Written by Charity Joy, Founding Member Restore Liberty in Idaho
If you’ve had the opportunity to peruse Mary Souza’s campaign material during her bid for Idaho Secretary of State or listened to her speeches and interviews, you’d be hard pressed to miss her focus on election integrity.
In fact, her website and the campaign literature has multiple bullet points on the topic of election integrity. These include the following statements:
● One of 12 State Legislators nationwide chosen as part of The Heritage Foundation’s Honest Elections Project
● Named one of America’s Top 20 Election Integrity Superstars by WorldNetDaily’s Whistleblower Magazine
● Senator Mary Souza was the FIRST lawmaker in Idaho to expose Facebook money used to operate our public elections.
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Well, let’s look into each of these statements and you can evaluate for yourself whether or not Souza is being upfront with the voters.
We all recognize the prestige associated with The Heritage Foundation and the work they do to promote conservative policies nationwide. Perhaps this is why Souza is attaching their name to the Honest Elections Project. However, there is no association between The Heritage Foundation and the Honest Elections Project. To contrive such an association with the phrase “The Heritage Foundation’s Honest Elections Project” is disingenuous at best and could be viewed as completely deceptive. Or perhaps Souza is simply naive? Search it out for yourself. The Heritage Foundation has an in-depth and thorough website which includes a tab for election integrity, yet nowhere do they mention an Honest Elections Project. However, a completely different website known as Honest Elections Project which is lead by their Executive Director, Jason Snead, shares how their organization works to promote fair and honest elections. If the fact that Jason Snead once worked for The Heritage Foundation now means all his endeavors going forward are an extension of Heritage then by all means let’s call his group’s activism “The Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Project”. That Snead’s Honest Election Project believes America is a democracy is a discussion for another time.
Mary Souza recently acknowledged in a message to an inquiry on a telegram chat that “The Honest Elections Project is co-sponsored by Heritage Action and ALEC Action.” Heritage Action is not the same as The Heritage Foundation. Heritage Action is an independent partner organization per their website information at heritageaction.com. Souza knows this, yet continues to promote her narrative to attach validity to a meaningless program that selected her to attend their events. ALEC Action is the advocacy arm of the nonpartisan (aka stealth globalist) American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). When you wade through their alecaction.org website you’ll see they are led by their President Micheal Bowman who has headed up many national PACs and was the Legislative Director in the California Assembly and Senate. With Idaho filling up fast with political refugees from California, I am hesitant to believe Mr. Bowman was promoting conservative policies during his tenure. But perhaps I have become jaded under the suffering of Idaho’s dysfunctional government that lends itself to tyranny more often than not under the “conservative” leadership of Governor Little, AG Wasden, Speaker Bedke and Pro Tempore Winder and one the most liberal senates this state has ever seen, of which Souza is a member. If you dive deeper into ALEC (the parent organization of ALEC Action) it becomes clear that they are a massive corporate lobbying firm, especially for big pharma, pushing mandatory vaccinations, amongst other anti-liberty policies. On a side note, the legislators participating in ALEC’s forums pay for the privilege of membership. So basically Souza paid (with taxpayer funds) to be a part of ALEC Action’s sponsored Election Integrity Project.
Inquiries to both The Heritage Foundation and Honest Elections Project have not yet been returned.
Being named one of America’s Top 20 Election Integrity Superstars by WorldNetDaily, an opinion news source founded by Joseph Farah in 1997, doesn’t hold any value for me personally, but feel free to give Souza a notch in her belt for this designation if so desired. These kinds of “awards” and “recognitions” have been used for decades by politicians to sound more established or impressive on the campaign trail. They hold no substantive value or meaning to voters who are looking at a candidate’s actual actions or record in office.
At first blush, the exposure of Facebook dollars (aka Zuckerbucks) going to county clerk offices throughout the state to fund the operational aspects of elections is very commendable and I said as much to Souza personally. However, there’s always more to the story. During the 2020 Legislative Session Mary Souza voted AYE on H0521 which was later signed into law. H0521 gave millions in sales tax breaks to future data centers. Shortly thereafter Idaho was shocked to hear that Meta (Facebook) was building a huge complex in Kuna, a city in Ada County. Are you kidding me? Don’t pretend to want the influence and dollars of companies like Meta’s Facebook out of Idaho while at the same time paving the way for them to have a physical footprint within Idaho’s borders AND grant them huge tax breaks! This is political double-speak and backroom wheeling and dealing that perverts the legislative process, undermines our Republic and punishes regular Idaho taxpayers. Now Meta and the possibility of other large tech companies via their agreements with city councils and the state of Idaho will have both political and economic capital which will be used to dismantle our First Amendment rights and further dilute the rural voice in statewide policies. This scenario is exactly what fascism looks like - privately owned corporations and government in bed together to the detriment of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
When asked about her vote on H0521, Souza originally feigned ignorance, then when faced with the printed bill and her vote on it, she made these comments, “There are no perfect bills”, “Our intentions were good”, and “If I’d known then what I know now ...”.
Just food for thought, I encourage everyone to continue pursuing their own due diligence when evaluating candidates for elected office.
