ACLJ Files Critical Brief to Fight Federal Power Grab

Today on Sekulow, the ACLJ is filing a critical brief in Georgia to protect the integrity of our elections. We're representing already over 57 members of Congress. We'll talk to you about it today on Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Welcome to Sekulow. And if you heard that open over 57 members of Congress, the reason why I say that is they had been in our Director of Government Affairs, not on the broadcast today, because we're still working up until the moment we file this lawsuit, which will be filed today. The brief will be filed in support of the state of Georgia against the lawsuit, the challenges to the voting law in Georgia.

This is, again, the Biden administration bringing the lawsuit through the Department of Justice. We represent 57 members of the House of Representatives, including all of the Republicans from Georgia, so the entire Republican delegation from Georgia and the House of Representatives. Of course, they don't have any in the Senate right now, represented by the ACLJ, but that's along with 57 total members of Congress, that number likely to go up by at least a few. We've got members of the leadership, Steve Scalise, Congresswoman Stefanik as well. So, I mean, this is, again, it just shows you the ability of the ACLJ to organize it.

We looked at it. We literally have representation from members of Congress from coast to coast, from the reddest of red states to the bluest of blue states where Republicans still get elected. And they're on board with us because this is being filed today, and it's to protect, again, the integrity of the election. We don't want to see, and I think most people in this country, both sides of the aisle, if they're being honest, no one wants to see 2020 again where the outcome of the election is in question and people don't have faith in the process. We want to make sure voter integrity is restored so that whatever happens on election day, win or lose, your candidate wins or loses, you feel like and you know that it was fair, that you were beat fair and square. And that's the kind of quick process of healing in America. What doesn't work is the months of uncertainty, which we saw out of the last election cycle.

And I think we have to be ready for it again because we start seeing the Fauci types go on TV and say, this is going to get worse than we've ever seen. And when they say that months before school goes back and we get back into a fall, if they can have this repeating kind of crisis feeling, I think that the Democrats think that benefits them because the laws go out the window. I mean, look at what's been challenged. So Georgia put a prohibition on government entities mailing unsolicited, unsolicited absentee ballot applications. In other words, the government isn't just going to send out an absentee ballot because I've used absentee ballots before and you have to fill out an affidavit. But Georgia now is saying, like most states, by the way, unsolicited absentee ballots will not be sent out.

That's just one. That's being challenged, Andy, by the United States Department of Justice. Yeah, this is a federal power grab, Jay, and that's nothing short of that. The Constitution of the United States, we know, gives the time, place, manner, and method of electing to the states.

And that's what the states are supposed to do. The state of Georgia, in enacting this bill, is really trying to establish election integrity. And one of the things that you do when you establish election integrity, among the other things that the statute provides for, is that if you don't solicit, if the ballot is being solicited by a non-governmental entity, it doesn't count. I have voted absentee.

You have voted absentee. We ask for the ballot. We verify it. We give our identification. We swear to it. We send the ballot in. I don't see anything wrong with that process.

You know, I think, again, this is a fight, these are these fights that are certainly worth fighting for, which is, one, the ability for the states to do what the Constitution gives them the power to do, which is to set the rules of the game, to set them up, to make them clear so that everybody who's running for office knows what the rules are, what you can and can't do, how we're going to move forward, how we're going to proceed, and we're not going to do this haphazard kind of throwing things together in election cycles. So if we're going to have the drop boxes, they're going to be official. They're going to have cameras on them. We're going to know what happened. You don't have to worry about the situation. You don't have to worry about fraud.

You don't have to worry about this uncertainty that then created months, months of problems. This is a way to solve that and move forward. It's why we supported the ACLJ, but we do something about it, representing 57 members of Congress as we speak.

I think we'll be more than that. We'll be right back on Secular. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to Secular Studio, ACLJ's position here filing the brief. We represent 57 members of Congress. You'll be able to see that later today when it's filed. We'll have it up at ACLJ.org.

You can go through and see that list, but it really is a coast-to-coast list. It includes all Republican House members from Georgia. So this is Congress saying this is not our role. This is not the federal government's job. This should be the state, the state legislature, not us, not DOJ, but Georgia's state legislature.

The Department of Justice has completely misinterpreted the United States Constitution. First, the election clause, as Andy said earlier, of the Constitution gives the state legislatures the role of power with broad authority to regulate the time, place, and manner of elections. That's in the Constitution. The election clause also gives Congress, not the executive branch, not the FBI, not the Department of Justice, not federal courts, the authority to override a state law if the state law is in violation of other constitutional principles. So Harry Hutchinson, our director of policy, let's look at this from a policy perspective. Here is what Georgia put in place in their law.

A prohibition on government entities mailing unsolicited absentee ballot applications, modification of the identification requirements, because you actually have to now show voter ID, and timeframes for applying for these absentee ballots, regulating the use of the ballot drop box, as Jordan said. So look at that and tell me, why is any of that unconstitutional? Well, it is not. And it clearly is not. And I would argue that the Democrats, who are suing the state of Georgia, they know it.

So what they have done is that they have woven a tale, a fantasy. Why? Because they dislike any law that increases voter integrity and voter security, because they believe that that disfavors you. That disfavors Democrats. So at the end of the day, the Biden administration is prepared to sue Texas. It's prepared to sue Georgia, even though both states, if you look at their proposals, they would provide greater voter access than most blue states do today, including the state of Delaware. So at the end of the day, we have Vice President Harris. She is now on record claiming that rural voters, they are harmed by voter ID laws.

Why? Because they can't find a kinkos. They can't photocopy. So what are we saying? We are saying that the Democrats, at the end of the day, sorry to use this metaphor again and again, they believe in elite condescension. They believe that anything that improves election integrity is unconstitutional. They have no grounds for that claim. Yeah, this lawsuit is really the culmination of months and months of lies and half-truths by the President of the United States, by Stacey Abrams, by the left-wing media and others.

I'll give you an example of that. This new Georgia law actually requires Saturday and Sunday early voting, which is something that many states do not have, including President Biden's home state of Delaware. But what they did on this, on the Saturday, Sunday early voting in the Georgia law, it says you have to be open from 9 to 5. Normal voting, I think, is 7 to 7 through the week. What President Biden comes out and says, oh, they're limiting the hours, they're shortening from 7 to 7 to 9 to 5, failing to mention that those new hours were for expanded voting on Saturday and Sunday. Through the week, it's still 7 to 7, and local counties can even extend it past that deadline in the evening if there are a lot of people lined up.

They don't mention that. I think it's worth repeating. You understand that this increased the days of early voting. Yes, absolutely. And so they latched on to the 9 to 5 on Saturday, Sunday to say, oh, wow, they're restricting when in fact they added two more days to early voting.

That's the kind of lies and half-truths that are being promulgated out there. This is a move, Jordan, you said it earlier, this is a move that, look, it worked for them last time. Yes, it did work for them last time. It was to try to scuttle these laws, call them racist, but also I think what they liked last time was the how do we, you know, just kind of throw it together. That worked better for Democrats. When the laws weren't clear, and the laws weren't kind of written down, and so everybody was kind of doing it by county by county, and you had state legislatures saying, well, we'll let the county registrars or whoever decide how this should move forward in their county. And, of course, none of that worked, so you had people saying in their county, well, this was rejected, but in another county, this was accepted, and that's because there was this, they kind of threw out the law this last election cycle, and Democrats said, oh, we like that.

That helped us. We got to put out ballots to whoever we wanted to, and now the idea is that if you don't mail a ballot to everybody in the country on every address you have, you're a racist. By not delivering the ballot to them, not the request, but the actual ballot itself. Georgia put in the law. There is the no excuse mail-in voting or absentee or however you want to call it.

You don't have to come up with the reasons now. It's not like jury duty. You can get the mail-in ballot very easily, but you do have to take a step to request it so that they're not, as we saw last time, mailing out live ballots to people. They don't even know if they're there anymore.

You didn't know if the people there were there anymore, Andy. People got an early ballot. They also could have voted.

There was no voter ID verifications. So look, here's what I'm saying. As I look at the situation in Georgia, obviously, despite what people are saying, Stacey Abrams was very successful in both her application of challenging Georgia and her voter registration issues. So now with Georgia's coming back, this isn't the, you know, in the clip we played earlier, there was this talk that this is, you know, Stacey Abrams gets what she wants.

Well, she was able to because there was no real challenges to this stuff. The state consented to these orders. Republicans.

Yeah, Republicans consented to the order. So that's really a little disingenuous for them to be complaining about that in one sense. On the other hand, if you look at it from a legal standpoint, you're talking about if you look at the law, what does the law require? A state has the constitutional authority to put in basic voter integrity measures. And that's all this is.

That's exactly correct, Jay. As Harry Hutchison, again, very tersely and correctly and succinctly stated, as he always does, we're here to ensure election security and integrity that those two goals are left by the Constitution to the states. That's not unclear. You read the Constitution and you see that. And if there is going to be any change because of discrimination or animus based upon race or some suspect classification, that is Congress's responsibility to do. And it is not the executive branch's responsibility nor the federal courts. And what this simply does, this Georgia law, this very comprehensive and I think very constitutional Georgia law does is it creates a situation where we do not and cannot hopefully have a repeat of 2020.

Jordan has said this before. We don't want a repeat of 2020. The legislature sat down and said let's figure out where the problems were, let's correct those, absentee balance, mail imbalance, voter identification, things of that nature. And the legislature, using its constitutional power under the United States Constitution, enacted this comprehensive law and I think that it should stand constitutional scrutiny. And the same goes not only for the ACLJ but for 57 members of Congress including the entire Georgia Republican House delegation led I must say in the tip of the hat to Congressman Rick Allen who really spearheaded this in Georgia and other Congressmen who signed on. The question of course is that they're using the Voting Rights Act, Harry, as the basis upon which the Department of Justice says Georgia violated the law here.

That's what they're basing this on. They are, but the subtext is that they are claiming that voter integrity laws are essentially racist inventions. But it's important to note that 80% of African American voters support voter ID laws. It's important to note that a majority of voters, both Democrat and Republican, support voter ID laws. And thirdly, it's important to note that voter ID laws are supported by something called common sense. But it's clear also beyond question that the Democrats, they reject common sense. They reject anything that inhibits their ability to win free and fair elections going forward. So rather than having a contest between all, that is decided by all legal voters, the Democrats want to decide to expand the voter role to individuals who are not even citizens of the United States. One of the concerns I have Jordan though is any way these cases go, if Georgia wins and we think we win the case, this becomes a talking point though then for their court packing plans.

Sure. Like the other major case we've talked about, the life case, the direct challenge to Roe vs Wade, these would be the two, I think you combine those two, the election laws and the life issue. But listen, that court packing could be an endless cycle of partisan politics when it comes to our courts.

Any sense that the court is independent would be gone because the next group would come in, they'd try to rewrite it to add or remove justice. What do you do with lifetime appointments? Well it takes a while so you gotta wait and then you're supposed to go back. We have nine, it's an odd number, it works, it gives a big sense. Big sense, you get age variation, you get the difference in age, you get the difference in opinion, and you get time on the bench, there's no reason to do that, but you don't back down from these fights because of what they might threaten to do. Exactly.

Because so far they haven't been able to do that, that's been like a wish list item. So let's fight for what's right, we'll be right back on Secular. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family.

Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. This is just an example of why you have to fight. It's the extreme. It's a New York Times opinion piece. But they published it. There's no good reason you should have to be a citizen to vote. Read that again.

It's like The Onion. There is no good reason you have to be a citizen to vote in the United States of America. Yeah, and there are pieces that legal residents should be able to vote. But sometimes people that have legal residency don't want to be citizens. There's reasons why they put themselves in the position they do. Others, yes, they are waiting to be citizens. And when they are, they will get to vote. But there's a process.

This is the idea of the chaos theory. Because how would you start determining that? You're going to start asking for green cards, but they don't like you asking for IDs. So how would we know who is a legal resident under their view? Because it's like they don't want to see an ID. So if you can't require people to do that, then how are you going to require people to bring green cards to go vote? But of course, this is the absurdity to even have the discussion that a non-citizen could vote.

That's where they want to push you, though. Because they're saying the elections aren't legitimate because they don't reflect who's actually in the country. Again, so they realize that these laws are going to hurt them. They know there's a Republican wave coming, likely the House.

I mean, these are right on the line. That's what happens if you look through history. So they're coming up with ways to figure out around that.

They saw in 2020, in 2016, one way, in 2020, one way to do that is if you soak the chaos theory, they were able to use that to their advantage. This would be another example, an extreme example, but pushing this agenda that we're bad people because we don't allow, it goes with the CRT, it goes with all that stuff. This is another one, if we don't allow people who are here and working to vote, even if they are not citizens, we're bad. But this is, no country would allow this.

So why would we, first of all, we are a constitutional republic, a representative government, represent of the people. What are those people? The people that are the citizens of the United States of America. Not people that just happen to be here.

What's their next thing? You're on vacation for two weeks so you get to vote? I mean, you happen to be in the United States, so you know what? I'm going to vote.

Citizenship doesn't matter. But here, I go back to the basics of this lawsuit. Georgia passed a clarification statute.

They said, you know what, we're not going to just mail out absentee ballots, which is absurd when you think about it. People request it, and it's very liberal on how you can get it. You don't have to have, I'm going to be in such and such, I won't be able to do this. You request it, you're going to get it. But you have to request it. To me, that is just fundamental fairness.

Yeah, absolutely. It's common sense. But what we're looking at here is political expediency on the part of the Democratic Party. And what the Georgia law is attempting to do, along with about 16 or 18 other states, is rein in the chaos from the last election.

But the chaos worked in favor of the Democrats, and so right now they're for chaos. I tell you what I find really, really offensive also, Jay, is when President Biden talks about this being a Jim Crow law and Jim Crow 2.0. Accusations of racism, when racism does not exist, lessens the impact of real racism, which is out there. And it's an insult and a disservice to people who face real racism. For him to come out, this guy who's been in Congress for 37 years, he knows about Jim Crow laws. He knows what the Jim Crow laws really are.

And to bring in racism and to accuse us of being Jim Crow, knowing how horrible that period was in our history, is an insult to people who still face racism. But the political reality of this is, Andy, that there is the sense among the left that conservatives are vulnerable right now because of the last election and because of the issues that have developed over the last year. So any attempt by a state to use its constitutional authority is going to be viewed with suspicion. Well, that's exactly right, Jay.

In other words, press your position when you see that your opponent is down or potentially down. They see the riot in us conservatives as being down, as having been beaten, as having been trounced. We have an even situation in the Senate. They have the majority in the House. They have the White House. And they say, well, now let's press the advantage. This is a typical Democratic move, a political power grab on the part of the Democrats through the executive branch of government. And that's exactly what you just said.

When you have the advantage, you press the advantage. Let's take on the state of Georgia. Let's say that this comprehensive voter security and integrity act is really racist and point to some rhetoric in there, and no facts, by the way, whatsoever, that prove that it's racist. Well, I think that the federal district judge to whom this case has been assigned is going to see through that nonsense and that the actions of the ACLJ supported by 57 members of Congress. Think about this, Jay. Fifty-seven members of the United States House of Representatives have supported us in the view that the Georgia law is constitutional.

That is pretty impressive. There's an interesting question came in from Laura on Facebook, and it says, why is the left so opposed to the elections being fair? Well, it's been successful. They were successful last time, that's why.

Yeah, I mean, their idea of what's fair is different. So they are able to better utilize in those times when, because you look at these states, oh, this is a red state, it's like Georgia, or this state's blue. But what they do is they go in, they say, well, we could utilize a Democrat stronghold like the major cities, and we'll utilize the chaos to our advantage. Don't make this settle that we have the drop boxes, but we're not running them. We want outside organizations to run the drop boxes. We don't want the state to run them. So the idea that, hey, we need these drop boxes because it helps people in the areas, it'd be difficult to get to polling and it makes it easier. Well, they're providing that in Georgia, but they're not allowing you to just run your own drop box.

And that hurts the state savings types. That's what they were doing. They were running the registration, the voting, and the drop box, and they were providing a lot to people to vote.

I mean, there was a lot more than just, you know, kind of just a little water. I mean, they were encouraging people, they were hiring some people on very small levels, so they put these teams together. They ran the gathering, they were ballot harvesting. And so what Georgia's saying is, if we're going to do any of this, it's going to be run by the state and by the actual government. It's not going to be run by outside groups so that no one can point a finger, regardless of who wins that next election in Georgia and in the future, and say it's because of this group and we don't have laws on the books to handle it. Harry, the election clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the state legislatures the authority to regulate, we said this earlier, time, place, manner of elections. That's the election clause of the Constitution. Has Georgia done anything, we only got a minute before the break here, that violates that in your view?

Absolutely not. I think a clear reading of that statutory provision provides Georgia with sufficient constitutional authority to do what precisely they have done. However, we should also keep in mind that the Democrats, by and large, increasingly do not believe in the Constitution. They believe that the nation's founding was oppressive. They seek a new framing, a new founding. So they don't believe in opposition, for instance, to ballot harvesting. They believe that illegals should have the free right to vote.

And so the column from the New York Times, which says there is no good reason you should have to be a citizen to vote, I would argue that 30-50% of the left actually believes in that because they see that as a way of absolutely destroying the country. I agree. This is, again, we've got a second half hour coming up on Sekulow. We'll get into this because this is, again, we want to take your comments too, Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, you want to talk to us on the air, 1-800-684-3110, that's 1-800-684-3110. Later today at ACLJ.org, we will have this posted for all of you, too, so you can see the brief, see the members of Congress.

Again, it's at 57 right now. Than Bennett, our Director of Government Affairs, working on increasing that number as we speak. And a big thank you to everyone who participated in last month's Matching Challenge. We really appreciate that.

We'll be right back. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back. We are prepared to file our brief today. What's unique about this, too, and we didn't get into it too much the first half hour, but it's unique for the ACLJ. When we're filing an amicus brief like this where we represent members of Congress here, we're up to 57. Than Bennett, our Director of Government Affairs, is not on the air today because he's working on adding to that number.

It includes every Republican House member from the state of Georgia, as well as, of course, all these additional two members of the Republican leadership, Steve Scalise and Lee Stefanik. On top of that, this is unique because we're filing at the district court level to fight for voter integrity, to fight for the trustworthiness in our electoral process. We may not all like the outcome in our country, but we shouldn't have to go to court.

We shouldn't have to question whether the outcome was correct. And at the same time, states should have the flexibility to put in place the laws that are best for them. Georgia is different from North Dakota. They should have different laws, or Oregon, and different laws.

And that's okay. That's how the framers intended this to work, is that there would be, this is what you need to do, you then determine what's the best way to go about that in your state. And we'll leave this very small role for Congress to come in and make corrections. But the allegations are not that we don't like this process, but that it's a racist process. And so when you come in and say it's a racist process, it goes back to like the New York Times op-ed, that you don't need to be a citizen. And if you oppose this, you're bad because these are people who work in the country. But how would you ever prove they don't like voter ID?

So are they going to have non-citizen voter ID? We think about that for a moment. It's all to get to chaos. How do you get people to say, I don't believe in this process anymore. I don't trust this process.

I'm not wasting my time with it. And that's exactly, it worked in the last election cycle. That idea, unfortunately this idea, that was, Democrats loved when you had all these conservative leaders get out there. We were not part of that. But you had lots of conservatives out there say, it's not worth your time.

Don't trust the process. And so what? People didn't show up to vote. They lost.

Now, what did Georgia say? Well, okay, we need to do something so that doesn't happen again. Voters shouldn't feel like it doesn't matter. That's not a good thing for our country, for our Democratic Republic to survive. People have to have faith in the basic institutions that whether or not the person they voted for won or lost, they believe that they won or lost. And they trust that the process was fair.

That's all this gets to. But this whole idea that voter identification is some like, you know, hurdle that's impossible to jump over in order to vote, Andy, is absurd. I mean, you've got a voter ID to get on an airplane. You have to have voter ID.

When you're going to go visit your kids or grandkids at school, of course you have to. You'd think that would be required for voting. Yeah, I mean, as fundamental a right as voting is, you would think that identification is required. Well, I would tell Attorney General Merrick Garland, can you get into the Justice Department without an ID?

No, you can't. You can't get in to see you, Attorney General Garland, or any of your assistants at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., unless you go through a machine and unless you present some sort of identification as to who you are. Should it be any less so for exercising the sovereign privilege of voting?

The answer is absolutely not. Voter ID is not racist. It does not discriminate against a person because of race, nationality, creed or religion, or any suspect category.

It's applied evenly to everybody. You show an identification. In Georgia, if you don't have a driver's license, you can get a government ID. There is a way to do that. The law provides for that.

It's not that we're keeping you out. What we want to do is ensure integrity in voting. Folks, we're going to continue to take your thoughts, your comments on this as well. If you want to talk to us on the air, it's 1-800-684-3110.

Or you can get your comments on Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, Instagram, whoever you're watching. And what I encourage people to do is check this out later today to see the breadth of the representation. Who we're representing at the American Center for Law and Justice at ACLJ.org. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. This is a unique time in our country. We're not totally out of the pandemic as we all see.

I mean, by any stretch, and again, it really varies depending on where you are in the country about what the laws are like and the rules. So it's the time to put the rules about the voting, because no one could predict that we were going to still be in this spot today, and that the world would be in the spot it's in today, with the same COVID even after vaccines or whatever you want to talk about. But that we're in that spot, and that we're not going to allow this or anything else like it in the future that we may encounter to put our democratic republic, our country, in jeopardy.

That happened in 2020. I don't think it's done, by the way. I don't think that the integrity has been restored.

I don't think the trust has been restored. I think some of this hesitancy on the vaccine is that distrust of politics. Everything becomes political. The Olympics is political. Sports is political. And of course, voting, the most political of political things, with the actual ballot being cast, becomes the center point. I think this actually, if you compare this to Roe vs. Wade, and if this was, these laws versus the challenges to Roe vs. Wade, I think this, unfortunately, the idea to put in laws that everybody can follow, actually is more appealing to the left to do the court packing than even the abortion rights. Because this is truly, they know.

The abortion issue, if they win the elections, it becomes very easy for them. But if they don't get to change the way the game is played regularly, so that you can't prepare, and they utilize whatever crisis the country is going through at that moment, the laws need to be ready for those. And that's what this is doing.

This is saying, okay, we went through this pandemic and a crisis, what can we do so that, well, we still will have the drop boxes, but we're not going to allow outside groups to run the drop boxes anymore. We did last time, okay? It was a scramble. But now we don't have to scramble at this moment, so let's put in laws that make sense that everybody, Republican, Democrat, Independent, can follow. And that's how you make the election fair. The election's fair if everybody has the same rules. But then the New York Times, like you said, if people are not concerned before, then the New York Times runs an op-ed, a guest essay, that says there's no good reason you should have to be a citizen to vote in the United States of America. Now, if you're not a citizen of France, do you get to vote?

I don't think so. I mean, whoever, this is insanity, actually. This is where you're making such a mockery of the system. So, on one hand, Georgia gets sued by the Department of Justice because they're going to have monitored drop boxes and they're going to say, if you want an absentee ballot, you actually have to ask for it. On the other hand, the left is asserting, in the most read newspapers supposedly in the United States, that there's no good reason that you should have to be a citizen, Andy, to vote.

Well, there's no rationale to that whatsoever, Jay. This business, for example, of drop boxes, I personally witnessed that driving down a main thoroughfare in Atlanta, where I live in Ponce de Leon Avenue, next to a newspaper stand where, you know, you put a quarter in and you open it and you take a newspaper out. It's not a quarter anymore, just so you know. It's not a quarter anymore. You haven't bought one in a long time. I haven't bought one in a long time. Well, I thought, and I can't use a quarter to make a telephone call anymore?

No. Oh, that's interesting. Anyway, there was a box next to it for a mail drop box. It was not monitored.

There was no one looking at it. You could put anything you want into that and someone just came up, picked the box, picked the bag up. It was a paper bag.

It was a paper bag and it was a mail depository bag, picked it up and took it away. You can't do that anymore under the Georgia law. Look, the states have the right to enact under the Constitution laws peculiar to their jurisdictions.

Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota, Georgia, every jurisdiction is different. They enact laws governing how they conduct their elections. The Constitution says you can do that. There is no racial animus here. It is not saying that only white people can ask for absentee ballots.

That's not saying that. It's not saying that only black people can ask for absentee ballots. It says you can, but it comes from the government.

It doesn't come from third parties and you have to show an ID. What is wrong constitutionally with that, Jay? Well, the Department of Justice says, quite clearly, I mean this is the argument the DOJ makes, that the Georgia law is a disadvantage for minority voters, Harry.

That's what they say. Essentially what they are claiming is that they are morally superior individuals, number one. Number two, they are engaged in massive condescension. And it's important to note that this is a policy approach taken by the Biden administration. So the Biden administration, their opposition to voter ID laws, features dueling messages from Vice President Harris and President Biden who apparently are engaged in a contest to see which of the two can out-hustle the other in weaponizing race and racial hysteria for political purposes. The facts on the ground basically undergird the fact that Georgia is moving in the right direction. So if you look at a comparison between the Georgia law and what is going on in the state of Delaware, unlike Georgia, Biden's home state of Delaware has never allowed early in-person voting.

The state will perhaps begin to do so in 2022. So what we have, if we actually look at the laws side by side, dispassionately and impartially, is that Delaware's law historically has been far more restrictive than Georgia. Nonetheless, you have President Biden standing before a podium and articulating the following message that Jim Crow is alive and well in Georgia as opposed to being alive and well in Delaware. So if he wants to engage in such a comparison, he ought to look at his home state.

He ought to look at what the legislators in his state have done and perhaps the DOJ ought to turn its attention to Delaware and argue that Delaware is in violation of the Voting Act's right. You know, this again, I believe this is the biggest issue politically facing all of us is that the idea is that we cannot have large groups of people, especially, again, the left knows this, affecting the right more than the left, who are saying, I don't trust this process, I don't trust these people. And again, it doesn't matter if that trust and the trust that's lost is right or wrong. We'll get past that. We're past that now. We're past that election. It's that how do you, moving forward, make sure that people are willing to go through the process to vote?

It's not a difficult process at all. But that they are willing because they understand that it's going to be fair. It doesn't mean they will win, but that it will be fair. And they don't have to question the outcome of every election. We don't want to live like that in our society.

We don't need to create that kind of uncertainty. And unfortunately, what we're seeing is that to get to just here's the rules of the game, here's how we're going to move forward. We're modernizing the process, we're utilizing the mail-in, we're utilizing the drop boxes, but we're going to do it at the state level. We're going to do what's best for the state of Georgia.

And that's the people who were elected to serve in the state of Georgia at the state level, state legislature. This is what's best for us. That's how you get to move forward. If you fight these like the DOJ is doing, you will see another 2020. Now, I don't know what will come from that. I don't know if it'll just be apathy or if there's going to be war in the streets again. But we saw a summer of war in the streets culminating in the smashing of the Capitol, people, you know, for months on top of the pandemic.

Well, the pandemic is still here and they are starting, again, I think they're starting to stoke this fire again. And the way to put their fire out is to say, no, we're going to fight this, we're going to put the laws in place, and everybody's going to play by the same rules. Well, unlike last time where the litigation was haphazard at best, okay, not being critical, but being critical, haphazard at best with, you know, and conspiracy theories galore that were being promulgated by lawyers. What we're doing is actually looking at the law and saying this law as drafted and passed by the Georgia legislature meets the constitutional requirements of the election clause of the United States Constitution. In other words, it's constitutional. So that's why we entered in even at the trial court level, which is very rare for us at the American Center for Law and Justice.

It's not unheard of, but very rare, but we did it here because it's that important. We believe in voter integrity, okay? We oppose discrimination and racism in any form, but requiring voter ID, I'm going to play when we get back from the break with Vice President Harrison about voter ID. As Andy said, to go see Merrick Gartland's office or to go visit one of his deputies, you have to show voter ID, you have to show ID. To get into the Supreme Court of the United States, you've got to show ID.

To get on an airplane, you have to show ID. To turn this into a racial argument is ridiculous. We're not getting into theories about machines and all this other stuff, forget all that. Let's talk about reality. Reality, is the law constitutional or not?

And in our view, the Georgia law is, and that is why we are defending it at the trial court stage. Alright folks, we come back. We'll continue to take your comments on Sekulow.

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Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Sekulow. The CEO on Facebook wrote in, they're weaponizing our federal law enforcement agencies against us. It reminds me of the IRS scandal targeting conservative states.

Well, it is what's happening. So in red states, the DOJ, that's where the DOJ is going. They're not doing a review of the voting laws in the Northeast, even though those laws are more restrictive and usually don't have all these other options and ways to vote.

And certainly not at the widespread level. They're tiny states that combine to make up again their strongholds, but they're not reviewing those rules. And again, I think if you look historically back at states that kind of do everything possible to make it fair for everyone in the state, it is states that were subject to, until recently, the Voting Rights Act review by the DOJ.

Georgia. These states have tried to do everything, but last time around, they got put in a bad position. There was a lot of bad decisions at the state level by Georgia by Republicans.

We're honest and clear. They wouldn't fight Stacey Abrams in court. They were afraid of her. And they were afraid of the claims she was making.

So what happened? Chaos in the Georgia election. But that's because they said okay to that chaos. They created, they welcomed in the chaos theory of, well, who's going to be up, who's gathering the ballots, who's putting this together. And again, I'll tell you, someone's worked a lot in politics. When you're at the base level of not being able to understand what the law is, throw your campaign apparatus out the window.

It doesn't matter. Because if it's not clear for people who have been... Well, that wasn't the problem the whole... How they should go about getting ballots to people. It was during a pandemic. I think we have to be prepared. Not that we're necessarily going to be dealing with COVID in the next major election cycle, the midterms. But we might be or something else.

Who knows? So deal with it. Let's get ready as a country and let the states do what they think is best so that people don't say, don't show up to vote.

Yeah. Which by the way, Republicans were saying, including Republicans that were, you know, hurt the Georgia election. By the way, I'm not even... We're not talking about was the election stolen?

Was it... Would have the outcome been different? We're talking about fundamental constitutional fairness. Now, I want to play though what the Attorney General, Attorney General Merrick Garland said about the lawsuit.

And then I want to get Harry West, Andy Rispani. Listen to what he said. Our complaint alleges that recent changes to Georgia's election laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color in violation of section two of the Voting Rights Act. Now, that is a very serious allegation made against the state legislature that they were basically engaging in Jim Crow. Now, looking at what the law actually did, you got to request a mail-in ballot that the drop boxes are going to be monitored and it'll be state official drop boxes and the basic voter identification requirements.

So I'm going to start with Harry. The Attorney General has said this is abridging the right of black Georgians to vote on account of their race. That is a fundamental charge of racism by the Georgia legislature.

Well, there is not a scintilla of evidence in support of Merrick Garland's claim. Indeed, in Georgia, it is easier for African Americans to vote than African Americans in Delaware and many other states. So in Georgia, they have expanded the hours for voting. They are allowing absentee voting.

They are simply ensuring greater election integrity and election security. And African American voters, by and large, support what Georgia is doing, unlike what Merrick Garland is saying. All right, Wes, you said earlier, and I think this is important for our audience to say, that when you do something like this, you cheapen the actual issues of racism that do exist within culture.

Oh, absolutely. You know, I do not believe we are a racist nation, but like any nation, we're a nation that has races in it and there are some racist policies out there in certain places. But to accuse the state of Georgia of racism or any other entity when there is no racism involved is an affront to the victims of true racism.

I mean, it's an insult to them. And not only that, Jay, these accusations from Merrick Garland are an affront to anyone who is for free and fair elections. I encourage people to read the 98-page piece of legislation in Georgia. It really is not racist at all.

There's not even a scintilla of racist stuff in it. It makes it easy to vote, hard to cheat. What Merrick Garland and his Department of Justice is doing, they're losing their integrity by attacking voter integrity. Well, listen to what Vice President Harris had to say about voter identification. Is agreeing to voter ID one of those compromises that you'd support? I don't think that we should underestimate what that could mean, because in some people's mind, that means, well, you're going to have to Xerox or photocopy your ID to send it in to prove you are who you are.

Well, there are a whole lot of people, especially people who live in rural communities, who don't, there's no Kinkos, there's no OfficeMax near them. People have to understand that when we're talking about voter ID laws, be clear about who you have in mind and what would be required of them to prove who they are. Of course people have to prove who they are, but not in a way that makes it almost impossible for them to prove who they are. Of course people have to prove who they are, but not in a way that makes it almost impossible for them to prove who they are. proof who they are now andy you've already addressed this but we're talking about the state of georgia will issue you an id card you could go to any county city local township and get it copied nobody's going to give you a problem you don't have to own a xerox machine they even make i mean well they copy machines i mean this is absurd it really is jay it really is you could be in a county in rural south georgia where i spent my professional career and you could go to the county registrar's office in the county seat and you can get a county or a state id issued that would allow you to be to vote if you don't have a driver's license you don't have to own a xerox machine you don't have to have a king goes nearby you you don't have to have a massive uh reproduction facility in which you go in and get copies made vice President harris is absolutely incorrect as his merrick garland statement that this is a racist law these are not racist laws these are laws that are supported by most all of the citizenry who votes in the state of georgia and those statements are just plain false and the ids are free okay you don't have to pay for them yeah so it's not there's no cost there i just got notification from our senior council eric zimmerman that our brief has in fact jordan been filed yeah so there you go uh we we are again filing this at the district court level uh which is not where we usually take this where we represent the members of congress uh we usually start at the appellate court level we believe this is so critical to get out ahead of this uh that the trial court and what's going to be determined the trial court phase of this is so critical not just in georgia but to more than a dozen other states red states predominantly that may that are also the doj's crosshairs this is the first test this is the this is the test number one can we uh beat georgia if so then we can take this around and we beat all these other states and we're going to be back to the same place but i want to go back to what kamala said because i i live in 2021 um she is trying to talk like we don't live in a time where you can scan things on your phone um and it by the way the phones are free i mean so people are handing out phones or however you want to sign up for and yes there's people that are in tough economic situations or rural areas but laws are that's why you have the flexibility at the state level to figure out what's best for your state and the residents of your state ones who live in the urban areas the ones who live in the rural areas you get to determine because you actually live there and represent them at the state level which is what our founding fathers intended because that's how you figure out what's best whether or not it's a fedex key codes or not she's talking about outdated things let's be honest i'll be right back on secular they lived in like two decades ago they love that talk to you tomorrow at the american center for law and justice we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad for a limited time you can participate in the aclj's matching challenge for every dollar you donate it will be matched a ten dollar gift becomes twenty dollars a fifty dollar gift becomes 100 you can make a difference in the work we do protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family give a gift today on the aclj.com your family give a gift today online at aclj.org