Why Aren’t Legacy Media Freaking Out Over Democrat Election Officials’ Plans To Attend A Summit Held By A Left-Wing, Dark Money Elections Group?
Given their history of orchestrating coordinated attacks against Republican election officials, legacy media’s targeting of Republican Donald Palmer earlier this month came as no surprise.
A Trump-appointed member of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a bipartisan governmental body charged with providing guidelines and “information on election administration,” Palmer evoked the ire of left-wing “journalists” for attending a private February conference co-hosted by the Heritage Foundation, Honest Elections Project, and the Public Interest Legal Foundation. The event, which focused on different aspects of election integrity, featured numerous speakers, including prominent election integrity advocates and GOP congressional staffers. Several Republican secretaries of state also attended the conference.
While The Guardian and Documented — two leftist media outlets — falsely accused the participating groups of spreading “election denial lies and advocat[ing] for restrictions on voting rights,” other corporate press venues have directed their malicious attacks at Palmer. In an April 14 article published by States Newsroom, democracy reporter Zachary Roth attempted to gin up controversy over Palmer’s decision to attend the February conference by quoting predictably critical, so-called “election experts” to give the impression that Palmer violated EAC protocol.
One of these quoted “experts” is Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a highly-partisan Democrat who’s refused to remove thousands of dead registrants from her state’s voter rolls. As if she were a leftist teacher scolding a student for “improper” pronoun use, Benson lamented how “[e]lection professionals across the spectrum are deeply disappointed” in Palmer’s decision to attend the conference. She also baselessly claimed the EAC commissioner “abused the trust we placed in his ability to be professional and unbiased in supporting election administration.”
“His inappropriate and poor judgment calls into question his ability to continue in his role in the future,” Benson whined.
Outlets amplifying Roth’s hit piece include Raw Story, The Virginia Mercury, and The Albany Herald.
Rules For Thee, But Not For Me
Equally unsurprising as legacy media’s faux outrage over Palmer’s decision to attend Heritage’s February event is their silence over prominent Democrat election officials’ plans to attend an upcoming summit hosted by a left-wing, dark money elections group.
From May 8-9, the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR) — one of the two major nonprofits that funneled $419 million in grant funds from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to government election offices during the 2020 election — is scheduled to host an invite-only “Summit on American Democracy” in Washington, D.C. The meeting will allegedly act as a forum for high-ranking election officials to “share actionable ideas to further strengthen our democracy.”
While marketed as a “nonpartisan” conference, a quick skim through the summit’s website tells a different story. Among those listed as speakers for the event is David Becker, the founder of CEIR and a far-left Democrat activist who also founded the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a widely used voter-roll management group “sold to states as a quick and easy way to update their voter rolls.” In actuality, ERIC inflates voter rolls by requiring member states to contact eligible but unregistered residents to register to vote.
As The Federalist previously reported, CEIR enjoys an active relationship with ERIC, which transmits the voter-roll data it receives from states to CEIR. Upon receiving the data, CEIR “then develops targeted mailing lists and sends them back to the states to use for voter registration outreach.” This means that CEIR is creating lists of potential (and likely Democrat) voters for states to register in the lead-up to major elections.
But Becker is hardly the only notable Democrat slated to speak at CEIR’s May summit. Several Democrat secretaries of state are listed as featured speakers, including none other than Michigan’s Jocelyn Benson. Cliff Tatum, the elections administrator for Harris County, Texas, whose incompetent election administration led to an untold number of disenfranchised voters last year, is also set to speak at the event.
In an apparent attempt to appear bipartisan, CEIR also invited several so-called “Republican” election officials to speak, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and Bill Gates, the chair of Maricopa County, Arizona’s board of supervisors. Both officials have overseen chaotic and mismanaged elections in their respective jurisdictions and have openly criticized Americans concerned about election integrity.
The media’s selective outrage over election officials meeting with partisan groups isn’t hypocrisy but hierarchy. Leftists genuinely believe they shouldn’t have to play by the same rules as conservatives and will gladly turn a blind eye to their political allies’ shady actions. Even if such actions expose their nonsensical double standards, it won’t matter to them. For the left, achieving their objectives is all that matters. Everything else is just noise.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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