Sunshine Sentinel

Gina Swoboda, executive director of Voter Reference Foundation, recently urged voters to educate themselves and hold their local county election officials accountable.

She shared these thoughts in a Live Free TV episode June 29, posted to YouTube by the American Constitutional Rights Union.

"So we need to verify that compliance exists in your county," Swoboda said to Live Free TV. "And when you don't follow the law that is there for a reason to ensure the quality and the controls, […] then if there is chaos, there's room for for bad things to happen. So people need to know what are the rules that are in place for the election, and are they following them and have they followed them?"

If they haven't, she urges people to go to their elected officials to ensure compliance with the statutes, according to the video.

The Voter Reference Foundation is an organization and informational website dedicated to educating and providing access to information about how elections work across the country, according to its website. The website includes resources like absentee ballot trackers, scorecards for each state based on their data transparency and election operations and state guides to voter registration.

“Our goal is to encourage greater voter participation in all 50 states,” the website reported. “We believe the people have an absolute right to a transparent elections system, including elections data and elections procedures.”

During the Live Free TV episode, hosted by former Republican Congressman and military officer Allen West, Swoboda referenced Florida as one of the states having issues related to automatic voter registration. In Florida, a resident is automatically registered to vote when they receive a driver’s license in the state. This can cause issues with non-citizens, who are eligible for certain licenses but do not have the right to vote.

“If you try to prosecute those crimes, which we saw in Florida, where they set up an election integrity unit and they said, okay, these people shouldn't be voting, some of them were felons, some of them were non-citizens, then the election officials position is, well, it's not our job.” Swoboda said to Live Free TV. “Taxpayer money is not supposed to be spent to go increase voter registration. We should be spending the money, the taxpayer money, on securing the system, keeping the rolls clean and not endangering people and kind of suborning a vote from a person who is not eligible.”

Florida has taken some steps to tighten their election security, Swoboda acknowledged, according to the video. The state scored a B rating on the Voter Reference Foundation’s election operations scale, with non-secure ballot collection and poor absentee voting methods. The data transparency rating was an 83 out of 100, putting them in the top 10 states for available election information.

Swoboda and West also discussed the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Moore vs Harper case in the Live Free TV episode. The ruling resulted from a North Carolina State Supreme Court case in which the state court prevented the state legislature from enacting a new jurisdictional map in 2021. 

The U.S. Constitution places authority in the state legislature over federal elections, however a 6-3 vote from the U.S. Supreme Court determined that “the federal elections clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections,” meaning states and state legislatures can be overruled by the federal government, according to the SCOTUS blog.