Regardless of our political affiliations and persuasions, those who cheat each of us from exercising our precious votes for leaders and governing policies we wish to represent us are committing criminal thievery of the first order.
When we allow ourselves to be tempted by a tendency to believe that our choices don’t count much in the larger aggregate, let’s remind our better sense of responsibility to recognize that this is exactly what those crooks are counting on.
The more we distrust our individual influence, the greater the danger to the integrity of those same systems that we count on to maintain democratic accountability and respect for our civic rights that countless others fought, gravely sacrificed, and died to protect.
As I wrote in my June 12 column, let's understand that whether we are selecting a city councilor — or the president of the United States — if every American can't trust the process and the result, the entire democratic system breaks down.
And as the National Commission on Federal Election Reform has stated, the problem "is not the magnitude of voter fraud. In close or disputed elections and there are many, a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference."
The U.S. Supreme Court has concurred with this assessment, noting that known instances of fraud "demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real, but that it could affect the outcome of a close election."
Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden warned of Donald Trump in June that "This president is going to try to steal this election."
This purportedly being a concern, it's ironic that the Democratically-controlled U.S. House recently passed a coronavirus social distancing-premised bill that would allow nationwide "ballot harvesting," letting paid activists canvass neighborhoods to collect absentee votes. (See The WallStreet Journal: "Beware the Fall Ballot Harvest," June 19, 2020).
Voting absentee collection corruption schemes prey most heavily upon the poor, elderly and minority communities. The scam often employs so-called ballot "brokers" who fill in the collected ballots and forge the purported voters’ signatures.
An Elections Committee split evenly by a 3-3 vote along party lines failed to stop the advancement of a Republican push to block ballot harvesting in Wisconsin. Reflecting on the slim decisive 2016 election margin, Committee Commissioner Dean Knudson observed, "If you think there’s no ballot harvesting in Wisconsin, you buckle up, because there most definitely will be."
President Trump won the state by a mere 22,748 votes.
Making matters worse, if passed, the House bill would also force states to count ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as the postmark meets that date. In this case, the next president could be in doubt for weeks. Nine days after Trump won the Pennsylvania election by 44,292 votes, Philadelphia reported that it still had 43,255 ballots untallied.
Sloppy or intentionally faulty state voter eligibility record-keeping presents another integrity liability. Last year, Pennsylvania discovered at least 11,198 non-citizens were on its voter rolls due to a computer glitch that allowed ineligible voters to register.
Nearly 43,000 voters in Pennsylvania have been found to hold potentially duplicate registrations in either Pennsylvania or other states.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation reports that 244 U.S. counties in 29 states, plus the District of Columbia, have more names on their voter rolls than they have voting-age adults.
Despite federal laws mandating reliable voter rolls, liberal advocacy groups are blocking "voter purges" designed to update voter registration rolls in the run-up to the November elections.
Collin Anderson, writing in The Washington Free Beacon, reported a lawsuit filed in December against the city of Detroit that alleges that its voter rolls contain 511,786 registered voters despite only 479,267 residents being eligible to vote.
As John Fund reported in the March issue of Newsmax, liberal state judges in Wisconsin halted the removal of 234,000 names from state voter lists. And in the first year of California’s automatic voter registration law, over 100,000 people ended up on the rolls who didn’t belong there — including illegal immigrants.
Only 34 states have laws requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls, and not all of these even require photo identification or any proof of citizenship.
The New York State Assembly is reportedly on the verge of passing a law that will automatically register all residents holding state driver’s licenses — which are now available to illegal aliens.
The current version of the New York bill would not ask registrants if they are citizens.
It would also decriminalize illegal voting in state elections, even when fraud was caught, under a "presumption of innocence" statute.
A 2013 sting operation by official New York City investigators also found people could vote in someone else’s name 97% of the time without detection.
Ballot registration and tallying irregularities, whether intentional or through inept record-keeping and regulatory processes, should be of great concern to every American citizen who becomes a theft victim of their cherished voting rights and responsibilities.
Assuring the integrity of the election process should not be a partisan issue. If Democratic representatives truly agree, there should be no obstructions to making proper safeguards and accountabilities happen.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. Larry has written more than 600 articles for Newsmax and Forbes and is the author of several books. Included are: "Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure and Our Future" (2020), "The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives" (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful" (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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