Opinion: Vindication – The first step towards secure elections

Nancy Churchill argues Congress must pass the SAVE America Act requiring proof of citizenship and continuous voter roll cleaning. Photo courtesy Nancy Churchill

🎧 Nancy Churchill: The Case for the SAVE America Act

Nancy Churchill says Congress must pass the Save America Act

Nancy Churchill
Dangerous Rhetoric

President Trump stood before the American people on July 16 and began to prove what many of us had said for six years. The 2020 election looked stolen. The skeptics were called election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and threats to democracy. They were censored, deplatformed, and investigated. Some faced grand juries. Some lost their licenses to practice law.

Nancy Churchill

On July 16, the truth started coming out. Communist China obtained the voter registration files of some 220 million Americans. Electronic voting machines run proprietary software no citizen may inspect. Hardware components come from China. Mail-in ballots are easier to counterfeit than a twenty-dollar bill. The system as built is not defensible.

Vindication is not victory. The same weak architecture still stands. It will face the voters again in November 2026 and in 2028. China and other foreign malign actors have not retired from the field. They are still at war with the United States. Here’s the bottom line up front: Congress must act!

Join the fight

The SAVE America Act must pass. States like Washington that refuse basic citizenship verification and paper-ballot accountability must face real pressure. Minimum national standards are both constitutional and overdue. Congress must pass the SAVE America Act requiring proof of citizenship and continuous roll cleaning. It’s time to treat elections as critical national security infrastructure under active foreign attack.

Set aside a few minutes each day to make phone calls to our senators. To call Senator Patty Murray use (202) 224-2621. For Senator Maria Cantwell call (202) 224-3441. Make the calls, do the work and turn the results over to God.

Start with your full name and city/ZIP code (this proves you’re a constituent). Keep it short and clear (30–60 seconds is ideal). State what you want them to do (e.g., “Please support the SAVE America Act”). Be polite and firm. Make these calls each day, until the SAVE America Act passes!

Mail in voting is an indefensible system

An election run on foreign-made software machines, flooded with tens of millions of unverifiable mail-in ballots could not honestly be certified as secure. No serious person could call that process fair.

The president confirmed what honest observers already knew. The machines contain concealed vulnerabilities. The architecture itself is the problem. A software-driven counting process sits between the voter and the result. It is exposed to nation-state cyber capabilities no county can detect or defeat. No cybersecurity professional can guarantee such a system against a determined attack.

Mail-in balloting remains the largest single source of potential fraud, as the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission concluded in 2005. A ballot carries none of the security features of currency. When a foreign adversary holds the names of low-propensity voters, counterfeit ballots become frighteningly simple.

The fixes are clear. Outlaw electronic machines and replace them with paper ballots marked in person and counted by hand at the precinct on election night. Observers from both parties should watch. Limit mail-in voting to the deployed, the infirm, and those genuinely abroad. Signature verification and chain of custody must be rigorous.

This is not a partisan demand

Americans already agree on the basics. A February 2026 Harvard-Harrispoll found that 85 percent of voters say only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote, including strong majorities across party lines. Seventy-one percent support the SAVE America Act itself, including half of Democrats, 91 percent of Republicans, and 69 percent of Independents.

Three-quarters back proof of citizenship. Eighty-one percent support voter ID. Eighty percent want states to remove non-citizens from the rolls. Fifty-eight percent of voters believe there is at least some voter fraud in U.S. elections. Nearly three-quarters say all ballots should be counted within 24 hours of Election Day.

These are not fringe positions. They are majority positions held by ordinary Americans who still believe citizenship and honest counting matter.

Washington’s own warning

These dangers are not abstract in Washington state. We have lived them.

In 2004 Republican Dino Rossi led Democrat Christine Gregoire by 261 votes, then by 42 after the machine recount. Democrats paid for a hand recount. King County “discovered” hundreds of previously rejected ballots. The state Supreme Court allowed them. Gregoire won by 129 votes. A later challenge found at least 1,678 illegal votes had been cast, yet the result stood.

That was before Washington made all-mail voting permanent. Today every registered voter receives a ballot automatically. No photo ID is required. Identity rests almost entirely on signature comparison, a subjective process that varies by county. No proof of citizenship is demanded. Automatic registration has enrolled foreign nationals. Ballots can arrive and be counted long after Election Day. Chain of custody is broken at multiple points.

Washington perfected the risks the president called indefensible. Rural and Eastern Washington voters must trust a process designed by Olympia. In 2004 a 42-vote margin was reversed. In today’s system the same problems, or worse, are far more likely.

The stakes ahead

Communist China and other malign actors are not going to give up on influencing our elections. November is mere months away. The media will spend the coming days dismissing the evidence and assuring Americans there is nothing to see.

But now, due to the newly declassified information released by President Trump, it is the defenders of this indefensible system who must explain why the world’s oldest constitutional republic counts its votes on machines it cannot inspect, by mail it cannot verify, under the gaze of an enemy it will not name.

Washington voters, especially those in the rural eastern counties, have skin in this fight. Local control and honest elections are not optional extras. They are the foundation of self-government.

Common sense still lives

We do not re-litigate 2004 or 2020 for sport. We establish the truth so it can never happen again. The purpose is to secure elections in November and in 2028.

Common sense still exists in the cattle country and the small towns that keep this state fed and free. We must loudly and persistently demand paper ballots counted in public under bipartisan eyes. Demand proof of citizenship. Demand that Olympia stop treating election security as a partisan inconvenience.

Small things grow great through concord. If we do nothing, nothing will change. Secure elections start with citizens who refuse to look away. The Republic still belongs to those willing to defend it. Set aside a few minutes each day to make a phone call to Congress. Be persistent: Support the SAVE AMERICA ACT!

Nancy Churchill is a writer, educator, and conservative activist in rural eastern Washington state. She chairs the Ferry County Republican Party and advocates for effective citizen influence through Influencing Olympia Effectively. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on Substack and X.