By Patrice Johnson | April 3, 2024
Watch video: "Election Integrity Explored," by Attorney Erick Kaardal at University of St. Thomas Federalist Society
Watch video using Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/u427bs4y36ihsfadf9v15/h?rlkey=k8rj1uswmjq6navxxu1x48g1l&dl=0
“I'm not really political, but my work has political implications,” Attorney Erick Kaardal said while speaking before an audience of law students at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis, Minn., on March 14.
Kaardal. a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Chicago Law School, encouraged the budding lawyers to pursue meaningful work. He recalled that, after earning his law degree, he decided to specialize in challenging the government on behalf of regular people. He said he enjoys suing “any governmental entity that violates people's rights.”
Over the course of his 30-year career, Kaardal said he had witnessed the emergence of a pressing threat to people’s rights. Then in 2019 and 2020, he realized “election integrity was a subject matter worthy of a law school course."
"We could have a whole course, you know, one of these subjects a week, and we could cover all these subject areas, because the progressive billionaires and their nonprofits have gamed our election system." The elites and their nonprofits are now “unduly influencing state election officials to violate federal and state law.”
The unlawful actions started as “generally legal,” Kaardal noted, but “where the government has evolved, they’ve purposely led our election officials to violate the law, which is a bad thing.” So bad, in fact, that today’s violations of constitutional protections present a “worthy” challenge to aspiring and practicing lawyers.
“The government is a worthy opponent. Their lawyers are above average. They're central and they really fight, fight sometimes like criminal defense lawyers, right? And they really fight even if they're guilty.”
Kaardal noted that legal battles chart the course of history. “Mollie Hemingway recently wrote in one of her books [Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections] that the way to understand the 2020 election is to start with the post-election litigation.”
Kaardal, who has chalked up 63 election integrity wins and two U.S. Supreme Court victories, emphasized that he “works with others to message about injustice.”
“What could be more important than a case against the government…leaving a bunch of cases behind you in your career path?” he asked.
“People view the most important cases generally, generally as cases involving the government.”
Kaardal, a partner in the law firm Mohrman, Kaardal & Erickson, P.A, has filed lawsuits against federal and state agencies, counties, cities, school districts, and universities—any governmental agency trampling on citizen rights. He has current cases working their way through federal and state courts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, and his watershed wins in the Great Lakes States are rippling across the nation.
In Michigan, Kaardal and team are representing 11 state legislators. The election integrity case focuses on the constitutional rights of state legislators to regulate the times, places, and manner of elections. The legislators claim two ballot initiatives, Proposal 2 of 2022 and Proposal 3 of 2018, bypassed the legislature to change the state’s election laws in violation of the U.S. Constitution and Michigan Constitution. If successful, the case before the U.S. District court for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division, could retract both ballot referenda from the Michigan Constitution.
The good news, Kaardal emphasized is “the United States has lots of ways” to right the ship. One avenue for undoing government descent to totalitarian control is through state legislatures retaking control of elections, like banning private monies from influencing election administration and undoing ballot initiatives that usurp state legislators’ Constitutionally protected rights.
Kaardal said, “Another way is to file lawsuits. Another way is to elect officials who don't think this way, so we have lots of democratic input.”
Before opening the floor to questions, he added, “So, my message is very hopeful, hopeful that we're working our way out of it. But you need people with firm convictions in order to do the work.”
“One of my daily prayers is I give my heart and soul to you, Lord, but in exchange, give me some meaningful work to do here on Earth,” Kaardal said. “Constitutional law is like higher than everything.”
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