What Is Our Endgame Election Integrity? Proven Felonies and Arrests? Or Misdemeanors and Slaps On The Hand?

WE ALL ARE LOSING TOGETHER!

At this point, when it comes to the 2020 General Election, it is hard to tell who the enemy actually is.

In fact, a more diverse array of finger pointing is done at election integrity individuals rather than the criminal which stole our elections. Here are a few things everyone needs to take into consideration:

Most people don’t realize this, but the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) were never built with real “teeth.”

Congress set the EAC up mainly as a standards and guidance agency, not a cop—so its voting system guidelines are literally labeled voluntary unless a state chooses to write them into its own laws. The federal government doesn’t micromanage how states comply with HAVA, and the only real federal enforcement route is the Department of Justice filing a civil lawsuit, which almost never happens and takes years when it does. The EAC can hand out money, certify machines to its voluntary standards, and issue reports—but it can’t fine officials, overturn results, or punish anyone for ignoring its guidance. That’s why, when election rules get bent or broken, it often feels like there’s no enforcement at all: because in most cases, there really isn’t a federal cop on the beat.

The reason the EAC’s rules are called Voluntary Voting System Guidelines is baked into the law that created them.

Under the Help America Vote Act, Congress told the Election Assistance Commission to write national standards for voting machines, but very deliberately labeled them “voluntary” because election administration is mostly controlled by the states, not Washington. That means EAC standards only become mandatory if a state chooses to write them into its own laws or contracts. Vendors seek EAC certification because many states require or prefer it, but the EAC itself can’t force any state or county to adopt its rules—its power is mostly limited to certifying systems, giving guidance, and tying some federal money to basic compliance with HAVA, not acting as a national election cop.

The “voluntary” guidelines are shaped by a small group at the top and several advisory bodies. The EAC is run by four commissioners, no more than two from the same political party, who are nominated by the president from lists supplied by congressional leaders in both parties and then confirmed by the U.S. Senate. They adopt the VVSG after getting draft recommendations from the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (chaired by the director of NIST and 14 other technical experts) and feedback from the EAC Standards Board (state and local election officials) and Board of Advisors (representatives from groups like NASS, NASED, disability advocates, and technical organizations). Thus, in practice, a bipartisan but very small federal commission, advised by a mix of insiders and experts, writes standards that only become binding when state officials choose to adopt them.

A lot of people hear rumors that “foreign software” like Smartmatic can be used to rig elections overseas and then assume that means those same people or governments can somehow control elections in the United States.

That’s not how U.S. elections work at all. In America, elections are run locally by state and county officials under U.S. constitutions, U.S. statutes, and U.S. courts. Every piece of voting technology (no matter who makes it) has to be bought, approved, configured, and tested by American jurisdictions under their own rules. A foreign government cannot log in, send orders, or “enforce” anything inside a U.S. election office just because some other country once used the same brand of software.

Even when a foreign country uses a vendor like Smartmatic in a shady or controversial way, that doesn’t give them any legal or operational control over how the United States runs its elections.

A vendor is just a private company offering products; it doesn’t get to write American law, can’t command any election official, and can’t override U.S. certification processes, audits, or court oversight. If something were to go wrong with any election system her, whether Smartmatic or any other brand the only authorities that matter are American: state and local election officials, U.S. courts, and, in serious cases, U.S. law enforcement. Therefore, what other countries do with their software may be a cautionary tale or a political talking point, but it does not give them a joystick to control or enforce anything inside U.S. elections.

When we keep saying “the machines stole the election,” we’re basically building our case on the weakest legal foundation in the whole system.

The federal standards for voting machines (the EAC’s Voluntary Voting System Guidelines) are just that—voluntary—unless a state chooses to make them binding. Even when rules are broken around testing, certification, or procedures, those are often handled as administrative or contractual issues, not slam-dunk felonies. So you end up in endless battles over expert reports, software claims, and technical speculation that judges routinely dismiss as “too speculative” or “not outcome-determinative.” In other words, you’re fighting on ground where the law has very few sharp teeth and the burden of proof is sky-high.

Physical ballots are the opposite:

that’s where the felony teeth live.

Every state has clear criminal statutes making it a serious crime to forge, alter, destroy, discard, or stuff ballots, to falsify returns, or to interfere with the chain of custody. If you can show that real, paper ballots were added, thrown away, altered, or mishandled in specific, provable ways—with witnesses, documents, video, chain-of-custody breaks, or mismatched numbers—that’s the kind of thing prosecutors must take seriously because it’s black-letter law, not a policy argument. If the goal is real accountability and legal traction, pouring all our energy into “the machines did it” (in a framework where the key rules are voluntary and fuzzy) is a failed premise. The smart play is to do the hard, boring work where felony enforcement already exists: track the ballots, confirm the physical ballot, audit the counts, document the chain of custody, and build cases around concrete violations that the law already knows how to punish.

I ask the question once again: What Is Our Endgame Election Integrity? Proven Felonies and Arrests? Or Misdemeanors and Slaps On The Hand?