Show-Me State Times

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said during a committee hearing yesterday about voting irregularities that his constituents were not going to keep quiet.

“Yesterday I was talking with some of the constituents back home, a group of about 30 people, every single one of them, every one of them told me that they felt they had been disenfranchised — that their votes didn't matter, that the election had been rigged,” Hawley said during the hearing. “These are normal, reasonable people."

Hawley said his constituents and all Americans are going to continue to question the results and will not be quiet.

“After four years of ... being told that the last election was fake and that Donald Trump wasn't really elected — after four years of that, the same people are being told, you need to sit down and shut up,” Hawley said. “If you have anything to say about cybersecurity, you better shut up. 24 million Americans are not going to shut up…”

Hawley questioned if anyone had seen anything like the days leading up to the election where social media agencies and others were allegedly suppressing reporting on a federal investigation into Hunter Biden.

“No, I think we live in a new age and we need to go back to great lessons from constitutional law,” Hawley said.

Hawley said absentee ballots were also sent in at unprecedented rates. He said the Carter-Baker Commission discussed this in its report.

“Their concern and their warning from President Carter and Secretary Baker is that this is a mechanism or platform for fraud and abuse,” Hawley said. “Be careful about it, have safeguards in place, and I think that's at the bottom what some of these concerns are.”

Hawley questioned how dead people were able to vote and said safeguards need to be in place nationwide to prevent that sort of thing.

“It's my understanding that 26 states allow harvesting of ballots,” Hawley said. “You can't do this in my home state of Missouri because we have control over some of those.”

Hawley also said in 37 states, people can pay a third-party to get the ballots and can pay to send ballots.

“I've introduced legislation to end third-party ballot harvesting nationwide, to make it illegal nationwide,” Hawley said.