It remains to be seen if absentee balloting will be as common during the January 5 Georgia runoff election for the Senate as it was during the presidential contest, with a state official pointing out that such ballots won’t be “automatically” mailed to voters. This is a significant matter, too, since a study found that mail-in voting is the kind most facilitative of fraud.
Mike Kaplan, chairman of the Macon-Bibb County Board of Elections, “said the distribution of these [absentee] ballots will not be ‘automatic’ and will require additional steps,” reports Breitbart.
“‘Just because you got an absentee ballot in the last election does not mean you’ll get an automatic ballot in this election unless you’re one of our 13 or so thousand elderly or disabled that are on our list,’” Breitbart related Kaplan as saying. “‘Everyone else, even if you voted by absentee in the Nov. 3 election, has to request an absentee ballot. I want to make that very clear.’”
The Macon Newsroom adds detail, writing:
The Macon-Bibb County Board of Elections began sending out absentee ballots Nov. 18 to those who recently requested them or were already on the list.
Anyone who previously requested an absentee ballot and checked a box for elderly or disabled will be automatically mailed a ballot for the upcoming runoff, said Macon-Bibb elections supervisor Jeanetta Watson.
Kaplan is worried voters might be confused since all active voters were mailed ballot requests this summer.
To lower the COVID-19 risk and burden on polling places in the June elections, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger sent absentee ballot request forms to all 6.9 million active voters in the state.
In that effort, a record 1.6 million Georgians requested an absentee ballot for the June primary with more than 1.1 million voting by mail and more than 1.2 million voting in person.
As of December 2, 940,000 absentee ballot requests had been submitted for the Senate runoff statewide, according to Poli Alert. Raffensperger’s office stated that “those requests include 604,255 people who are eligible to receive mail-in ballots automatically,” the website writes, pointing out that aside from the elderly and disabled, the number also includes “members of the military.”
It’s certainly understandable that military members and the genuinely handicapped should have recourse to absentee voting, but why should anyone else? Note here that contrary to Facebook deception — namely, its notice “Click here to learn why mail-in voting is safe and secure” — a study out of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University found that such balloting was actually the kind most facilitative of vote fraud.
A case in point: Mail-in vote fraud was so bad in Paterson, New Jersey, during a May 12 special election that a judge ordered that a new election be held.
This didn’t surprise the “top Democratic operative” who spoke to the New York Post this summer under the condition of anonymity. After all, he has been committing mail-in vote fraud “on a grand scale, for decades,” the paper reported August 29.
Moreover, here’s something GOP voters must know: The operative also revealed that “rabid anti-Trump” postmen will sometimes throw out absentee ballots from conservative strongholds, knowing that “95% are going to a Republican.”
What’s more, in “some cases, mail carriers were members of his ‘work crew,’ and would sift ballots from the mail and hand them over to the operative,” the Post also informed.
Note that discarded ballots — something a source told me before the election would cause President Trump’s defeat — can’t be discovered during “canvassing” or “recounts.”
Of course, that absentee balloting is problematic, as chain of custody cannot be ascertained, is just common sense. The deeper issue is that a certain notion justifying it, and more, has been sold to the population — namely, that high voter participation is good for a republic.
Obviously, being well informed is a prerequisite for intelligent voting. Yet as we know and as studies have shown, most people aren’t well informed. Therefore, it cannot be good for a republic for most people to vote.
So how do you minimize the low-information vote? While it’s understandable why poll taxes were struck down — they penalize the poor — this doesn’t mean voting should be made too easy.
Consider that the easier something is, the less seriously people tend to take it. Imagine, for example, that citizens’ phones included an app that enabled people to vote, at any time, simply by voice command. Even if the system were somehow made “secure,” would this be a good idea? A person could too easily cast an impulse vote motivated by, for instance, a fit of pique after hearing a malicious rumor about a candidate.
Since it takes great effort to be politically informed and sophisticated, a simple question here reveals the truth: If someone doesn’t have the motivation necessary to get out and vote on Election Day, is it likely he’ll have the greater motivation necessary to inform himself on the issues?
Thus, people’s failure to vote is simply “nature taking care of itself.” People don’t vote for the same reason most don’t play the piano or are skilled at such: They’re not interested in it. Pushing the apathetic into voting is at least as bad as pushing the engaged away with poll taxes.
Interestingly, we don’t believe that “high participation” is good in much of anything else. Would we fancy that air travel or brain surgery would be improved if everyone got, respectively, a chance in a jumbo jet’s cockpit or to root around inside someone’s cranium?
Of course, even allegedly “turnout obsessed” leftists understand this. Consider that the $400 million in Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) money designed to facilitate voting apparently went into Democrat counties, not Republican ones. You may say, “Well, of course, the Democrats will naturally try to get out their vote.” Yes, of course — but that’s the point.
Few really appear to believe that massive turnouts are, in principle, good for a republic. If Democrats believed this, they would encourage high voter participation everywhere. They have only incessantly played the “Participation is good for democracy” card because in our time and place, large turnouts of low-info voters correlate with greater Democrat participation.
“Absentee dad” and “absentee landlord” are pejoratives. Excepting the cases of those unable to get to a polling place through no fault of their own (i.e., military, the disabled), “absentee voter” should also be — and for the same reason.
