The Heritage Foundation unveiled its “Election Integrity Scorecard” on Tuesday, which seeks to assess and compare election laws and regulations that affect the security and integrity of the democratic process in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
According to RealClearPolitics’ Philip Wegmann, the scorecard allows lawmakers and voters to “see how Heritage ranks each state by hovering their mouse over an interactive color-coded map of the United States,” with the entire country lit up “with reds, yellows, and greens to easily indicate which states have done the best to live up to the Heritage standard of running an election.”
Heritage unveils new “election integrity scorecard.” https://t.co/qpRboNrPHT pic.twitter.com/p8S7THIkCZ
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) December 14, 2021
States such as Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee are colored forest green, ranking them first, second, and third, respectively. Hawaii, Nevada, and California, on the other hand, are colored red and come out at the bottom of the list.
The RealClearPolitics report goes on to note how the conservative think-tank assigned grades “out of a possible perfect score of 100 according to a dozen categories, each weighted differently, from implementation of voter ID requirements and maintenance of voter registration rolls to prohibition of private election funding to access for election observers.” In creating the scorecard, Heritage conducted its own analysis in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, while also inviting input from election law experts.
According to John Malcolm, vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government and the director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, the organization will regularly update the scorecard as states make changes to their election laws.
“If that changes the ranking,” Malcolm said, underscoring the entire point, “it changes the ranking.”
Executive Director of Heritage Action Jessica Anderson detailed her optimism over the new project, saying grassroots activists “will be able to use Heritage’s Election Integrity Scorecard as a roadmap to go back to their legislators and advocate for further election integrity measures.”
“The scorecard represents the single best resource for Americans in all 50 states to understand election integrity laws and advocate to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat in their state,” she added.
Source: The Federalist
