PHX Reporter

Hayden Ludwig, the director of research at Restoration of America said “Time Magazine called Mark Zuckerberg a hero for ‘saving the 2020 election’ by privatizing it.” 

“So not only is the left not reporting on this, they’re actually hailing it and calling anybody who does honest work just looking at the numbers, stuff that my organization does, they call us election conspiracy theorists and deniers,” Ludwig told host Leyla Gulen on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast. “It’s outrageous.”

“We’ve seen this happen many times with totally unrelated issues like Critical Race Theory where these ideas start out as very fringe, say in a University or by an activist organization, and when they’re pushed out there everybody scoffs,” Ludwig said. “But then over time, they normalize and mainstream this position until it becomes accepted by the Democratic party.”

This full episode is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Ludwig joined the podcast to discuss his recent column, “High Election Worker Turnover’ is the Left’s Newest Ploy to Federalize Elections.”

Restoration of America was founded by West Point graduate and U.S. Army veteran Doug Truax with the mission of preserving the conservative ways of life in the United States.

Before joining Restoration of America, Ludwig worked as a senior investigative research for Capital Research Center, investigating the funding of various left leaning movements and organizations. 

Ludwig’s recent column, published on the American Greatness website, investigates how organizations on the political left are attempting to control local elections through federal and partisan funding efforts, along with legislation changes to state election processes. 

Full, Unedited Transcript of this Podcast:

[00:00:00] Leyla Gulen: Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I'm your host, Leyla Gulen. In this episode, we welcome our guest, Hayden Ludwig. Hayden hails from Orange County, California, and is the Director of Policy Research at Restoration of America. He was formerly Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center and holds a Master's in Public Policy from George Mason University.

[00:00:26] Leyla Gulen: Aidan, welcome. 

[00:00:27] Hayden Ludwig: Well, it's so good to be with you. Thank 

[00:00:29] Leyla Gulen: you. Yes. We've got a lot to dive into. You've written some really fascinating articles on just so many critical issues that are affecting this country and voters today. But why don't we start here? You do some fascinating deep dives. And to where the money is coming from, essentially.

[00:00:48] Leyla Gulen: So there was another article that you co wrote following the Zuck bucks and obviously referring to Mark Zuckerberg and how his money is finding itself in states coffers that would otherwise [00:01:00] not take it, but doing so by proxy through other organizations. So just recently, Louisiana, they passed an initiative to ban Zuck bucks, they become the 26th state to do so.

[00:01:12] Leyla Gulen: So can you talk a little bit more about following the money and how you've gone about investigating all of 

[00:01:19] Hayden Ludwig: this? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So if you go back to 2020, there was this little side story. I say side story because people weren't following it the way they were traditional election day news, but it was how Mark Zuckerberg, of course, the billionaire behind Facebook, was pouring 400 million, huge sum of money.

[00:01:38] Hayden Ludwig: Into a two different very obscure nonprofits. The one that we know well now is the Center for Tech in Civic Life based in Chicago, and this is a nonprofit meeting. It's a 5 0 1 C three. It's the same kind of tax code as your local church or goodwill. It's a group that's supposedly doing charity. Well, all of this money got pumped out, $350 million.

[00:01:58] Hayden Ludwig: And to thousands [00:02:00] of county election officials. So whatever county or city you live in, that money was routed as grants to help these people run their elections. And this was supposedly some great act of philanthropy by this mega dirt, you know, amidst of the COVID 19 pandemic. Well, when we crunched the numbers, the month after election day, so here we are, December 2020, trying to figure out what did this money actually do?

[00:02:23] Hayden Ludwig: Lo and behold, we found that in all of the nine battleground states we looked at, all of this money favored big blue Democrat cities like Philadelphia or Maricopa County or Atlanta juicing Democrat turnout. We figured that out by looking at. Well, you'd expect bigger grants of money to go to bigger population centers, but let's look at it on a per person basis.

[00:02:47] Hayden Ludwig: And it's shocking how much more money flowed into counties that Joe Biden won as opposed to Donald Trump. And we'll flash forward to today, half the states have banned that practice rightly because it's effectively privatizing [00:03:00] election administration. And a way that is totally unaccountable and susceptible to Chinese or Russian mega funders pouring their money into our elections.

[00:03:08] Hayden Ludwig: It's outrageous. Never been done before in our country's history. But what you have now is an evolution that we're tracing about how the left is trying to make this a permanent feature in all of the states where Democrats have control. And it's something that needs to be stopped. 

[00:03:24] Leyla Gulen: Now, why are we not hearing more about this?

[00:03:26] Leyla Gulen: I think it's really fascinating. They always say you follow the money, but this, despite the fact that your research has been featured everywhere, why is this not part of the regular everyday conversation that people are having when it comes time to casting your ballot? Or when it comes time to choosing your nominee?

[00:03:52] Hayden Ludwig: I think the simplest answer is because there's not enough people who are actually reporting honestly on the facts, whether they're conservative or [00:04:00] not. I mean, everybody knows that the left controls to the quote unquote mainstream media. And what that actually looks like in practice is stunning. Time magazine called called Mark Zuckerberg a hero for quote, saving the 2020 election by privatizing it.

[00:04:14] Hayden Ludwig: Right? So not only is the left not reporting on this, they're actually hailing it and calling anybody who does. honest work, just looking at the numbers, no spin or anything like stuff that my organization does. They call us election conspiracy theorists and deniers. It's outrageous. It's because the left is trying to do a sort of with this whole thing.

[00:04:34] Hayden Ludwig: What I mean is, uh, we've seen this happen many times with totally unrelated issues like critical race theory, where these ideas start out as very strange, say in the university or by an activist organization. And when they're pushed out there, everybody scoffs. What do you mean a billionaire is going to privatize our elections?

[00:04:50] Hayden Ludwig: That's outrageous. But then over time, they normalize and mainstream this position until it becomes accepted by the Democratic Party. And [00:05:00] oftentimes in our past, the Republican Party has fallen for it too and not known how to respond. Well, like I said, half the states have responded because grassroots activists, not me, people who are everyday Americans, everyday voters concerned about the integrity of their country's elections.

[00:05:14] Hayden Ludwig: Stood up and told lawmakers we have to ban this practice and unfortunately in blue states That's simply they've not had the power to convince Democrat lawmakers to do that And when I say there's an evolution going on It's kind of amazing to see how we've now evolved from you using Zuckerberg money to saying well now What we need is to federalize all of these elections.

[00:05:36] Hayden Ludwig: So all of this 400 million dollars Let's ask for billions of dollars instead of 400 million And all of that should come from Congress. You think, well, Congress, that's an elected organization, right? Well, understand that in our constitution, states are given the power to run elections. You as a taxpayer fund elections by paying your state income tax, your property tax, or your sales tax, [00:06:00] not through your federal income tax.

[00:06:02] Hayden Ludwig: This is the back door to taking over. How we run elections and centralizing it in the Justice Department in Washington, D. C. It's something people should be deeply concerned about because we've seen the effects of when the federal government takes over all of these different important areas of our republic that are supposed to be run by the states.

[00:06:22] Leyla Gulen: Tell me again the name of the non profit where Mark Zuckerberg has been pouring his money into? 

[00:06:28] Hayden Ludwig: It was the Center for Tech and Civic Life, CTCL, in Chicago. 

[00:06:33] Leyla Gulen: Okay, and Louisiana becoming the 26th state to ban these Zuckbucks. What are some of the 

[00:06:39] Hayden Ludwig: other states? Well, I know Virginia and Pennsylvania are two big standouts because they actually required bipartisan support.

[00:06:46] Hayden Ludwig: So Virginia, because only half of our General Assembly is controlled by Republicans, And in Pennsylvania, where, of course, the governor is a Democrat, but most of the other states are Idaho and Texas and Florida, a lot of [00:07:00] big red states. So we've kind of come to an impasse where there aren't very many states that are what's called low hanging fruit.

[00:07:05] Hayden Ludwig: But, you know, this gives us a pretty important talking point. If you don't have to be a conservative to point out that, wait megadonor

[00:07:15] Hayden Ludwig: of either party. Actually paying for our elections. That means it's not transparent. We have public budgets for a reason so that they can be debated and and fought over in the public square where everybody can weigh in and see what's going on. There's nothing stopping, for instance, a Chinese megafunder or a foreign power like Iran from pouring money into groups like the Center for Tech and Civic Life which don't have to report their donors.

[00:07:41] Hayden Ludwig: And then those monies pass, those monies being transferred on to local county elections offices. It's a huge national security loophole. 

[00:07:50] Leyla Gulen: Now, when you look at the article following the Zuckbox and you've broken down all those states and how much money they have taken through this [00:08:00] 501c3, is there not anyone?

[00:08:04] Leyla Gulen: In the governor's office in each state saying, wait a second, I'd like to see the trail of this money that we're getting. Do they just not ask that question? 

[00:08:14] Hayden Ludwig: Well, I, I think unfortunately there's not a big interest in doing election integrity work among the Democrats in this country. And unfortunately, many of the Republicans too, certainly not all.

[00:08:24] Hayden Ludwig: And that's wonderful. But I'll give you a prime example. In Wisconsin, there were groups that tried to pass a Zuck Bucks ban through the legislature, which is Republican controlled. So the Republican majority there passed two bills, which would have overhauled various parts of Wisconsin's elections, dealing with absentee ballot security and drop boxes and the like.

[00:08:45] Hayden Ludwig: And one of them would have banned sources of funding for election offices that came from anywhere other than the state or the county, which you want, which is what we've always had before 2020. Well, the Democratic governor, Tony Evers. [00:09:00] He vetoed it twice, and if you read his vetoes, the second one, he says, I don't object to private funding.

[00:09:06] Hayden Ludwig: I think it was an important part of making sure we had enough money to fund the 2020 election. And the counterpoint is obvious. Well, wait a minute. If there are budget shortfalls because of the pandemic, and surely in some places there were, that's an issue for lawmakers now at the county and state levels.

[00:09:23] Hayden Ludwig: And let's add to That Congress passed the CARES Act in 2020, which allocated 400 million, almost the same exact amount that Mark Zuckerberg paid out privately to states and counties to pay for their elections. So that wasn't enough for the left, right? Understand that this is not really about the money.

[00:09:42] Hayden Ludwig: It's about centralizing power in Washington, D. C. So there's a vested interest by groups not to ask questions if they think that their party is going to benefit from that. 

[00:09:53] Leyla Gulen: I swear we could do a whole episode just talking about this. I want to move on to some other things. I'm telling you, it's so [00:10:00] fascinating.

[00:10:00] Leyla Gulen: Now, I want to stay in the vein of money, though, because you've written many articles on the election process and funding campaigns and weaponizing. So I thought we'd also talk about the idea that you write up about dark money. So back in February, you discussed how much more effective the left has been at funding politics than the right.

[00:10:22] Leyla Gulen: And I'd like for you to explain that so people can understand better. 

[00:10:26] Hayden Ludwig: So you kind of have to take a 30, 000 foot view to understand what we're diving into here. And that is to say, most people think that politics in Washington, DC is run by the two parties, but that's really only scratching the surface.

[00:10:38] Hayden Ludwig: In reality. There are billions of dollars, and nobody knows the size, it could be hundreds of billions of dollars tied up in literally thousands of non profit organizations. And again, that's 501c3 and c4 groups. These are tax exempt organizations. If you cut a check to these 501c3 groups, you can write it off in your taxes because it's like your church.[00:11:00] 

[00:11:00] Hayden Ludwig: And why do we have these groups? Well, because they were created to encourage, to incentivize charity in this country. Think like Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Well, about 20 years ago, the left figured out that there's a lot of advantages you get if you try and route your political... strategies and you're through these nonprofits rather than the old fashioned model that unfortunately people on the right are still using, and that is using party committees like the Republican National Committee, for instance.

[00:11:28] Hayden Ludwig: So if you fast forward to the present, what this has meant is that the right pushes a lot of its money to to elect Republicans through places that are easy to track and have all sorts of limitations put on them by Congress using these party committees. But the left has figured out that you can not only.

[00:11:46] Hayden Ludwig: You can register people to vote on a partisan basis. You can also turn out voters. You can influence congressional policy and legislation. You can even elect Democrats using all of this money in these nonprofit [00:12:00] organizations. So if you picture Congress, you picture the amount of money influence going on in there.

[00:12:05] Hayden Ludwig: Picture a gigantic bubble worth hundreds of billions of dollars operating just around this. Now, this is a weaponization of philanthropy, and the reason is simple. These organizations were created a hundred years ago by Congress at the time we passed the income tax, interestingly, in order to encourage people to give money to charitable groups.

[00:12:26] Hayden Ludwig: And when the left figured out, well, hey, there's huge loopholes here that we can use to do politics. We can exploit these things for very cynically. They started to pour big money into this. Now, if you take something that everybody knows, like George Soros or the Ford Foundation, this is a prime example of how the system works.

[00:12:44] Hayden Ludwig: And these are massive endowments and money pots that pour money into all of these organizations. That's exactly what Mark Zuckerberg did with the Center for Tech and Civic Life. And they can do things that you would think are illegal. I'll give you a perfect example. There's a lot of organizations. [00:13:00] I calculate a few hundred of them that every year bring in one and a half.

[00:13:05] Hayden Ludwig: Billion dollars just to register new Democrats to get out and vote. That's not like bussing people to the polls or anything. That's simply finding people who, because of their demographic background, would be likely to vote for the Democrat if they voted at all, and making sure that they're registered to vote whatever state they live in.

[00:13:23] Hayden Ludwig: If you looked at what the right does, I'd be shocked if it's 10 million dollars, let alone dollars, to do this sort of thing. So, conservatives are fighting in a totally different arena, not even aware of the stakes that are going on. And one of the things we try to do is expose these imbalances so people know what kind of juggernaut they're dealing with.

[00:13:42] Leyla Gulen: My next question is... Who's winning the left or the right? 

[00:13:46] Hayden Ludwig: Yeah, it's I'm usually the bearer of bad news when I come into this thing, but this is one area for actually pretty optimistic And that's because for all this dark money and understand I'm not I'm only talking about billions of dollars I'm talking about [00:14:00] thousands of paid professional activists whose job it is to just turn the country leftward as much as they can with all of this money It's like an army that we're facing and we're this tiny little ragtag militia seems incredibly unbalanced because it is and yet what I would tell people is it's shocking that with all of this money and coordination that the left barely wins elections as it is go back to 2020 if you ask people how many votes did Joe Biden win by in 2020 they'll say five million six million no actually he won by about 42, 000 votes across four cities you For states, Philadelphia, Maricopa County, Atlanta, it depends on how you kind of split it there, Wisconsin as well.

[00:14:44] Hayden Ludwig: That's a really close thing. And if you look at how much money the left poured into simply registering new voters and turning them out, the right didn't do any of that work. In fact, you can credit President Trump for simply by going out there and appealing to a new [00:15:00] base that the Republican Party had never brought in before Basically helping to bring the Republican turnout level to something at least comparable to what the Democrats had to pay to do, and he did it basically for free.

[00:15:11] Hayden Ludwig: It's pretty stunning. And so you take that lesson and say, well, what do conservatives do with it? Well, they start getting smart. They start learning like, well, if the left has all of this coordination, we need to be better coordinated. If they've got billions of dollars. We need a few million. And if we had a fraction of all of that, I'm convinced that Republicans would win nationally for the next generation because Democrat policies are not popular.

[00:15:34] Hayden Ludwig: They have to be cynical like this in order to win anything. And yet they barely win at all. That's cause to be optimistic. 

[00:15:41] Leyla Gulen: That's really interesting. That's really interesting. I never thought of it that way. It's they're almost bending over backwards and knocking themselves out just to gain a few extra votes.

[00:15:52] Leyla Gulen: But at the end of the day, isn't it just values? It comes down to values because [00:16:00] now we're seeing just a lot of craziness in our society. And I think there's so much pushback as well. You see it a lot on social media where you think, well, social media has been used as a tool to promote just sort of these radical ideas.

[00:16:15] Leyla Gulen: But then most, and it's not Because any one particular person seeks it out, it just shows up on your feed, all that pushback and coming back to family values, a sense of normalcy in this country that really, truly does prevail. 

[00:16:36] Hayden Ludwig: Yeah, well, Leila, I think you've nailed it. And actually, I think it's exactly that, plus all of the coordination I just mentioned a second ago.

[00:16:44] Hayden Ludwig: I think that's actually going to be the downfall of the Democratic Party. Here's what I mean. So, if, if you follow what I've been talking about with registering new voters, there's a whole aspect of this we've done a ton of research on about how these new voters are identified. These are people who are, you know, [00:17:00] eligible to register, but are not, they can't vote until they register in their state.

[00:17:03] Hayden Ludwig: And there are tens of millions of these people. People think that there could be as many as 65 million nationwide, and remember there are 150 million ballots cast in the 2020 election. This is a gold mine if you can tap into this system. And so far, the right has not done any of that while the left has.

[00:17:18] Hayden Ludwig: What this has actually looked like in practice, is the left has found everybody who, I'm gonna use demographics here, a college educated, you're an ethnic minority, you're a millennial, you're under the age of 15, uh, 50, excuse me. What have you. And they know that because statistics says those people are likely to vote for the Democrat if they're registered, then they say, well, all we need to do is spend enough money to get these people registered and make sure they cast a ballot and we win.

[00:17:45] Hayden Ludwig: Yeah, but there's the thing here. There's a, that comes at the expense of actually trying to win over independence by having good ideas and good candidates. I mean, look at Senator Fetterman, John Fetterman up in Pennsylvania. That election, the left did not try [00:18:00] and convince a single person who was skeptical of Fetterman.

[00:18:04] Hayden Ludwig: All they tried to do is juice the people, the base of people who would vote Democrat, if they voted at all, using all of these voter registration nonprofits. And that's why in places like Arizona and Georgia. They've been able to flip these red states blue. It's because they're finding people who already lived there, but we're not voting and made sure they started voting.

[00:18:27] Hayden Ludwig: And that sounds like this great big doom machine when I described it to conservatives. But what I point out is since Barack Obama, since 2008, and this is the culmination of stuff that started in 2008, the Democratic Party has changed from this national party that was confident we can go out and win.

[00:18:44] Hayden Ludwig: the electoral college and win a majority of the voters into this regional party that thinks we have to use every hook and crook and a lot of money and paid activists in order to win anything at all. While the Republican party has almost by [00:19:00] accident waltzed into the massive national big tent majority because all of these people were being isolated by the LGBTQ agenda, by open borders, by support for Hamas, all these crazy things.

[00:19:13] Hayden Ludwig: They're leaving the Democratic Party and the Democrats are doing anything to try and get them back and this is going to cost them. So I predict it may take five to ten years, but they are locking themselves out of a majority for the next generation at least. This is not the first time this has happened.

[00:19:31] Hayden Ludwig: Go back to the 1930s with D. R., that's exactly what happened to the Republicans because they were on the wrong side of really big changes in how people perceive the two parties. And so Republicans just need to keep what they're doing and be the same party that offers family values. The party for anybody who's religious and believes in God, who anybody respects their country and is an patriot, they will have a place in this party because they're being forced out of the other party.

[00:19:57] Hayden Ludwig: So how do you 

[00:19:57] Leyla Gulen: explain states like California, [00:20:00] Illinois? New York, where all it takes are those big cities, those big cosmopolitan cities, L. A. County. Cook County and also in New York just determines the rest of the state when the there are lots of pockets I mean coming from Orange County very Republican very conservative and there are conservative places in California California is a huge state, Illinois Not a huge state, but Cook County being the second largest county in the entire country behind L.

[00:20:36] Leyla Gulen: A., and then of course, New York. So, so how do we, how do we explain why, despite all the craziness that has been going on in these particular places, that people, We'll keep voting the same way 

[00:20:48] Hayden Ludwig: over and over again. Yeah, no, it's a great point. So yeah, I don't think this project's going to happen overnight.

[00:20:53] Hayden Ludwig: There's a lot more collapse that has to happen in our country's immediate future. Unfortunately, I think before [00:21:00] people who run those cities and those counties become totally discredited, and it is possible. I mean, these sorts of big changes have happened in our country's past. Remember, it was only a few decades ago.

[00:21:10] Hayden Ludwig: That Ronald Reagan got 49 states, that means there are big blue cities, as we would recognize them, that were voting in a way that they hadn't voted before. It's possible. I don't think that's going to happen in the next four or five years, of course, but I think a lot of this is, look at what I said earlier about the Democratic Party becoming this regional party.

[00:21:29] Hayden Ludwig: It's because Progressives live in only a handful of these places, and if you understand a lot of, there's theories about how politics actually works and policy gets passed, and it's usually not about big majorities. Things change often in legislatures because there's a small, very motivated, very powerful and influential minority that pushes things, and if you understand the Democratic Party, it's kind of structured like a third world country, like a dictatorship.

[00:21:58] Hayden Ludwig: You have a tiny cabal of people [00:22:00] who are in the know at the very top, and they're extremely partisan, extremely progressive, and know what they want, and you have a massive legion of highly uninformed voters at the bottom, and that system works as long as those two groups don't stay in flux, right, as long as they kind of work together.

[00:22:18] Hayden Ludwig: Right now, progressives can run those cities because Republicans are offering no good alternative, and that's a failure of the Republican Party to do. But, they also have a lot of money and influence and a political machine at their disposal in each one of these cities that's in some cases a hundred years old.

[00:22:34] Hayden Ludwig: But everywhere outside of those direct control areas, And purple states especially, we're seeing that influence fall short and as, and as Democrats display things like they did in Arizona, which Arizona is at best a red leaning purple state, right? If you look at the numbers of registered voters there, it is not a blue state by any stretch.

[00:22:54] Hayden Ludwig: Katie Hopps didn't bother to debate Carrie Lake. She didn't think she had to. [00:23:00] Why? Because she was trusting in this big political machine to go out and find likely Democrats who weren't registered to vote and make sure that they cast a ballot already. Well, that might win a few short term places, but outside of San Francisco and Los Angeles, that's not going to be a viable strategy when your party becomes the party that owns things like Middle Eastern terror, a war with China, Iran, and or Russia, collapsing economy, massive inflation everywhere you go.

[00:23:29] Hayden Ludwig: Food shortages, oil lines that remind us of the gas lines that remind us of the 1970s. These things we all see as pretty much inevitable at this point in the next couple of years. You might think you can distance yourself by saying, Hey, I'm just the mayor of San Francisco. But you ultimately will have to break with your party.

[00:23:46] Hayden Ludwig: Or, look like what you are, an actual representative of that party. It can't last forever. Right, 

[00:23:52] Leyla Gulen: right. Well, I'm so glad that you brought up the election map, uh, under Ronald Reagan because I don't think we've ever seen a map look like that [00:24:00] ever since. It was completely bright red with a couple of blue specks.

[00:24:07] Leyla Gulen: Yeah. So, so this is kind of a perfect way to segue into my next topic. And the notion that under the U. S. Constitution, elections are not meant to be a popularity contest. In other words, an electoral college determines the winner, not the results of the popular vote. So let's first talk about the difference between 

[00:24:26] Hayden Ludwig: the two.

[00:24:28] Hayden Ludwig: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. So understand when you go to cast your ballot for say, let's say in 2024, let's say Donald Trump and Joe Biden, right? Well, you're actually casting a ballot for is a slate of electors. These are individuals who represent the number of electoral votes in your state. So it could be 15 votes, let's say, or 45 votes depends on how many congressional seats in your.

[00:24:52] Hayden Ludwig: population. What we're basically saying is I'm voting for the slate of electors that when they meet in Washington, D. C. in December [00:25:00] after the November election, they're going to get together and cast their vote for the person I just voted for. So we saw the kind of turmoil in 2020 when you had competing slates of electors, but you had maybe 15 from one state like Virginia who would say, we're going to vote for Joe Biden.

[00:25:15] Hayden Ludwig: If you cast, we get a majority there or the 15 who would say we were going to vote for Donald Trump. We get the majority there. And in the past, that's usually not been a big deal because the individual who wins the majority of electoral votes goes on to actually win the presidency and is sworn in January.

[00:25:32] Hayden Ludwig: The left, ever since 2008, go back to this idea of, of, of this change in their mind that was subtle at the time between like a national party and a regional party. The left certainly started deciding that. Pretty much in the wake of Obama, they weren't going to be able to win, uh, reliably at the national level.

[00:25:50] Hayden Ludwig: This doesn't mean that they thought they would lose necessarily. What they thought was, there is, we're at a disadvantage because we've gotten so lacked that we can only [00:26:00] choose between being progressive or being centrist enough to be competitive in states like Ohio and Florida. And we've seen how those states have become bright red Republican strongholds since about 2012, 2016.

[00:26:14] Hayden Ludwig: What you see in like all of these bad ideas, they started out with the activists and then they make their way into the Democratic Party's platform, is the left shifting gears on, well, the electoral college is actually the problem. This is where the idea of we need to win a national popular vote comes from.

[00:26:31] Hayden Ludwig: So Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote in 2020, Biden did in 2020, excuse me, 2016, then 2020 was Joe Biden. And the idea that, well therefore, that individual should become president has become one of their main talking points. You can actually trace this idea back to a handful of non profits that were created by the left, funded by major left wing foundations, and have created this quote unquote mainstream idea.

[00:26:57] Hayden Ludwig: One of them is called National Popular Vote. [00:27:00] National Popular Vote is a DC organization that goes around trying to convince states that you need to surrender the Electoral College in order to ensure that whichever candidate gets the most popular votes nationwide wins. There's still increasing It's never gonna happen.

[00:27:15] Hayden Ludwig: Right, exactly. In 2016, if all of these ideas were in place, Hillary Clinton would have won because she won the popular vote. And think about what this actually looks like in practice, because the left will say, well, this, this is what democracy looks like. No, no, think about this. This means you would never have to go to a state like Iowa again, or South Carolina again, because if you're a Democrat, it's a waste of your time.

[00:27:37] Hayden Ludwig: Instead, you go to big blue states, or if you're a Republican, big red states, and you juice as many voters as you can in these places. So that you pass 51 percent of the total turnout in any election. That's how you win. It also means that if a Republican, let's say, goes to your state, South Carolina, your voters vote for the [00:28:00] Republican.

[00:28:00] Hayden Ludwig: He wins your state. The Democrat gets the most popular votes nationwide. All of your electors from South Carolina Then automatically give their votes to the Democrat. So that person wins your state, no matter who you voted for, no matter who win it, wins it. That's the best way I can think of to ensure that nobody will ever vote again.

[00:28:22] Hayden Ludwig: Everybody will lose confidence in how elections work and the entire Republic breaks down. But that's the left strategy because they want to sow that kind of chaos. They believe it's the best way to guarantee victory. 

[00:28:33] Leyla Gulen: And can we give it some context to and how the United States differs from other First World nations, because there are countries in Europe that do things in a certain way that just take the voter completely out of the process.

[00:28:47] Hayden Ludwig: Yeah, actually, you're right. In some ways, we're just like the rest of the world. In other words, we're very different. So The left will paint you, paint the United States Electoral College as this weirdly Jim Crow or colonial [00:29:00] era relic of a time gone by, where it's very undemocratic. Actually, if you look at the top, let's say 20 or so, what they call OECD, this is the most developed countries in the world, Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea.

[00:29:13] Hayden Ludwig: Almost every last one of them uses a system that's kind of like an electoral college. But the ones you're talking about, like the United Kingdom, they're actually less democratic than the United States. So, for instance, the prime minister is not the same thing as a U. S. president. A prime minister is simply a member of parliament, their legislature, who's elected internally to become the number one member of parliament, the prime minister.

[00:29:40] Hayden Ludwig: So if you look at what just happened yesterday in our own Congress, the Congress voted all on the Speaker of the House. Now, that's just the leader of the U. S. House of Representatives. But imagine if the Speaker of the House was the President of the United States. You didn't vote on that. You voted for the Congressman and then he voted on that.

[00:29:59] Hayden Ludwig: That's [00:30:00] exactly how it works in the United Kingdom and Japan and a lot of other, these, these countries that are much less democratic. And if you look at the United States, the founders were not foolish. They didn't want a democracy. They wanted a limited representative republic. Where you vote on people who represent you and your community's interests when they're dealing with legislation.

[00:30:21] Hayden Ludwig: But they actually give a lot of trust and confidence in the American people when it comes to voting for the president and voting for all of these other elected representatives. It's pretty impressive. It's a beautiful balance between having too much popular say and being too aristocratic and aloof from the common man like we find in Europe.

[00:30:42] Hayden Ludwig: And it's interesting. If you listen. And the groups like National Popular Vote, they consider this to be outrageous. But I don't know anybody who's outraged by the fact that you don't go to Washington, D. C. and vote on the next appropriations bill. Your congressman and your senator vote on that. But that's exactly the kind of thinking that the people who want [00:31:00] a National Popular Vote would have you believe.

[00:31:03] Leyla Gulen: So fascinating. So not to beat a dead horse, but going back to the Popular Vote versus the Electoral College. Uh, there are some Republicans who are backing this notion, and can you discuss 

[00:31:15] Hayden Ludwig: why? Yeah, well, I wish I knew all the reasons why they would do it, but I'll give you a really, a newsy example right now.

[00:31:23] Hayden Ludwig: Tom Emmer, a congressman who was very briefly, I think for 30 minutes, Loaded as a speaker just the other day over the weekend. In fact, yeah, he used to be a spokesman for this group, national popular vote. Very shameful because this would effectively lock out any Republican running for president forever for as long as this is an effect, right?

[00:31:41] Hayden Ludwig: No, it's interesting. This group ended in PV. They've been around a long time. And they've made it shockingly close to getting a majority of states representing 51 percent of all electoral votes to pass some kind of national popular vote legislation. Now, thank goodness, those states have largely withdrawn, so we [00:32:00] don't think that's actually going to come to pass.

[00:32:02] Hayden Ludwig: But if you, I've spoken with people who worked at the group Save Our States, who've investigated a lot of how Republicans were wooed, and it works something like this. So National Popular Vote, remember, a left wing bankroll organization, hires a man named Saul Anousis. He is a former head of the Michigan Republican Party.

[00:32:22] Hayden Ludwig: Saul Anousis would go to states like Arizona, where there's a Republican majority legislature. And he would approach these Republicans, our local Republican lobbyists who are known and trusted in the Capitol and would say, Hey, let me take all of you legislatures on this lavish, all expenses paid junket to Sedona or Hawaii or Puerto Rico or some beautiful getaway vacation place.

[00:32:50] Hayden Ludwig: And because it's paid for by my organization, a nonprofit, you don't have to report it on your ethics filing. So nobody will consider it lobbying, which is stunning. And [00:33:00] we'll whine and dine you, and we'll play golf, and we'll watch movies, have all this great time, and then we'll tell you why you need to vote for national popular vote legislation.

[00:33:08] Hayden Ludwig: And from what I've heard, insiders who've been at these junkets, they'll tell you things like, well, it's going to help Republicans get re elected, which is... Patently false, but they would get these people to believe it. And sure enough, in places like bright red Oklahoma, these Republican lawmakers would come back to the Capitol and immediately vote to pass national popular vote legislation.

[00:33:31] Hayden Ludwig: In a lot of these places, we were only saved because grassroots activists, again, just regular people, saw this and set capitals and got these embarrassed Republicans to pull back. And in a lot of cases, primary these people out of a job. And national popular vote, if you listen to the people who've been burned by them, they are the out and outs with a lot of state Republican officials, which is why I don't think they're going to advance much further than they already have.

[00:33:56] Hayden Ludwig: But this kind of sleazy, underhanded way of going about and [00:34:00] saving the country for democracy, it shows you exactly what the left is up to. They don't trust people to make good decisions. They don't trust the people of this country, and that's why they do these backroom deals. Right. Right. 

[00:34:13] Leyla Gulen: And forgive me if this sounds like an ignorant question, but the adage...

[00:34:17] Leyla Gulen: What's good for the goose is good for the gander. So what could work for Democrats in terms of this idea, this notion of having a popular vote? I mean, could that not possibly benefit the right as well? Just playing the 

[00:34:31] Hayden Ludwig: same game. Exactly what they're counting on it is. So, so Trump in 2016 didn't win the popular vote, but won the electoral college majority, right?

[00:34:40] Hayden Ludwig: They're counting on that scenario forever. And anybody who can look over 50 years or 100 years. People within a human lifespan have seen how the two parties have shifted and changed and there's been landslides in both directions. I mean, talk about short term tactical thinking that could easily come back to destroy them at some point in the future.

[00:34:59] Hayden Ludwig: You're [00:35:00] absolutely right. Okay. 

[00:35:01] Leyla Gulen: All right. I just want to make sure. Well, Hayden, anything else? Yeah. Anything else that you've got cooking as we close up 2023 and heading into 2024? What's what's at top of 

[00:35:12] Hayden Ludwig: mind? Well, we're paying close attention right now to tapping in Wisconsin. So a quick aside right now, there's been a flurry of these litigation groups, like one led by Mark Elias, the big Democrat super lawyer there.

[00:35:24] Hayden Ludwig: Trying to change how the 2024 election will happen to Wisconsin. So one thing is trying to remove President Trump from the ballots so that he can't actually appear on voters ballots. A very democratic thing to do, obviously, right? That's one thing. But we also know that, um, those Zup Bucks that paid for ballot drop 2020 election, they were found unconstitutional last year by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

[00:35:49] Hayden Ludwig: Unfortunately, this April, 2023, Progressives managed to flip the majority from a conservative to a left wing majority on the state [00:36:00] Supreme Court. And now, Elias and other allies have introduced a lawsuit that would reintroduce all of these ballot drop boxes. So find them constitutional, I suppose, is the idea.

[00:36:10] Hayden Ludwig: At the same time, they're trying to waive this signature, witness signature requirement for absentee ballots. So right now, if you're a Wisconsin voter and you vote by mail, You have to have a witness there to say, yes, this person is a lawful citizen, is registered by the best of my knowledge, and that person signs.

[00:36:28] Hayden Ludwig: Well, the left thinks that's outrageous and want to waive that, and they're trying to do that. There's a big battlefield going on up in Wisconsin, because the left knows that a lot of the next election could hinge on whomever wins Wisconsin. So we're paying close attention and fighting back wherever we can.

[00:36:44] Hayden Ludwig: Wow, 

[00:36:45] Leyla Gulen: wow. I mean, if you've got nothing to hide, what's wrong with having a witness? 

[00:36:48] Hayden Ludwig: Uh, exactly. Right? 

[00:36:50] Leyla Gulen: Yeah, absolutely. And just moving on to the Middle East, have you got any articles that are going to be coming out about what's happening there? Between Hamas and 

[00:36:59] Hayden Ludwig: Israel. [00:37:00] Well, we're all disgusted by the amount of support for terrorism going on in our universities right now.

[00:37:06] Hayden Ludwig: We have a number of articles out looking at how our Ivy League universities are responding. First, they looked at George Floyd and sang his praises back in 2020. But now, they're totally mum on Hamas. They want, they don't want to say anything. Or... They want to equivocate between Israelis being massacred by terrorists and the terrorists doing the massacring.

[00:37:25] Hayden Ludwig: We're also looking at some of the biggest companies in some of these swing states like Coca Cola and Delta down in Georgia, who again sang the praises of George Floyd, whom we're learning now is a fentanyl addict who was probably not killed by Derek Chauvin, was probably killed by all sorts of other complications, but nevertheless made him a martyr.

[00:37:44] Hayden Ludwig: And if you look at what they're saying about Hamas, crickets. They don't want to talk about it. It's absolutely shameful. We think that if you're going to take a public stand on issues like this, and shame anybody who doesn't support your side, well, you ought to be talking about the massacres going on against Israeli [00:38:00] women and children and unarmed civilians right now.

[00:38:02] Hayden Ludwig: So, yeah, we're digging into all of that stuff too. Fascinating. 

[00:38:06] Leyla Gulen: And how do people find you and how can they contact 

[00:38:08] Hayden Ludwig: you? Well, you can get on our website. It is restoration news. com. It's restoration news. com. And all of our content's there and feel free to send a tip or anything to us there. Hayden 

[00:38:22] Leyla Gulen: Ludwig, groundbreaking researcher whose work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Breitbart, Fox News, the National Review, and more.

[00:38:30] Leyla Gulen: He's a regular contributor to the American Conservative and the Washington Free Beacon. Hayden, great to have you 

[00:38:36] Hayden Ludwig: with us. My pleasure. Thank you so much. That 

[00:38:39] Leyla Gulen: does it for this episode of the Grand Canyon Times podcast. We'll see you 

[00:38:42] Hayden Ludwig: next time. Transcribed