As they say, elections have consequences, but offer opportunities

October 18, 2022

Voting in the midterm election of November 8th has already started, with early voting underway in some states. Exactly how the election will turn out is being debated, with predictions of Republican gains in Congress and statehouses, but is truly unknown at this point.

There are several issues that command the interest of voters. Those include the economy/inflation, the rising crime problem, abortion, education, immigration and voting policy.

A survey by the Pew Research Center in August placed the economy at the top of the list, with 77 percent of the registered voters polled ranking it first. Coming in fifth was voting policies, ranked first by 59 percent of those polled.

We all remember the chaos over the security of the 2020 election, but that one was not the only election that has been questioned. Four previous presidential elections have been seriously questioned, dating back to 1876 when Samuel Tilden ran against Rutherford B. Hayes. Amid much controversy, Hayes squeaked out a 185-184 majority in the Electoral College.

A bribery scandal marred the 1888 election between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Ultimately, Cleveland lost the race. More recently, the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon had some of the closest results in presidential politics. Kennedy won by just 100,000 votes.

And then there was the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000. With Bush receiving just 527 more votes than Gore, a U.S. Supreme Court decision ultimately led Gore to concede the race to Bush.

There was also a lot of chatter about the 2016 election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton, with many Democrats, including Clinton, complaining about the outcome. Many of these same Democrats were highly critical of Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, which put Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in the White House.

The complaints by Trump and his supporters did not produce a change in the results of the election. And there is not going to be a discussion of that election here today.

However, it is appropriate to note that in many, if not most, elections, there are those who question the results, and there is the fact that in most elections voter fraud does exist, as well as other irregularities. The real issue is, to what extent do fraud and irregularities influence the outcome?

A very important issue in any election is the security of the process. 

Every eligible voter’s vote must be counted, and no ineligible votes can be counted. And while removing obstacles that make it a little inconvenient for people to vote is important, that is far less important than making the process as secure as possible. A little inconvenience in return for vote security is a small, but necessary price to pay.

In-person voting, where prospective voters go to the polling place, show their photo ID and are verified, and vote on paper ballots that are counted by honest poll workers, is generally considered the most secure method. Voting by mail is considered the most vulnerable to fraud, because the ballots are sent out and returned through the mail or in special ballot return boxes. This process makes the ballots available to being intercepted from home mailboxes and the boxes set up for ballots to be returned, and fraudulently used by those wanting to control the outcome.

And, states must insure that voting procedures are not changed by election officials or poll workers, etc. Only action by the state legislature may legally change election procedures. In 2020, five states did not abide by this requirement, perhaps for the best of reasons during the pandemic. But the law is the law, and it must be followed.

The country is in far worse condition than when Biden took office, and the problems that have resulted are causing much discomfort among Americans, both voters and non-voters.

Inflation has surged by double digits — 13 percent — since Biden first entered the White House. Higher prices of products like gasoline and food have put thousands or millions in financial distress.

Illegal immigration has killed people trying to cross the Rio Grande, thousands more who have mistakenly taken fentanyl brought across the border by illegals have died, as have others at the hands of illegal aliens who crossed the border, which is, for all intents and purposes, wide open.

Crime in many U.S. cities has spiraled out of control, as “progressive” prosecutors, judges, and others have eased up on punishing criminal behavior, refusing to prosecute some crimes and to jail criminals for some violent crimes, and generally catering to criminals, to the detriment of their victims.

This election and the 2024 General Election offer opportunities to reject the incompetence of the Biden administration, and to return life in America to where it was only a short time ago. Elect people who want to restore common sense to government, to use America’s resources to benefit Americans and the world, and move toward cleaner energy at a sensible, normal pace.

The policies of the radical left Democrats have created chaos, and put the lives of Americans at greater risk than ever before in our lifetime. It’s time to put a stop to that.

Abolishing honest elections and re-imagining legislative procedures

Deceptively called the “For the People Act of 2021,” H.R. 1 and S. 1 should more accurately be named the “Act to Encourage Cheating and Vote Fraud.”

Critics of this legislative boondoggle charge that it federalizes and micromanages the election process now administered by the states. It also imposes unnecessary, foolish, and even unconstitutional mandates on the states, and puts the federal government in charge of elections, which is a reversal of the decentralization of the American election process as created by the Founders to protect our liberty and freedom. 

The Founders established a federalist system that deliberately did not cede all power to the federal government. 

Furthermore, it interferes with states and their citizens in determining qualifications for voters, ensuring the accuracy of voter registration rolls, securing the integrity of elections, participating in the political process, and determining district boundaries for electing their representatives.

States will be forced to implement perilous methods such as early voting, automatic voter registration, same-day registration, and no-fault absentee balloting. The latter is the tool of choice of vote thieves.

Early voting is convenient, but voting early can put those voters at risk of casting their ballot before late-breaking developments occur that might affect their decision.

Same-day registration prevents election officials from verifying the eligibility of registrants, and allows ineligible voters to register and vote. It also makes it difficult to predict how many voters will appear at polling places, and thus more difficult to adequately staff the polling places.

The bill would also force precincts to allow voting by persons registered to vote in other precincts, preventing adequate steps to prevent ineligible voters from casting ballots, or to prevent people from voting more than once.

The accuracy of registration lists will be degraded by automatically registering individuals from state databases, such as DMV and welfare offices. These registrants likely will include large numbers of ineligible voters, including aliens, and multiple or duplicate registrations of the same individuals.

Online voter registration allows for massive fraudulent registrants through actions of cyber criminals if registrations are not tied to existing state records, such as a driver’s license.

These election revisions are a strategy for increasing fraud and abuse and are plain stupid. We must have an honest election system that will reflect the actual choices of eligible voters. The election system already needs to be strengthened; this bill will essentially destroy its security.

Elections are too important to allow foolish mechanisms in the system for no better reason than for a bit of convenience, which is a prominent reason cited for making these changes. Voting is too important to be made too easy.

Those behind these absurd changes also cry out against “voter suppression,” which they term any sensible idea that helps to protect the integrity of the election system, such as photo IDs and signature verification for mail-in ballots. We need photo IDs for lots of normal things we do, but somehow requiring an ID to vote is suppressing voters.

In addition to a clean and honest election system, we need a sensible system for creating legislation. Every piece of legislation offered should focus on making things in America better for the American people. Not some of the people; not a political party, but things benefitting the nation at large.

Bills should be limited to one topic and be only long enough to describe that topic. Having more bills of such a limited nature is far simpler, therefore better, than having a few gargantuan bills of hundreds or thousands of pages with multiple issues addressed.

Legislative language should be as brief as possible to get the concept of the legislation across, not written so as to make the intent difficult to understand. Most bills should be no longer than about 50 pages, which still is a significant read for legislators, particularly if there are more shorter bills to study.

Passage of legislation that affects the nation should be passed by a 60 percent or 67 percent majority. A truly beneficial bill will be able to gain that level of support. If it doesn’t gain enough support, it wasn’t a good enough bill.

No cheating! A good piece of legislation that benefits the entire country, and has broad bipartisan support, should not be a mechanism that members can load with pork-barrel items or items to benefit partisan goals. 

Trying to get a pork feature passed by tagging it onto a very good piece of legislation, hoping it will slide through if people are afraid to vote the good legislation down to prevent the bad feature from getting through, is blackmail.

No riders or amendments should be allowed that are not directly related to the topic of the legislation.

And while we are improving things, we need to remember that whatever the job is, the best qualified people are who deserve that job. If they are all men or all women, or all black, or all Asian, or all Latina, or all white or any combination of those groups, those who have displayed the highest level of competence and actual ability for the job in question are who should get the job.