Jack Lombardi – Is it time to return to paper ballots?

Newly released intelligence assessments have renewed debate over election security and the vulnerabilities of voting systems.

Entrepreneur and former congressional candidate Jack Lombardi joins the show to discuss election infrastructure, voter verification, and whether America should move back toward paper ballots and stronger election safeguards.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hey, welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show on First Amendment Friday. Well, the President says our voting system has been compromised. Three primary foreign actors involved China, Russia, and of course Iran. And I thought we'd talk to Jack Colombardi, who's an entrepreneur and a former Republican candidate for Congress from the great liberal state of Illinois. Jack, welcome back to the program.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Formerly from the People's Republic of Illinois, sir.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

You you've now moved out of the People's Republic of Illinois.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yes, sir. I'm in the Free State of Florida.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, that's a good place to be. So tell me this. I was looking at a soundbite from the great Kamala Harris, who's run for president a bunch of times, never been successful, but she has run. And in just eight years ago, she was saying, why, we have to go back to paper ballots, because you can't hack a paper ballot. And I thought all these dem all these Liberals and Democrats and news networks are saying, how dare Donald Trump come out and talk about the compromise or election system? Apparently, all the things that have been said by people like Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, President Auto Pen are okay if they say it, but evil if Trump says it. Do I understand that right?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Well, yeah, of course. You know, President Trump is calling out their hedge. They got a hedge on this whole thing. I mean, well, here's what's even crazier, Lars. Both parties have said that electronic voting is rigged, and yet we still have it. That's how stupid our government is. Incredibly stupid. And and I'm in technology. I can tell you this when you have a software of any sorts that has an ability to be connected to a Wi-Fi. Just because that button you think you pushed on or off is is on or off, it doesn't necessarily mean that you know it works the way that you think it does. That button could still be on and still be hooked up to a Wi-Fi. And yeah, okay, is this the way they service the machine? Lars, I don't want to hear the excuses. The reality is we need to go back to paper ballots. I mean, you know, machines could count them, I guess. I mean, you know, to be able to get things done. However, when you're gonna rely on the machine to check the machine, it's kind of like the state that I came from, the People's Republic of Illinois, that's a tem Democrat top-down one, you know, one party government, and people say there's no fraud, there's no fraud in elections, and I'm like, of course there is, but who's gonna tell? Is it gonna be the whistleblower Democrat that's gonna tell the other Democrat or the other progressive, or maybe the communists that are all under the camp of the Democratic Party? Who's gonna be the one that's gonna say, oh, this is wrong? Is it gonna be the judicial system that's run by the Democrats? Is it going to be the sheriffs that are all Democrats? Or is it gonna be, I don't know, the governor's office that's Democrats or General Assembly? Lars, who is going to hold them accountable? Nobody. That's why they won't open the voter rolls. And President Trump is sent his DOJ to go do that, and they've even run into you know pushback. Why? If there's nothing to worry about, why wouldn't you open it up for the American people as a whole, as a complete society, why wouldn't you open up the voter rolls and clear the air and say, listen, there's no illegals, maybe there's a small percentage, we're working on it. I think all Americans would be like, okay, okay, you know, fine, we'll agree. But because this doesn't happen, because they're not opening up the voter rolls, because they continue to use these electronic machines, they have Wi-Fi, Americans don't trust the elections. And and it's crazy, you know, between the right and the left, let's be let's all be honest and have an honest conversation. It's only cheating when the other guy wins. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

And and by the way, Jack, I'm I'm with you. If you want to use machines to count things, but there's got to be a way to double check it. I'll tell you, a couple of weeks ago, I was leaving town on the weekend with with Tina and my granddaughter, and I stopped at the bank and I wanted to get some cash, and I didn't want to go to the ATM. Uh, and and uh the lady said, I have to run it through the machine. She runs it through the counting machine. It came out with an extra 20. And I went, you know, because she was counting, I don't know, uh uh some c some 20s and she goes, Oh, I gotta run this through again. Count it again, sure enough, it came out with an extra one. And I I thought, oh, well, that's interesting. I mean, even at the bank where they count money all day long, they've got machines that occasionally give you either the right result or the wrong result, or a result you weren't expecting. So when you're counting hundreds of thousands or millions of ballots, should we have a double check on whether or not the count is being done correctly?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

What they say we do, Lars, and you know what happens? They run it through the same machine that tellied it the first time. That's how stupid we are. And and you know, here's the problem, and this is the part that burns me up, and why I even got in involved with politics, which I I hate politics from the start. I'm gonna be transparent with you and your listeners. Sure. I've never really liked it. It's just it's gone so far off the rails. I said, you know what, you know, what the hell, right? And that's what happened. What the the issue that I have, I mean, it's like, okay, we all agree, I I know I'm I'm saying this again, we all agree that the you know that there's something maybe not right. Okay. Yep. And and and it's the American people, it's our country, these are our representatives. So, and we all agree left and right. I have friends on all sides of every spectrum of everything, because I'm from you know, big city like Chicago. We all agree there has to be some sort of fix to where we can all say, hey, our elections, we are we're not very confident in them, and that you know, we need to have a solution, a workaround. We gotta, we gotta get this fixed. And and everybody always seems to agree on paper ballots because then we can hand count them, we can machine count them, and we don't have to worry about putting it through a system that could be possibly perhaps rigged.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

And by the way, you're in our votes. Jack, you're an entrepreneur. You went in to buy a company, I would expect you'd say, You got to show me the books. And if the people telling you the company said, nope, Jack, you got to buy it blind, you can't see the books. And if you saw the books and you said, okay, can I trust these numbers? You might ask the company, by the way, do you have outside auditors who come in? Most of the companies I've ever worked for. I've never been in that part of the business, but uh the radio stations and such I've worked for, they have outside auditors. They come in about once a year. They go through all the books because they say, yeah, we think you're running things right, but we want somebody on the outside to come in and make sure all the numbers still add up. And I would imagine occasionally they find errors in there. These are all secretaries of state, governors, and lawmakers who say, Democrats all, who say we don't want outside auditors to double check our system. And that immediately, I mean, if I were if I were you and I was in the process of buying a company and they said, number one, we don't use outside auditors, number two, no, you can't see the books, I'd say, then me and my checkbook are gone.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Lars, you know what? It's funny you bring that up. I'm actually in an acquisition or selling one of my companies. I kid you not. And here's what's happening. I've had to deal with the bank, I've had a deal with the broker, I had to deal with the representative on the other side, I've had a deal with the attorney, and I had a deal with my attorney, and a deal with my accountant. These are all the people I've had to deal with here in the past three months. So, yeah, I 100% agree with you. It's logical, it makes logical sense. And if we had a process, a systems like that, that guaranteed all state, no matter what, I mean, this is what has to be done. A lot more Americans would feel more confident in their vote. And I gotta add one thing. Last night I was talking to my son, 22 years old. He's you know, bright eye and getting out in the world, and he has some views about the world and and cultures and whatever. And we got we had a really heavy conversation, and he said, the dumbest thing is, dad, my vote don't count. It's stupid. And and it broke my heart, it absolutely broke my heart. I said, I said, Jack, of course it counts. I'm like, the biggest mind twist that they could put out there is to convince young people, because he's a Gen Z that their vote don't count. I'm like, what you have to say counts, son. It does, because you take the time to go in there and cast your ballot.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

That's absolutely right. That is Jack Lombardi, entrepreneur, former resident of Illinois, former Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress. Jack, thanks very much. Back in a moment. I'll get to your phone calls and emails. You've got the Lars Larson show.