Washington, D.C. – Does America have the cleanest el*ction system in the world, as we were told we should believe after the last presidential contest? Or is it riddled with abuse, leading to outcomes that cannot be said to truly reflect the will of the people?
We may never know, especially after attorneys associated with former President Donald J. Trump made such a hash of things after the last el*ction. At first glance, some things do look odd. Maybe they can be explained to everyone's satisfaction but, because those concerns were lumped in with allegations too outrageous to be believed, anyone with legitimate questions risked being discredited if they raised them.
Expressing doubt about how a race turns out is not the same thing as being what the Democrats now call an “election d*nier.” El*ction integrity is not a partisan issue. It's in everyone's interest that American ele*tions be as clean as possible. Fr*ud disenfranchises us all, even when it's not ubiquitous enough to alter the results of a single race.
One would think state governments and university scholars in the field of political science would have conducted numerous studies to evaluate the impact C*VID-related accommodation had on the electoral process. Remarkably, there don't appear to be any studies that looked at that – at least not any that looked at whether mailing ballots to every enrolled registered voter without them having to ask for one did anything in the states where it was done would, if known, undermine the public's confidence in the election returns.
No one appears to know what happened to the ballots that could not be delivered as addressed. Were they sent back as undeliverable? Were they allowed to lie around, unguarded, in mailrooms and post offices and apartment house lobbies for an indefinite period? These were not advertising circulars after all. They were votes. They had value. And they may have helped determine who the president of the United States would be.
Curiously, no one seems to be asking. Think back to 2000, when operatives working for the Democratic Party and the Gore-Lieberman campaign argued the outcome in Florida hinged on ballots cast by people in a few countries who, because of the way those ballots had been designed confused voters who may have ended up voting for someone other than the candidate they intended.
The outcome of that race was held in doubt for weeks. Some people still refer to it as a st*len el*ction. Yet, in its aftermath, at least six different recounts were privately conducted to find out what happened and what the “correct” outcome was. All of them, save for the one that followed the specific, limited recount the Gore-Lieberman campaign wanted in just a few counties confirmed George W. Bush won the state and, with it, the presidency.
The lack of curiosity about what happened to any undeliverable no-request mail b*llots is astounding, giving our “social media age” desire to know everything and to believe that everything is knowable – at least all the things that persons with power sitting in dark rooms don't suppress.
That's a reference, tongue in check, to the kind of paranoia that's been growing among certain segments of the adult population for at least as long as people have been able to Tweet, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. It's not healthy for the country. It undermines our faith in our democratic institutions and the electoral process – which is easy to discern from many of the comments made by people who ought to know better about the conduct of the last election.
There is, however, a wrinkle. One that suggests there may be more to the fr*ud issue than the “fra*d deniers” allow. On Thursday, the Just The News website reported that complaints from a Democratic whistleblower in Florida had triggered a request by the state's election crimes unit for “a full criminal investigation” into allegations that “a long-running, widespread ballot h*rvesting operation in the African-American communities” had been operating in vote-rich Central Florida.
“Former Orange County Commissioner candidate Cynthia Harris filed a sworn affidavit in late August with the Secretary of State's office alleging that illegal operations to collect third-party b*llots have been going on for years in the Orlando area where voting activists are paid $10 for each ballot they collect,” the site reported.
In her complaint, Harris described “an intricate system funded by liberal-leaning organizations that dispatch b*llot brokers into black communities to pressure voters to turn over their ballots.”
The charges are worth pursuing. The initial inquiry undertaken by Florida's Office of Election Crimes and Security into Harris' allegations did conclude that sufficient evidence existed to warrant a full criminal probe, according to the website.
B*llot harvesting, the practice of sending volunteers or, as Harris charged, paid workers to collect mail b*llots from voters at their homes and submit them, one at a time or in large numbers through drop boxes of the type that entered the public's consciousness during the 2020 election, is illegal in many places. But not all, which is perhaps why stories like this do not receive the attention they deserve.
That shouldn't be. The integrity of U.S. el*ctions is too important to let transient concerns about who won interfere with the government's obligation to ensure they are conducted fairly and according to law. Hopefully, after the counting of the ballots cast in the 2022 election runs its course – and who knows when that might be, thank you Congress and the courts – everyone can take a deep breath and do a deep dive into what parts of U.S. election law at the federal, state and local level need to be changed. What procedures need to be adopted and which ones should be banned? Are the voter roles accurate? Should ballot harvesting be made against the law everywhere? What should the uniform standard be for purging people from them? Should citizens be required to renew their voter registration every few years like a driver's or a professional license?
There are plenty of subjects ready to be discussed robustly without touching on the thorny issue of whether a government-issued photo ID needs to be presented by anyone who chooses to vote in person. That's a separate matter, one that has broad support in all parts of the country and among all racial groups. Nevertheless, as an anti-fr*ud measure, it is under continual assault by elite liberals who believe it is somehow discriminatory. They can't seem to understand why people find it odd that you need to show a government-issued photo ID before you can go into the U.S. Capitol to talk to your congressman but in many states don't need to show one at your polling place to vote for him (or her).
Harris' allegations need to be investigated thoroughly. By Congress if necessary. If true, they are a travesty and a testimonial to the fact that election fr*ud, as much as we wish it were not the case is real and must be addressed.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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