Elections
All posts tagged Elections
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on September 20, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “Critical American Elections.”
‘Sixteen years ago, in 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform issued a report that proposed a uniform system of requiring a photo ID in order to vote in U.S. elections. The report also pointed out that widespread absentee voting makes vote fraud more likely. Voter files contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, and deceased voters, a fact easily exploited using absentee ballots to commit fraud. Citizens who vote absentee are more susceptible to pressure and intimidation. And vote-buying schemes are far easier when citizens vote by mail.
Who was behind the Carter-Baker Commission? Donald Trump? No. The Commission’s two ranking members were former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James Baker III, a Republican. Other Democrats on the Commission were former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton. It was a truly bipartisan commission that made what seemed at the time to be common sense proposals.
How things have changed. Some of the Commission’s members, Jimmy Carter among them, came out last year to disavow the Commission’s work. And despite surveys showing that Americans overwhelmingly support measures to ensure election integrity—a recent Rasmussen survey found that 80 percent of Americans support a voter ID requirement—Democratic leaders across the board oppose such measures in the strongest terms.
Here, for instance, is President Biden speaking recently in Philadelphia, condemning the idea of voter IDs: “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Sadly but predicably, he went on to suggest that requiring voter IDs would mean returning people to slavery.
But the fact is that the U.S. is an outlier among the world’s democracies in not requiring voter ID. Of the 47 countries in Europe today, 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote. The odd man out is the United Kingdom, in which Northern Ireland and many localities require voter IDs, but the requirement is not nationwide. The British Parliament, however, is considering a nationwide requirement, so very soon all 47 European countries will likely have adopted this common-sense policy.
When it comes to absentee voting, we Americans, accustomed as we are to very loose rules, are often shocked to learn that 35 of the 47 European countries—including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—don’t allow absentee voting for citizens living in country. Another ten European countries—including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain—allow absentee voting, but require voters to show up in person and present a photo ID to pick up their ballots. It isn’t like in the U.S., where a person can say he’s going to be out of town and have a ballot mailed to him.
England used to have absentee voting rules similar to ours in the U.S. But in 2004, in the city of Birmingham, officials uncovered a massive vote fraud scheme in the city council races. The six winning Labor candidates had fraudulently acquired about 40,000 absentee votes, mainly from Muslim areas of the city. As a result, England ended the practice of mailing out absentee ballots and required voters to pick up their ballots in person with a photo ID.
Up until 1975, France also had loose absentee voting rules. But when massive vote fraud was discovered on the island of Corsica—where hundreds of thousands of dead people were found to be voting and even larger-scale vote-buying operations were occurring—France banned absentee voting altogether.
On the topic of buying votes, I should point out that we in the U.S. did not always have secret ballots. It wasn’t until 1880 that the first state adopted the secret ballot, and the last state to adopt it was South Carolina in 1950. Perhaps surprisingly, when secret ballots were adopted, the percentage of people voting fell by about twelve percent. Why was that? Prior to the adoption of the secret ballot, lots of people would get paid for voting. In those days, people voted by placing pieces of colored paper in the ballot box, with different colors representing different parties. Party officials would be present to observe what color paper each voter put into the box, and depending on the color, the voter would often get paid. Secret ballots put an end to this practice.
France learned in 1975 that the use of absentee ballots led to the same practice—it allowed third parties to know how people voted and pay them for voting a certain way. This same problem is now proliferating in the U.S. in the form of “ballot harvesting,” the increasingly common practice where party functionaries distribute and collect ballots.
Defenders of our current voting rules point out that in lieu of absentee voting, some European countries allow “proxy voting,” whereby one person can designate another to vote for him. And while it is true that eight of the 47 European countries allow proxy voting—meaning that 39 do not—there are strict requirements. In five of the eight countries—Belgium, England, Monaco, Poland, and Sweden—proxy voting is limited to those with a disability or an illness or who are out of the country. In Poland, it also requires the approval of the local mayor, and in Monaco the approval of the general secretariat. In France and the Netherlands, proxy voting has to be arranged through a notary public. Switzerland is the only country in Europe with a relatively liberal proxy voting policy, requiring only a signature match.
How about our neighbors, Canada and Mexico? Canada requires a photo ID to vote. If a voter shows up at the polls without an ID, he is allowed to vote only if he declares who he is in writing and if there is someone working at the polling station who can personally verify his identity.
Mexico has had a long history of election fraud. Partly because its leaders were concerned about a drop in foreign investment if it wasn’t perceived to be a legitimate democracy, Mexico recently instituted strict reforms. Voters must present a biometric ID—an ID with not only a photo, but also a thumb print. Voters also have indelible ink applied to their thumbs, preventing them from voting more than once. And absentee voting is prohibited, even for people living outside the country.
Those who oppose election integrity reform here in the U.S. often condemn it as a means of “voter suppression.” But in Mexico, the percent of people voting rose from 59 percent before the reforms to 68 percent after. It turned out that Mexicans were more, not less, likely to vote when they had confidence that their votes mattered.
H.R. 1, the radical bill Democratic Party leaders have been pushing to adopt this year, would prohibit states from requiring voter ID and require states to allow permanent mail-in voting. And mail-in voting, I hardly need to point out, is even worse, in terms of vote fraud, than absentee voting. With absentee voting, a person at least has to request a ballot. With mail-in voting—as we saw in too many places in the 2020 election—ballots are simply mailed out to everyone. With loose absentee voting rules, a country is making itself vulnerable to vote fraud. With mail-in voting, a country is almost begging for vote fraud.
If the rhetoric we hear from the Left today is correct—if voter ID requirements and restrictions on absentee (or even mail-in) voting are un-democratic—then so are the countries of Europe and the rest of the developed world. But this is utter nonsense.
Those opposing common sense measures to ensure integrity in U.S. elections—measures such as those recommended by the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission in 2005—are not motivated by a concern for democracy, but by partisan interests.’https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/ensuring-election-integrity-anti-democratic/?utm_campaign=imprimis&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=182212930&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8-oiRBN0Vykw1B9dlrIYbtAK_LAmaky9raOG5YdLgk5xMLiozqnRM1g8YlXKP9fOTmlK8bzIfCnFdRYYWxqEVGHReQTw&utm_content=182212930&utm_source=hs_email
With people like Pete Snyder who needs enemies?
Pete Snyder
‘Establishment Republican Candidate for Governor Pete Snyder ‘Teamed Up’ with Anti-Police BLM Democrat
The establishment Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, Pete Snyder, “teamed up” last year with Sean Perryman, a radical, Black Lives Matter Marxist who is running for Lieutenant Governor in Virginia as a Democrat.
Perryman’s agenda includes forcing critical race theory into classrooms, banning guns, making Virginia a sanctuary state for illegal aliens, “defelonizing all drugs,” giving criminals in prison the right to vote, ending qualified immunity so that individual police officers can be personally sued and bankrupted for doing their job, and defunding the police.
Like most Black Lives Matter activists, Perryman sees white supremacy everywhere. That’s why last year during the COVID lockdowns he directed financial assistance only to businesses owned by non-white Americans. Teaming up with him in this woke effort to discriminate against white people was none other than Pete Snyder.
You may remember Snyder as the former Romney-McCain Republican who is best buds with Lincoln Project cofounder and Never Trumper Rick Wilson. Wilson and Snyder shared an apartment together, along with some Russian hookers they like to tweet about.
But Perryman and Wilson aren’t the only liberals Snyder is cozy with. Aside from his own self-funding, Snyder’s gubernatorial campaign is primarily bankrolled by Mark Kimsey, who gave Snyder a $1 million check in March. Kimsey is a Beverly Hills Democrat and big donor to Hillary Clinton and Democrat Senator Mark Warner.
Daniel Gade, the Virginia Republican who tried to unseat Senator Warner in 2020, recently revealed that when he asked Snyder to donate to his campaign last year, Snyder told him that “first I’ve got to call Mark Warner and get his permission because he and I are friends.”
And speaking of Hillary, new video has emerged showing Snyder calling Hillary a “rockstar” and saying he is a “big fan.” He has also praised the “exceptional job” she did as Secretary of State under Obama.
Given all this, it makes sense that Snyder was paid to do online marketing for years by the Democrat Party – and it’s absolutely clear that conservatives in Virginia need to support anyone BUT Snyder.’https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/establishment-republican-running-virginia-governor-teamed-anti-police-blm-democrat/
Australia’s THE CONVERSATION is Leftist to say the least! I receive their emails and rarely go to their web site as I already know it will be full of climate scam heresy and other left leaning lies. Putting that aside ‘A new study finds that virtue-signalling signals virtue. Specifically, in this case, that Australians consistently tell pollsters they care about climate change – over 80% as a rule, including a majority of conservative voters. But like the alarmists who buy seaside mansions, fly jets to climate conferences and otherwise exhibit glittering hypocrisy, they don’t vote the way they talk. It’s not exactly that they’re kidding; it’s that they’ve learned their lesson too well, that climate awareness is all about striking the right pose. Irony can indeed be ironic sometimes.
The authors of the study exhibit considerable irritation in The Conversation, asking “If 80% of Australians care about climate action, why don’t they vote like it?” But a better question would be “Why do 80% of Australians claim to care about climate action?” which is all that polls actually reveal or can reveal. And part of the answer is that they’re ashamed not to, especially in front of strangers, which is why polls too often underestimate unpopular opinions. And another part is that Australians, like others, have been assured far too often that climate action is all gain and no pain.
The authors reach a different conclusion: “Our research suggests the question about social support for climate action in Australia is no longer: ‘does climate change matter to enough Australians?’. Instead, the critical question may well be: ‘does climate change matter enough to Australians to shift climate politics?’.” And they admit to at least one eye-opening experience.
“We conducted our survey in July 2019, two months after the Coalition won the federal election. Its victory came as a surprise to many, as the election was sometimes billed the ‘climate election’, implying climate change was a bellwether issue. The climate policies of the two major parties were night and day, with the Labor Party campaigning on ambitious mitigation targets and the incumbent Coalition maintaining the status quo of very limited climate policy.”
It opened one eye. But to prise the lid up on the other, ask yourself who billed it as the “climate election”? Activists and advocates, political and private. Not voters. They all went yeah yeah sure and signalled their virtue, then voted their convictions. The authors do note that “We found about half of Australian voters (52%) said climate change was important when deciding their vote in the 2019 Australian federal election. However, climate was the most important issue for only 14% of voters.” But again, the real measure of how people vote isn’t how they say they vote. As with buying and selling, the acid test is what they actually do with a scarce resource, in this case their ballot.
It’s not just Australia. German climate worrywarts gave themselves something new to worry about with a major survey by the European Investment Bank, now part of the green machine along with far too many woke-like financial institutions, that found that youth aren’t behind Greta the way the old folks are. As Pierre Gosselin put it about a news story on the study, “Shockingly, ‘Only 26 percent of young people believe that we should use less fossil energy, primarily for climate protection reasons,’ the two Die Welt journalists reveal.” Young people also don’t want to limit speeds on the famous Autobahns, or subsidize electric cars. “Geht es um CO2-Verbote,” Die Welt admits, “ist die Bereitschaft zum Klimakampf unter den Generationen anders verteilt als gedacht.” You can say that again. (And if they did it would be “When it comes to CO2 bans, the readiness to fight climate change is distributed differently among the generations than expected.”)
In this sense the global warming alarmists have won a massive Pyrrhic victory. They’ve got everyone claiming they care about climate and a fairly large number believing they do care. But it’s happened at the expense of driving people’s real beliefs underground where they have become inaccessible and unrealistic. Many don’t really think it’s an issue, or at least not one worth sacrificing for, many are sick of being nagged, and many believe it’s an issue on which no significant sacrifice is required.
As the Conversation authors note about Australia, “Across the political spectrum, the proportion of voters willing to accept a small personal cost is relatively similar: 60% of progressive voters, 55% of conservative voters.” Yes. A small one. So when asked to make a significant sacrifice, they balk. It’s not what they were told was needed.’https://climatediscussionnexus.com/2021/03/31/talk-green-vote-brown-mate/
‘Democrats in Congress have renewed efforts in the House and Senate to make sweeping changes to America’s electoral laws.
As Jarrett Stepman wrote in 2019, when H.R. 1 was first proposed, these reforms would be a significant threat to the federalist system under the Constitution of the United States and would undermine election integrity.
H.R. 1 is even more significantly threatening in the aftermath of 2020 election, where electoral flaws made many Americans question the integrity of the system. H.R. 1 makes it likely that all future elections will have that outcome. Here is Stepman’s original article:
Democrats intend to save “democracy” by putting themselves in charge of elections.
As absurd as that sounds, it really is a part of the inappropriately named “For the People Act of 2019,” or H.R. 1, moving through the House of Representatives.
The Heritage Foundation created a list of the law’s provisions, which you can read here. The Conservative Action Project also provided this quick rundown of the bill:
• Forces states to implement mandatory voter registration, removing civic participation as a voluntary choice, and increasing chances for error.
• Mandates that states allow all felons to vote.
• Forces states to extend periods of early voting, which has shown to have no effect on turnout.
• Mandates same-day voter registration, which encourages voter fraud.
• Limits the ability of states to cooperate to see who is registered in multiple states at the same time.
• Prohibits election observers from cooperating with election officials to file formal challenges to suspicious voter registrations.
• Criminalizes protected political speech by making it a crime to ‘discourage’ someone from voting.
• Bars states from making their own laws about voting by mail.
• Prohibits chief election officials in each state from participating in federal election campaigns.
• Mandates free mailing of absentee ballots.
• Mandates that states adopt new redistricting commissions.
The bill is more or less a grab bag of progressive priorities, much like the Green New Deal.
Like the misguided movement to abolish the Electoral College, H.R. 1, in the name of democracy, takes a blow torch to the concepts federalism and self-government enshrined in our Constitution.
As the above summary makes clear, H.R. 1 has numerous provisions that would undermine free speech rights, upend the way America conducts elections, encourage voter fraud, and turn election oversight into little more than a partisan weapon to bludgeon foes.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who seems to have positioned herself at the forefront of every piece of radical legislation coming out of the House, dismissed the idea that H.R. 1 is a “power grab” by Democrats.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=dailysignal&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1094987726313742338&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailysignal.com%2F2021%2F01%2F25%2Fthe-left-wants-to-transform-and-nationalize-our-election-system%2F&siteScreenName=dailysignal&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=500px
Democrats took a 1st step to fix the massive, foundational issue of voting reform & money in politics.#HR1 For the People Act by @RepSarbanes was cosponsored by 227 members&passed the House.
Now it’s at the Senate. GOP is calling getting money out of politics a “power grab.” https://t.co/ruzqcN1MgZ— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 11, 2019
She had to make an almost immediate correction after that tweet, as the legislation has not yet passed the House. Even if it did, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said it wouldn’t pass in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority.
Ocasio-Cortez has a penchant for missteps, but she’s a good barometer for where the progressive base in America is.
In this bill, the left has shown it is willing to make a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party,” as McConnell noted. But beyond that, H.R. 1 is most concerning for the devastating effect it would have on our federal republic.
National Review’s David French summed it up perfectly:
At its essence, the bill federalizes control over elections to an unprecedented scale, expands government power over political speech, mandates increased disclosures of private citizens’ personal information (down to name and address), places conditions on citizen contact with legislators that inhibits citizens’ freedom of expression, and then places enforcement of most of these measures in the hands of a revamped Federal Election Commission that is far more responsive to presidential influence.
Certainly, the effort to get around the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision through a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is misguided and an assault on free speech. It is at odds with our right to free speech and, in the end, would mostly benefit insiders and incumbents who know how to play the Washington game of navigating arcane campaign finance laws.
Further, it would require donors to disclose their own private information in the name of “transparency.”
This is how democracy descends into mob rule. It’s why the Founders erected barriers to guard against a tyrannical majority. Given the way progressives brazenly attack and shame dissenters on college campuses—and increasingly in public life—it is all the more urgent that individual privacy rights be protected. Privacy is a cornerstone of liberty.
Perhaps the most concerning aspect of H.R. 1 is what it would do to American election laws and how it would not just undermine, but bulldoze any semblance of federalism left in our political system.
H.R. 1 would stop state legislatures from drawing up their own congressional districts and would mandate independent commissions in their place.
As I’ve written in the past, getting rid of legislative redistricting, sometimes known as “gerrymandering,” is a “cure” worse than the disease. Redistricting will always be partisan, no matter who does it. Laws to prevent this would simply drive partisan redistricting underground, where it would be done in secret by an unelected, uncountable commission rather than openly by a legislature.
Again, even if this were good policy, it assumes that the federal government has the right to dictate how states run their elections. It would take away the right of the citizens of a state to make their own choices on these issues.
H.R. 1 contains other violations of federalism—and the Constitution—including mandates to restore voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison and stop states from finding and removing ineligible voters.
And it gets worse.
After nationalizing American election laws, H.R. 1 would put them all under the watchful eye of a “revamped” Federal Election Commission. This is perhaps the most brazenly partisan element of the bill.
The Federal Election Commission currently allows six members (though it currently only has four), with a requirement that four members sign on to any decision in order for it to pass. It has an even number of Republican and Democratic appointees—thus, it takes both parties to agree to prosecute a violation of federal law. This prevents the party in control of the White House from enforcing the law in a partisan fashion.
H.R. 1 would change that by making the commission a five-person body comprised of the president’s appointees, with the president’s party able to appoint three of the five. This would make the commission into a partisan body beholden to the president.
Proponents say this would end the current “deadlock,” but in reality it would turn the commission into a partisan tool to be used by the president. It would be an egregious concentration of power, especially given the way the rest of the bill would nationalize American elections.
While the Framers weren’t unanimous about how much power states should have relative to the federal government, none would have thought it a good idea to give near-tyrannical power to an unelected body of five people, which is what H.R. 1 would essentially do.
The “For the People Act” really is little more than a progressive power grab intended to manipulate election rules to favor liberals, and it is an anti-democratic bill that would upend America’s electoral system.
As with the Green New Deal, it is a vehicle for introducing ideas that would fundamentally transform our republic into something we would not recognize at all.’ https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/01/25/the-left-wants-to-transform-and-nationalize-our-election-system/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newslink&utm_term=members&utm_content=20210126224049
This is from the horse’s ( that’s to say Sleepy Basement Joe’s) mouth. How can it be said he is President when he admits voter fraud?! This is scary when a man and a political party can assume control of a whole nation via fraud!
I live overseas but I am still an American and it is so sad to see what has just transpired. The cheating and mafia style of politics that the USA has allowed to occur is unbelievable but not unpredictable. We have voted in every Presidential election but this just may be our last. Why vote when cheating has become the norm. Why vote when a man who shows signs of dementia and a vice president that is an out and out socialist/Marxist at the very least will be given full reign under a Demoncrat Congress! I remember when Communist Russia held elections and the outcome was known before it happened. That’s what America now is!
We sing GOD BLESS AMERICA but I believe God has turned His back on America. God cannot bless a nation that has turned its back on Him. Sadly, Christians are to blame for some of this and perhaps most of it. The churches have thrown God and His Word out. Psychology has replaced theology! Therefore, sodomy and same sex so called marriage is just one of the many things that are now accepted by many who call themselves a Christian. However, this is an offense to a holy God. Then there is the teaching of evolution as though it is a proven fact of science. It is NOT a proven fact. Oh, and when I speak of God I speak of the Creator God found in Scripture that brought all that we see around us into being about ten thousand years ago according to the first Book of the Bible, Genesis! One does not have to understand every facet of every science to believe the Genesis account and what the Apostle wrote in Colossians 1:16, 17 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Oh, and by the way there are a many many scientists that have earned doctorates in various scientific fields who believe in the veracity of the Book of Genesis and other Scriptures such as the one just quoted from Colossians.
Not only have the sodomites and evolutionists been accepted as normal but now those who holler ‘follow the science’ tell us there are more than two genders! This is another fairytale that sprouts when God is mocked and thrown out of a society. What will the American society be like in four years after the Devilcrats have finished? Young people will be so confused that there will be so much mental ‘illness’ that the society once known by those who were born in the 40’s and 50’s will be no more.
Well, you the reader must know the future does not look bright! The China virus, more lockdowns, mask wearing all the time and more travel restrictions are just a sample of what lies ahead in a Biden/Harris world. If a political party will cheat to win an election what will it do after it gains power!? More could be said but is anyone listening? Therefore, I will close with a saying by a man who was a very close friend to the Creator; Even so, come, Lord Jesus Revelation 22:20 .
Cheating is always wrong except in elections for the Democratic candidate!
‘To see what’s wrong with our election system, just look at all the claims and allegations being made in the litigation filed by the Trump campaign and other organizations contesting the outcome of the presidential election. Regardless of what happens with that challenge, state legislatures should take note of the underlying problems, which have existed for years, and finally do something about them — before we have our next set of state and federal elections.
The Heritage Foundation has an Election Fraud Database that provides a sampling of proven fraud cases from across the country. It highlights the many vulnerabilities in the election process that can be — and are — exploited by those willing to game the system. It is everything from non-citizens registering and voting, to vote-buying and submission of fraudulent absentee ballots, to individuals voting more than once because they are registered multiple times in the same state or are registered and voting in two different states (like former Democratic congressional candidate Wendy Rosen was caught doing in Maryland and Florida).
Anyone who doubts this type of activity can make a difference in an election should look at what happened this past summer in Patterson, N.J., where a new municipal election was ordered and four locals were charged with absentee ballot fraud. Or the 9th District congressional race in North Carolina that was overturned in 2018 due to absentee ballot fraud and illegal vote harvesting by a political consultant and six of his staffers, all of whom were criminally charged.
But it is not just intentional misconduct. It’s also the errors, mistakes, and incompetence of sloppy, inefficient systems that exacerbate all of these problems. Like state election officials not doing something as basic as checking the addresses of newly registered voters with county tax records to ensure they are really residential addresses where someone lives, as opposed to a vacant lot or a mall or a UPS store.
Or modifying their registration software to detect multiple registrations by the same individual with only slight variations in his or her name, such as using a full middle name in one registration but only the first initial of that person’s middle name in a second registration. In many states, that will get you registered twice without election officials noticing, which will then allow you to vote twice with little chance of detection.
Steps That Need to Be Taken
There are a whole series of steps that need to be taken by state legislators to fix these problems, and they should act in the upcoming legislative sessions that will start in many states in January 2021. It should be the states, not Congress, that address these issues, since the states are primarily responsible under our Constitution for administering elections.
There is no doubt they will run into opposition, and left-wing advocacy groups will sue to try to stop any reforms that would fix these problems and make it harder to cheat. States just need to be prepared to defend their reforms in court, the way states that have implemented voter ID laws have, usually successfully.
In fact, that is the first reform states need: requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote not just in-person as in Georgia and Indiana, but also for absentee ballots, as is the law in Kansas and Alabama. That includes providing an ID at no charge for the tiny percentage of the residents of their states who don’t already have one. And states need to modify their driver’s licenses, which are the default national ID card used by the average American every day for many different purposes besides voting, to conspicuously note whether the individual is a citizen or not.
Easy for Non-Citizens to Vote
Unfortunately, it is easy for a non-citizen, legal or illegal, to register and vote with little chance of being caught, because states don’t verify citizenship. That needs to change. States should require proof of citizenship to register to vote. They should also use available Department of Homeland Security records to check the citizenship of registered voters.
For those of us who’ve been called for jury duty, you may recall that you had to swear under oath that you are a U.S. citizen. Yet very few states require state courts to notify election and law enforcement officials when individuals called for jury duty using voter registration lists are excused because they are not U.S. citizens. Furthermore, federal courts also use state voter registration lists to find jurors for federal cases. Yet they also don’t notify states when those called for jury duty are excused for not being U.S. citizens. This should have been changed years ago.
Absentee Ballots
Absentee ballots are the only ballots voted outside the supervision of election officials and outside the observation of poll watchers, making them particularly susceptible to fraud, forgery, theft, and numerous other problems we’ve seen surface in this year’s election. For that reason, the use of absentee ballots should be limited to individuals who have a valid reason, such as being disabled or out of town on Election Day, to vote absentee. They should require witness signatures or notarization and the signatures of voters on both absentee ballot request forms, and the absentee ballots themselves should be compared to the signature of the voter on file before they are accepted.
With all of the disputes over absentee ballots received after Election Day, the deadline in every state for receipt of a completed absentee ballot should be Election Day itself. Voters have many weeks prior to Election Day to obtain and vote via absentee ballot. There is simply no reason to have a deadline past that day. Additionally, vote-harvesting should be banned in every state. You are just asking for trouble if you give candidates, campaign staffers, party activists, and political consultants the ability to pick up and handle the ballots of voters – including subjecting voters to coercion and intimidation.
Absentee ballots should only go to voters who request them — there should be no automatic mailing of such ballots to all registered voters. Why? Because as this and past elections have shown, state voter registration lists are in terrible shape, filled with voters who have moved, died, or otherwise become ineligible. That is because many states are not taking the most basic steps to keep their lists accurate and up-to-date. They need to be comparing their voter-registration lists with other states; using available state, federal, and commercial databases such as credit agencies, tax records, driver’s licenses, and public assistance filings; Department of Homeland Security alien records, and deaths listed by the Social Security Administration and other government agencies.
Just a Start
These fixes are just a start. There are many others to add to this list, including more vigorous investigations and prosecutions of fraud by election and law enforcement officials who all too often don’t want to know about these problems or don’t take them seriously.
We have razor-thin elections all the time in this country at the federal, state and local levels. As the Supreme Court and many others have pointed out, including the bipartisan Carter/Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, fraud can make the difference in a close election. And so can errors and slip-ups by election officials. That is why state officials all over the country need to concentrate on addressing all of these vulnerabilities and problems and finally do something about them.’https://stream.org/von-spakovsky-how-to-make-sure-the-2020-election-never-happens-again/
If Sleepy Joe and that other person do get into the WH then you can kiss life as you once knew it, good bye.
‘If the Biden-Harris ticket prevails, would their Green climate policies take hold? It would come if the President exhausted his options in the courts and falls short. This is how the 2000 presidential election concluded, causing Al Gore to concede to George W. Bush 37 days after election day.
Upon declaring himself President-elect, Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to fight “the battle to save the climate” and to re-enter the Paris Climate Accords.
A Biden administration will have a huge impact on climate policies by controlling the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Interior Department as the leading rule-making agencies for Green policies. More than likely, gas pipeline construction will be denied permits, fossil fuel drilling on federal lands refused, carbon emission standards tightened on industry, and wetlands and logging restrictions re-imposed.
Literally dozens of environmental orders are likely forthcoming from a Biden presidency that would reverse Trump administration actions, and impose costlier, anti-competitive energy burdens on American industry, jobs and households.
The question, however, arises: why is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sounding sullen these days? She supported Joe Biden for president (after his nomination at the Democratic convention last August), and drafted his climate policies in the Unity Task Force recommendations.
The answer is that congressional elections did not go well for Democrats. As Joe Biden leads in the presidential count, the Democratic Party unexpectedly took losses in Congress. Several Democratic lawmakers, including 3rd ranking House member, James Clyburn, are publicly blaming the Party’s progressive agenda championed by AOC, Sen. Bernie Sanders and others.
AOC rejects the criticism and is on the defensive. “It’s irresponsible to pour gasoline on what [are] already very delicate tensions in the Party,” she said. She went on, “I don’t even know if I want to be in politics.”
These are not the sentiments of a jubilant, victorious politician.
While Democrats and most pollsters expected Mr. Biden to win the presidency, they also expected to take full control of Congress: first, by expanding their majority in the House of Representatives; second, by taking majority control of the U.S. Senate where Republicans had twice the number of seats at stake and where the Democrats heavily outspent them. Neither occurred.
Instead, Democrats will dwindle to a very narrow House majority to perhaps a handful of seats above the minimum 218, as Republicans are likely to capture a dozen or more seats held by Democratic incumbents. In the Senate, Republicans have at least 50 of the 100 seats, with two Senate run-off races in Georgia to be decided in January.
Even if Biden becomes president, a bare majority in the House and likely continued minority position in the Senate will make progressive climate policies far more difficult to pass into law, if not impossible. In particular, Congress has the power of the purse. Even a modest Green New Deal labeled something else would cost trillions of new taxpayer dollars to impose carbon mandates and “create” green energy jobs. They have no mandate from the voters.
Another reason for climate policy proponents like AOC to be concerned is hydro-fracturing for natural gas, which they oppose. Joe Biden insisted during the fall campaign that he did not oppose fracking, despite taking the opposite position for more than year prior. Kamala Harris said, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact,” though she claimed no reversal for herself. Biden also claimed he was not for the Green New Deal, and Harris refused to mention it, even though both were on record in support. Evidently, both understood the political risk of going big and ostentatious on climate policies.
Lastly, should Mr. Biden end up as president and re-enter the Paris Accords, the Republicans should insist it come before the Senate as a treaty, which requires two-thirds approval, pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. International deals of this magnitude on any subject are manifestly illegal for any president alone to commit the nation. A Biden refusal to do so could trigger Senate Republicans to deny funding its implementation, if they dare.
President Trump and his administration took a balanced approach between economic and environmental issues. A Biden administration would reverse many such executive actions. However, since a predicted “Blue” Democratic wave failed to materialize, a “Green” wave, at least from Congress, is unlikely.’https://papundits.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/will-there-be-a-green-wave-for-america/
When an old geriatric and a confessing communist grab the two highest jobs in the USA whether one is conservative or not should be scared.
‘Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have declared themselves the winners of the US presidential election; news which should fill many freedom-loving or conservative constituencies from the Middle East to Europe to our own neck of the woods with horror, as several of our writers point out this week.
Nonetheless, many conservatives have chosen to simply accept the media-declared result and opt for the ‘we must do the right thing’ and politely accept defeat and congratulate the self-declared winners. This was the approach of most of the political commentariat as well as many world leaders, including our own Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Yet what this lazy strategy boils down to is not exactly all that reassuring; it suggests that fraud and cheating are acceptable so long as they are either successfully hidden (out of sight, out of mind) or of an insufficient quantity to materially influence the outcome (so what? everybody does it, it doesn’t make any difference, etc., etc.).
Regardless of how painful or awkward it may be, the reality is that in a democracy there is no more important principle than that every vote counts and that every vote is verifiably legitimate. In Australia, we have long had the familiar scrutineers and one efficient national body, the Australian Electoral Commission, charged with ensuring fairness and we are the luckier for it. That the Americans have muddled along with a spaghetti bowl of tangled rules and regulations doesn’t change the moral and ethical imperative for all authorities to ensure a clean vote. For sure, it has long been suggested that most US elections have involved degrees of fraud, most notoriously the election of John F. Kennedy, and that indeed he is proof that it doesn’t really matter — he was still a great president. This is fatuous and does not justify the US (and the West) simply shrugging their shoulders and accepting ‘small amounts’ of fraud.
As several of our excellent writers detail this week, there is an extraordinary number of questionable factors to do with Wednesday’s result. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theory whacko to be concerned about allegations of fraud from mysterious computer ‘glitches’ to a veritable platoon of dead voters. That with almost no exception all the alleged crimnality favours the Democrats only compounds the concern, as does the mathematical implausibility of many of the most important and pivotal individual results.
The US constitution involves a series of checks and balances to ensure an orderly and legitimate transfer of power. They must be allowed to work.’https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/11/it-aint-over-til-its-over/
whatyareckon 