Point of View October 21, 2024 – Hour 2 : Economic Proposals, Presidential Election Expectations

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View. And now, Dr. Merrill Matthews.

[00:00:20] And welcome back to Point of View. I'm Merrill Matthews, sitting in for Kirby Anderson today, and we spent the first hour talking about health insurance, health care issues that are facing voters as we're coming up to the election.

[00:00:31] Now we're going to change focus and look at economic issues facing voters as they decide how they want to vote.

[00:00:38] And joining us, Dr. David Henderson. He is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Naval Postgraduate School of Research, Postgraduate School, I'm sorry, and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

[00:00:51] He was also a senior economist on Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, and he is the author of three books, and also the editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

[00:01:04] And he has a blog on Substack called iBlog2Differ. David, thank you for joining us.

[00:01:11] Thanks, Merrill.

[00:01:12] So, we've got a couple of pieces up on our website, pointofview.net, from the Hoover Institute that you have written.

[00:01:19] Looking at some of these economic issues, sort of comparing Kamala Harris to Donald Trump.

[00:01:29] So let's start out with taxes, because this has become a big issue.

[00:01:33] Donald Trump has proposed several tax cuts that he's interested in.

[00:01:38] Kamala Harris is proposing some tax increases, but also some tax cuts in forms of subsidies and so forth.

[00:01:45] What do you see there?

[00:01:48] Well, I think, obviously, I prefer lower taxes, all other things equal.

[00:01:54] And so to me, Donald Trump's views are better.

[00:01:58] So I'll talk about him a minute.

[00:02:00] The big concern I have, one of the best things he accomplished, with the help of Congress, of course, was the 2017 tax cut.

[00:02:08] Agreed.

[00:02:09] And the things he has proposed make it very hard to renew that tax cut.

[00:02:16] So he wants to have no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on people like me who get Social Security when our income is above a certain level.

[00:02:28] And all of those things, I mean, the tip thing, you know, employers will figure out how to turn wages into tips.

[00:02:37] Suddenly lots of people want overtime, which isn't totally bad.

[00:02:39] But, you know, anyway, and then Social Security, the whole idea when they introduced that tax with the 83 committee report, commission report,

[00:02:50] was the idea that people who have high income that's non-Social Security income, people like me, will pay taxes on it.

[00:03:00] So we get a kind of a means testing, which isn't great if we're starting with a surplus.

[00:03:07] But if we're starting with the huge deficits we have, this is a really bad idea.

[00:03:14] So he's doing a lot of things that are just very irresponsible.

[00:03:18] And also the state and local tax deduction, which was one of the limit on that to $10,000,

[00:03:24] which was one of the biggest accomplishments of that tax bill because it means that people in states like yours, Texas,

[00:03:32] aren't subsidizing implicitly people like me in California as much.

[00:03:38] He's actually talked, and it was a very loose talk when he was out in Long Island, who knows what he means,

[00:03:43] that he talked about getting rid of that limit.

[00:03:46] So all of those things would make it very hard to keep the 2017 tax law.

[00:03:52] Also, he wants to cut the corporate income tax from 21 down to 15.

[00:03:57] And again, in isolation, that's good.

[00:04:00] Corporate tax is tax capital.

[00:04:03] The less capital you have, the less productive workers are because they have less capital to work with

[00:04:08] and therefore the lower their wages.

[00:04:10] So the big beneficiaries of cutting corporate taxes are workers.

[00:04:15] But the thing is, again, in isolation that looks good,

[00:04:18] but that makes it very hard to keep other elements of the tax of the 2017 tax law.

[00:04:24] But he also has a caveat on that 15%, doesn't he?

[00:04:28] He wants to, if your company is based in America.

[00:04:33] Yeah, so that's an even worse idea.

[00:04:35] I want a level playing field.

[00:04:38] I don't want there to be some artificial incentive to have a company based in America.

[00:04:43] What about Kamala Harris's tax proposals?

[00:04:47] They're almost all bad.

[00:04:49] I'll give you the one good one in a minute.

[00:04:52] But she wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%.

[00:04:56] And I kind of said why that's a bad idea because corporate taxes,

[00:05:01] higher corporate taxes hurt workers, not just owners of shares.

[00:05:07] She seems to have backed off, but she doesn't talk.

[00:05:10] She doesn't say anything.

[00:05:12] So who knows what she thinks?

[00:05:13] But this whole idea of taking people whose net worth is $100 million or more and saying,

[00:05:18] well, you didn't sell your capital and get a capital gain,

[00:05:22] but we're going to act as if you did and tax you an unrealized capital gains.

[00:05:26] And, of course, people in that kind of category of wealth are some of the major investors in this economy.

[00:05:35] And so you're discouraging investment.

[00:05:37] And even if you say, oh, my net worth is half a million dollars, I'm not affected.

[00:05:42] Yeah, you are because it will affect the incentive to invest.

[00:05:46] So that's another bad one.

[00:05:48] The one good, and she wants to raise the top tax rate from 37% to 39.6%.

[00:05:56] The one good one is she wants to allow a deduction of up to $50,000 for $50,000 in expenses when you start a firm.

[00:06:07] And I think that's good.

[00:06:09] That's the only one I can see that's good.

[00:06:13] Well, the tax, she also wants to hand out tax credits or tax subsidies for children and also for first time buying of a house.

[00:06:22] And that's sort of the flip side of a tax.

[00:06:25] I mean, if you're getting a tax subsidy, you're in essence getting money as opposed to just paying lower taxes.

[00:06:33] Yes, she wants to give a tax credit of $6,000 to people for the first year of their kid's life and then a higher tax credit for kids generally.

[00:06:46] By the way, the person who's competing with her on that is Vance, is J.D. Vance.

[00:06:51] Yes.

[00:06:51] She wants this huge tax credit, which I think is actually more of a revenue loser than hers is.

[00:06:58] Because if I remember correctly, his would be $5,000.

[00:07:01] It would be $5,000 for every kid, no matter, not just the one-year-old or the one up to the one-year-old.

[00:07:06] And so, you know, who knows whether Trump will go with what Vance wants.

[00:07:12] We don't really know.

[00:07:13] Right.

[00:07:14] But you also talk about spending in your Hoover piece.

[00:07:17] And that's something almost no one is talking about in this election.

[00:07:22] Yeah.

[00:07:22] And I guess I'm surprised, but then again, I'm not surprised, but it's such a big deal.

[00:07:28] And you don't seem to have either party who says, we need to try to get control of government spending.

[00:07:33] That's right.

[00:07:34] And so, as a result, the Congressional Budget Office predicts we're going to hit a deficit of just shy of 7% of GDP.

[00:07:43] And that is unsustainable.

[00:07:45] But Trump has made it clear he doesn't want to cut Social Security, he doesn't want to cut Medicare, even prospectively.

[00:07:51] Like, let people currently getting it get what they get, but just lower, you know, lower the benefits over time because they aren't just inflation adjusted.

[00:08:00] They're wage adjusted.

[00:08:01] And so, people are getting higher real benefits than their counterparts 20 years ago.

[00:08:08] And so, it wouldn't be that hard to just slow that growth rate, but he's not talking that way.

[00:08:12] Kamala Harris isn't talking that way.

[00:08:15] And Kamala Harris has now proposed that they use Medicare to pay for home visits and so on, you know, people taking care of their relatives in their home.

[00:08:27] And Brookings estimates that that's around $40 billion a year.

[00:08:33] And I didn't check, I should have before this thing, I didn't check the Brookings method, but I bet you they just took who's getting home now.

[00:08:41] But of course, there's an incentive.

[00:08:43] It's called the Woodward effect.

[00:08:45] Hold on, we'll be back in just a minute.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:02] What do people in the intelligence community believe are the greatest threats to America?

[00:09:06] I had an opportunity to watch one presentation that listed five threats.

[00:09:10] The first is the possibility of an EMP attack in which a nuclear weapon is detonated at high altitude over this country.

[00:09:18] The Congressional EMP Commission has stated that it could bring down the entire power grid.

[00:09:23] The second threat could have a similar impact.

[00:09:25] This is the concern that sleeper agents from foreign countries in this country get activated and take down this country's power grid or conduct terrorist actions.

[00:09:34] A third concern is the possibility of massive supply chain disruptions which surface because of looters or rioters who target food production facilities and supply chains.

[00:09:44] We've seen many suspicious fires at food production plants.

[00:09:48] And this overlaps with a fourth concern that the country breaks out into a civil war with certain states deciding to secede and close their borders.

[00:09:57] A fifth concern results from China invading Taiwan.

[00:10:00] Some fear that this could trigger World War III if the U.S. decides to respond.

[00:10:05] China has the largest navy in the world and more warships than the U.S.

[00:10:09] I listed these in descending order of disruption.

[00:10:12] The first two threats would have a devastating impact on the country.

[00:10:16] Supply chain disruption could be harsh in some areas, perhaps less in others.

[00:10:20] And we might hope that the likelihood of a national civil war or the onset of World War III would be less likely but very devastating if it occurred.

[00:10:28] These threats are a reminder that we need to have serious and capable people in office.

[00:10:32] It's also a reminder that each of us need to also prepare for scenarios like this we hope and pray never occur.

[00:10:39] I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my Point of View.

[00:10:47] For a free booklet on a biblical view of Israel, go to viewpoints.info.com

[00:10:54] viewpoints.info.com

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:11:03] And we're back with Dr. David Henderson.

[00:11:06] He's Emeritus Professor of Economics at the Naval Postgraduate School and Research Fellow with the Hoover Institution.

[00:11:12] And, David, when we had to take a break, you mentioned the woodwork effect, and that's an important concept in economics.

[00:11:20] Yes, and you as a health economist probably know that maybe better than I do.

[00:11:25] This term came along in the late 60s when Congress decided to just pay for everyone's end-stage renal dialysis.

[00:11:34] And so they looked at the number of people getting it and said, we'll pay for it, and they multiply one by the other, by the cost.

[00:11:41] And they said, that's what it will cost.

[00:11:42] And it turned out to be way more expensive than that because, of course, people came out of the woodwork who weren't getting that done and got it done for free.

[00:11:50] Similarly, you put this plan in and you say, we're going to pay for all or most of your expenses.

[00:11:56] You're going to have people who weren't going to take care of their relatives in their home or they were going to take care of them instead of hiring people.

[00:12:05] And now they'll hire people and we taxpayers will pay for that.

[00:12:09] So my gut feel is that $40 billion a year is a substantial underestimate of the cost of that program.

[00:12:16] Is there any chance you think – I did hear Trump at one point say he wanted to cut spending, but he didn't spend much time on it.

[00:12:23] But given the fact that when you talk about cutting spending, you get a lot of attention, people want to know if their program is getting cut,

[00:12:30] is there any chance that he might be planning on doing some spending cuts, maybe by putting Elon Musk in charge of that government efficiency committee he's mentioned,

[00:12:39] but that he's going to do some spending cuts, he just doesn't want to make that part of the campaign because it may turn off some voters?

[00:12:47] That's possible.

[00:12:48] And he comes from a long tradition about that.

[00:12:50] In 1980, when Ronald Reagan ran, he said he wanted spending cuts, but he was vague about it for obvious reasons.

[00:12:56] Ronald Reagan later put something together called the Grace Commission, which had a great report, but they didn't act on it.

[00:13:03] I think Elon Musk is a separate kind of animal.

[00:13:05] I think if he is brought in – and also Trump will kind of pay attention to Musk.

[00:13:10] So if he were brought in to do that, I have some hope that they would identify spending cuts and try to carry out at least some of them.

[00:13:19] So yes.

[00:13:20] And by the way, when we talk about spending and taxes, obviously the thing people want to talk about is deficits.

[00:13:25] There are all these estimates out there that Trump's policies will raise the deficit much more than Harris's.

[00:13:31] And those estimates, even if they're biased in some ways, are roughly right.

[00:13:35] I mean, his thing would.

[00:13:36] But the thing is, I don't care just about deficits, although I do care about them a lot.

[00:13:41] I care about spending.

[00:13:42] So if I could have spending go up by a trillion and deficit goes up by two trillion versus spending doesn't go up, but the deficit goes up by one trillion, I would take that.

[00:13:58] You know, because I care about government spending ultimately.

[00:14:02] And Milton Friedman's old line is, the real measure of taxes is not taxes, it's government spending.

[00:14:07] Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:08] Let's talk about tariffs too, because you mentioned that in one of your Hoover pieces.

[00:14:13] And Donald Trump likes to call himself tariff man.

[00:14:17] He keeps saying that the government gets in lots of money from other countries when he imposes a tariff, which just is not true.

[00:14:24] And I know he's had good people around him who have said, Donald, it's not the foreign country that you impose tariffs on that pay the tariffs.

[00:14:34] It is Americans who pay the tariffs.

[00:14:37] But what do you think about the tariffs issue?

[00:14:38] Because Donald Trump points out that Joe Biden did not really change many of his tariffs that he had imposed.

[00:14:45] Yeah.

[00:14:46] On economics, the tariff issue is my biggest concern with Trump because he's proposing a 60 percent tax on goods and services from China and somewhere between a 10 and 20 percent tax on goods and services from the rest of the world.

[00:15:00] That would make us more protectionist than we've been for 80 years or more.

[00:15:07] And so it is true that Americans pay the bulk of the tariffs.

[00:15:13] Now, there is some of it is borne by the producers because, you know, all taxes are split between producers and consumers according to something called elasticity of demand and supply.

[00:15:24] But the point is that we are going to pay probably the bulk of those tariffs.

[00:15:30] And that does concern me.

[00:15:31] And when he spoke at the Chicago Economic Club last week, he was talking, you know, he was talking about all these massive revenues we bring in.

[00:15:39] Well, if so, they're brought in, as you say, mainly for Americans.

[00:15:43] And so it is part of his tax policy seems to try to put tariffs in a separate category.

[00:15:50] They are separate in the sense that they're taxes on imports, but they are taxes.

[00:15:54] You highlight something in your piece about competition, because once you raise tariffs and you make products, other products much more expensive, it gives U.S. companies a certain amount of ability to be able to raise their prices as well, just under the cost of where the tariff rises to.

[00:16:13] That's right.

[00:16:14] That's right.

[00:16:15] They get more market power.

[00:16:16] And so I did a talk recently where I showed a slide, and it was about Obama bragging in the 2012 debate with Romney that he'd saved 1,000 jobs in the tire industry by these massive taxes on Chinese tires.

[00:16:35] And I titled the slide, Don't Brag, Mr. President, because the cost per job saved was something like $900,000 per year.

[00:16:43] It's just a crazy way to have economic policy.

[00:16:49] And, yeah, part of it was that other countries then raised their prices on tires, and our producers of tires raised their prices on tires.

[00:17:01] We'll talk also about the price controls, because one thing Kamala Harris has said she wants to do is she wants to stop price gouging, though most of the things that she points to, you have – in some cases when you have a natural disaster, you have a short-term increase in prices because of shortages and other things.

[00:17:20] And then those typically go back and go back to normal long before the federal government could step in and try to do anything about that.

[00:17:27] So my sense is she really has – she wants to start doing a broad price control package.

[00:17:33] She's just trying to couch it in something different.

[00:17:36] Yeah, that is a big worry.

[00:17:38] And she probably knows about as much about price controls as she knows about how to pronounce price gouging.

[00:17:44] She's called a price gauging when she's reading off a teleprompter.

[00:17:48] And the thing is, during a storm or something, that's the ideal time when you want to allow prices to go up.

[00:17:58] Because let's say it's Florida and there's this storm and they need plywood.

[00:18:01] You have people in Georgia wanting to come in and will come in with all that plywood if the price is allowed to be double or triple what it normally is.

[00:18:10] And then, as you say, it comes down later.

[00:18:12] So, yeah, it could be part of a more massive scheme, and that is concerning.

[00:18:16] On price controls also, though, Trump outdid AOC and Elizabeth Warren because they were advocating – and it was AOC and Bernie Sanders saying –

[00:18:27] they were advocating some years ago limiting interest rates and credit cards to 15%.

[00:18:32] Trump advocated recently limiting it to 10%.

[00:18:36] And that would cause people to – you know, high-risk people, not people like me, not people like you, but, say, students, young couples starting out, not to be able to get credit cards.

[00:18:46] They would then do layaway plans.

[00:18:49] People who are over 60 who are listening might remember those.

[00:18:53] Where you had to save – you went to the department store, you said, here's what I want, and they'd put it away for you.

[00:18:59] And then you'd save every month to get the money to pay for it.

[00:19:02] Mm-hmm.

[00:19:02] And also even payday loans where you're paying way higher than 10%.

[00:19:09] So, yeah, I don't think he thought that one through.

[00:19:12] I mean, my hope is that the economists around him, Steve Moore and so on, will say, Mr. President, don't do that.

[00:19:19] We only have a couple minutes left in this segment, but talk a little bit about – it seems like we've got both parties moving more towards an industrial policy where the government's essentially trying to decide the economy, decide where the economy goes, subsidizes companies that it likes, opposes companies it doesn't like.

[00:19:38] What happens under industrial policy?

[00:19:42] Well, the problem with industrial policy, of course, is that the government officials don't have the knowledge and don't have the incentives.

[00:19:51] So Friedrich Hayek wrote a classic piece in 1945, Use of Knowledge in Society, in which he laid out how the information you need in an economy is in the minds of the millions of us actors.

[00:20:03] It's not in the minds of government officials.

[00:20:05] And that's why central planning doesn't work, even aside from incentives.

[00:20:09] But you also have the incentive problem.

[00:20:11] A government official who says, you know, as with Solera under Obama, let's put all this money into this company and the company fails.

[00:20:22] Well, their pay doesn't fall a penny.

[00:20:26] And so it's just – it's bad incentives and it's bad information.

[00:20:30] That's why industrial policy doesn't work.

[00:20:33] My guest for these past two segments has been Dr. David Henderson.

[00:20:37] He is the emeritus professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School and also a research fellow with the Hoover Institution.

[00:20:45] You can find out more about that.

[00:20:46] We've got links to two of his articles on our website at pointofview.net, both from the Hoover Institute,

[00:20:52] where he talks about the taxes, spending, tariffs, policy control, price controls, immigration, and other aspects,

[00:20:59] and just does some comparison between the two presidential candidates.

[00:21:02] So I'd encourage you to go there and take a look at it because we want you informed as voters coming up for November 5th.

[00:21:10] David, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:21:12] Thanks, Mel.

[00:21:14] When we come back, we're going to turn to election expert John Fund.

[00:21:18] Often – he's been on the show for, oh, oftentimes for the last 20 or 30 years.

[00:21:23] And we'll talk a little bit about election integrity.

[00:21:25] So stay with us.

[00:21:26] We'll be back on Point of View.

[00:21:30] It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority.

[00:21:36] They say men can be women and women men.

[00:21:40] People are prosecuted differently or not at all depending on their politics.

[00:21:45] Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens.

[00:21:49] It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing.

[00:21:53] You feel like giving up.

[00:21:54] But we can't.

[00:21:55] We shouldn't.

[00:21:56] We must not.

[00:21:58] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II,

[00:22:02] never give in.

[00:22:04] Never give in.

[00:22:05] Never, never, never.

[00:22:07] Never yield to force.

[00:22:08] Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

[00:22:13] And that's what we say to you today.

[00:22:15] This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos.

[00:22:22] We can't do it alone.

[00:22:24] But together, with God's help, we will overcome the darkness.

[00:22:29] Invest in biblical clarity today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151.

[00:22:38] Point of View will continue after this.

[00:22:51] You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:02] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.

[00:23:09] And now, here again, Dr. Merrill Matthews.

[00:23:13] And welcome back to Point of View.

[00:23:15] Our guest for these last two segments is John Fund.

[00:23:19] He's a longtime guest of Point of View and just a person who understands national elections better than just about anybody in the country.

[00:23:29] He's national affairs columnist for National Review.

[00:23:32] He worked for The Wall Street Journal for more than two decades.

[00:23:35] He's written several books, but the ones we're talking about this time is going to be elections.

[00:23:39] He wrote one Stealing Elections, How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.

[00:23:43] He wrote one on Who's Counting, How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.

[00:23:49] And his most recent one is Our Broken Elections, How the Left Changed the Way You Vote.

[00:23:55] John, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:23:58] Always a pleasure.

[00:23:59] Thank you so much.

[00:24:00] You have a piece in National Review, came out on October the 4th, October 7th, excuse me,

[00:24:06] where you talk a bit about the lack of confidence in our voting elections

[00:24:10] and whether or not people feel like they can actually, their vote will actually be counted.

[00:24:15] Talk a little bit about this lack of confidence that we have out there.

[00:24:20] Well, 57% of people say that they have a lot or significant confidence

[00:24:26] that their vote is going to be counted fairly, accurately, and without any irregularities.

[00:24:33] But that means 4 out of 10 Americans don't feel that way.

[00:24:36] And then if they're asked separately from that, do you believe that illegal and invalid votes would be a significant problem in this coming election?

[00:24:45] Well, 57%, 74% of Republicans, and 21% of Democrats say yes.

[00:24:54] So this is obviously a question that has a partisan skew, but it's widespread.

[00:25:00] I mean, when you have that many people expressing concern, you would think the media would be paying some more attention to the weaknesses

[00:25:09] and the sloppiness of many of our election systems.

[00:25:12] And not only do they not pay attention, they oftentimes just simply dismiss it as if it's not a problem out there.

[00:25:20] And that creates a lack of trust in the media because so many people do have at least some concern.

[00:25:28] Well, look, I'm the first person to say that the things that Donald Trump said after the 2020 election

[00:25:35] and what he claimed was the basis of stop the steal were often exaggerated and, frankly, sometimes just preposterous.

[00:25:44] But that didn't mean that we didn't have real problems in that election and we still have problems ongoing.

[00:25:50] And I'll just give you a new one that has popped up.

[00:25:53] Last month, the National Association of Secretaries of State, half Democrats, half Republicans,

[00:25:59] wrote an urgent letter to the postmaster general of the Postal Service saying,

[00:26:03] if you don't do something to improve delivery standards, we're going to have a meltdown in some states.

[00:26:08] They cited two primaries, Merrill.

[00:26:11] One was in Kansas, where 2% of the mail-in votes, and by the way, 41% of Americans voted by mail last time.

[00:26:18] 2% of the mail-in votes in Kansas either didn't make it back to the election officials,

[00:26:24] even though people said that they had mailed them in, or they arrived back so late they weren't counted.

[00:26:30] Well, less than 2% of the vote separates many candidates in the final result.

[00:26:36] So you're talking about potentially a serious problem of knowing that the right person won the election.

[00:26:43] The Secretary of State of Kansas said, this is horrible.

[00:26:46] He said, in 1859, the Pony Express had a better record in delivering mail.

[00:26:50] And then in Utah, where I happen to be today, in Utah, there was a congressional race in July, a primary, Republican primary.

[00:27:02] It was won by the incumbent congresswoman, Celeste Malloy, by 176 votes.

[00:27:07] But in one of the counties in the district, Washington County, which was carried overwhelmingly by her opponent,

[00:27:14] in that county, 1,172 people sent in their mail-in ballots on time.

[00:27:20] But the postal service rerouted them, because of their new delivery standards,

[00:27:24] to the regional center in Las Vegas, where they sat for a while and then took a run trip back to Utah.

[00:27:31] Well, those votes arrived too late to be counted.

[00:27:34] So we had a winner in a race by 176 votes, but 1,172 ballots from a county primarily carried by her opponent weren't counted.

[00:27:43] Is that fair?

[00:27:44] Did the winner really win?

[00:27:46] You know, the mail-in ballot has been a point of real contention, and especially because different states,

[00:27:52] you've got, what, seven or eight states that are all mail-in ballots, but you also have states that have different requirements.

[00:28:00] So some of them, you have to have it in by the election day.

[00:28:04] Some day it can come a little later.

[00:28:05] There's several things that just make it look really confusing out there.

[00:28:11] Yes, and I like our federal system.

[00:28:14] I'm glad that we don't have a single national set of rules and standards.

[00:28:19] I want our Constitution, which gives the power to regulate, control, and design our elections to the states.

[00:28:25] But it does create a confusing pattern.

[00:28:28] We should have a system of encouraging best practices.

[00:28:31] So, for example, you should have confidence that if a mail-in ballot comes in in a state like Georgia,

[00:28:41] which has had an enormous increase in immigrant population,

[00:28:46] and there's concerns about noncitizens voting,

[00:28:49] you should have confidence that the signature verification machines or the signature verification workers will check

[00:28:57] and make sure that the person who sent in the ballot is actually the person on the voter registration roll

[00:29:02] and that that person is a citizen.

[00:29:05] You should have that level of confidence, but we really don't.

[00:29:09] But, you know, in some of these states they have requirements.

[00:29:12] For instance, you need to put a date on there, and if somebody doesn't do it,

[00:29:16] then some people will say we need to reject this because it didn't follow all the requirements,

[00:29:21] and then somebody else will say, no, no, no, we have to go ahead and accept this,

[00:29:25] and this has become a legal issue in some of the states.

[00:29:28] Well, you're absolutely right, Merrill, and I think we've taken convenience voting too far.

[00:29:33] You know, the Constitution and our laws talk about an election day.

[00:29:38] They don't talk about an election month.

[00:29:40] Some people have been voting already in some states for three weeks already.

[00:29:44] What you have is a system now where only 40% of the people vote on election day.

[00:29:50] Well, if you're voting mail ballot, that means there are more things you have to do.

[00:29:55] You have to cross the T's and dot the I's,

[00:29:59] and you have to make sure that everything is just right.

[00:30:02] It's unlike voting at the polls where there's election workers to help you

[00:30:06] or give you a new ballot if you invalidate the old one.

[00:30:09] So I think people should recognize that they're not only sacrificing the right to a secret ballot

[00:30:14] by having a mail-in ballot, but they're sacrificing the right to have the system be more forgiving

[00:30:20] if they don't show up at the polls, such as if you don't fill in the proper date or address,

[00:30:27] your vote may not be counted.

[00:30:29] I had the elections administrator for one of the counties in Texas speak to a group here,

[00:30:35] oh, some months ago, and he's a famous one, has been widely praised for what he does.

[00:30:42] And the question came up, what keeps you awake at night?

[00:30:46] And he said, the mail-in ballots, because once I send it out,

[00:30:49] there's no chain of custody until that thing comes back to me,

[00:30:52] and I don't know where it's been or what it's been through.

[00:30:56] Well, I can remember when I wrote my first election integrity book,

[00:30:59] there was a chapter on Dallas County.

[00:31:02] And back then, the problem people were having is people would know

[00:31:06] when the ballot-in ballots were sent out by the government officials.

[00:31:10] They would know when they were delivered.

[00:31:11] People were stealing those ballots from post office boxes.

[00:31:17] And in other cases, they may be putting, stuffing some ballots in.

[00:31:22] Well, here's the problem.

[00:31:24] In Nevada, you know, some states have improved their election procedures from 2020

[00:31:29] because those were COVID procedures, and thankfully they've lapsed.

[00:31:32] But in states like Nevada and Michigan, they've slid backwards.

[00:31:36] In Nevada, Merrill, everyone who is on the voter registration list

[00:31:42] automatically gets a mail-in ballot, everyone.

[00:31:46] That is an open invitation to mischief.

[00:31:48] I have physically been in Las Vegas apartment buildings

[00:31:51] that have a highly transient population whereby, you know,

[00:31:55] packages and things are left on a table in the middle of the lobby

[00:31:57] and also the mail that doesn't fit or isn't deliverable in the mailboxes in the lobby.

[00:32:03] Well, I've seen dozens of ballots sitting there unclaimed,

[00:32:08] so there's nothing to prevent someone from picking it up, filling it out.

[00:32:11] And since our signature verification procedures are so lax in many places

[00:32:15] and there's so many ballots they can't properly scrutinize all of them,

[00:32:18] they'd have a good chance of getting that vote counted.

[00:32:22] One of the issues you highlight in your recent pieces is non-citizen voting.

[00:32:28] And, of course, you've got some areas that have been trying to expand the vote,

[00:32:32] at least in local elections, for people who are not citizens to be able to vote,

[00:32:37] and that raises its own questions.

[00:32:39] When we come back from the break, I want to talk a little bit about the non-citizen voting problem

[00:32:44] and whether or not that is over, I don't want to say, there's concerns about it,

[00:32:49] but you have, again, the media that tends to want to dismiss that,

[00:32:53] others who say this is a real problem.

[00:32:55] And with more immigrants coming in, so many that we've had coming in,

[00:32:59] it seemed like it would raise the potential.

[00:33:01] My guest up to the top of the hour, John Fund.

[00:33:05] He is an elections expert.

[00:33:06] His most recent book, I believe, is Our Broken Elections, How the Left Changed the Way You Vote.

[00:33:13] John has been doing this for decades.

[00:33:14] He is one of the country's top experts on this, always filled with information.

[00:33:19] We have more information about him on the Point of View website,

[00:33:22] so I'd encourage you to go there at pointofview.net,

[00:33:25] and I also encourage you to go to Amazon and look up his books there

[00:33:28] and get some of them because he has the information on voting that you need to hear.

[00:33:34] Stay back.

[00:33:35] Stay with us.

[00:33:35] We'll be back in just a minute on Point of View.

[00:33:55] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:34:01] And welcome back to our final segment on Point of View.

[00:34:03] Our guest for the rest of this segment is John Fund.

[00:34:07] He is an elections expert and national affairs columnist for National Review

[00:34:11] and has written several books on election, election fraud, election integrity.

[00:34:17] And, John, one of your recent pieces,

[00:34:18] you are talking about the issue of immigrants, non-citizens voting.

[00:34:23] It's a bigger issue today, or at least the concern is,

[00:34:27] because the Biden administration has let so many immigrants in the country.

[00:34:31] What do you see happening out there right now?

[00:34:36] Well, I have often said that I don't think that non-citizen voting has been a major problem in our country,

[00:34:43] in part because, for example, if you're here illegally,

[00:34:46] you know, the last thing you want to do is have an engagement with election officials.

[00:34:54] However, things have changed.

[00:34:55] It has now become very obvious to people, and the word is out in the street,

[00:34:59] that if you're a non-citizen, legal or otherwise, you can register to vote.

[00:35:05] All it takes is a federal postcard, and you have to check a box saying you're not a citizen.

[00:35:10] But even if you don't check that box, if you leave it blank, they often will register you.

[00:35:14] And there's nothing to prevent you from going in and voting on Election Day.

[00:35:19] So I think that the level of scrutiny on who gets on the voter registration rolls has never been great.

[00:35:27] About 15% to 20% of our voter registration rolls are filled with people who are dead,

[00:35:32] have moved out of state, aren't eligible to vote because they're felons or for some other reason,

[00:35:36] or they don't even exist.

[00:35:38] So I think that non-citizen voting could become a problem because the election is seen in these seven states as so close,

[00:35:46] people might think that I can help influence the outcome.

[00:35:50] And then, frankly, you have Donald Trump saying that he's going to announce the biggest deportation in the history of the world

[00:35:56] if he becomes president.

[00:35:58] Don't you think that might incentivize some people to say I'm going to stop this deportation potentially from happening?

[00:36:03] So the reason that I'm worried is we see a clear division between what happened in Virginia,

[00:36:10] where Governor Youngkin said he had 6,033 people who were on the voter registration rolls who were proven non-citizens.

[00:36:17] They either had asked for their name to be removed from the voter rolls,

[00:36:21] or they had registered and their name came up in a database as a non-citizen,

[00:36:26] or they refused to provide any kind of documentation that they were citizens.

[00:36:30] So he asked for those names to be removed.

[00:36:34] The Biden-Harris Justice Department has sued them last week saying,

[00:36:37] no, you have to keep those names on the voter rolls.

[00:36:41] Potentially those people could vote because, of course, that could be discriminatory if we put them off.

[00:36:47] How preposterous is that?

[00:36:48] What's the motive for them to do that?

[00:36:50] I think the only motive is they really don't care how accurate our voter registration rolls are,

[00:36:55] and they really don't care who votes.

[00:36:57] You point out that several states have been trying to go through and purge their voter rolls,

[00:37:02] find out who's alive, who's moved out of the state, other reasons why they might not be able to vote.

[00:37:11] And in many cases you have people who are registered to vote that they find out that they are really not here as citizens

[00:37:18] and should not be allowed to vote.

[00:37:22] Absolutely.

[00:37:23] And, you know, we have a long tradition in this country of welcoming immigrants,

[00:37:28] and we make it fairly easy for them to become citizens.

[00:37:31] In many cases you just have to be here for five years, you have to pass a very simple test,

[00:37:36] you have to have a clean criminal record, and you can become a citizen.

[00:37:40] It's not hard.

[00:37:41] We don't make it hard to be a citizen.

[00:37:43] We don't make it hard to register to vote.

[00:37:45] What we should make hard, though, is having noncitizens registering to vote and voting,

[00:37:51] knowing that there's almost no chance, there is no chance they'll be caught and convicted of anything.

[00:37:57] You know, we do have cases where noncitizens who are registered to vote go in and vote,

[00:38:02] and then they thought that that wasn't a problem.

[00:38:04] They thought they would be allowed to vote, or at least maybe somebody told them they were,

[00:38:08] and then they end up getting in trouble later.

[00:38:11] Well, you know, you're absolutely right, because in Pennsylvania for 20 years they were allowing legal residents

[00:38:18] who had driver's licenses to register to vote, and they didn't ask them if they were citizens on the computer screen.

[00:38:25] So some people innocently said, well, if they're asking me if I can register, I guess I can.

[00:38:30] So people are often tricked also at these shopping centers where people say, of course, you know,

[00:38:35] and you're on the path to citizenship.

[00:38:36] Yes, I hope to be a citizen.

[00:38:37] Well, you can register to vote already.

[00:38:39] And the problem with that is if you come before an immigration official trying to get your citizenship

[00:38:45] and it's discovered that you're registered to vote, that could be a black mark against you

[00:38:50] that could block your citizenship application from going forward.

[00:38:53] That's a cruel trick that some people have played on them because it may slow down something that they really want to do

[00:39:00] and want to have stability for their family over.

[00:39:03] You point out that some cities have been allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections,

[00:39:09] and that concerns me because I may not make that distinction if I'm a noncitizen.

[00:39:14] Oh, I was able to go and vote on the mayor, so here comes the presidential election.

[00:39:19] Why shouldn't I be able to go vote there?

[00:39:21] Or maybe I think I should be able to vote there because I'm just confused and I've voted in other elections.

[00:39:27] I think it creates a murky situation where you have some people voting for some offices and some people for others.

[00:39:35] That's the situation in Arizona right now where the federal government was fighting Arizona's desire

[00:39:40] to have people verify their citizenship when they registered to vote.

[00:39:43] It's murky.

[00:39:44] We should have a clear dividing line.

[00:39:46] We should make it fairly easy to become a citizen, but until then, no voting for anything.

[00:39:52] No tilting school boards in one direction.

[00:39:54] No tilting local governance running for the mayor in another direction.

[00:39:59] Let's have a clear, bright line.

[00:40:01] We have a close election coming up, likely a close election for the president.

[00:40:06] What's keeping you awake on some of these voting integrity issues, especially in the swing states?

[00:40:13] Well, I always fear when we don't have a quick resolution, when the election is close enough,

[00:40:18] that it goes to recounts, litigation, and recriminations immediately.

[00:40:22] You know, we're supposed to have election day.

[00:40:24] Instead, we now have election month where people vote early before election day,

[00:40:28] and now we have election month where people fight over the results and go to court for a month.

[00:40:32] That's a really dangerous, corrosive element added to our democracy.

[00:40:37] I believe what worries me is elections that are so close, you have recounts.

[00:40:43] And like the Florida recount in 2000, everybody is arguing for a certain standard that will help their candidate,

[00:40:50] but may not be the standard that people will accept as representing the legitimate outcome of the election.

[00:40:57] And it's also probably true that both parties are gearing up with lots of lawyers getting ready to go into some of these states

[00:41:04] to be able to raise questions if they come out with the lower vote count.

[00:41:09] I am told that there are jets that have been reserved,

[00:41:12] and they're all fueled up of a tarmac ready to fly to any state that is considered to be the one that could decide the 2024 presidential election.

[00:41:22] You will see so many lawyers come in they'll have to parachute in.

[00:41:29] So given the states, is Pennsylvania the most problematic or is there another one or two?

[00:41:35] Well, Pennsylvania is both problematic, it's also close, it also has the most electoral votes.

[00:41:40] It has 19 electoral votes, which is a very significant number.

[00:41:44] Well, I've often said that doing safe and secure elections is just not Pennsylvania's thing.

[00:41:53] Not in Philadelphia, at Pittsburgh for sure.

[00:41:57] Well, John, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:41:59] We have, for our listeners, if you want to know more about John Fund, we have access to information on our website.

[00:42:05] We also have links to his National Review pieces, I believe,

[00:42:08] and you can also go to National Review and look up that because John is one of their major writers there.

[00:42:14] And, my goodness, we've got the election coming up now in two weeks.

[00:42:18] We want to encourage you to go out and look at the, to be an informed voter,

[00:42:23] to make sure you are voting your values and making sure that you have your voice heard in the polling booth

[00:42:30] so that we get the, we should be getting the election official, the politicians we deserve.

[00:42:37] I think in many cases we've gotten some we don't deserve.

[00:42:40] But I encourage you to go out and be an informed voter to make your choice known in the voting booth.

[00:42:47] I want to thank Megan for doing the engineering here and Steve for the production.

[00:42:53] As I said, we've got information up on the Point of View website, pointofview.net.

[00:42:57] I'd encourage you to go there.

[00:42:58] Thank you for joining us today on Point of View.

[00:43:10] The Bible tells us not to worry.

[00:43:14] And yet, there is a lot of worrying stuff in our world today.

[00:43:19] Thankfully, the Bible doesn't stop at telling us not to worry.

[00:43:23] God gives us a next step.

[00:43:26] He says we need to pray.

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