With little time left to shore up the integrity of the fall elections, states are being urged to grab some $75 million in federal grants to protect balloting.
“As Americans are losing confidence in the fairness, integrity, and security of their vote, redoubling our commitment to secure elections cannot come soon enough,” said a letter to the National Association for Secretaries of State from key conservative watchdog groups.
While the grants have a wide variety of uses, the groups want states to focus on cleaning up voter rolls, protecting ballots, and increasing the confidence in voting.
“We, the undersigned organizations, urge every state to prioritize these funds for election security by implementing new election integrity provisions many states have adopted in the past year,” said the letter, signed by Jason Snead of Honest Elections Project Action, Jessica Anderson of Heritage Action, Ken Blackwell of America First Works, and Ken Cuccinelli of the Election Transparency Initiative.
The funds are part of the ongoing Help America Vote Act, and each state is eligible for at least $1 million, less than in past years but still a significant amount. States have to match 20%.
The groups said that they hoped the money will boost voter confidence and integrity in elections following the 2020 vote that saw several outside groups, including two funded by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, pouring cash in to juice the vote in mostly Democratic areas.
“We urge this latest round of federal funds be devoted to improving the security and transparency of elections,” said the groups. They listed many of the uses they prefer the grants to fund in states:
- Voter list maintenance.
- Post-election audits and process reviews.
- Voter fraud investigations and the operation of voter fraud hotlines.
- Investigations into misfeasance or malfeasance by election officials.
- Purchasing security cameras for drop boxes and voting facilities.
- Enhancing cybersecurity.
- Acquiring new voting equipment, such as voting machines that produce voter verifiable and auditable paper trails.
- Training for election officials.
- Voter education campaigns to raise awareness of new or modified voting procedures.
“We urge you to meet the challenge of declining confidence in elections with a renewed focus on the security and transparency of our elections,” said the groups, adding, “After all, the American people want it to be easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
