now they're.
Something even more troubling that's coming out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, Bill Osali. Who pointed to a court filing? There's a ongoing fight between the federal government wanting to investigate what they believe are as many as twenty thousand suspected non citizens on the voter rolls, and the city of Los Angeles is fighting it. They don't want to work with the federal government to clean up their voter rolls, and they conceded in court.
And this is just what blows my mind. I'm going to read this directly. This is the City of Los Angeles. What they filed with the court, not what the government alleged, what the federal government alleged. The registrar is not equipped or authorized to verify voter citizenship because it does not independently house citizenship-related information beyond the voter attestation as identified in federal and state law.
And certainly is not equipped to do so within the election period. Rick, we know the state didn't do it because they told us, and we know the attorney general doesn't prosecute it because they told us.
Now the city of Los Angeles is defiant against the federal government instead of working with them, and in their own court document they admit the only thing we go on here is if the voter says. Yeah, I can vote. I'm a citizen. They got to go with it because they have no way of even checking if that's true. Does this surprise you, Rick, out of your home state?
It doesn't surprise me, except for one point here. They say that they will ask the voter, but they won't ask for an ID to choose.
So they literally are going out of their way to say you can't ask for an ID. You only can ask someone individually. Are you a citizen? And if they say yes, you have to believe them because we're not going to check.
Now imagine an airline doing that out of LAX to say, you know, are you a criminal in any way? Are you carrying anything that you shouldn't? Oh, you're not.
Okay, go on through. We're not going to check. I mean, look, this is a disaster from the beginning. This is sanctuary states. Sanctuary cities.
Our attorney general in California, Rob Bonta, is the one who is supposed to be challenging things and following the law, and he is absolutely not following the law. He's willing to put his head in the sand, as evident by what you just read. I think this is pretty simple. The Democrats in California are supporting by bigger numbers than they ever have supported any type. Of common sense legislation, they are saying we need to have a voter ID.
When it comes to this third group, what some would call independent, but we in California call them no party preference, meaning I am not going to prefer any party, and I am not going to tell you what I prefer. The no party preference group is overwhelmingly for a voter ID, and of course, Republicans are for common sense and voter IDs.
So. I think the state is really, and the counties are really in a predicament here. And thank God that President Trump and our team in Washington is really pushing as hard as they can. Rick, we actually have a phone call coming in with a question. I think they want to address to you specifically about some of the issues in California.
Let's let's take this from Sandra, who is in California watching on the Salem News Channel. Sandra, go ahead. Oh, thank you, Rick. I wanted to ask about. I have received.
Four additional ballots this time, and have for years. My husband recently passed, but I received six to eight when we were both voting, and it's been going on for years. I've called the number on the back, taken them to the polls with me, taken them to the post office, returned. No, this person does not live here, and I've gone to two offices. Republican.
They happened to be closed the days I went. How do you get a number or somewhere to return these so they can get taken off the polls? I think, Rick, we can answer this. Is mainly this is precisely one of the major problems that's happening here. Is this plan is not quite set.
Look, the simple answer is that you're supposed to be able to go to the county voter registration. Office, the voter registrar, and tell them, and they should immediately remove it. They should be interested in removing it. They should be proactive in checking, but the reality is, is they don't want to remove people from the polls because then they call you a racist if you do. Here is the problem: we have a bloated voter roll in every single county because we don't check the voter rolls as evidence.
You. We we don't cross check it against who's legal. We don't cross check it against a database that shows people that have moved out a residency violation. If you lived in California and then moved to Nevada, you're you're you know. Either between Nevada and California, you're supposed to figure out where you're registered.
There's a communication there, and you're supposed to be removed if you don't do that communication. Then after voting, not voting like three times, then you're supposed to be removed. The problem is, is that people get. Ballots in the mail that don't know they're coming. Every single person on the bloated roll gets a ballot, and then all sorts of nefarious activities happen.
People fill these out for others, and if you get six ballots, you're really now asking for trouble because people are going to fill out six ballots, and and really try to change the system of one person one vote. Not having rules is crazy and. It's just common sense to be able to say. Take the voter rolls and purge them. Often, make sure that every single person who is legally allowed to vote is able to easily vote.
Only send ballots in the mail to people who know they are coming. If they didn't request a mail-in ballot, it shouldn't be sent to them automatically. And then, at the end of the day, ask for a voter ID.
Well, and Rick, I think even to that point that. They're they're they're now broadcasting. They don't track this, so I think that's even a little bit more dangerous. Is they're not trying to say, we don't track this, but yeah, we need the help of the federal government. We need to figure this out.
They're now broadcasting it. They're putting in legal documents. They're telling the truth. They're telling the ACLU, we don't track it. And you see this—this eleven individuals that were arrested by the federal government for illegal voting in California over the past twenty-four hours.
One individual was interviewed by the media and said, "I've never registered to vote, nor have I voted because I am not eligible to vote." So now you get into a weird situation. The the state of California made it so easy; they don't ask for ID. This individual could be telling the truth.
Someone was doing identity fraud and voter fraud at the same time.
Now that's up to the federal government to decide and and to follow the facts and follow the evidence. But hearing that as an alibi per se from someone telling the media is not even close to being outside the realm of possibility because they're broadcasting. Anyone can use these names, and what's a easier person to use?
Someone that actually is eligible to vote and goes and votes, and then you have multiple voting records in the same election. No, that's going to get caught. But the people that aren't even eligible, that they're not checking, use their names all the time because the real person may be doing the right thing, and they'll never know that you're voting in their name illegally.
So I think it raises even more issues by trying to track it down by what they're admitting. Yeah.
Well, look. For one thing, let's be clear. It's illegal to ask for an ID. It's not just something that they say we shouldn't do. It's actually, if you ask for an ID, it's illegal because they somehow are spinning that it's bad for certain people to be able to ask for an ID.
They had never been able to explain why you need an ID for so many other things, including at LAX to get on a flight. But regardless, that that's their position. Look, I think that the triple whammy of bloating the voter rolls, sending a ballot to everyone on a bloated voter roll that doesn't know it's coming, and then not following up with some sort of a verification of a voter ID—that is a recipe for disaster. People who don't even know that they've been voting are getting caught in the system, and it's clearly Funded for groups of people to go out and steal these elections. Look, Rick, I appreciate you calling in and being a part of the show today because we have a petition available right now at aclj.org/sign.
S-I-G-N, like signing a petition, or you could scan the QR code you see right now. It has all to do. With voter integrity, election integrity, be a part of it today. You can read it, sign it, be a part of the ACLJ team, and our push for election integrity. Do it today at aclj.org.
We're going to be back with your calls and comments coming up. Give me a call right now. We got a few lines open. Welcome back to Sekulow. This is the last segment of the day.
We actually do have a bunch of lines open right now. We had some people on; they hung up or something happened. We had a glitch.
So, guess what? If you want to call in right now, it's a great time to do it. We got to restate even some of the first topics we discussed. I know a lot of you are tuning in right now, maybe want to know about it because you have seen us go through multiple different topics over the last hour.
Sometimes I see in the comments like "get to the topic," and it's like we did that earlier in the show.
So now I always have to remember we got a lot. Watching online, who may have just seen a thumbnail or just seen a title, clicked on it, want to know we're talking about here. We're talking about Wedgwood Polling, a company that was very honest after they weren't, because they initially had polling numbers. That got ran with by the New York Times, but Newsweek, MS Now, Election HQ, all of these different companies and organizations are running with these polling numbers from this allegedly real company, Wedgwood Polls. But guess what?
Two weeks before the midterm elections, Wedgwood confirms not only and not necessarily in the same way you're thinking they weren't creating fake polls to dupe the American people. They were creating fake polls intentionally to show the vulnerability of sourcing in the media.
Somewhat, I'm glad they're doing this. I'm glad that you see. They honest work that they're doing in some ways, saying, "Look, this entire thing was an experiment to show what you read on the media isn't always accurate." Some of these major sources, including the New York Times and all of these, are not checking their sources clearly enough because we were an experimental project. This is their quote to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry. And then they went on to make a statement going through exactly what the experiment was for.
I find that to be a pretty wild push, but also again, I'm conflicted because morally, you know, they created something that was fraudulent. They created something that was could, in theory, influence elections and was being picked up by major news sources. On the other hand, I see this as a giant wake up call, but it really should have been the second or third wake up call the media has had because this is nothing new. We have seen these companies pop up that are fake. And cause some chaos amongst modern polling.
That's right.
And once again, they say how far it went in their statement. They go, "How far it went." That's the heading. Despite having no history. No formal credentials or real data behind the vast majority of our releases. Wedgewood polling was added to major polling aggregators, including the New York Times, Fifty Plus One, and Vote Hub.
I'll add to that Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, and repeatedly treated as a legitimate data source. Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms, including being cited on air and in reporting by outlets such as MS Now. The ease With which unverified figures were absorbed into mainstream political narratives highlights a systemic breakdown in media vetting and data aggregation, and and here's the questions that this raises for me: one on on the project itself. I want to know more. I want to know who's behind it.
I want to know who's behind this, as well as median strategies, the fake firm that did it during the primaries for Democrats that showed insurgent candidates way ahead when, in reality, it was much closer races, and the candidates themselves were citing those polls. It didn't make it into the mainstream, but now Wedgwood polls did.
So, I want to know: Is it the same people behind it? Did two completely different anonymous groups have the exact same idea in the exact same election cycle? Maybe it seems odd and interesting. I want to know more about that.
So I hope people will do actual journalism and maybe try to run that down and try to see what's going on. But my second question here that I want answered is what's next, because. We all knew that the polling industry was a mess.
So, is there going to be reform? I don't want government regulation of polls. I don't think that that would be the answer here. I don't want more regulation necessarily of the news media, but I want a reckoning. I want.
And when was the people last reliable? It's been a while. I mean, from a federal point, from especially from a a Presidential election, right? National election. I mean, Obama.
I'm sure probably. Led in both the polls, I would assume.
Now we know Hillary led against Obama, but we had Obama once he became the nominee. I believe he led McCain and he led Romney in in most of them. They were close, but maybe a closer. But even go back before that, and they were still John Kerry was up in the polls significantly to George W. Bush on his reelection.
Like by. A hefty margin, and George W. Bush had that election called within a few hours of the polls closing.
So there hasn't been a real global sense or a a country sense of reliable polling, maybe outside of local campaigns in a very long time. But I think this also highlights what goes further with the media. It goes further than just polling them, taking a source, not vetting it, running with it, printing it. This is the entire industry. This is an industry that that I want to be thriving in the United States.
I love the freedom of the press. I want journalism to be good. I want them to be antagonistic of all administrations, not just the ones they don't like. We don't have that in the United States, and if they do have one that equally treats both, they get called a right wing organization. But the fact of the matter is.
The the polling industry, they was it was a source, and in this case, a named anonymous source. They were running with information they didn't vet, they didn't get multiple sources on, and they treat it as truth, in fact. And that's what we've been seeing since RussiaGate, through every story that they go after and attack conservatives not not the those on their side, but conservatives. They don't vet the information; they just use it as a bludgeon in the public space. Yeah, and I can honestly give.
It more if you are a political campaign and you're like, oh, this poll is nice for us. Let's run with it in a meme. Let's run with it in an image we're going to post on on social. Let's try to be you know proactive. Let's find some of these polls that are wildly off, but maybe could rile up our base.
That's different to me than the New York Times or Newsweek or MS Now or you know any of these sources for your election coverage because that's very different than running a campaign. I do. We have a a question coming in here. We're going to check that in one second, and we'll we'll get to it. Yeah, let's go to Tanya.
Who's calling? We got two minutes here. Tanya, you got about a minute. Go ahead. I'm just wondering why people think it's so hard to clean up the voter rolls.
Yeah, especially with people who have passed away, when you have to apply for a death certificate from the state. Right, Tanya. It should all be working together, and look in the world of AI. This is one of those things that should be easily working together. If you want to know what some of the good that could come from having artificial intelligence that can do these things—purging numbers, purging poll lists—yeah, we got to be careful on it.
Make sure it's doing it correctly. But there's a lot of things that can be done, and I think you're right. Cross referencing—I don't know—every three months, every six months. Every year, I mean, even every year, the death certificates—pretty easy, you think, to fix, especially if these are elections being run locally. And Tanya, here's the inconvenient truth about why it's so hard to clean up the voter rolls because they don't want them cleaned up.
Yeah, that's the inconvenient truth. They don't want them cleaned up. It's the same reason why the bureaucracies make it so hard to, to, to. In benefit to people that have passed away because they don't want to clean it up. The top dogs don't want it cleaned up, and let's just be honest: those working in the offices don't want to do the work.
You don't want to do the extra work because it's probably a pain to do. Just like a lot of people, they do their job. They don't want to be given more things to do. That being said, I'd love for you to do something for me, and that's sign our petition right now to support election integrity. That's by going to aclj.org/sign.
That's S-I-G-N, or just scan the QR code. It's a lot of great content on aclj.org. Not just this show we do each and every day, but of course, all of our free content is available. It's all free, only because you support it. But it's all there without a paywall, including our legal work.
If you need legal help, we'll attach you to a lawyer. You're never going to get a bill. You want to make sure we're there though, for you when you need it, and that's, of course, by supporting financially at aclj dot org as well. We'll talk to you tomorrow.
