Heritage Foundation takes voter fraud battle straight to states: 'On the target'

The Heritage Foundation is on a mission to make sure that every vote cast in an election is legitimate, and celebrated a win for election integrity in Arizona when Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation requiring voters show proof of citizenship in order to vote in a presidential election.

"We, along with many other people, have been fighting this fight. And we're pretty well on the target. The target being real issues, real state laws that have to change, real federal legislation that has to be defeated. We're not just saying this because it is the issue of the moment. We're saying this because it's a problem. And we're saying this because we're really frustrated," Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told Fox News Digital in a phone interview this month. "It is 2022 and one whole side of the American political system, the left, continues to propagate this crap." 

Ducey signed into law last month a measure requiring voters in presidential elections show proof of citizenship and that newly registered voters show proof of an Arizona residence. 

Heritage Action is actively lobbying a handful of other bills in the state, including prohibiting same day registration and unmonitored drop boxes. Roberts told Fox News that similar efforts are unfolding in other states. 

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Heritage Action, the 501(c)(4) sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, is registered to lobby in 15 states and of those, eight states, including Arizona, have been "very active on the election reform bills," according to Roberts. Those states are Florida, Utah, Virginia, South Dakota, Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee and Oklahoma. 

"This is an issue about voter integrity, about making sure that every vote cast is one cast by the person who is verifying their identity. It is the greatest promise of America. We think even though it sounds a little idealistic, given the hostility from some of these blue state governors, that we'll eventually get [red, blue and purple states on board] because it's so common sense." 

Roberts said the "people are all in" for implementing reforms ensuring votes are legitimate, including "a majority of Democrats in some of these states." But the problem comes down to "institutional Democrats" such as members of state legislatures who have the means to block the bills. 

"It's crucial that Heritage and our coalition partners in these states remind the governors, remind the members of the legislature, that in spite of the heated rhetoric from these radicals, in spite of the threats of lawsuits from Marc Elias, who is an enemy of the people, to plow forward. Because number one, it's the right thing to do and number two is very popular. And number three, all of these challenges that Elias and his henchmen have propagated are not bearing fruit," he said. 

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Elias is a top Democratic election lawyer who founded Democracy Docket, a Democratic Party voting advocacy group, and a founding partner of the Elias Law Group. He has slammed Republican-backed voting laws requiring voter IDs, characterizing them as a tool to suppress minority votes. 

Roberts said that Democrats who use an "old outdated trope about any election reform being racist" are "exploiting" voters of color.

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"They're exploiting the legitimate concerns, especially that older Hispanic and Black voters have, because they can remember maybe when their parents or grandparents were trying to vote, and they were stopped and usually, by the way, by Democrat political machines in the South," he said. 

The Heritage Foundation has tracked voter fraud for years on its Election Fraud Database and also keeps tabs with an Election Integrity Scorecard, which ranks and compares election laws and regulations of each state. Roberts noted that fraud can occur on both sides of the political spectrum, but Democratic fraud outweighs Republican at a ratio of "nine or 10 to one."

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Heritage "is acknowledging the sentiment among a majority of Americans that we cannot trust our elections and acknowledging that it is very sorrowful for us to say that. The United States of America of all places, all of us: left of center, right of center, in the center, ought to have faith in our elections," Roberts said.