Voting by Mail: Let the Fight Begin!

Here we go! All those for making voting so much easier for Americans now have another arrow in their quiver for what they term is “justification” for voting by mail. Their new arrow has a name: “Coronavirus.”

We saw it play out in the Wisconsin Democrat primary election just a few weeks ago. Back and forth from court to court filing lawsuits, filing appeals, the Wisconsin governor weighing in with his decision and another court overturning. Wisconsin voters voted: period. Sure, there were some fears of Coronavirus. But it’s reasonably sure that everyone that voted had their one vote count. I said “one vote” because that has not always been the case. In many lessons throughout American history, people have cheated and have voted multiple times and often have lied and voted as someone else. That’s part of this story we’ll get to in a bit. But we DO know this one thing: Coronavirus IS and WILL be changing everything for at least a good while in the nation. And that probably will include the November election. Buckle up! The fight has already begun.

In recent history, voters in national elections know almost immediately after polls close who is going to be the next president. Electronics in voting have made it easy. But it’s not going to be very easy in November, and it probably will be no easier in any day going forward. Because of a massive increase in mail-in voting in states that are not used to it, the presidential election could take a week or more to be decided. Public officials are just now beginning to grapple with how to prepare themselves and the country for this unprecedented situation.

“It’s a culture shift that’s going to be required,” said Vanita Gupta, president, and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, in an interview. “We should be prepared to wait at least a week before the results can be certified.”

Gupta, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil rights division from 2014 to 2017, said her organization — one of the oldest civil rights groups in the country — would work with other groups over the next several months to raise awareness and create an expectation among both voters and journalists that results should not be expected on election night.

“People are going to have to be able to be patient to wait for the results,” Gupta said. “That’s an uncomfortable position for a lot of people. The media’s not used to it. The public’s not used to it.” But, she said, “election officials need to be able to do their job to make sure they are counting every ballot. The danger would be if there is false pressure that gets built-in, and people are disenfranchised because of this false pressure.”

Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said that “if we have a vote-by-mail state that is close, I would rather be in a position where everybody’s vote got counted. I think that should be our gold standard, is that everyone who wanted to participate was able to participate.”

“I’d rather get it right than get it at 10 o’clock on Election Day night.”

In my opinion, “Get it right” means “everybody gets one vote to cast — just ONE vote. And we must verify whoever casts that vote has been confirmed to be the person registered and casts that vote legally.”

Vote By Mail Already Exists

Five states currently conduct all elections entirely by mail: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Utah. At least 21 other states have laws that allow certain smaller elections (such as school board contests) to be conducted by mail. For these elections, all registered voters receive a ballot in the mail. The voter marks the ballot, puts it in a secrecy envelope or sleeve and then into a separate mailing envelope, signs an affidavit on the exterior of the mailing envelope, and returns the package via mail or by dropping it off.

Ballots are mailed out well ahead of Election Day, and thus voters have an “election period,” not just a single day, to vote. All-mail elections can be thought of as absentee voting for everyone. This system is also referred to as “vote by mail.”

While “all-mail elections” means that every registered voter receives a ballot by mail, this does not cancel in-person voting opportunities on and before Election Day. For example, even though all registered voters in Colorado are mailed a ballot, voters can choose to cast a ballot at an in-person vote center during the early voting period or on Election Day (or drop-off, or mail, their ballot back).

Generally, states begin with providing all-mail elections only in certain circumstances, and then add additional opportunities as citizens become familiar with procedures. Oregon’s vote-by-mail timeline includes four times that the legislature acted before the 1998 citizens’ vote that made Oregon the first all-mail election state.

All states will already mail an absentee ballot to individual voters who request one. In two-thirds of the states, any qualified voter may vote absentee without offering an excuse, and in one-third of the states, an apology is required. Some states offer a permanent absentee ballot list. Once a voter asks to be added to the list, she or he will automatically receive an absentee ballot for all future elections.

Voter Fraud

Mention those words at a Democrat Party function, and you’ll be immediately tossed! That’s like the proverbial “something ugly got slipped into the punch bowl.” That forces one to ask and try to answer this question: “Why are so many Democrats adamantly for mail-in voting while being just as adamantly against voter ID requirements? But there’s no absolute answer to that. Let’s start with words from leaders in one of those five states who conduct elections totally through the mail: Oregon.

That all sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And voting SHOULD be simple. And, as you just heard, those who so vehemently support mail-in voting, to a person, disavow any claim or claims of voter fraud. If we’ve heard once that, “there is no proof in any federal election on record of there being ‘massive’ voter fraud like Republicans and President Trump claim,” we’ve heard it a hundred times.

Notice that word “massive?” That’s the caveat that allows them to make that argument. But there is plenty of evidence of massive voter fraud. The problem is that states — not the federal government — run all elections. Normally states conduct their own elections in tandem with federal elections. And whether or not Democrats, or any other persons for that matter, want to dispute the existence of systemic voter fraud, they must live in “La-La Land.”

Tom Fitton, the President of Judicial Watch, has on behalf of his company filed numerous lawsuits against states, individuals, corporations and other municipalities for voter fraud. Sometimes the alleged voter fraud can be written-off as accidental — but not very often. Fitton in his research and subsequent lawsuits have found millions of voters and votes that were fraudulent and therefore ineligible to vote or be counted in every kind of election! Why would those on the left simply shrug those claims away and say, “Voter fraud just doesn’t happen?”

Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch have been busy finding places where voter fraud is rampant. You just heard his comments about one million bogus votes discovered in North Carolina. It’s not just in North Carolina, believe me.

Los Angeles County has started the process of removing from its registration rolls an estimated 1.5 million inactive voters who have moved, died or become ineligible to cast a ballot, an effort to comply with federal election law and a court settlement with Judicial Watch. The county, the most populous in the United States, recently mailed notices to the inactive voters in an effort to verify their residency status and whether they are still alive. It’s the first time in 20 years that Los Angeles County has cleaned its voter rolls, having previously interpreted the federal law requiring it as not mandatory.

And then there’s this: we KNOW for certain there’s voter fraud in mail-in voting. We know someone personally who did it!

In 2011, a lady decided to test the system, and so she asked for three voter registration applications from the county voter registration office in her county in Florida. She filled them out, listing three different names — two that she pulled out of her head Rebecca Bugle and Hannah Arendt — and her own name, Margaret Menge. Margaret listed her real date of birth, and made up dates of birth for the other two. On the lines where the application asked for a driver’s license number or last four of Social Security number, she wrote “none” as the instructions said to do if a person has neither of these.

A few weeks later, she got two notices back, saying applications for Rebecca Bugle and Margaret Menge could not be processed because a driver’s license number or Social Security number was not provided. But Margaret also received in her mailbox a new voter information card for Hannah Arendt. On the outside of the card, her mailman had circled the name and address and written a question mark in pencil. But he still put it in the mailbox.

A few days later, Margaret checked the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website, and, sure enough, there was Hannah Arendt, listed as an eligible voter — a person who existed in history, the celebrated author of “Eichmann in Jerusalem” — but not a person who was in existence in 2011 in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Not long after, with an election approaching, she called the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, said she was Hannah Arendt, and asked for an absentee ballot. The employee on the phone asked for a date of birth, and when given that information from “Hannah’s”  initial application — July 20, 1991 — she said she’d send one. The absentee ballot for Hannah Arendt appeared via mail a week or two later.

Margaret called a former Florida secretary of state in 2012 and asked him how was it possible that she was able to do this.

“Well,” he said, “the fact is that they check names of people applying to register to vote against several different databases, but they have no way to check to see whether someone exists.”

That’s just one way people can cheat with absentee ballots. There are many more.

Last year, a political operative working for North Carolina Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris was charged with fraud for directing a group of people to fill out as many as 1,000 absentee ballot requests on behalf of voters — most of whom were unaware the ballots were being requested. These people then collected the ballots and filled them out themselves. Harris defeated Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes and, though it was never shown that the number of tainted ballots was enough to account for Harris’s win, the election results were thrown out, and a new election was held. (Republican Dan Bishop beat McCready in a special election by 2,400 votes.)

Also in 2019, a Democratic city clerk in Southfield, Michigan, was arrested and charged with six felonies for falsifying absentee ballot records to say that 193 of the ballots in one election were missing signatures or a return date, when in fact they had both. The correct records were found in the trash can in her office.

Summary

Voting in person or mail-in ballots: both seem simple and each in certain circumstances appropriate. But the single absolute in these two voting methods is that when a person in person shows up at a voting precinct, gives their name and presents an ID to confirm they are the same person as registered in the registrar’s voters database, those running that election know a legal voter just cast a ballot.

In a similar case but one using mail-in voting, there is absolutely no way possible for anyone to guarantee the person whose name is on the ballot above their signature is the person who actually “showed up” to vote.

Mail-in voting is a really big deal right now. It’s not so much because of Coronavirus — which is the narrative Democrats are cramming down the throats of Americans. It’s looking as if our pandemic may be mostly if not totally resolved before September 1! That if it happens means the November election should proceed in normal fashion.

But there’s one big glitch in all this: the glitch’s name is “COVID-19.” “If” our pandemic has not disappeared or is not in a status in which voting in person is safe, absentee-balloting is a certainty. And NO state, with the exception of the five states who already have mail-in voting, can possibly be prepared by November. And voting ballots would necessarily need to be mailed a month before.

I just hate to think about how easy it will be for those who wish to cheat in voting find it to be really easy to do so. And, by the way, mail-in voting MUST be done for the 2020 election according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She stated weeks ago that any new stimulus bill that the House considers MUST contain a provision for permanent mail-in voting for every state, or she will not give American businesses or the American people one more dime.

I can’t wait for November!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download