Sell­ing Amer­i­cans a ‘lie’: How elec­tion integri­ty attor­neys bat­tled left-wing efforts to upend vot­ing laws

The 2024 elec­tion cycle was rife with repeat­ed legal bat­tles to pro­tect the vot­ing process­es from left-wing attor­neys lever­ag­ing the courts to strip elec­tion safe­guards, the chief of an elec­tion integri­ty non­prof­it who saw a string of legal wins told Fox News Dig­i­tal. 

“They’ve been sell­ing Amer­i­can peo­ple a lie,” Restor­ing Integri­ty & Trust in Elec­tions (RITE) Pres­i­dent Derek Lyons told Fox News Dig­i­tal in a Zoom inter­view, refer­ring to left-wing efforts to under­mine elec­tion laws. “And I think that these past two elec­tion cycles, where peo­ple have said ‘No, vot­ing is very easy and mil­lions, hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple have been doing it,’ have shown that what they’re doing is mis­lead­ing, at the very least.”

RITE is a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion found­ed in 2022 fol­low­ing vot­ers’ con­cern over the secu­ri­ty of the 2020 elec­tion dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The group was co-found­ed by Fox News con­trib­u­tor Karl Rove and includes board mem­bers such as for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bill Barr and Fox News con­trib­u­tor Andrew McCarthy. The orga­ni­za­tion hit the ground run­ning in 2022 to ensure its “mis­sion of pro­tect­ing the rule of law in the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for, admin­is­tra­tion of, and tab­u­la­tion of vot­ing in the Unit­ed States,” accord­ing to the group’s web­site. 

Lyons spoke to Fox News Dig­i­tal just less than a month after Elec­tion Day, when he took a vic­to­ry lap for his team’s bat­tles against efforts to report­ed­ly under­mine elec­tion integri­ty, detail­ing the top legal tac­tics left-wing activists took dur­ing the elec­tion sea­son. 

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Lyons, an attor­ney and for­mer White House staff sec­re­tary and coun­selor to the pres­i­dent under Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s first term, explained that Demo­c­rat activists were hyper-focused through­out the elec­tion on decry­ing efforts put forth by state leg­is­la­tures to ensure safe elec­tions, such as vot­er ID laws, fre­quent­ly claim­ing such a pol­i­cy would dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers. 

“​​The main thing they do is any­time any­body puts up any sort of elec­tion integri­ty mea­sure, whether that’s vot­er I.D., vot­er pho­to I.D., whether that’s ratio­nal­iza­tion of cure peri­ods – the abil­i­ty of peo­ple to fix errors in their bal­lots sort of after the elec­tion – bal­lot receipt dead­lines, so that we can know the result of the elec­tion quick­ly … they attack it and say, this is dis­en­fran­chis­ing,” he said. 

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“ ‘This makes vot­ing hard­er … this takes away peo­ple’s right to vote.’ …. They invoke fed­er­al vot­ing rights laws that were meant to pre­vent the worst abus­es of Jim Crow. They’re sort of shame­less about it. They’ll throw any, any tac­tic at it,” he explained of Demo­c­ra­t­ic efforts to change vot­ing laws. 

When groups such as RITE step in to chal­lenge claims that such vot­ing laws are legal and pro­tect elec­tions from ille­gal activ­i­ty, Lyons said left-wing activists slam them in court as hold­ing no stand­ing. 

“They try to kick us out on pro­ce­dur­al grounds because, ulti­mate­ly, a lot of times they don’t want to defend the mer­its of what elec­tion admin­is­tra­tors are try­ing to do.”

Lyons point­ed to a suc­cess­ful case in Wis­con­sin back in 2022 when RITE chal­lenged state offi­cials from enabling what he called “re-vot­ing” pro­ce­dures, which entailed absen­tee vot­ers who already sub­mit­ted their bal­lots chang­ing their votes mid-elec­tion. RITE chal­lenged the prac­tice and won to ensure that once a bal­lot is mailed, it can­not be changed. 

“We were able to win that case on the grounds that once a bal­lot is put into the mail, received by the elec­tion offi­cials, that’s the end of that per­son­’s vote. There’s no fish­ing bal­lots back out and putting them back in, etc. Which obvi­ous­ly cre­ates a risk of errors and dou­ble vot­ing and all sorts of oth­er prob­lems. And so they tried to kick us out on stand­ing. We were able to defeat that and secure that vic­to­ry in Wis­con­sin,” he said. 

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Penn­syl­va­nia was again the pre­mier bat­tle­ground state this year, with both Trump, Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris and a bevy of their respec­tive sur­ro­gates criss-cross­ing the state to ral­ly sup­port ahead of Elec­tion Day. For RITE, the group has filed and tak­en part in 10 dif­fer­ent elec­tion cas­es since 2022, includ­ing a case revolv­ing around poten­tial dou­ble votes. 

“In Philadel­phia, we just got them to admit that they had planned to elim­i­nate a cru­cial check against dou­ble vot­ing to make sure that peo­ple weren’t both vot­ing in the mail and in per­son. So we had that in place for both elec­tions [the 2022 midterms and 2024 elec­tion] to pre­vent that type of dou­ble vot­ing, which does hap­pen in Alleghe­ny Coun­ty,” he said of the dou­ble vote case. 

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Lyons also cel­e­brat­ed a win in a case he described as the “crown​​ jew­el” of Penn­syl­va­nia: ensur­ing undat­ed and incor­rect­ly dat­ed mail-in bal­lots were not count­ed in the offi­cial tal­ly. 

The Penn­syl­va­nia Supreme Court ruled in Sep­tem­ber that mail-in bal­lots with­out the cor­rect dates on bal­lot envelopes can­not be count­ed in elec­tions. 

The rul­ing gained wide­spread atten­tion fol­low­ing Nov. 5, when Demo­c­ra­t­ic-led elec­tion boards bucked the state high court’s rul­ing and vot­ed to include such bal­lots in a recount con­cern­ing long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen. Bob Casey’s race against Sen.-elect Dave McCormick. Democ­rats in the state open­ly defied the rul­ing before the state Supreme Court ordered coun­ties to not include undat­ed bal­lots, and Democ­rats walked back their deci­sion. 

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“​​We took it to state court and got a dec­la­ra­tion that this had to be done under state law,” Lyons said of RITE’s bat­tle against Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists over undat­ed bal­lot envelopes. “They ran to fed­er­al court and said fed­er­al law pre­vents this. We won that case. They took it to the Court of Appeals. Demo­c­rat judges dis­agreed with them and said the date require­ment does not vio­late fed­er­al law. They went back to state court and said, ‘well, this vio­lates the state con­sti­tu­tion.’ That case was pro­ce­du­ral­ly improp­er. That case was thrown out. And then they tried to bring some oth­er lit­tle case that nobody was pay­ing atten­tion to and use that case to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion was done in Penn­syl­va­nia. And final­ly, the state Supreme Court, to its great cred­it, said enough.”

In Ari­zona, RITE had anoth­er win when it led a coali­tion of groups against a bal­lot ini­tia­tive all the way through the Ari­zona Supreme Court that Lyons said would have expand­ed bal­lot har­vest­ing. 

“One of our first engage­ments that we’re very proud of was, we quick­ly led a coali­tion of like-mind­ed groups to lit­i­gate against a bal­lot ini­tia­tive that was pend­ing … in Ari­zona that would have elim­i­nat­ed things like precinct vot­ing, would have expand­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for bal­lot har­vest­ing. It would have pre­vent­ed efforts to keep nonci­t­i­zens off the vot­er rolls and a host of oth­er, I think, real­ly bad rules for elec­tions,” he said. 

“We were able to inval­i­date hun­dreds of thou­sands of sig­na­tures that the left, the lib­er­al orga­ni­za­tions that were pur­su­ing this ini­tia­tive had, quote unquote, gath­ered. We inval­i­dat­ed them. We lit­i­gat­ed the case up to the Ari­zona Supreme Court. It actu­al­ly went back a cou­ple of times. And in the end, that bal­lot ini­tia­tive was not approved. And so that meant that the 2022 elec­tion, but I think more impor­tant­ly the 2024 elec­tion in Ari­zona, was not infect­ed by bal­lot har­vest­ing.” 

When asked if Demo­c­rat activists essen­tial­ly cried uncle amid the avalanche of elec­tion law­suits, Lyons point­ed to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty elec­tions attor­ney Marc Elias and a case orig­i­nat­ing out of Ohio as his “favorite” exam­ple of defeat over lib­er­al attor­neys. 

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“Marc Elias went to Ohio. Ohio passed a very sen­si­ble vot­er pho­to ID law. He start­ed out the year in 2024 boast­ing and pro­claim­ing to all who would lis­ten on Twit­ter and in the media, that if Ohio passed this law, it will be sued and the law will be struck down. So he went to Ohio, and he did file that law­suit. He fol­lowed through on his threat.”

“We showed up, and we defend­ed that law­suit. We defend­ed against that law­suit along­side the state. And the vic­to­ry was com­plete and total. A Demo­c­rat judge appoint­ed by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, I believe, threw out his entire case, said ‘you have not proven at all that there’s even a remote chance that any vot­ers are dis­en­fran­chised or bur­dened by this law. Case dis­missed. Final judg­ment.’ [Elias] did­n’t even appeal that case. Did­n’t even both­er to try to take it up to the courts of appeals,” he recount­ed. 

Repub­li­can Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed the vot­er ID bill into law in Jan­u­ary 2023, which man­dat­ed vot­ers pro­vide a driver’s license, state ID, pass­port or mil­i­tary ID when cast­ing a bal­lot, instead of pre­vi­ous forms of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion such as a bank state­ment. 

Democ­rats and some res­i­dents in the state dubbed it one of the most restric­tive ID poli­cies in the nation and the “worst anti-vot­er” bill, argu­ing it would dis­en­fran­chise low­er-income vot­ers who have sus­pend­ed licens­es or lacked the required doc­u­men­ta­tion. The Ohio Sec­re­tary of State office found over the sum­mer that more than 8,000 vot­ers who tried to cast bal­lots since the law’s pas­sage were not includ­ed in final vote tal­lies as they lacked the prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, USA Today pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.  

Repub­li­cans have defend­ed the law as “an ele­men­tary pre­cau­tion to pro­tect the vot­ing process,” cit­ing that Amer­i­cans can­not board a plane or buy alco­hol with­out the same require­ment. 

Con­cerns over elec­tion integri­ty have been brew­ing for years and were under­scored dur­ing the 2020 elec­tion as vot­ers hun­kered down amid stay-at-home orders, and mail-in and absen­tee bal­lot vot­ing grew. Head­ing into the 2024 elec­tion, a poll from Jan­u­ary found 46% of reg­is­tered Repub­li­cans said they had no con­fi­dence bal­lots would be accu­rate­ly count­ed and report­ed, Fox Dig­i­tal pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. On the oth­er hand, 81% of reg­is­tered Democ­rats report­ed in the poll they are “very” con­fi­dent the 2024 elec­tions would be “fair.”

Polls focused on spe­cif­ic mea­sures tout­ed by Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tives to ensure safe elec­tions have received wide­spread sup­port across the board. A Gallup Poll released days ahead of Elec­tion Day found that 84% of respon­dents favored requir­ing vot­ers to pro­vide a pho­to ID, while 83% said they sup­port pro­vid­ing proof of cit­i­zen­ship when reg­is­ter­ing to vote for the first time. The poll not­ed that vot­er atti­tudes toward these issues were sim­i­lar to those seen in its July 2022 poll. 

“Vot­er pho­to ID is sup­port­ed by some­thing like 80% of the coun­try. The notion that this is some­how uncon­sti­tu­tion­al has been reject­ed time and time and time again,” Lyons said. 

Look­ing toward future elec­tions, Lyons said RITE will focus on elec­tion laws sur­round­ing left-wing efforts to “nor­mal­ize” nonci­t­i­zen votes in blue states before such efforts seep into red states, as well as con­tin­u­ing their efforts on vot­er ID laws, enhanc­ing the integri­ty of sig­na­ture match­ing require­ments, and unrav­el­ing what Lyons said was left-wing “lies” sur­round­ing claims of dis­en­fran­chised vot­ers over prac­tices such as vot­er ID laws. 

“I think our orga­ni­za­tion was able to do and to plug into a much broad­er coali­tion of of groups ‚who real­ly care about what I call the crown jew­el of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, which is our elec­tions. That’s the key. It’s the foun­da­tion of our self-gov­ern­ment. And I think today we can believe, and we can have con­fi­dence, and we can be proud of the fact that they’re a lit­tle more secure today than they were two years ago and four years ago,” he said.