Bluegrass Times

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said during a committee hearing on voting irregularities that it’s important to understand what courts are saying and not saying regarding alleged election fraud.

Paul said so far it has been alleged that there were 60 cases rejected nationwide regarding election fraud.

“I guess another way of looking at this is that the court cases have been refused for ... procedural and technical reasons,” Paul said. “When you see the 60 court cases rejected (do) you think that's a conclusion of our court system that there is no fraud or do you think that the court cases were primarily rejected for procedural reasons?”

Paul said there is another important issue involving the cases along with fraud.

“I do think there's an important issue here though, the fraud is one aspect of this and I think courts (have) historically been reticent to get involved in elections ... but moving forward we've got to change the rules or re-evaluate our state rules in order that this doesn't happen again,” Paul said.

Paul said there is also the legal aspect that is important.

“There is another important aspect to this … it is a legal aspect that I think does need to be heard by the courts and I don't know if it can be heard beyond the election but I think (it) should,” Paul said. “And this is the question of whether or not people who are non-legislators can change the election law.”

Paul said in at least two dozen states, non-legislators chose to make changes to the acceptance of mail-in ballots without legislative approval.

Paul said what happened in some swing states needs to be addressed so that it doesn’t happen again.

“I think it's absolutely true we have to prevent it from happening again,” Paul said. “I think state legislators ... will need to reaffirm that election law can only be changed by a state legislature, so I think there's a lot of work to be done.”

Paul said that while the U.S. Senate and House would not dictate it to the states, he believes at least a hearing should be done to hear from state legislators on what they are going to do to make sure each state’s election laws are upheld and not changed by non-legislators.

Paul said he understood that courts don’t like elections and try to stay out of them, but that fraud occurred during this election and that needed to be addressed.

“But the fraud happened — the election, in many ways, was stolen and the only way it'll be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the laws,” Paul said.