Vulnerable Seniors Exploited in Election Scandal | Heather Honey

Full Episode Transcript:

Heather Honey: In October of 2020, nursing homes across the country were locked down. At that same time, the center for Medicare and Medicaid services, it’s a federal agency. They sent a memo and essentially said, Hey, you better make sure that all of your residents are able to register and vote. And if you don’t, there will be consequences.

When you look at the statistics in terms of nursing homes that had 95, a hundred percent turnout in the 2020 election. You just know that there, that there was some exploitation there. Executive order 14019 is the Biden’s administration order to essentially turn every federal agency into a get out the vote machine.

But the part about it that is so alarming is that they keep it secret.

Andy Mangione: Hi, I’m Andy Mangione. Thank you for joining us on AMAC’s Better for America podcast. One of AMAC Action’s great coalition partners in the fight for election integrity is a wonderful organization called the Election Research Institute. This group just released a paper citing evidence of voter fraud in nursing homes, and I’m happy to welcome to this edition of the Better for America podcast, Heather Honey, who is the executive director of the Election Research Institute.

Thank you for taking the time to join us, Heather.

Heather Honey: Hey, Andy, it’s great to be with you.

Andy Mangione: We’re glad that you’re here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what your organization does.

Heather Honey: so the Election Research Institute is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that is dedicated to mitigating vulnerabilities in the election system.

And part of that, of course, is identifying what those vulnerabilities are. and so we do a lot of research into, election systems and, regulations and rules and how those rules are actually. applied in practice, right? So you can have a really good law, but if it doesn’t work in practice and it’s not, and they can’t comply with it, then that creates an opportunity for, fraud errors, et cetera.

we do research, we investigate that stuff. We try to make recommendations for mitigating those kinds of vulnerabilities. And then when that fails, we also do litigation support.

Andy Mangione: And you do this throughout the country. Okay.

Heather Honey: We do. Yeah. Yeah. we obviously we’ve really focused on, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, done some work in Michigan as well.

but yeah, all across the country.

Andy Mangione: Certainly, you’ve also identified that the hot states in this upcoming election. Heather, let’s get right to the paper. Your organization identifies the COVID pandemic as the catalyst for voting irregularities in nursing homes throughout the country. How did this all get started?

Heather Honey: when you go back and look at it, I think that you can, draw some conclusions, right? In October of 2020, now keep in mind at this point, nursing homes across the country were locked down. Family members could not go visit their loved ones. And, at that same time, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, it’s a federal agency, they sent a memo to every single nursing home that receives this memo.

Medicare or Medicaid funding and essentially said, Hey, you better make sure that all of your residents are, able to register and vote. And if you don’t, there will be consequences. So it was almost like a, like a strong arm, threat because of course, the funding is dependent on these inspections and.

if the criteria for the inspection is set to be, we want to make sure that every single person, regardless of their ability, their, their cognitive, their medical situation, every single person has to be registered. And there were no, no family members around to, to oversee that, to support, to help these people that might need assistance with some part of the process.

And, we, when you look at the statistics in terms of nursing homes that had 95, 100 percent turnout in the 2020 election, you just know that there, that, there was some exploitation there.

Andy Mangione: Yeah, we’re going to get to that in a second here. You mentioned consequences. your paper pointed out that CMS controls the funding, the federal funding to nursing homes throughout the country to the tune of 100 billion annually.

So they if I’m not mistaken, it sounds as if they dangled that money over nursing homes and they had no choice but to comply with this regulation change.

Heather Honey: So when they sent out this, sort of emphasis, they took a regulation that exists. In the federal regulations, and they said, we interpret this to mean.

You know that you have to make sure they all get absentee ballot applications. We interpret this to mean that you need to do all of these things. And so what the center for medicare and medicaid says is a priority When these survey agencies, so the survey agencies are the ones that come in and they do the inspections the audits If you will, to make sure that the, that these facilities are complying, they have their priorities.

What are the things that they’re looking for? And that’s a signal to these nursing home, administrators. Like I don’t, when, they get an inspection, whatever is identified as a deficiency is publicly posted. So not only can, bad ratings on these things impact their, federal funding, but it can also be really challenging, for family members, if they’re looking at those ratings and they’re like, gosh, this nursing home is depriving somebody of their rights.

it, it can have a lot of far reaching consequences.

Andy Mangione: And then let’s throw a little gasoline on the fire here. Joe Biden gets elected and issues an executive order that makes this voting irregularity practice in nursing homes even worse. Tell us how that executive order affected voting in nursing homes.

Heather Honey: executive order one four Oh one nine is the Biden’s administration order to essentially turn every federal agency into a get out the vote machine. And, so every agency, including the centers for medic Medicare and Medicaid were required under this executive order to develop plans to increase voter registration and increase voter participation.

In addition to that, they are required to partner with White House approved nonprofits, NGOs to conduct these voter registration, get out the vote activities, but the, part about it that is so alarming is that they keep it secret. So they’re, they will not release the records when the White House has been asked by Congress, by organizations in litigation over Right to Know.

We would like to see these plans. We’d like to know who your White House approved non profits are. The White House says, nope, we’re not telling. So if there’s nothing going on there, why with all the secrecy?

Andy Mangione: Exactly. Now the Election Research Institute’s paper outlines startling evidence of senior citizens, nursing home residents being the victims of voter fraud schemes.

Share with us and share with our audience what’s outlined in your paper. This is, really, it’s really upsetting.

Heather Honey: So, for starters, we obviously talked about the issues that they found in Wisconsin when Gableman and Eric Cardall did the investigation of the nursing homes in Wisconsin, all sorts of laws were violated, that’s been confirmed.

they violated the Wisconsin law, but. They had people assisting, in fact, filling out ballots for people who are absolutely incapable of doing it and then not disclosing that. if you cannot watch those videos of those families with these people who were, so significantly disabled, and just to, realize that they were exploited like that, it’s, absolutely heartbreaking, in Pennsylvania.

For example, we, were able to review the, absentee and mail ballot. envelopes for, several counties. And so what we were able to do is sort them by nursing home, and what we found is that some nursing homes had the same person filling out all of the envelopes. And listen, I believe that, the vast majority of people that go to work in a nursing home do so because they care deeply about the residents of those nursing homes.

but I think that this pressure from. The, the federal agencies to, to do all of these things, causes, creates a situation where these, people are being exploited. They’re being taken advantage of. And, again, all you have to do is look at just broadly the statistics on nursing home turnout in the battleground states, again, to have a facility that has 90, 100 percent turnout, that just cannot be the case.

Andy Mangione: No, you can’t. And you cannot discount the fact that bad actors are everywhere and they’re affecting what’s going on in nursing homes. So Heather, what can people do to protect their loved ones from this kind of voter fraud in a nursing home or any long term care or any other care facility?

Heather Honey: So I think there’s a couple of things that you could do if you have a loved one in a facility, especially if you are their, authorized representative, right?

when, when federal regulations allow every nursing home resident at the time of admission to designate a representative, and this isn’t people who are adjudicated incompetent or anything. This is every single person, right? You’re going into a nursing home. you want to have your, authorized representative.

Those representatives have a lot of authority. And so the nursing home resident, if you have a family member there, tell them you, you don’t want anybody, but your representative to assist you, whether it’s applying for a ballot, registering to vote or completing that ballot. That only you only, that you want to do that for your family member, for your loved one, who’s in the nursing facility, but have your loved one.

Put that on record, do it in writing and that way that will be that will serve as a protection, but monitor as well. So most states make that information available. You can log in and see if a ballots been requested. If a ballot has been sent monitor for that. And make sure that you’re tracking that for your loved ones.

But, on a broader scale, I think that, we should reach out to these, facilities and let them know that when there is a change in rights, that they have an obligation to notify the family. coming at it at all three of those ways for the, family members that are in there.

Andy Mangione: Let’s take it a step further. Unfortunately, there are nursing home residents who have no family, who have no friends, unfortunately, or anybody to advocate on their behalf. What about those people? How can we help those vulnerable voters in nursing homes?

Heather Honey: Yeah. so again, I think there’s a lot that we can do in the community.

So we all, we all live near, one or two or more, nursing homes or long term care facilities. I like the idea of adopting a nursing home, adopting a long term care facility. Going in there, talking to the administrators and saying, listen, I’m concerned about this. What are you doing? you can advocate at the County level to have your County election officials, be in the facility, if your state law allows that, to make sure that the, that it’s not these nursing home residents behind closed doors with who knows who assisting them with a ballot.

But instead, actually having this out in the open that, at an approved time so that family members can be there. If, some of these nursing home residents that want to vote, can do but generally you can actually monitor. Again, we talked about the websites that allow you to check individuals.

Some States make it public. Every person who has requested a mail in absentee ballot. the address of the nursing homes in your community. Look it up. do you see a spike? Are they all on the same day? I think that there are things that we can do to keep an eye on this beforehand to make sure that these people are not exploited.

Andy Mangione: And this is going above and beyond. This is such a pivotal existential election, and you’re looking at a huge voting block of senior citizens, and they are exposed when they’re in a nursing home. So this is something, this, I would put this right up there with knocking on doors and canvassing and talking to low frequency voters.

This is something that will take you out of your comfort zone, but it’s well worth it, don’t you think?

Heather Honey: Absolutely. And listen, I just want to make it clear, senior citizens, nursing home residents should be able to vote. They absolutely should be able to exercise the right to vote, but they should do it in a way where they’re not being influenced, not being exploited, but they also have the right not to vote.

when you see some of these people who are, nursing home residents, 75, 80, 90 years old, have never registered. And somehow they get admitted to a nursing home. And for the first time they’re registering and voting that, that sort of thing, screams of, manipulation. and it’s really, it’s, really unsettling.

Andy Mangione: It is. There are those bad actors that we were talking about earlier. Now, Heather, you’re in Pennsylvania. That’s almost ground zero for a battleground state. And there was a recent state Supreme court ruling that would allow counties to what the state Supreme court referred to as Misstated mail in ballots.

Now we all know how important Pennsylvania is in this election, and this appears to be a setback for proponents of election integrity. Is there any recourse to this ruling?

Heather Honey: Yeah, absolutely. So that decision was in the Commonwealth Court, right? So it will be appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

And there’s reason to believe that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will come down on the right side of this for two reasons. First of all, they have previously looked at the issue of. Of the dating of ballots and determined that it is actually required in the election code. They could reverse themselves, that’s certainly a possibility.

But the other thing that, that I think will might weigh into this is that Pennsylvania did not have no excuse mail voting before 2020, right? That was an act 77 passed at that point. Act 77 has a non severability clause. So if the Supreme Court were to say that this requirement that they’ve already said is a requirement in the law to date it is somehow invalid.

Wouldn’t that potentially trigger this non severability and make act 77 as a whole invalid and essentially make it go away? I think they would be reluctant to do that and open that door. I think there’s, I think there’s a chance that, the Supreme Court will, come down on the right side of this, but we’ll have to wait and see

Andy Mangione: pins and needles.

Heather. Thank you for spending time with us today and keep up the great work. You and your team. We’re doing at the election Research Institute.

Heather Honey: Thanks, Andy.

Andy Mangione: Very welcome. I’m Andy Mangione. Thank you for being with us. We’ll see you next time on AMAC’s Better for America podcast.

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