In Part 2 of our series on Election Integrity we chat with Kyle Scott, former Republican Candidate for Harris Country Treasurer. He outlines his path to politics and shares his personal frustrations around the 2022 election management in his race. He's still fighting-the-fight and ultimately puts the blame right where it should be, on inept elections administrators and shady Democrat maneuverings. I also provide my ideas on where the GOP can go from here to secure our elections going forward.
Click here to learn more about Ben: http://bit.ly/3WJ1Czl
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In Part 2 of our series on Election Integrity we chat with Kyle Scott, former Republican Candidate for Harris Country Treasurer. He outlines his path to politics and shares his personal frustrations around the 2022 election management in his race. He's still fighting-the-fight and ultimately puts the blame right where it should be, on inept elections administrators and shady Democrat maneuverings. I also provide my ideas on where the GOP can go from here to secure our elections going forward.
Click here to learn more about Ben: http://bit.ly/3WJ1Czl
---
Today’s Sponsor(s):
Gambit Construction – go to www.gambitconstruction.com
---
Socials:
Follow on Twitter: http://bit.ly/3CeR2YJ
Follow on Instagram: http://bit.ly/3XfBADV
Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3vw8ww4
Welcome back patriots to part two of our discussion on election integrity. On today's episode, we chat with our friend Kyle Scott, former Republican candidate for Harris County Treasurer and pick his brain about getting into politics and securing our elections. Please consider supporting this podcast, follow me on Twitter and Facebook at Ben Armenta Texas. You can also find out more about my story at Ben armenta.com. So today, we're talking with Kyle Scott, former Republican candidate for Harris County Treasurer, he was the primary winner and ultimately lost in the November general election this past November and 2022 to a Democrat. Before we get into his race and what happened there. Kyle, thanks for joining us today. How are you? I'm excellent. Thanks for having me. This is a terrific opportunity. Thank you. Well, look, I mean, it's, it's great that you're here. It's always great for our listeners, to get to know, politicians and community members who are actively involved. So certainly appreciate you coming in and 2023 off to a good start for you. Oh, yeah, it's actually you know, it's nice to be able to walk into meetings and not have to carry in our full yard signs with it me anymore. But you know, 23 is great, we had a great holiday and just ready to carry this thing through the end of the year. When when, so the election was the general elections in November, the primary was in, you know, in March, you did not have a runoff, so you didn't have to do the May stuff. So if we just back up, when when did you decide that you wanted to get in that particular race. So it was October 2021, when I made the decision, when I filed my paperwork with TC and with the county. And that's all so at the time when I left my job, because I said, you know, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all in, it's going to be a full time commitment. In the decision for the race, and my calculation has always been, it has to be a race that I know something about after I have some competency in the area. And it has to be an office that needs to be fixed. And with background and the private sector with a heavy focus on the finance stuff, I thought, well, I'm pretty good at math. And I know the finance, I think the treasurer being an undervalued and underutilized position, I can come in and do some good. It's not one that a lot of people pay attention to, which was attractive to me, because having also been a teacher, it was like, Well, I get to take this opportunity to inform people about what this office does. And it also offered an opportunity since, you know, form, former treasures hadn't really utilize his full capacity, that I felt like I could almost build that office into something at the watchdog that is designed to be so what what kind of work were you doing previously? What was sort of your background before getting into politics? Yeah, so I started life as a high school teacher, right out of undergrad, spent two years doing that. When we moved back to Houston, I started working on my PhD and just it's other private sector stuff on the side. And then I followed that tenure track job search to Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. And then once we had our second child, we moved back here, my wife and I with our two kids, and oh wait, we're both put on this spring Klein area. And at that time, it was easier to start a job than to find a job. Right, the market did just collapse. Yeah, the whole world was coming to an end. And so I started use car lot. And then that eventually expanded into other things, building car lots and then selling them just building them strictly to sell build up a customer base. Because at that time, private equity and public money was coming heavy into the subprime market. So it was an easy space to sort of flip these things. So and what these private enterprises do if you think about that's like a that's like a business in a box. Yeah. So you you, you essentially built built that business and a small business in a box, right? Yeah, often people think about building up a big business and you know, doing a merger or getting acquired by somebody else, but you essentially built a small, you know, small operator type, business and and would sort of assembly line them and sell them out. Yeah. And it was 100% by accident. I had one. And then I was like, well, let's do a second one. And by the time I had, you know, 10 cars out front and started advertising, somebody came along and made an offer. I was like, Well, that was easy. Let me try that again. And so I built one, but I still wanted a second lock. But then they came back and was like, well, let us get that one. I was like, that's how, that's how I ended up with two kids, by the way. I don't think it was, that was easy. But I was like, Ah, I did one. And she's still alive. Let's, let's go ahead and have another one. Yeah, and, you know, it was Right Place Right Time, because like I said, private equity. And the public markets were coming in, and they had to, you know, this was an area that they had not tapped. And they're seeking returns. So, you know, all of these big money funds are always seeking alpha. And in order to do so, they have to always find new markets. And this was just so you see everything on the side of the road, the echo parks, the car, Max's group on automotive, Sonic, these are all publicly traded firms that go into buy up the little guys and keep them branded as little guys. Because when you go into subprime, you're entering into an area of less reliable vehicles, higher repossession rates because of higher default rates, and they don't want to hurt their overall brand. So they keep it branded as a small mom and pop shop. Right? So Wow. Yeah. So it was just right place right time. 2015 still doing that, went back received my MBA, because I was like, these guys are a lot smarter than me, when it comes to the finance and accounting stuff, not felt like maybe I was getting outmaneuvered and spending too much money with outside advisers to help with the exits. And I wanted to become more sophisticated in those areas. So that's what I did. 2017 I was like, market feels like it's getting flooded. So let me sell off everything. And then I partnered with another firm that I had no business being in, but I got into it anyway. We manufactured industrial filtration equipment, for the oil and gas industry, chemical processing, that sort of thing. There, everything was manufactured locally, sold domestically. And they needed some cash, and also somebody willing to help with market entry internationally. So that's what I did. I you know, for few years between then and now, I traveled the world everywhere from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia, to Colombia and Belgium, which was awesome. I would go to Belgium, before Saudi Arabia Wow. I can imagine I can imagine, well, you know, we, I've always said, Am that business owners and small business owners make fantastic politicians, because you have this this entrepreneurial mentality and mentality of, of progress. You know, the right appetite of taking some risks, but also understanding that you still got to put food on the table, and you got to make payroll. So you want to take risks in order to grow. But you've got a sense of accountability to your family sense of accountability to, to your employees, and politicians who have been small business owners or large business have been in business at all, I feel have that kind of perspective, when they step into a role in which they really need to be a steward on behalf of, you know, they need to be a servant leader, they need to be thinking about how to leave that office better than when they got there. And so I'm curious what, what was kind of the discernment process for you to say, okay, and with your family as well, right. Okay. Now, let's set that aside and and step into doing public service. Yeah. So, you know, like I said, I was a teacher from the start. So that's where my heart has always been. And I taught government, I was a professor of political science. I watch presidential debates, like most people watch the Super Bowl. I get mad when they misspeak. I tell them what they should have said and my wife was like, you have to we have to watch these things in separate rooms. Right. So a hunch is a political joke. It's it's not just a drinking game for you. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's what it is for the rest of us. So it was easy to feel pulled to it. I love being involved. And it was just when I'm involved, whether it's in education, or whether it's involved in public service, there's a sense of purpose that I was never able to find in the private sector. You know, when I go to a private sector job, I do my best, I get excited about it. But what excites me is working with the people, they're working with my team to make sure that they're developed to take that next step in their career. It was never, it was like, the paycheck is cool. And this probably made me a bad business person in that, you know, you want to maximize value for shareholders, you want to maximize for employee comp, but my goal was always to make the system better, and not necessarily my own financial status better, right? That just in that position, I always had to set the alarm that morning, when I was teaching, when I was on the campaign trail, there was no alarm, it was go to bed at midnight, wake up at four, it was all natural. And at that point, it just, you know, it felt it feels right. And I felt like I was doing something that matters. You know, you meet business owners who can't go on vacation without talking about their business. I mean, they just love it, they love it does not matter if they own dry cleaners or McDonald's. They just live and breathe it and they love it. It's a part of them. Yeah, at 100%. And you have to be that way if you're going to make your mark. And that's how I feel about politics and not politics, necessarily, but the the public service part of it, right. And that this is a world in which we all have a vested interest in. And no matter what your role is, if it's in politics, if it's through nonprofit, or if it's business by making jobs for other people. And it's up to us to say, okay, what are our talents? Where's our passion? And how does that align with where I need to move forward, and the political process, just it, I loved it. And it's where I found that sense of purpose. One of the things we talk about on this podcast, is the fact that the Republican Party and really more important than that the conservative movement is better off when individuals bring their families along with them that, you know, we're all in this together. And there is generational wisdom in passing down conservative values and the conservative movement and this idea that we all can do something from from whatever vantage point we're at, because certainly the the Democrats and the left, they're doing a lot and they're pretty active, they're pretty mobile, we need to be the same. What what was kind of the role, or what has been the role of your family and your kids in getting involved and being a part of that process for you. So this was probably the most rewarding part. So my kids, my daughter's 14, my daughter's 17, they both have two totally different personalities, you would never expect that they came from the same set of parents. They're both wonderful kids, but just two totally different people. Now, they do go to a classical Christian school. So we feel like, you know, kids are going astray, but we put proper bumpers by the church that we go to the school that we send them to, and always being surrounded by family. But everybody had a role as part of the campaign process. They were all bought into it. So my wife, you know, aside from just, you know, if there were, if there had been a problem that the house I never knew about it. She never complained about the long days. She never said, Oh, we had this issue that it was just everything was roses. And I know that wasn't the case. But I didn't know anything different. My daughter, she, if I tell if we're at a restaurant, I say ask the you know the waiter for a refill. Like she melts. She just can't. I mean, she's so introverted, but she would help with campaign finance reports assembling size, putting together the databases. I mean, she just had a role in that. And my son who's 17, I was like, listen, Harris County's large. I have to make the certain meetings. There are some that I have to go to because either I haven't been before or it's in a hostile area where I need to be the one who's present and he would cover a lot of the Republican events on the north side. So we live on the north side of Harris County. And I remember the first meeting he went to Sam Harless is field director was at the meeting. She said, Did you know that your son standing in line with the other candidates to speak and I said, well go stop him. And she filmed it and sent it back and said Too late. And so he gave like this 62nd. You know, my dad's so and so he's running for x. And that just became sort of a common part of the campaign is he would make events on the north side that I could make, he would give the two to three minute speech, he would hand out signs, he would give people the elevator pitch. And being able to shift as a parent, from, you know, this sort of telling your kids how to make choices, how to live their lives, to putting your future success in some part into their hands, and become a partner in that process with them was just such a rewarding experience to watch him grow up. And for me as a parent to recognize that he's no longer the 10 year old or 12 year old that needs me to tell him what to do. I could give him name of the group and address time and say go, there was no prep work, no anything, and he would just go and take ownership of it. And that was so awesome. That that is a fantastic story. We in our household will sometimes refer to you know, team, Armenta, and team Armenta has got to stick together. And we started that. We'd go to, I don't know, like six flags or something. And my, my daughter and son would go off and be like, Look, remember, like Team Armenta. Y'all gotta stick together. You can't go in separate locations. But this is that's a that's a very cool story, Kyle, because you guys were very mission aligned. And everybody sounds like they were stepping out trying something totally different and out of their comfort zone, but having a good time doing it. Yeah. And I mean, that was the most crushing part about not winning in November, was, they had taken just as much of a vested interest in my success as I had. And just to come home and say, Guys, it did not happen. Because they wasn't this wasn't just something that dad was doing. This was something that everybody had bought into, and that they were giving a tremendous amount of effort along with everything else that they do. And that was that was a hit. Yeah, well, let's not kid ourselves, you you did a ton of work. You I mean, you won the primary, significant, you know, by a significant margin, really, almost two thirds of the vote. Over a million votes were cast in the general election. And I think about 3% separated you and the the Democrat who's now seated as the as the county treasurer. So a lot of people certainly got behind what was happening and behind your campaign, and that's that's the positive news. The challenging news is what appears to be barriers and walls and obstacles that Harris County and Democrats in the left continue to put in place throughout any and all election cycles. I know we have a lot going on, we've got the Attorney General has is doing investigations across the state of Texas and as looked at Harris County, the Secretary of State has done the same thing. Even Kim AWG, a Democrat in Harris County, who's the DA has asked for assistance from the Texas Rangers to help out in investigating election integrity. What what went down what you'd like, based on what you've canvassed and assessed from that particular election, what appears to have been the good, the bad and the ugly, as far as integrity of of that race in Harris County. Sure. So there are two. There are lawsuits moving forward. And there are two issues that the lawsuits are focusing on now. And just my own anecdotal evidence, I think that there's more to it that we are either not able to prove or we just can't dig into. So the two real factors that everybody's digging into. So there were 50 Plus voting locations on election day, that did not open on time. And they opened late they were now geographically dispersed, they weren't concentrated in a D are independent area. Throughout the course of the day, we were all wondering what would happen at seven o'clock that night. Would they keep the polls open to compensate those polling locations for opening late how's this gonna work out? So we're working the polls, and then at six 55 We get this notification on Twitter from the elections administrators says the polls are open an additional hour. So between 655 and eight o'clock, it was chaos. Because there were some election judges who weren't allowing the polls to stay open because that wasn't communicated to them. There were others that are those. Are those judges volunteers, or they paid pay? Yep. So there were some that were keeping them open some that were closing them. So if you're in a Democrat precinct, you have a Democrat precinct judge and a Republican, AJ and a Republican precinct it's reverse. So some were saying open longer, some were shutting down at seven, some were kicking people out of line. Others were saying, Hey, listen, we don't know what's going on here. Here's the seven o'clock cut off line, but stay in line until we get some clarification on this. So it was haphazard across all 800 Plus voting locations on Election Day on what was happening between seven o'clock and eight. Then the Texas Supreme Court said, No, you can't keep them open. And so that happened about 730. Meanwhile, all of these people who had been admitted had voted, other people had been turned away. And then 730, there were still other people voting. And these ballots were supposed to be cast provisionally, between seven and eight, the original court decision who said there needs to be two stacks, provisional ballots and ballots that you're, you know, regularly cast before seven. Because this is going to come up for litigation. And we don't want these two files to cross in case we need to take some of these out. There were no provisional ballots cast, they were all mixed together. So now we can't even unravel, who voted legitimately and who did. So that's one prong of the attack on the lawsuit. The other is there were 23 voting locations that ran out of paper on election day. So if you live in Harris County, and I've been so focused on Harris, I don't know the process and other counties. But if you live in Harris County, you know that you vote on the computer screen, you feed in one piece of paper, it prints out you feed in another piece of paper, it prints out now all of your candidates and your votes are listed on this piece of paper. upon exit, you feed both pieces of paper into machine. So if you don't have paper, you can't cast a ballot. And your votes not counted. There were 23 locations that ran out of paper. 21 of those were in Republican precincts. Wow. Yeah. That's a high percentage. Yes. And that's where people are saying like, Okay, this can't be an accident. And, you know, there's certain parts of lawsuits that we can't discuss that we can, but this part has been open public, which is on election day that the PJs and the AJs, from the locations that were running out of paper, we're calling the Republican Party headquarters and saying, Hey, guys, this is what's going down. And we had a rapid response team in place with acrp. We were getting some people, some people have kind of accused the the the county party, the Republican Party of being sort of slow to respond and are not aggressive enough in a moment what what really kind of happened or what's sort of your take on so my read on it was they call down there, got hung up on call down there, were given the runaround, and this was going on until they sent one of the staffers down there. John Douglas, who younger guy probably mid 20s, worked at HQ PR office, went down to Central count said, Hey, these locations need paper. I'm looking at stacks of paper right now. Can you please send this paper out? I said no, we're not sending it out. And if you don't leave, we're gonna have you arrested for trespassing. And so So hdrp had somebody down there when they couldn't get through on the phones, and they were threatened with an arrest. And there were I mean, it clearly clearly one of those where you just have to ask yourself if there's smoke is there fire? And this is and people will say all the time in our election integrity comes up or people will talk about, you know, deniers and all that kind of stuff. But look, I mean, this is pretty significant. You've got you know, 50 plus locations with the, you know, the schedule and the timing and when they open up late and when they're closing and discrepancies in the process. I bet for you I mean, you just 10 minutes ago, you were talking about how, as a, as a business owner, you enjoyed the process and making the process better and being processed disciplined. I bet this was driving you nuts. How tough is it to make sure that you have the equipment that you need, you know, this is gonna be a big turnout election, let's make sure that we have our logistics and our distribution network set up, let's make sure that we have enough phone lines to stay open enough staffers to make sure that we feel the calls for when there's problems, we can address them. Simple. I mean, this is not it's a complex system, because of the magnitude of it and the truncated timetable of which it happens, because Election Day is only for 12 hours. So you have to have your system set up ahead of time. But when you break it down, the processes themselves are not complex. Right? Yeah, four years ago, four years and last four to six years. There's been this trend ever since. Really, I guess, 2016 and Trump's first, you know, election first victory, this trend of Republicans and grassroots being very leery of of elections and how they're managed and how they're run. And rightfully so. I mean, it's, in fact, I would like everybody to question the process. I'd like Democrats to, to question and challenge we all should want, you know, fair, you know, simple, but controlled voting processes. But during that time, there was kind of this groundswell of Republicans saying, we can beat the Democrats, we can beat the system, we can beat the game that they're playing, if we all just show up on election day. I mean, this kind of sounds like, Democrats got wind of that. And might have said, well, let's put a few little landmines out there and see how this plays out. Correct. So, you know, one of the things I heard and throughout the process was, don't show up until election day, because then the Democrats will know how many votes they need to make up on election day. I said, that makes some level of sense. But if you think about it, if the polls are overwhelmed with people, chaos breeds the opportunity for some level of corruption. And if it's not crashing, then you overwhelm the polls, just incompetence could get in the way of a fair election. And let's be clear, because of our election integrity efforts, the process of running a polling location has gotten very complex. And the training that the election judges are given is only two hours, and it's not very rigorous. They weren't even trained on how to shut the machines down. But they were trained on how to turn them on. And so it's that training aspect. That also complicates the issue. Because, you know, I've been careful to call them election irregularities. Because until something is proven in court, you know, we need to be disciplined about that message. I mean, of course, where there's smoke, there's fire, right 21 of the 23 or republican precincts like we can put two and two together here, folks, this was a targeted effort to deny supplies to Republican precincts. Because they were made aware of it. And it's high tech, as things have gotten that we've said, okay, these high tech solutions are going to be a barrier, they went very low tech, okay, we'll just shut down the polling locations, we just won't open on time, and we won't get paper. On the other side, we also have an elections administrator, who's terrible at his job. He lost his job in DC, for being terrible at his job. And we went ahead and hired him here. So when you couple opportunity with people who don't know any better, it's very easy to get, you know, to make sure that the results are not reliable. And that's what we're arguing in these cases is that, hey, listen, we don't know if this was intentional or not. But what we do know is that the results are not reliable. So is it are these cases race by race by race? Or are they bundled together? Sort of like a class action all Harris County elections were jacked up. I mean, what's sort of the layman's mechanics of that? So they're race by race, in order to go through with this, each candidate had to file and you actually file against your opponent. And there are two groups backing these are not backing them. But this is where some of the confusion comes in on the bundling aspect because there's an attorney that's been retained by Harris County Republican Party, and there's been a group of candidates that went with that, and but they fly held individually. There's one, Erin Lunsford, who filed her own lawsuit. Then there's another group of candidates, which I'm a part of that filed through the Republican Party of Texas. So they're using a different law firm out of Dallas, Elizabeth Gray, she's done work with RPT before. And there are about 18 of us that went that route. RPT put up $25,000 per candidate, just to get us started. And now the fundraising coming on to sort of help get the rest of it. But there are already donors behind that. I don't think that this is something where you go in, you know, this should be something that large donors are behind, and we're not going to, you know, $25 $50 $100 donors and trying to piece this thing together. That's just not what that donor base should be asked to do. They should be asked to support candidates to win, not to support these lawsuits. Yeah, I mean, if there, if there ever was a compelling opportunity for the machine of the party to step up, it is this right. I mean, is clearly a need for for some of that large party oversight and support to step in and unify and, and strengthen these cases. So that's, that's good to hear that that's happening. What's kind of the what's on the horizon? Then? Which case? So it's just a recent that y'all filed? Right? Correct. So I think it was, there'll be two weeks ago, this Friday was the deadline. So the process now is it's still in the discovery phase. And you know, on the Friday filing deadline, of course, there were IT issues at the courthouse. So they had to push back the filing deadline, because the the, the county clerk wasn't or the district clerk was not admitting these filings, of course, Charlotte, solid, and she's the defendant in one of these flights, Maryland Burgess is being has a claim by Chris Daniel. And I was like, Oh, really? No figure the system's down. Hmm. But all of whom were accepted in so we're in the discovery phase. Now the question comes, they go before a court, all of them, I think, are will all be in different courts, some of them may end up in the same court. But a sitting harris county judge cannot hear these cases, because some of them may be a party to these cases, right. So what happens is there's a administrator that sits over the region who's elected by the judges within that region. So we're surrounded, I don't know all the counties but we're surrounded by for Ben Montgomery, Matagorda Galison. They're all sort of lumped in so this administrator then will select a visiting judge for each of these cases. So the visiting judge has to be from outside Harris County. How that decision is made? I don't know. Okay, we we've got a ways to go with this. So is, is any and all outcome, potentially, on the table? Like, are we are we talking everything from slap on the wrist to two be criminal charges to redoing elections? Is the whole spectrum out there as potential? Yes. So the ultimate end game is to have a new election for each one of these races is victorious. Okay, that's the ultimate end game. Or the ideal end game. Just this is not legal, this is just me spouting off. Even if a case is successful, I don't know if a judge would say we need to hold a new election. Because if you think about this outcome will be six, maybe seven months down the road. I don't know if a judge would actually go that step and say, Okay, I'm about to tell somebody, they no longer have a job. They're no longer an elected official until we hold another election. That would set off so many levels of appeals that we're going to push it even further. So, you know, my hope with getting involved in this election, it really was a battle on whether or not to get I'm sorry, in this lawsuit was for a number of factors, one, you know, we need we spent a lot of time talking about it. And I don't want it to be litigated on Facebook. We need this find out what the facts are, what the root causes of these things. These are in a court so that we can actually take action to make to take corrective measures. And when it comes to a slap on the wrist, unfortunately, when it comes to these infractions, they're only slap on the wrist from a criminal procedure. These are all Class C misdemeanors. Now, SB one in the previous legislative session had previously written in some of these infractions were felonies. But if you remember, prior to the vote on that, and when I think was the third, second or third special session, the Democrats broke quorum and went to DC. Right, one of the compromises, and this is what the state legislators will not tell you, one of the compromises that the Republicans made, was lowering that standard from a felony to a misdemeanor. And that got them back from DC. Yeah. And we certainly wanted them back from DC. But I was a fan of keeping the charges being filed against them. And, you know, being prepared to arrest them when they when they came back, because they eventually would have, but that that's a bit of a travesty. Right? Because Because leverage now is is lost, and we traded it in that moment. So look, I think conservatives everywhere are concerned. I don't know if they're all aware of the nitty gritty details. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and perspectives. What what is the message to leave us with? I mean, I do we all just pick up our bags and people that live in these blue counties head for the for the hills and buy some some land and, you know, plant some some rows of, of corn and save, forget it, you know, the urban centers are lost. Elections are a hot mess. What's What's the the message to continue to stay in this fight? Yeah, so um, I'd be lying to you, if I didn't say we went on Zillow and started looking at stuff and Waller Magnolia the day after. But just like in business, and politics, they will always look for new markets. So moving out of the problem isn't going to fix the problem, because they're just going to move there. Right. We see in our rural counties that the school boards and the curriculum are still being infiltrated with the work curriculums. Right. So to me, that's not an option. You know, on the front end, it seems like it's a lost cause. But I'll tell you, just from the numbers we've seen, from the voters who are denied access to vote, or who we think were turned away, had the Republicans turned up. And the numbers that we actually have in Harris County, they would not have been able to take the election. So there were between be depending upon the numbers, you you believe, between 230 and 270,000 Republicans who voted in one of the previous two elections, who didn't show up in this election. So we had a 555. About 500,000. Republicans show up, which is about what we always have, but they're not always the same 500,000. Right. So some new ones, turn up and vote some other ones stay home. So there were about between 230 and 270, who voted in 2020, or 2018, who didn't show up, we just took a quarter of those 50,000. Every race would have been different. So the first child that that that is that is crazy, because we know that the candidates were able to at the county level, were able to draw some, you know, some moderates, and some some Democrats who ended up casting their vote for some statewide Democrats, but ended up voting for some county level Republicans. So the voter sort of used state policies and state approaches slightly different than they viewed their county candidates in Klamath County policies close to home. So we had some the county messages resonating there. But we didn't turn out all the usuals that we needed to turn out correct. And, you know, in a blueish, purple County, like Harris, I also think it's important for Republicans to recognize that even in parts of the county or areas where they may be moderate or softies they share for local issues. A lot of our same perspective. When you talk to people in who are traditionally blue. They want safer neighborhoods, they want better schools, they want better infrastructure. These if we package it the right way, and we take the time into Go in these areas that are quote unquote lost. And we don't stand a chance, we could still, it's a long term strategy. But even in the short term, we can pull off peel off enough votes to make a difference. But it has to be also a long term perspective. In addition to that, on the election integrity issue, you know, candidates are always asking for volunteers. And I've told candidates now to stop asking for volunteers on election day, start asking people if they want to work on election day, or during election week, get trained as a poll watcher, get trained and go be a clerk, or an AJ or a PJ. Because now that when this discovery phase, if something happens, evidence is important. And the more eyes and ears we have at the poll, the more evidence we will have. And so I love it, that people are really concerned about election integrity as they ought to be. Go to work during the polling locations as a poll watcher or clerk and put your eyes and ears on the process. I love it, I love it. That's it, that's a great idea we need, we need more people willing to volunteer to help out. And every time you go to those to the precincts, you see that they are understaffed, they could use more, they could use more hands. Those are long hours. Often they work multiple days. And so we do need more folks more good solid conservatives to step up and do that. So to all the listeners out there, you have you have my contact information, you can email me at any point, though, at Ben Ben armenta.com. And I will get you in touch with your county's party and whomever it is in your area that is training pole watchers and clerks and judges. That is something super simple that we can do here on the answer with Ben Armenta as we can, we can help you guys out. So if that's your calling, and you want to get involved, many areas have school board elections coming up, they have city municipality elections coming up here later this spring, we can get you connected in your local area, so that you can help out with those elections. Happy to do that. Kyle, again, thank you so much for joining us today. But more importantly, thank you for getting off the sideline, thank you for getting off the sideline, thank you for showing up into the fight into the arena showing up with your family thank them. And you know, we're we're absolutely praying for for you as you embark on whatever's next in your journey. And you know, you have my support support of our listeners as you continue to work with Harris County Republican Party to hopefully win some of these some of these cases. So thank you again, Kyle, for joining us. Yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity on Jordan. You. So where do we go from here? If we as individuals do our part, to secure our votes, and we work to secure our precincts through volunteer work and raising your hand and saying we're going to be pole Watchers or whatever at being a judge whatever we can be? Where does our party go? As a whole from here? Where's our party go? Let me give you my take on actions to address election integrity. So first, I think we must use favorable state laws to our advantage. If a state allows ballot harvesting, for those of you that may not be familiar about harvesting, is really a technique where you can gather and submit the ballots for other people. And you might think to yourself, I mean, the right there, there's no chain of custody. That's that's probably unethical. Well, there are states that allow that. Well, what is our Republican strategy to do it? We can't just allow the Democrats to do it. You know, fighting with our gloves off, and throwing on brass knuckles. It isn't unethical. Not doing so is irresponsible. So if there are laws, which allow and enable ballot harvesting, or interacting with the voters directly, the Republican Party and conservatives need to have a strategy where they are participating in they're doing that as well. We must get conservatives to vote early and not wait until the last minute you heard from our friend Kyle Scott. It is a problem or just waiting to hear happen. If you wait to the end, if you wait to the end, we are out of runway to fix and address the nefarious, ugly, manipulative tactics of the left. We must get our legislatures and Secretary of States to shorten the time to count the votes. I don't know why we just continue to allow these vote counts to go in perpetuity. The longer the voting process is, the more opportunities there is for corruption to infiltrate into that process. So we got to shorten that time we they must be time bound. We must as conservatives ignore the name Colin, I'm good with it. Now. I'm good. I mean, I remember there's a time people call you racist, and you you sort of like cower. Oh, you gotta get over it, you got to get over it. We cannot acquiesce to the left, because they call us names. Our job is to serve the conservative movement. That is our responsibility. We have to help advance the conservative movement. And and I work hard with my wife every day with our kids to ensure that they can find their voice and they can find their courage and that they are around friends and people through church and their network and our network, who support them and in their beliefs so that they are not alone. When you're alone. It's very difficult to stand up in the face of the Democrat objectives really. We must continue to elect judges and justices who are true originalist who defend the Constitution and will who will never legislate from the bench. See, these judges often become the final decision maker in these election cases. Whether it was Donald Trump in 2020, whether it's Carrie Lake and Arizona, whether it's Kyle Scott and all the other individuals who are contesting the election in Harris County, we need to ensure that when somebody is reviewing the facts, that that's what they're doing, reviewing the facts of the case. So pay very close attention to the judicial races in your area, and be sure that you're voting for those originalist, those that won't legislate from from the bench. Lastly, it's important that we don't ever succumb to this false belief that the Democrats want the same thing you want. They don't. They don't want fair and honest elections. They want to win. I believe we can have both. I believe that fair and honest elections lead to conservative victories. But election integrity is a never ending battle. And we have to stay a step ahead of the Democrats. So as we close, I want to give credit to two individuals who, whose their research and their guidance. Really it served as some inspiration for me today. And for some of this content in the first is actually my congressman, Congressman Troy nehls. A great leader, a great representative of of our area outside of Houston, a true patriot who has served me in the military, in law enforcement and now in Congress. And Congressman Nels wrote a fantastic book called The big fraud. And he touches on all the things going on around 2018 2019 2020, all the things from from COVID, to Antifa riots to all these pieces that we're building up the frustration in the hearts and minds of conservatives. And as somebody who was in the Capitol, on January 6, he breaks down and tells the true story of that day. So it's a great book. Again, it's called the big fraud. You should check it out. Donald Trump endorsed it. And I'll give you one tip when you're reading it. Just read one chapter at a time. Soak on it. Don't Don't try to binge read the whole thing and just soak on some of the history that he breaks down. Just read and process Antifa read and process the stuff on COVID Read and process the stuff on the 2020 election and voter integrity and just soak it all in. It's a good read. I enjoyed it. The other one is a movie done by Dinesh D'Souza called 2000 meals. And individuals across the country were paid to bring and drop off ballots at various locations, and essentially to stuff and add votes when and where needed. And those individuals are called mules. So great bit of research, great documentary, Dinesh D'Souza, again, some excellent details in there. And all this is information. All this is information for you to you know, my job isn't here to convince you that I'm right. I'm not trying to win an argument. The only argument I want to win is that the conservative movement is better off with more families and moms and dads and people in it. That's it. That's the only argument. I want to win. All these other ones, all these other stories and anecdotes and pieces of information. I'm trying to educate and activate. So please get involved. Do something if it matters to you. Do something about it. Thank you so much for joining us today on the answer with Ben Armenta. As always, you can email me your thoughts to Ben at Ben armenta.com. Be sure to like follow and share this podcast with your family and friends. On the next episode, we're going to spend some time talking with him election work and hearing his story on how he became a conservative. I look forward to joining you then. Until then, thank you and God bless. The answer with Ben Armenta is brought to you today by gang construction a leading multifamily general contractor they have over 50 years of experience in renovations, restorations and rebuilds. But most importantly, they have strong conservative values just like you and me visit them today at Gambit construction.com