Attorney Cleta Mitchell has been named the chair of a grassroots initiative that seeks to safeguard the sanctity of the ballot box across America.
The National Election Protection Initiative, which was launched by FreedomWorks, aims to mobilize grassroots efforts in key states and counties to protect election integrity, the conservative and libertarian advocacy group told Newsmax. FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon hosts the show “Save The Nation” on NewsmaxTV.
The initiative provides a platform for conservatives and other like-minded Americans who wish to participate in election activism and provide a counterweight to other left-leaning voting initiatives. It also aims to train and coordinate participants for grassroots efforts to address a range of election integrity concerns such as voter registration, voter rolls, and election procedures and rules across several key states.
This comes as the November 2020 election was significantly shadowed by a series of allegations of irregularities and election fraud. Former President Donald Trump and his allies challenged the Nov. 3 election results in the courts, alleging that “illegal” votes were cast and counted in several swing states due to relaxed election regulations that were changed by state executives without going through the legislature or alleged voter fraud.
Meanwhile, a slew of evidence emerged in the weeks following the election in the form of sworn affidavits and expert testimony that provided accounts of irregularities during the election process. Critics and members of the legacy media have characterized those claims as “baseless.”
Many of these issues were left unresolved following President Joe Biden’s inauguration and have now prompted Republican lawmakers and conservatives to launch legislative measures and grassroots efforts aimed at restoring confidence in future elections. Trump is also working on his own initiatives to address this issue.
“What is urgently needed today is the involvement by conservative and patriotic Americans in the election process at the local and state levels, challenging the vast resources of the leftist groups who have dominated election activism for too long,” Mitchell, who has worked as an election law attorney, said in a statement to Newsmax.
Following the election, Mitchell had been assisting Trump’s post-election legal efforts in Georgia. She received renewed prominence after it was revealed that she had participated in a call between the president and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to discuss a settlement on an election dispute.
Mitchell subsequently resigned from the law firm Foley & Lardner, where she was a partner. She said at the time that she, her firm, and her clients have been receiving “massive pressure” from “leftist groups via social media and other means” following the release of the Trump-Raffensperger call.
Mitchell told Newmax’s “Save The Nation” on Sunday that protecting election integrity is crucial because it is “the very bulwark in which our nation is built, the right to vote, to choose our elected officials.”
“If people don’t have confidence that their vote is going to count and meaningful because the system is somehow rigged against them, they’re not going to participate,” she said. “Our country is built on the consent of the governed and if the governed are not giving their consent, we’ve really eliminated our Democratic Republic, and we’ve become essentially a totalitarian government. And I think that’s very frightening.”
A recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll found that a majority of 1,007 attendees believe election integrity is the number one issue facing the nation today. This was followed by constitutional rights and immigration.
Election reform has been pushed back in the public consciousness as Democrats seek to pass a sweeping bill aimed at amending several aspects of the electoral process and campaign financing. The bill, H.R. 1, also dubbed by Democrats as the For the People Act, passed the Democrat-controlled House on a largely party-line vote of 220-210. It is now being considered in the Senate.
