Nick LaLota knows better on election integrity, yet still promotes the big lie

LaLota’s background as an Annapolis graduate and Naval officer strongly suggests a high degree of leadership and personal integrity. Yet from where I sit, LaLota lacks both of those attributes. To our detriment.

How so? We can see it in his campaign materials. The first bullet point in a recent LaLota handout proclaims that he is “[f]ighting for Voter ID and Secure Elections.” Some 60-plus federal judges, two statewide paper ballot recounts in Georgia, one by hand and the other electronically, conducted under a Republican secretary of state, LaLota’s own electoral wins in 2022 and 2024, and Trump’s own win in 2024 all point to the same conclusion: the big steal was the big lie. And it was. Which has not stopped LaLota from running on it.

He did not need to sign up for that lie. LaLota is in a safe red district. He can fairly claim credit for playing a role in increasing SALT and trying to protect our environment. Despite this, there it is on a campaign handout: the big lie. LaLota will fix a system that isn’t broken by breaking it. That is made plain by his cross-reference to a bill that passed the House of Representatives, H.R. 22, footnoted on that same handout in very small type in the lower left corner.

I have never understood why Democrats oppose picture IDs to vote. There is no meaningful voter fraud. We know this from the Trump-directed state and nationwide prosecutorial investigations that keep on coming up empty. But still, I need a picture ID to get on an airplane. Why then, simply as a matter of common sense, shouldn’t you also have to show one at the voting booth?

But H.R. 22 is not that. Instead, it is a government-concocted Trumpian train wreck. It would tie everyone’s ability to vote to external government databases, such as those of the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

That is, your right to vote would then hinge on the accuracy of computer software and the diligence of federal employees. Let’s test that. According to federal audits, approximately 18.9 million Social Security numbers are assigned to people almost certainly dead, having been born before 1920, yet are still shown as living.

Now apply your lived experience to the tsunami of error promised by H.R. 22. About 69 million women and 4 million men have changed their names due to marriage or divorce. Meaning that under H.R. 22, as many as 74 million Americans whose names no longer match their original birth certificates would be required to produce chain-of-ownership documentation, such as official marriage certificates or court-ordered name-change decrees, to prove their eligibility to vote. How many of you have tried to fix any entry about you with a government agency? How did that work for you?

My mom kept my birth certificate. When she passed, I found it in her personal effects and thought, “oh, that’s nice.” Because I had never seen it before. Is it possible to get birth certificates? Of course. Do you know what’s involved, or how long it would take? Neither does LaLota.

H.R. 22 is so stupid that no one who understands it would support it. LaLota supports it and is running on it. Sort of. Because as a former elections commissioner, LaLota knows better than most the multiple levels of safeguards embedded in our voting system.

So, rather than characterize LaLota’s flyer as a fix, let’s call it what it is: kissing the ring to placate a vain, inept octogenarian. Because if our electoral system isn’t broken, then Trump, in fact, lost in 2020. Imagine that.

Trump can’t. And therefore LaLota can’t say he does, either. You can call this many things. But one of them isn’t leadership.

In the movie A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise’s character makes the point that honor does not come from a uniform. LaLota wore the uniform. He is also at the tip of our national leadership spear, one of just 535 members of Congress, a tiny fraction of the country entrusted with an enormous responsibility to the rest of us.

 LaLota, having sought this role, now has the obligation to tell people the truth on something as fundamental as election integrity. His unwillingness to do so says something very bad about him. And something not so great about us, as well.

No politician, not LaLota, not any Democratic Socialist, not anyone, would run on the inane unless they believed it would get them elected. They should all know better. And they should all serve us better. But they don’t. Because we reward the simple, the sound bite, the small-print reference to H.R. bills that none of us have read.

I am not for or against LaLota’s opponent. I am against building our house on sand. It is not working now. It will not end well for us or our children in the future. If you are doing nothing about this, do something. If you are already doing something, do more.

Andrew Leven is a former federal prosector and an attorney in private practice. He lives in Riverhead.