Reactionaries are playing for keeps in the provinces Under the guise of “election integrity,” Republican secretaries of state held a two-day conference in Washington in February to discuss efforts to restrict voter access to the ballot box. The watchdog group Documented shared documents from the Heritage Foundation-sponsored event with the Guardian. “A list of attendees namechecks the chief election officials of Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia,” write Ed Pilkington and Jamie Corey: The keynote speech was given by Ken Blackwell, former secretary of state in Ohio. He was an early adopter of Trump’s lie about rigged elections, championing the idea in the 2016 presidential race which Trump won. Blackwell now chairs the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute, a rightwing thinktank led by former Trump officials. The center has been touting election-related model legislation. Heritage was careful to organize the conference amid tight secrecy. Among the records obtained by Documented is an email from Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer at the foundation who leads their election work. Responding to a query about the event from a Texas official, Von Spakovsky said: “There is no livestream. This is not a public event. It is a private, confidential meeting of the secretaries. I would rather you not send out a press release about it.” Yeah, that Hans von Spakovsky. The Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf) and the Honest Elections Project (HEP) joined Heritage in sponsoring the event. Pilf “sues election officials to force them to purge voter rolls,”…