Why Are These GOPers In A Group That ‘Fortified’ 2020 For Dems?

Nearly four years ago, Time Magazine admitted that powerful interests participated in a “behind the scenes” “conspiracy” to deprive Trump of a second term. One of the groups mentioned in the article was Issue One, the parent organization of a group behind a 2020 initiative to “neutralize … attempts to question the security of mail ballots.” That group, the National Council on Election Integrity (NCEI), includes a handful of Republicans. Given the fact that mail ballots statistically benefit Democrats and create opportunities for election fraud, why did these Republicans go all-in on mail-in voting?

Four years later, another presidential election looms. Trump, again, is the Republican nominee, and, again, he wants a second term.

What might these people be up to in 2024?

Republicans and Never-Trumpers 

The conspirators belonged to “an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans,” that came together to “oppose Trump’s assault on democracy,” Time Magazine’s Molly Ball wrote in the 2021 article. According to Ball, this “well-funded cabal of powerful people” was “not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.”

The 45th president warned many times in 2020 how voting by mail could help rig the election in Biden’s favor, and suggested that mass mail-in-balloting makes voter fraud easier to commit. 

But according to Ball, “it was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night.”

Members of these organizations mentioned in the article — including Protect Democracy, the so-called “nonpartisan” litigation organization “created to oppose the policies of President Donald Trump,” according to InfluenceWatch — “got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time,” as Ball wrote, in 2020. Protect Democracy has blatantly referred to Trump as a “threat” to “our system of government” in its reporting.

The Time article also named the AFL-CIO and a representative from the Brennan Center for Justice — organizations that lean heavily left — among the other groups who also conspired to remove Trump. 

One of the groups mentioned by Ball was Issue One, based in Washington, D.C.

This group, according to its website, aims to “fix our broken political system and build an inclusive democracy that works for everyone.” 

I contacted Issue One spokesman Cory Combs over email, asking if he could explain how and why mail-in voting isn’t “susceptible to fraud,” as the Time article stated. I sent a number of other questions in a follow-up email, including asking if and how Donald Trump is “still considered a threat to democracy,” and whether mail-in voting “made the difference” in electing Joe Biden president in 2020.

Combs declined to answer nearly all questions, merely saying, “Issue One is focusing our nonpartisan efforts in 2024 on making sure voters are directed to the most trusted sources of election information — state and local election officials.”

“We will continue to communicate how our elections are safe and secure because they are administered by trained election workers who use sophisticated and continuously validated processes for counting every ballot,” he wrote.

Issue One has labeled its efforts as “crosspartisan,” according to its website.

Ahead of the 2020 election, Issue One created a National Council on Election Integrity (NCEI). That council “consists of 39 government, political, and civic leaders united around defending the legitimacy of our free and fair elections,” according to its webpage. The council “worked to neutralize the false narrative of widespread election fraud in the media, including attempts to question the security of mail ballots.”

The NCEI includes plenty of well-known Democrats. Among them are former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile and former U.S. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. 

But numerous Republicans also serve on the NCEI, many of whom have been or have become critical of Trump, including former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (who refuses to endorse Trump in 2024) and former George W. Bush administration Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who endorsed Biden in 2020. Former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, who bashes Trump every day on X, is also a council member.

Former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock serves as the council’s co-chair. She has called Trump a “dangerous and diminished man,” and has also joked that if Trump disappeared, few Republicans would join the search party. 

But not all of the Republicans on the Council are Never Trumpers — supposedly.

Former Tennessee U.S. representative and current NCEI co-chair Zach Wamp, who according to Ball “worked through the nonpartisan reform group Issue One to rally Republicans to the effort” of, seemingly, dismissing Trump’s concerns, also told Ball that the council included “rabid Trump supporters.” 

However, their names were not printed in the Time article. 

Combs, when asked to identify who those “rabid Trump supporters” are or were, did not respond.

Other Republicans on the council include former Rep. Charles Boustany, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, former Rep. Steve Gunderson, former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, former Rep. Susan Molinari, former Ambassador Connie Morella, former Rep. Deborah Pryce, and former Rep. Reid Ribble.

‘Reckless and Dangerous’

State election directors nationwide recently expressed “serious concerns” that the U.S. Postal Service “can’t handle” all of the mail-in ballots they are expected to receive in November 2024, according to the Associated Press. What’s more, election integrity advocates — and even the corporate media — have expressed concerns about the vulnerabilities and potential for fraud that come with voting by mail. 

And as we know, these concerns are nothing new. Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in 2020 that mass mail-in voting is a “reckless and dangerous” method, and its proponents are “playing with fire.” Barr cited the story of one Texas man indicted for “marking his preferred candidate on 1,700 ballots,” as The Federalist reported in 2020.  

Even The New York Times reported as far back as 2012 that “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.”

Despite grassroots activists maintaining these concerns, many in the GOP establishment seem to have endorsed voting by mail, not just as a necessary tactic but as a model system.

“The grassroots seem to have a better understanding of what the concerns are and how they should be addressed from a process perspective,” said Garland Favorito, a Georgia IT professional with more than 40 years of election experience. “I think establishment people are not understanding what the issues are that need to be addressed.”

D.A. Butler is an award-winning journalist who has covered news, business, sports, and various human-interest stories. He’s happy to ask questions that other journalists either will not ask or cannot ask.