It appeared no state could top Nevada in inviting election fraud by mailing live ballots to thousands of voters en masse in 2020, leaving ballots for the taking in trash cans or in stacks on dining room tables of people likely to conclude, “if Nevada didn’t want me to vote five times they wouldn’t have sent me five ballots!”
Unlike neighboring Utah, which runs a signature verification process that secures mail in ballots just like Voter ID secures in person voting, Nevada made little effort to watch who received live ballots or who actually filled out the ballot or ballots.
However, Michigan now passes Nevada for this dubious No. 1 for future suspect elections with the enacting of Proposition 2.
The midterms were disappointing for Republicans, but they did take the House. The much bigger loss in November was the rigging of rules for all future elections in a swing state like Michigan.
For years we have focused our mission on the rules of elections, and this effort rigs every rule to make it almost impossible to stop or document voter fraud. This was passed by George Soros’ Open Society and other leftwing out-of-state liberals spending $23 million dollars to trick voters into believing they were voting for Voter ID by adding the words “or signed statement” and in fact throwing out any future Voter ID laws, as noted by the Federalist before the election.
The reason the rules of elections have been our top issue since we formed Take Back Our Republic Action in 2015 is that once you rig the rules like Michigan just did, you not only make fraud easy but you make proving election fraud almost impossible.
Having run campaigns for decades, I can attest thousands of people are paid to get more votes out of their area. And if they know the rules change to prevent anyone from being asked for an ID, knowing lots of people are listed as voters who no longer live at homes (try knocking on doors once if you do not believe this), or that signatures on mail in ballots are not checked against a signature at form, the incentive is huge to improve their results.
Even a small percentage of bad apples can skew an election.
Without knowing these details, the average voter knows you need an ID to go many places, from the Democratic National Convention to cashing checks, so it took $23 million and deceptive language to rig the rules and make it easy for anyone who wants to cheat in future Michigan elections.
Voters have been tricked out of their common sense preferences.
According to a Monmouth University poll, 80% of Americans support basic photo ID laws. In my now-home state of Wisconsin, as battleground of a state as they come, a survey from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found 84% support for basic photo ID laws, 69% support doing so for absentee ballots, and 65% support a ban on ballot harvesting.
This all also goes without saying that, without fair and reliable elections, none of the issues we all hold important have a chance.
While many, including yours truly, have been analyzing the midterms, one thing is for certain — we need to strengthen our election laws.
As written recently in our blog, Take Back Our Republic Action’s top priority has been promoting sound election integrity measures across the country, such as insisting Wisconsin clerks take legally required steps to verify which voters are “indefinitely confined,” abiding by the voters will when they reject changes like Stacey Abrams' request for no-excuse absentee and same-day registration.
Michigan already has seen an unfortunate history of election misconduct, with several cases of voting machine tampering, as well as the Secretary of State unilaterally changing absentee voter laws.
By spending to deceive Michigan voters on Proposition 2, out-of-state mega donors gutted any sense of election integrity. It allows anyone to simply sign an affidavit to vote, requires state-funded ballot drop boxes, encourages outside operations — like Zuckerbucks — to fund election administration, and creates permanent absentee ballot lists.
On top of how bad this all is, it is now enshrined into the state constitution, meaning any law from Michigan’s legislature to directly counteract this measure is now unconstitutional — continuing the pattern of thwarting the will of voters to contaminate the Republic.
This measure didn’t go without notice, as a petition to add photo ID requirements gained over 500,000 signatures across Michigan. In addition, three former state secretaries of state publicly spoke out in opposition to Proposition 2, one of which said that the proposition “is a recipe for voter fraud”.
Both highlight the fact that Proposition 2 stands in direct contrast to what many in Michigan and across the country have continued to say in unison: Voters want common-sense election integrity measures.
Proposition 2 acts both as horrible legislation that weakens Michigan’s election security and as a call to action for those of us who care about securing elections in our own states. And while we at Take Back Action will continue to make this issue a top priority, it’s going to take all of us working together to secure elections across our Republic.
Losing an election is much less important long term than rigging election rules for all future elections.
John Pudner is President of Takebackaction.org, a nonprofit home for Americans seeking true political reform. The organization's conservative solutions include: working for voter integrity through steps like voter ID; stopping illicit foreign money via groups from impacting elections; and supporting innovations like Instant Runoff/Final-Five voting to take away the opposition's incentive to fund spoiler libertarian or pro-life candidates that often allow progressive candidates to win with less than 50 percent of the vote. Read more John Pudner Reports — Here.