The Fight for Fair Elections in Michigan | Patrice Johnson, Michigan Fair Elections Institute

[00:00:00] We would like to see that the government is not involved in registering voters. When you have government agencies registering people willy-nilly, that's how you get spikes in the registration going like this when the population is going like this. Keeping our republic is on the line, and it requires patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms.

[00:00:25] Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She is an author, a filmmaker, and one of Time Magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is mom to her boy-girl twins. She has been at the forefront, fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Today we are joined by Patrice Johnson, who is with the Michigan Fair Elections Institute.

[00:00:53] Patrice, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for inviting me, Jenny Beth. My pleasure. So, Patrice, what does the Michigan Fair Elections Institute do? Well, obviously we focus on Michigan, and we focus on fair elections. We are an organization of volunteers. We have about 3,000 folks around the state. We have kind of a two-pronged approach. One is an educational outreach aspect to teach people about the issues of importance regarding election integrity.

[00:01:23] And the other is to actually test and verify that our elections are being held fairly and accurately. So we check the voter rolls. We send people into the elections. We train them how to be election inspectors and how to be poll challengers. So we play a lot. If it has to do with election integrity, we're there. Last year we analyzed over 70 bills that were going through the legislature here in Michigan.

[00:01:48] Wow, that's amazing. And of those bills, how many did you think were good bills versus how many you thought maybe should not have been passed? Of those 70, I would say probably 60 were bad bills. Some were just regular old bills that probably needed to be passed. But most of those were an assault on election integrity, the ones that we were dealing with. We only dealt with election integrity bills. Right. And most of them were very, very bad.

[00:02:17] Yeah. And a lot of times I think legislators, even on the Republican side of the aisle, will hear some weird idea about election integrity, like that's related to elections or election processing. And somehow they mistakenly think that that is a good idea when really it's it's horrible. And it happens, of course, on both sides of the aisle. It's really great that you guys are reading through every single bill to make sure that you understand what's in them.

[00:02:47] Yeah. Well, in Michigan, they're pretty clear. They show you what the existing bill is and then they bold the language they want to add and they cross out the language they want to take out. And so you can easily see that why they're making. Well, you can infer what the what they're trying to accomplish through what they're taking out and adding. And usually what they're trying to do is to eliminate a lot of the checks and balances that had been in place to ensure fair elections.

[00:03:14] That was with the prior legislature. We had a change of majority control. So that's all being questioned now. So I'm excited about that. That's really good. What are the kind of changes you might want to see since the majority control changed in Michigan? Well, top of the list would be citizens, verification of citizenship. Another top of the list would be voter ID. In Michigan, you can just say you don't have an ID and you can vote.

[00:03:43] A third thing that we need to do is we need to clean up our voter rolls. And the secretary of state needs to be held accountable because we have I think it's one hundred and eight percent now is the percentage. More registered voters than voting aged citizens in our in our state. It just keeps it's going through the roof. And there's the thing that people don't tend to realize is that when you have dirty voter rolls, it invites abuse.

[00:04:13] The only time you want dirty voter rolls is if you want to do something nefarious with and have people that shouldn't be voting vote or people that don't know they're voting two or three times. Things like that happen when you have dirty voter rolls. So in your Michigan, Michigan Fair Elections Institute, do you have a group of volunteers who works on attempting to clean the voter rolls? And if so, what what have they experienced over the years working to try to clean them?

[00:04:40] Because one hundred and eight percent of the voting age population that there's no way that's possible. It's not possible and it's inexcusable. There's no excuse for it. We had as of November 30th, we had eight hundred and seventy two people in our state that were actively looking at the voter rolls. They're they're analysts. And then we have what we call clerk advocates. So once they get the information, for example, we we get the qualified voter file, which is the state's official voter roll every month.

[00:05:10] And then we look at who's been added, who's been deleted, who's been recorded as having voted and that type of thing. And we check to see where there are anomalies. For example, some two bedroom households, if they have 40 people registered to vote in them, we suspect there's something. So our folks will go knock on the door and ask, you know, we show these people registered here. Is this correct? And a lot of times the rules are not correct.

[00:05:39] So then we have a clerk advocate that takes this information and says, we took this from the voter rolls. We have verified that this is the situation. This person is deceased or these people don't live here. And then we take it to the clerk and then the clerk can remove those people. And and does the clerk or do the clerks remove the people?

[00:05:59] I know in many states there has not been good success with with that that final step of removal or even just putting them in a pending status, a voter in a pending status. It isn't happening. Well, you bring up a very good point. It depends on the clerk. It depends on the clerk. And we have we have friendly clerks. Really, 70 percent of the counties are what you'd call red counties. And those clerks tend to want to really verify the voter rolls.

[00:06:29] We have other clerks that aren't interested. And in that case, you know, we have to look at other options. But, for example, we just discovered one of our volunteers discovered that in Michigan, we have what's called challenge and verify status on a voter. And if they're in challenge or verify status, it means that the clerk is supposed to verify that they are who they are and that they are eligible to vote in their jurisdiction.

[00:06:54] Well, something happened to all the clerks in Michigan, apparently, where absentee ballots, when they when they hit the button to send absentee ballots to the registered voters, there the algorithms had been changed. And everybody who was in challenge and verify status received absentee ballots. They're not supposed to. That's against the law. And and the clerks didn't make those changes. And somehow their machines, their their their absentee ballots were sent to, you know, thousands of people like that.

[00:07:24] So we detected it and we tried to notify the clerks, you know, they had to verify these ballots when they came back in. But that's, you know, that's that's too late by that time. But that's exactly what you mean, where when you have those bad rules or the challenge status and the laws and upheld, that's when problems can arise, whether it is deliberate or not. For instance, it may be someone who even still lives in Michigan and somehow they didn't get removed from an old place like an old county.

[00:07:54] And now they live in a new county, a different county. And they're on the voter rolls in two places potentially. And they may wind up with two ballots and not even realize they're filling out the wrong one. It doesn't mean they necessarily as a voter meant to create a problem. But when the rolls aren't cleaned and the law isn't upheld, it creates that kind of opportunity in the very least for mistakes to happen.

[00:08:18] And of course, we could you and I both know there are a lot of people who would say things are very, very deliberate and and that can happen as well. And deliberate acts can happen as well. But even when it can even be mistakes and those mistakes could wind up being significant enough to swing the outcome of an election or at least cast the outcome in doubt. That's right. That's right. And the majority of time, those are innocent mistakes.

[00:08:46] The the issue where, for example, an algorithm changes all of the machines that, you know, raises eyebrows because the clerks had nothing to do with changing the algorithms inside their computers. And that could have been a mistake, too. But it was not corrected in time for the election this time around. So next time we will be notifying folks ahead of time to test and be sure that when they when they hit send, that it's not going to the challenged and verified folks.

[00:09:13] Well, and it seems to me like and I don't think I'm just throwing out an idea. And sometimes I do that and sometimes it's good and sometimes it's really dangerous. But it seems to me like that kind of problem should actually be covered in some sort of logic and accuracy testing.

[00:09:34] It's not because I'm sure it's not because the logic and accuracy testing is testing more of what happens on Election Day with the the machines on that the voters are directly interacting with. But every single bit of the entire election process, especially when computers are involved, it needs to be checked.

[00:09:57] Once you know that everything is working the way it is supposed to work, that software code should be locked in and not changed again until after the election is over. That is what would happen in corporate America for sure. And it seems like those simple same kind of procedures should be happening in our election system. You know, Jenny Beth, you are exactly right.

[00:10:19] We should treat ballots like we treat a dollar bill in the sense that if we went into the bank and the bank said, well, I think you either have three thousand dollars or you're ten thousand dollars overdrawn. You're somewhere in between there. That wouldn't fly with anybody. And in I think it was 2002, the financial institutions were in trouble because their books were not auditable and it nearly crashed the financial market.

[00:10:44] So our U.S. Congress instituted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which says that every publicly traded company must have auditable books. And if they're not, they have to explain why. And then there's personal accountability for the executives. To explain if they know they have to sign personally that they do, they know of no fraud and they participated in no fraud in their companies.

[00:11:11] And we should have the same type of logic applying to our elections if we want to have people trust them and have citizens have confidence in their vote, that their vote counts. That is exactly right. And it's hard to know whether the algorithm inside the computer code was a deliberate act of malice or just a mistake. I used to program computers and I know those kind of mistakes can happen. But that's why the testing is so important.

[00:11:37] And then locking the code in after you've tested it is so important as well. Mistakes do happen, but you should have enough checks and balances to catch the mistakes. And that's really the same kind of thing that we're talking about now computer code and voter rolls. But it's the same thing in both instances.

[00:11:55] You need safeguards in the system to make sure that when human error occurs, there are ways to try to check that and avoid it and correct it before it is too late to be able to have surety in the outcome of the election. That you're exactly right. And another thing is that our machines should be protected against being hacked.

[00:12:20] These passwords that are open to everybody and the easily accessible hacking of these machines is not acceptable either because you don't know who the good guys are and the bad guys. It doesn't matter. Nobody should be hacking into the machines and putting the integrity of the vote at risk. Yeah, that is exactly right.

[00:12:40] And that kind of thing where you're locking down passwords and you have very good password protections and mechanisms and the passwords are long and only one person has each password and it's not a password that's shared everywhere, especially not an administrative password or a super user password.

[00:13:01] Again, it's best practices that you would have to do in a manufacturing or production production plant around the country, a retail store that is dealing with lots of money. These are normal kinds of practices and safeguards that businesses have in place. And we should have the same thing for our election system. I don't think it is outrageous to think we should have that.

[00:13:29] And I also think that most Americans, if they understood the kind of issues that you've seen and that other people like you in your own state of Michigan and around the entire country have witnessed, they would want those kind of checks and balances to make sure that we're preventing mistakes and problems from happening.

[00:14:15] I agree. And if they're not going to be in the market, there would be companies producing those parts. So some type of plan to make the transition so that the parts are secure is important, too. Yeah, I think that that's such a it seems like such a common sense requirement when you're dealing with machines that are determining the outcome of elections of one of the world's superpowers.

[00:14:40] You want to make sure that the world's superpowers has control over the manufacturing of those machines and it's not being outsourced to other countries, especially countries that may not have our country's best interest at heart. And no matter what, no matter what country it is, it could be our greatest ally. They're still going to have their own interests ahead of our interests. It's only human nature that that would happen.

[00:15:08] So let's let's take us. Well, first, so you want to see a few changes to the legislation this year. What other changes would you like to see? And then I want to talk a little bit more about what your group does and how you got involved in your your background. Oh, well, gosh, thanks. Yeah, well, we would like to see we would like to see that the government is not involved in registering voters.

[00:15:33] We think that that should be the parties are, you know, motivated to register voters. When the government gets involved, they put the thumb on the scales and they tend to register the party in power. The people who think the people will vote to keep the party in power. And so I'm really pleased that President Trump has rescinded Executive Order 14-019.

[00:15:58] In Michigan, we have a situation where our governor followed suit with President Biden's order and she executed an executive directive saying all anybody interacts with a state government institution will be automatically registered, too. And so that needs to be rescinded. And we don't have anybody that can take that executive order out of place right now.

[00:16:23] So when you have government agencies registering people will and willy nilly, that's how you get spikes in the registration going like this when the population is going like this. Right. Yeah. And sometimes the people may wind up double registering without even realizing that they've done it.

[00:16:41] You know, if you're at a doctor's office and they're giving you a whole bunch of papers and some of them are official government paperwork, you just sit there and fill it out because you fill out everything when you're sitting in the doctor's office so you can get in to be seen. And you may not even realize it and inadvertently you wind up registering twice or other kind of weird issues like that can happen. That's right. And say one time you put your middle initial in, the next time you don't. One time you abbreviate your first name, the next time you don't.

[00:17:10] You could end up being registered three or four times. And that's another thing. In Michigan, we do not have real-time computer systems. But we do have same-day voter registration. So you have people that could register and not be detected for weeks or months afterwards that they were double registered. And again, this doesn't mean that these people are nefarious, but there are systems out there that recognize that a person is registered and that they're not using that ballot.

[00:17:39] And ballots that aren't used or, you know, a voter identification that isn't being executed is just a huge temptation for bad actors out there. It really is. It is too great of a temptation. And one way to help reduce that temptation is to remove that many ballots from being in circulation when they should not be. Patrice, how did your group get started?

[00:18:05] How long have you been doing election integrity and fair election type work? Well, after the election 2020, my husband and I were sitting around where I actually live at this kitchen table with some friends. And we were bemoaning the fact that things just didn't smell right. It seemed quite wrong. So we decided we needed to get involved.

[00:18:27] And somebody said, well, if we're going to get involved in the elections, we have to focus on election integrity because without that, our vote doesn't mean anything. And nothing, we don't, that's that, a person's vote is their only voice in government. That's their voice. So we decided to focus on that. So we started reading the laws and going to the hearings. And then Cleta Mitchell had a summit. The Election Integrity Network had a summit in Michigan. And those folks asked me to come speak there.

[00:18:56] And then Cleta Mitchell and some of the folks at EIN asked me if I would start an organization that focused on local task forces. And that's when we started Michigan Fair Elections Institute. So currently we have county leaders in 43 of our 83 counties. And we're moving to a chapter model where we're very excited about from task force to chapter model.

[00:19:19] It'll just be a little bit more, a little, we'll be providing more direct assistance with calendars and assistance like that. So we're hoping to keep up the momentum of the local involvement in politics. What we found is that a lot of people were not engaged, but they were very frustrated.

[00:19:41] So we'd like to teach people how the government works, what the positions are locally, and get them involved locally and to understand what the laws are based on the Constitution of both Michigan and of the United States. That's really important. Now, Patrice, you started this in the very beginning. You said your group has 3,000 people and you've got 43 out of 83 counties covered. That's quite amazing.

[00:20:08] What do you think your secret to success with that kind of recruitment and engagement is? And what else do you plan to do besides transitioning from the task force model to the chapter model to help continue to grow? Well, I wouldn't give me credit. We have an enormous talent in Michigan. And I think that's really what gives our organization the strength. These volunteers, they might come from a background.

[00:20:36] For example, I got a text from a person that said she was actually an auditor and she wondered how she might join our group and be of value. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that's perfect. So people come from all walks of life, insurance, whether they're blue collar, white collar, it doesn't matter. In our organization, everybody can do something. So we have a saying that says nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.

[00:21:01] And so we try really hard to match people up with what they're comfortable doing and find where they can partner up and enjoy a sense of community with the folks that they're working with. That's so important. And I've been on some of your statewide conference calls, and you do a great work, and you also run a really tight ship on those calls. So you've got an agenda, you stick to it, you end on time.

[00:21:25] I think some of those simple kind of things make a huge difference when you're working with volunteers because they know you respect their time and you're using it wisely. Well, part of that is selfish. I can't stand being on a call where I feel my time is wasted, so I wouldn't want to do that to anybody else either. But we do have a great group of people. We just get terrific people. You really do.

[00:21:48] And one of the things that I've been impressed about with Michigan over the last several years is how well they were willing to – the grassroots in Michigan, from what I could see from outside of Michigan, were willing to set aside differences they may have had in the past and just work on this mission of making sure they were improving the elections and making sure that they were secure and fair. Most importantly, fair to all voters and to the entire election system itself.

[00:22:18] And it was very collaborative, and I saw that it was just a great coalition. And I know that you worked with the RNC back in 2021. Maybe not your C3 exactly, but the RNC was involved and had this great person assigned to Michigan at the state level, Matthew, who did a great job. And you worked closely with him and others worked closely with him, just sort of coalescing and saying, here's what we agree on.

[00:22:47] We're not really talking about the outcome of the election. We're just talking about the process and making sure that people understand it, that voters understand it. And these are ways that the everyday American can be involved and make a difference. Yes. Matthew was assigned to Michigan as the election integrity director. And so he was great to work with because he was focused on election integrity. So we would help recruit election inspectors, for example. Those are the poll workers.

[00:23:16] And then he had the training system to train them. But that's training people on the law. It's not party-specific at all. It's just training, here's how an election is supposed to operate, and here's what your functions might be. So that was a real good combination, I think. And if the other side had election integrity directors, we would love to work with them, too. But the other side doesn't seem to be so interested in election integrity. They're focused on other things. Yeah.

[00:23:43] And I think some of that kind of depends on which state you're in. I know that we've had interesting alliances in the state of Georgia that are sometimes a little bit unlikely. And when that opportunity arises, we definitely, within our election integrity coalition in Georgia, and I'm heavily involved in that one, although I've been to your state and many others helping as much as I can,

[00:24:12] but it's interesting to see where there are some places where across parties they can kind of go, oh, I don't know if I really like the candidate, but yeah, we're worried about this election didn't seem like it worked out quite right, and we need to get to the bottom of it. And they've accepted help on the left. They've accepted help from the other side of the law. I mean, the other side of the aisle. And then on the right, I think that that same kind of thing has happened.

[00:24:40] And I know that it also sometimes happens in California, which seems unlikely, but when you have a state where it's one party control, all of a sudden if there are candidates who think there's a problem with the election, with the outcome of the election, they have to turn to volunteers who are willing to help them regardless of the party. And it just seems that groups like yours are willing to say, okay, we'll put aside all the other differences and just see if we can figure out where we can agree

[00:25:08] and work to restore faith in the outcome of the election. Yes, we have laws, laws protecting the elections. And if they're not enforced, that's a real problem. So we focus on what the laws are and following the law. And we did have a problem in Michigan where our Republican, the Michigan GOP was falling apart, and the other side wasn't interested in election integrity. So we stepped into the breach when we discovered, for example,

[00:25:37] we try to do research-based action. So we did some research in Detroit and found out, for example, that they had seven Democrat election inspectors for every one Republican. And the law is very specific. It says it should be 50-50 as nearly as possible. So they had plenty of notice to make it 50-50, but it wasn't happening. So we set up a call to action to our folks with Peer Entity Michigan Elections

[00:26:05] and started recruiting people. And we recruited over 1,000 people signing up to go into Detroit and be election inspectors. We had trouble getting them placed because Detroit wasn't really open to hiring any more people. But we will continue to work with Detroit. And we had the same problem in Flint where actually we reported the same type of numbers and the clerk of 25 years resigned the next day. But the problem still isn't fixed completely.

[00:26:35] In certain areas, I think they're just used to doing things with their friends the way they've always done it. And maybe everything's fine, but maybe it's not. And you can't tell. Our founding fathers set up a set of checks and balances for a very good reason. So you don't have to rely on the law. You can rely on people with integrity to say, no, that ballot wasn't signed or no, that ballot wasn't marked correctly or this ballot wasn't counted and it should have been counted.

[00:27:04] So you just need both sets, both sets of eyes. All ideologies, all types of people should all be represented. That is exactly right. Now, what is your background, Patrice? How did I understand that you were talking about it and worried about about the elections after 2020. But what else have you done that led you to be able to to start this amazing network of people in Michigan? Well, I have a master's degree in English literature.

[00:27:32] But I also have a for some reason I start companies. And I had started a company way back when and it became a fairly large, it was the first computer reseller association in the country. That grew really well. And so I was, that company was acquired and I was moved out to Washington. And from there I went to a data company and was their director of computer markets.

[00:27:57] And so I, I've kind of just, just been very fortunate to have people that mentored me and, and gave me guidance. And I happened to be in areas that kind of coalesce. So I, I'm good at looking at data. I, I had a job at one for, I, the company I joined was a, I think they were 3.4 billion when I joined them. And then, so they were a fortune 50 electronics company.

[00:28:25] And then I happened to have an opportunity to start a company within that company. And we took that public. So that was a very exciting time. We sold off 10% of the company and that company became, had greened a bigger market cap than the parent company at that time. So I've just had a lot of very fortunate experiences of working in corporate environments as well as marketing and writing and stuff. It just, I like to start things, I guess.

[00:28:54] Yeah, that's, no, that's really good. And one of the things that I found, like you and people around the country who are very engaged in election integrity and are doing some of the really nitty gritty work with it, there are a lot of, there are a lot of people who are stepping up and working elections or being poll watchers or helping get the word out about the importance to have safe and secure and fair and transparent elections. All of that is very important.

[00:29:23] And then there's this, so there are a lot of those people getting involved. And then there's this smaller group of people that is just getting involved at that, like the thousand foot level or the, you know, they're just digging as deep as they possibly can trying to understand, understand the processes, clean the voter rolls, understand how the computer systems work, understand how the whole election process in their, their county or state works.

[00:29:49] And I found many of those people who are just digging really, really deep are the ones who come from that information technology background. And I'm the same way. I used to program computers. You know, we just, we know how to do data. We know what was required for quality assurance before our code would be able to be released to other people who worked in our company. We understood the consequences financially, if we were getting it wrong to the fortune.

[00:30:19] I worked for a fortune 10 company. I worked for fortune, I think 200 companies. So, you know, you understand that there's a real impact if you don't get it right. And then like that auditor who you mentioned, well, it isn't exactly computer programming when you're dealing with auditing, but you're dealing with all those processes. You're looking at money, you're looking at numbers and, and you're making sure every single thing lines up.

[00:30:44] And I think that, that, that people like that who might be listening, there is a lot of work to be done in this space. And, and we can always use more volunteers willing to help with that. Oh my gosh. Yes. I think if I've learned anything, it's that it's, it's really the process that matters because you can have a finally, finally tuned engine or a finally operating a computer algorithm and you tweak one little thing and you can crash the whole thing or you can make it do

[00:31:14] things it shouldn't be doing. And so we need to pay attention to the whole process from start to finish from the time a person's registered to the time that ballot is counted. And there are all kinds of people with all kinds of talents that, that fit into every step along the line there. So there's no, no shortage of things for people to do to help. That's right. So what other kind of task forces or subcommittees do you have within your, within your network

[00:31:44] and your institute? Well, we have a communications committee and they're very active. They focus on finding, taking, taking the information that the group has found and, and sharing it so people understand and are educated on what the situation is. So I kind of started at the end of the row there. At the, at the beginning, we start, we do investigations. Like we investigated Lansing after the, after the 2020 election, I guess it was, and found

[00:32:11] that there were people voting from college dorms that had been closed due to COVID. They couldn't have been voting there. And we found people that were 60 years old that were registered and voting from fraternity houses that, you know, clearly they were not living in those fraternity houses. So then after 2022, we did the same type of audit on, uh, in, in Ann Arbor. And there we found that people were voting at two o'clock and not just voting, they were

[00:32:38] registering to vote and voting at two o'clock in the morning after the election had closed. And so we reported that in a report and thinking that they would then change, you know, they would, they would snap to a little bit. And what happened was the legislature made it legal. If you're in line, you can register and vote as long as you're in line at eight o'clock. So this time around, what we did is we put, we sent people out to 19 different precincts,

[00:33:06] usually on college campuses, and they held last in line signs. So at 8 PM, they got in line. Nobody could get in line and register to vote after them. So, uh, we try, we operate within the law, but the law and the process is very important. You should not have people registering to vote in a computer system that is not real time, that can't check if they're citizens, that can't check if they've, they're registered elsewhere. Um, but that is the system we have. So that's the, those are the rules we have to work under.

[00:33:37] That's, that is really good. And you find creative solutions, like having someone stand there with last in line, line signage. You're not doing anything wrong. You're showing this is where the line ends. It's eight o'clock, no more. And, um, you're finding a solution so that you don't have those same kind of problems that you experienced previously. We had, uh, one, one person called me and he said, you know, there's a, there's a warehouse that produces the ballots for 15 counties or something around this, around the state.

[00:34:06] And they're only two or three blocks from Huntington Center, which is the, it's the main absentee counting place in, in Detroit. And it's always suspected that these, well, in 2020, there was a suspicious ballot drop that came in about three in the morning. Nobody knows where those thousands of ballots materialize from. So anyway, he said, I would like to set up a camera on that warehouse and see what happens. So we had a very generous donor that helped us buy the camera and he set up a crew.

[00:34:34] And so they stood there and basically watched that warehouse. And they're, okay, we see a truck entering now. It's in front of the doors. We don't know what's being loaded on. So it was very entertaining. We called it the warehouse watch party. But you know, um, oh, and then they saw, uh, they followed one truck that went to Huntington Center. It parked at Huntington Center and they kept the camera on it till one o'clock in the morning. And then they got tired and went home. But that truck, as far as we know, was never unloaded with any ballots.

[00:35:03] So we, you don't know what you deter. Um, but it always helps to have eyes on things and to know what should be and what should not be so that you, so that you, um, aren't gullible. Yes, that is exactly right. Now, what happens if somebody is listening and they're in Michigan and they want to get involved? What should they do? Oh, great. Well, go to myfarelections.org and then you can just sign up to volunteer or sign up to subscribe.

[00:35:30] We just need to know your name and your county. We like to know your county and phone number and email address, of course. So yeah, we'd love to have any volunteers. Thank you. And then the last thing is what are the most, you're going to be following legislation in, in your state legislature with a new majority. And what are the other things that you're doing in 2025? We're not going away when it comes to election integrity. We're going to continue to, to work on this and make sure that everyone, regardless of the

[00:36:00] outcome of the election has faith in that outcome. So what other things are you continuing to do? Well, we're continuing to, uh, investigate and where we're finding things that need to be fixed. Because our speaker of the house has granted the oversight committee subpoena power. So we would like to have, just find out information, like how do these algorithms change?

[00:36:27] You know, we understand that there's a cobbled up electronic system in Lansing, which is the capital of Michigan. Um, so let's fix that so that the technology works and the weird algorithms don't go changing, uh, during, without people knowing, you know? Right. Um, so we want to do that. We'd like to very much get involved with, um, there are mayoral elections coming up in 2025.

[00:36:51] And then also in 2026, we'd have a, our governor will change, our secretary of state will change, and our attorney general. So that'll be on us in no time. So we want to get people trained, um, to know how to work the elections. We want to have the voter rolls as clean as we can get them by that time. And we also want people to understand that, that if they're interested in running for office, they should, they should, what the deadlines are for them to get their names in, to apply,

[00:37:19] you know, if they have to have petition signatures in order to run. A lot of things, a lot of it's just politics 101, we call it, educating people on what the process is and the importance of civic engagement. You know, uh, was it, um, Benjamin Franklin said he gave us the republic if you can keep it. And it's all about citizen engagement. In our country, if we want to have a country that we govern, we have to be involved in it. Um, it's easy to live in a country where you have tyrants in charge.

[00:37:49] Um, but if we want to keep our government of the people, by the people, then we have to be involved. So that's what we, we're planning just to keep educating people on the importance of being involved. That is wonderful, Patrice. I really appreciate that. And I am so glad that you are doing everything you can to keep our great republic and doing that work through the Michigan Fair Elections Institute. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you, Jenny Beth.

[00:38:13] The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mooneyham and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action. For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org. If you liked this episode, let me know by hitting the like button or leaving a comment or a five star review.

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