J Robert Smith
- Feb. 16, 2021
- 3 min read
This article was adapted from the original, which first appeared at American Thinker.
Universal mail-in balloting and looser ballot integrity laws are poison to fair, honest elections. Go ask Donald Trump. Trump lost by whiskers in five battleground states last November. A switch of approximately 139, 350 votes (out of 23.8 million cast) across those states would have reelected Trump. Democrats fixed the systems just enough. And, in many instances, with Republican assistance, in the name of easier voting access thanks to COVID restrictions. Thus, turned the nation’s course.
Trump losing last year had little to do with Democrats running better ground games, per some explanations. Porous voting laws and highly insecure mail-in balloting, with multiple opportunities to commit fraud or mishandle ballots, were culprits. They proved to be licenses to steal. There was other “irregularities,” too, but those two factors were primary.
Peter Navarro’s report about the presidential contests, issued last December: “The Immaculate Deception: Six Key Dimensions of Voting Irregularities,” makes a compelling case for greatly abused elections systems in six pivotal states.
There’s good news, though. Outcries from the grassroots for change are being heard by conservative GOP legislators in, at least, three critical states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. Moves are underway to tighten laws and either repeal or restrict mail-in balloting. The superior play is outright repeal. Republicans have a penchant for trying to improve bad laws or policies, rather than ending them.
This from a very biased “CNN Source” news report, January 29, 2021:
The [GOP state legislatures’ reform] measures, if passed, could have a significant impact on upcoming 2022 midterm elections, as Republicans have failed to hold a majority in the Senate but have noticeably gained members in the House.
The mainstream media grasps the peril to Democrats. Stopping or seriously crimping mail-in balloting – along with other needed reforms – revokes Democrats’ license to manufacture votes. Vote manufacturing also includes counting flawed ballots that in previous election years would have been rejected. Tightening definitions of ballot integrity are a must.
As Stalin famously said, it’s less about who votes than who counts the votes. Transparency in tallying ballots is also required. GOP poll watchers were impeded from doing their jobs in Detroit and Philadelphia last November; that was a dead giveaway of Democrats’ intentions.
The question arises: If Democrats gamed the system in battleground states, tilting contests to Biden and away from Trump, why, then, didn’t they repeat the trick in down-ballot races? The simple answer is that Trump’s presidency was remaking the nation’s political landscape. Doing so would disadvantage Democrats for a generation. Trump was the fulcrum. Democrats’ priority was to beat him and recapture the presidency. That’s where their energies went.
Democrats fully appreciate the stakes in 2022. They’ll do their level best to not only protect permissive elections laws, but make them looser.
A group, the National Vote at Home Institute, is indictive of how Democrats and the left organize in very interlocking and sophisticated ways to not only advance universal mail-in balloting, but provide detailed execution.
A conservative counter to the National Vote at Home Institute needs to occur sooner, not later. The clock is already ticking toward the 2022 midterms. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers must press ahead with repeals and reforms of egregiously bad elections laws, which they may have helped pass with the best intentions last year, but resulted in elections irregularities that will forever taint the 2020 presidential contests. The damage done to the Republic is grave enough. More harm to our elections systems may prove fatal.
J. Robert Smith can be found on Parler @JRobertSmith, and is new to Gab, again @JRobertSmith.