In 2020, the excuse for long delays in vote-counting, for keeping Republican monitors away from watching the vote-counting, for disregarding state constitutions and long-established election integrity laws, for the use of unverifiable mail-in voting, and the like was the Covid pandemic. In the 2022 mid-term elections, it appears that Democrats, pleased with how all of that helped them in the last election, want to normalize such practices that cause serious questions about election integrity.
While those who lose an election are understandably unhappy, they are willing to accept the results if they perceive those results as free and fair. After all, they can assume that they can compete again in the next election, and have a reasonable chance of winning then. But if citizens believe the election results are pre-determined and rigged, then they will lose faith in the system.
In mid-term elections, it is quite common for the party that does not have the White House to pick up seats in the House of Representatives. For example, President Trump’s Republican Party lost more than three dozen seats in 2018, and President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party lost 63 seats in 2010. Because of this, Republicans have had hopes of a “Red Wave” in this election.
Democrats, on the other hand, along with their allies in the mainstream media, have begun to discuss the possibility that this Red Wave might just be a “Red Mirage.”
Their argument is that, while Republicans will appear to be winning big as the returns roll in on election night, more votes can be expected to be counted after election night — mostly from “mail-in” ballots — which will just happen to be so heavily Democrat that they will maintain their control in the Senate, if not the House of Representatives.
It is not surprising that Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman has actually filed a lawsuit to mandate that undated mail-in votes be counted, despite the fact that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has already ruled recently that they could not be counted.
Furthermore, VOX reported, “We won’t know all the midterm results on election night. That’s normal.” If it were just one media source making that argument, then it could be dismissed, but it is almost as though they have circulated a memo to convince Americans that this is the new normal.
But this is not “normal.” In France, for example, all votes are by paper ballot and mail-in votes are not allowed. And the results are reported within 24 hours. That is the way it pretty much used to be in the United States.
Writing on Twitter, columnist Auron MacIntyre observed, “They are literally going to tell us every election now that sure it looks like the GOP won but just wait, we’ll count the votes until they didn’t.”
It is not certain whether it will make a huge difference, but reports from across the country of voting irregularities on election day have raised some concerns.
Of particular concern — to Republicans — is that the Biden Justice Department is actually sending “observers” to Maricopa County (essentially Phoenix) in Arizona. This is a violation of Arizona law — outsiders monitoring election day voting and counting — but apparently the Biden Administration is prepared to flout Arizona law. For what purpose? Perhaps to intimidate local election officials into allowing questionable election practices that favor Democrats.
An 84-year-old in Queen Creek, Arizona, for example, was reported as having voted in person and being told to just drop his ballot in a big cardboard box, despite voting machines being available. “I am going to be really upset if this is an attempt to screw this election up again” — an obvious reference to the controversy over the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, when it appeared on election night that President Donald Trump had been re-elected, only for Americans to wake up and being told that some new votes having swung the election in favor of Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden.
Like many Americans, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas recalled in his new book, Justice Corrupted, that he went to bed on election night with every indication that Republicans had retained the presidency.
But, of course, mail-in votes were a major factor in the Pennsylvania presidential contest, for example. These ballots were sent — in violation of the law — to addresses where someone had been registered to vote, but were then returned without any proof that the ballot was actually cast by that person. In other words, people move, or die. Then, new people move into the house or apartment. It is madness — or malicious — to send ballots to people who no longer live in that house. It is clear that this could lead to massive fraud, which many Americans believe happened in 2020.
In this writer’s home state of Oklahoma, voters use “optical scan” machines. Paper ballots are marked and fed into the machines — which are not connected to the internet, and thus cannot be “hacked” — and counted by that machine immediately after the polls closed. If there is a dispute about the machines, the election boards re-count the paper ballots. This writer was present for one of these re-counts, and the machine had counted the paper ballots exactly correct. However, in far too many states there are no paper ballots, and therefore no way to “check” the machines for accuracy. Oklahoma citizens know the results within hours — not days — after the polls close across the state.
In 2005, a commission was formed to study the integrity of U.S. elections. Co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, and former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, the commission offered some solid suggestions to give Americans confidence in their country’s election system. For example, they recommended states enact laws requiring a person to show a government-issued photo ID before being allowed to vote, always have paper ballots to backup machines, and to not allow the type of mail-in voting used in several states in 2020.
Regardless of how the 2022 mid-terms turn out, and whether states such as Pennsylvania take a week to count votes — an absurdity — states need to conduct their elections in such a way that no one can seriously question that they are free and fair.
