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Election Fraud: A Massive Civil Rights Violation
The United States Constitution is the initial and continuing “contract with America”. Fundamental is citizen control of government. This control is exercised at the ballot box. The alternative is either acceptance of authoritarian rule or violent revolution.
When fraud occurs in submitting or counting ballots it robs all citizens of their franchise to some degree. In effect, our pockets are picked. To extend that analogy, most of us won’t make the effort to complain about pennies, and that is what historic voter fraud has relied on — keeping the perception of finagling to be a low level and not substantial enough for us to care.
But HR 1, the Covid rule changes adopted under “emergency authorities” and the suppression of efforts to actually audit the 2020 election have raised our consciousness about how dangerous even seemingly small fraud is to our republican form of government. It should be uncontroversial to insist that rolls be kept accurate and up to date, that positive identification of ballot casters be verified, that votes not be overtly bought as opposed to candidates arguing how their policies will improve the lives and fortunes of potential voters. And yet it isn’t. The allure of power distorts the needed rectitude for fair, free, and honest elections. And the People need to use the force of the government it controls to detect and deter fraud.
We need to treat voter fraud as the massive civil rights violation it truly is. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is making news (again) by his insistence that we treat voter fraud like the crime it is:
“We are excited to say that next legislative session we are proposing another package of election integrity reforms that will make Florida the number one state for elections,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “I am excited that with this legislation, our state will be able to enforce election violations, combat voter fraud and make sure violators are held accountable. If potential violators know they will be held accountable, they will be much less likely to engage in improper conduct in the first place.”
At the event, Governor DeSantis called on the Legislature to take four additional steps to safeguard our elections:
Establish an Office of Election Crimes and Security within the Department of State to investigate election crimes and fraud;
Elevate the crime of ballot harvesting to a third-degree felony, recognizing that this offense is a serious attack on democracy;
Require timelines for supervisors of elections to clean the voter rolls of ineligible voters; and
Prohibit unsecure, haphazard drop box locations in Florida.
Every state governor should take up the same cause. It is estimated that just this past year alone about 2 million illegal aliens were allowed to enter and distributed throughout the country. Totally aside from the drain on our resources as we feed, house, school and provide medical care, if they are also permitted to vote (alongside the dead in certain precincts) they can dramatically change the fortunes of this country. Just seeing what Progressives have done in 12 months with pResident Biden as the front man, should cause us all to tremble should they convert their tenuous hold on power into a death grip.
Yes, our Constitution extends certain protections to non-citizens while resident in this country. It does so because our Constitution is designed as a limit on the power of government over individuals without regard to citizenship status. But that does not mean that non-citizens should hold the reins of government. This is where we must draw a line and insist that our government be beholden to citizens and not “residents”. We must treat election fraud as the massive violation of civil rights that it is.
Published in General
The Constitution currently provides all that is needed for the federal government to insure the civil rights of residents are not violated. No addition federal statutory authority is necessary.
States should do whatever is necessary to insure election integrity within each state.
It’s not complicated.
I agree with you on this. “We’re just trying to make sure votes are legitimate. Who could possibly be against that?” Leftists will agree with this, too, but only in theory. It remains a controversial issue because there is a massive trust problem between the more ardent folks on the right and left. Progressive commentary over the past 20 or 30 years is full of stories of people, usually minorities or other groups likely to vote Democrat, who show up to the polls and are denied a ballot because of some supposedly bogus paperwork error. They were erroneously purged from the rolls, or maybe technically they should have been purged, but it’s only because the voter failed to comply with some petty bureaucratic red tape they didn’t even know about. And that probably does happen from time to time – it’s just not a deliberate attempt to keep someone from voting. So, the left believes this is all part of a conspiracy to reduce turnout among minorities. I’m not at all saying they’re right – that is clearly not the motivation of these reform efforts, I’m just explaining why it’s still controversial.
Conversely, of course, Democrat efforts to make voting easier appear to right-leaning conspiracy theorists as an effort to make it easier for them to cheat. And progressive are left just as baffled as conservatives as to why these efforts are opposed – “We’re just making it easier for people to vote – who could possibly be against that?” Again, ardent conservatives are against it because there is something more sinister afoot.
This trust problem is ridiculous, and at least partially driven by the constant rhetoric on the left and right which seeks to paint the other side as irredeemably evil, secret Marxists, secret racists, hell-bent on taking away your rights, putting you back in chains, imposing a socialist state, etc…..The same folks and their rhetoric make it difficult for moderates, who actually don’t believe all the hype, to get some negotiated progress on things, because they’re tarred as squishes and traitors. So, it’s that perpetual outrage addiction that people have which, ironically, keeps problems from getting addressed. It does keep campaign coffers full, though.
I heard stories this last year about people, usually non-minorities likely to vote Republican, who showed up to polls and are told they already voted. It might be some bogus error, but they got a provisional ballot that was tossed into a dumpster.
Since we have made government so big and powerful, our voting systems have to be accurate and auditable so we can trust it. Anybody who works against trust is anti-democracy, right?
Excellent post, Rodin. Now DeSantis’ proposals need to catch on at least in red states, if not across the country. It’s time!
Election fraud is a problem.
i don’t see any reason to confuse definitions by categorizing it as a civil rights issue. This looks like an erroneous classification, to me. What is the point of doing so? Is it purely rhetorical?
@arizonapatriot
How would you classify the election fraud problem? Here is how I understand @rodin‘s point. A properly qualified voter has a right (civil? I think so) to have the vote count as one vote among however many other properly qualified votes are properly presented to the election process. Any vote counted that does not meet the above criteria would then be a fraudulent vote, whether it was a vote submitted by a person not properly qualified or a fabricated vote not attributable to any given person but counted in the tally. Any such described vote occurring in my own voting precinct would reduce the value of my one vote and thus violates my civil right to have my vote counted properly.
I don’t doubt that things like that happen all the time. It only gets attention when it can be worked into a larger narrative – when the election loser can use that narrative to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results, as Trump wants to do for 2020, or to disparage the voting system as systemically racist – as progressives have often wanted to do over the years.
I really don’t think so. The purpose of voting is to give democratic legitimacy to the people in power, whatever that power is. This is so that, in other words, an office-holder, and especially lawmakers, can say that they have the “consent of the governed” in going about their business. But what does “consent of the governed” really mean? I don’t think it means that the winner of an election by .01% of the vote has some holy writ to rule, or some grand claim to the will of the people. That’s too close a result for anything like that. Close elections don’t really say anything about the will of the people, other than they are divided and can’t give much clear direction to the office holders. After all, a million different little factors could have changed the result, from traffic to the weather, and who-knows-what else. Hold that same election a day later and you may well get a different winner, because some of those little factors may have changed. So, from a democratic legitimacy perspective (as opposed to the legal question of who gets to hold the office), it doesn’t really matter who wins a really close election.
Don’t get me wrong, you have to have some legitimate legal mechanism for declaring a winner – you have to fill the office – and people need to trust that process. The rule of law demands that we follow it properly. But I don’t think there is any sacred voice of the people emanating from results so close, and so no reason to call anyone in this dispute “anti-democracy.”
Got it in one, @bobthompson. Thanks.
Agree. A slim win is not a “mandate” for a particular policy approach. It is only the determination that a given politician has authority to act consistent with constitutional authority.
Agree. But it is important that the people have confidence that the electors were qualified and the count accurate.
Election cheating is disenfranchisement.
It’s just as much a violation of your right to vote as if you had been physically turned away from the polls, when someone steals your vote invisibly by voting twice or whatever. And that’s the difference…traditional vote suppression was highly visible and provoked outrage. This type is invisible and is pooh-poohed by liberals and the MSM.
I once served not only as a poll watcher at a specific precinct, but as the Republican Party’s roving Party Inspector which gave me the right to enter any polling place and observe. I spent all Election Day visiting precincts on the Navajo Reservation, putting hundreds of miles on my car. (30% of Coconino County is Native.) I have several observations.
First, I didn’t see any obvious fraud, but I wasn’t in precincts long enough to really see any fraud.
Second, there was a benefit to have a Republican Inspector show up. I was pleasant and courteous. I did hear that I was the first Republican Inspector to show up within memory. The is a value in the beat cop walking around and showing the flag. There was a smidge of resentment by a few poll workers, but most people were friendly and pleasant, and several were proud to show me that they were running a clean and fair election.
Third, in every precinct, both parties have the right to have a poll watcher. However on the far flung Navajo reservation, there were few Republican poll watchers.
Fourth, there has not been a Republican County Recorder in Coconino County for decades, if ever. However, the County Elections Supervisor told me that she really was really happy to have Republican poll watchers, and I found her to be believable and authentic.
Fifth, if you question if the Democrats are cheating, there are three things you can and frankly should do. First, be hired as an election worker. Do the job. Suit up and show up. You will be paid only a smidge more than minimum wage, but you are needed and needed now. Second, you can be a volunteer poll watcher for the Republican Party. If I had it all my way, every single precinct would have at least one Republican poll watcher. Third, seek to be appointed as a roving party inspector. Please don’t just complain about voter fraud, suit up and show up, as a paid poll worker, an unpaid poll watcher, or as a roving Party Inspector. Your country needs you.
[Edit. I expanded this into a OP at https://ricochet.com/1128430/your-country-and-your-party-need-you-to-be-a-poll-worker-or-poll-watcher/.%5D
If he’s serious about election integrity why isn’t he auditing the 2020 election? Any serious attempt at reform needs to start with a comprehensive examination of what went wrong in the past. For some reason DeSantis refuses to go there. We need to know why.
He already did.