by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Sep 27, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
American elections were once comparatively modest affairs. They were conducted in the autumn every fourth year, beginning about Labor Day until Election Day, when everyone voted.
We went to a designated polling place and cast our confidential votes under the watchful eyes of fellow citizen volunteers. The ballots were transported under strict chain-of-custody procedures to be counted by election officials.
Accommodations were made for those physically unable to vote, but most Americans didn’t regard voting as especially onerous. We were grateful for the privilege and willing to overlook minor inconveniences. There were racial and gender barriers to voting for too long, but those are now thankfully corrected.
Elections are the process, in our democratic republic, by which we choose our governing officials. But they also play an important role in ensuring the unity of citizens by providing a process for fairly reconciling our differences.
Americans have always had strong, often contrasting opinions about how they should be governed. It once took a catastrophic war to resolve our differences but normally elections serve well to determine our way forward. Ideally, all sides get their say, nominate the best candidates they can find and then we vote. The results are conclusive and binding until the next election.
Customs change, rules evolve, and elections today look very different than a few decades ago. Yesterday is never going to come back, but it’s worth remembering that not all changes represent progress. Our elections could use a thorough overhaul.
Campaigns simply last too long. The presidential campaign is now continuous, with candidates beginning to compete by the previous Inauguration Day.
As one result, campaigns have become horrendously expensive. They are endurance contests in which the most successful fundraiser is favored. Insiders can’t get enough of the “horse race,” but ordinary citizens become bored. Considerations of ongoing policy decisions are filtered through their possible effect on the campaigns and the ever-present polls.
Perhaps this extended attention could be justified if the result was more carefully examined and higher-quality candidates. But recent elections have featured generally weak choices. This year’s candidates are widely considered to be laughingstocks, the least qualified candidates in memory. Each is fortunate to have the other for their opponent.
More importantly, Americans have lost faith in the integrity of our election processes. Fully one-third of all Americans believe Biden was not legitimately elected in 2020. In another poll, 81 percent believe democracy to be threatened.
“Not my President” buttons sprouted after Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, and left-wing pundits freely disputed the legitimacy of his presidency. Four years later, rule changes attributed to the COVID lockdowns resulted in looser security procedures and widespread suspicion of fraud. Almost half of Americans and a clear majority of Republicans believe fraud may have been extensive enough to alter the result of the elections.
This level of distrust is toxic to a government “of the people.” Whether or not you believe fraud is widespread, “innovations” like vote counting long before election day, poorly monitored drop boxes, ballot harvesting, slipshod or absent identification procedures, citizenship verification by affirmation only, and voter rolls puffed up by automatic registration at welfare offices leave many non-partisan observers skeptical. Election officials deny any problems and brand those with honest doubts as “deniers.”
The gaping hole in our defense against slipshod practices is bulk-mail voting. There is no possible way we can mail out millions of unsolicited ballots to poorly maintained voter rolls, addressed to people who presumably once lived there, and then count all the ballots that are mailed back and pretend we have a reasonably secure system.
Signature matching, far from perfect, is our main defense against cheating. Yet no signature can possibly assure the vote inside was made without undue influence by a mentally competent person for whom the ballot was intended.
Reliable data is unavailable for logistical reasons, but in a recent survey about one-fifth of bulk-mail voters admitted to some illegal behavior in their handling of the mailed ballots – and those were the ones willing to admit it.
Your precious vote only counts if it is not canceled by fraud. We need Easy to Vote, Hard to Cheat.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Mar 1, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Legislative Republicans in Arizona are advancing a bill to terminate your right to vote…well at least from the “comfort of your kitchen table,” according to Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts. Arizona’s beleaguered voters would instead have to “schlep down” to actual polling places.
But wait – it gets worse! The bill also eliminates the ability to cast your vote anywhere you choose, or it won’t count. Of course, in the real world you would’ve been repeatedly notified of your polling station, and if you went to the wrong one anyway, poll workers would helpfully direct you to the correct one.
Why are Democrats motivated to concoct these exaggerated arguments against in-person voting, which has always worked just fine for Americans? It began in the age of COVID when, to prevent unnecessary mingling, voting in-person was discouraged. Voters instead were sent a ballot which they could return at their leisure
Then, magic happened. Suddenly, Democrats became more likely to win. Close elections turned blue at the last minute, sometimes even after the official account was completed. Underdog candidates, almost always Democrats, begin to eke out victories.
In-person voting came to be depicted as an onerous infringement on our fictitious right to convenience, much more difficult than a trip to the grocery store or a doctor’s office. Exceptions were readily granted for the elderly, infirm, or geographically unavailable. Still, requiring the able-bodied to vote in-person was nothing more than voter suppression, barely more tolerable than Jim Crow.
What difference does it make where you vote? Most Americans don’t realize elections must be rigorously protected from fraud. The election process to a political grifter is like a bank to a thief. Within lies wealth and influence if you can crack it. Every election produces mountains of anecdotal evidence of widespread fraud, although unfortunately no official statistics are kept.
Moreover, all this activity occurs in a system with no systematic method for detecting fraud. When it is sought, the results can be shocking. The multiple irregularities found too late in the 2005 Rossi/Gregoire gubernatorial election in Washington and the ineligible votes cast in Al Franken’s 2010 senatorial election in both cases would have been more than enough to change the outcome.
American elections in the last century have been designed to ensure security of the ballot. On election day, registered voters not claiming a hardship exemption present themselves to a local polling place with a signed photo ID. They are physically protected from inappropriate influence both inside and outside the polling booth. They would drop their completed ballot into a secured receptacle, the contents of which would be delivered to local election officers under strict chain-of-evidence protocols.
With bulk-mail voting, all the precautions vanish. Millions of unsolicited ballots are mailed to poorly maintained lists of voters, many of whom have moved or don’t exist. Nobody knows or can know what happens to the ballots until they are returned by mail. The notably unreliable signature verification process is the lone fraud protection.
Whether the ballot actually reached the intended recipient, who actually filled out the ballot, and whether any illegal aid was supplied to the voter are all categorical unknowns.
Still think bulk-mail voting is basically reliable? Read on.
A Rasmussen poll of 1,085 voters after the 2020 election revealed that fully 21% admitted to filling out a ballot on behalf of another voter. Also,17% said they voted in a state where they were not a permanent resident, and another 17% said they signed a ballot for someone else. Remember, too, the 2020 election was touted as our “most secure of all time,” and these survey numbers were obtained directly from voters who were unlikely to over-report themselves.
Up to 80% of Americans doubt our elections are secure. Some are conspiracy kooks fighting the wrong battle at the wrong time. But many others have justifiable concerns about a system increasingly dependent on bulk-mail voting.
Deep doubts about election validity are not healthy in a democracy. Although bulk-mail voting is popular, convenience-loving Americans should rethink their choice. Casting your ballot in person is a small price to pay for ensuring our republic.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | May 26, 2023 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Elections aren’t being stolen. But they are carried out under rules devised by one side for their benefit.
The Left loves our election system and why wouldn’t they? It has been a boon for them. They can win elections even when all seems lost. They have learned to exploit, through both legal and extra-legal means, the opportunities presented by bulk-mail voting, ballot harvesting, and lack of voter ID requirements. So, they falsely insist our procedures are virtually fraud-proof, and that attempts to improve election security are racially motivated “voter suppression.”
In fact, voter fraud is not all that rare and is easy to commit. It is hard to detect because victims are unaware that their vote has been canceled and so are unlikely to complain.
In New York, 63 undercover agents went to the polls, giving the names of individuals who had died, moved, or were incarcerated. All but two were given ballots, including young people impersonating voters three times their age.
A television reporter in Florida, on his own, turned up 94 non-citizens who had voted. Elections have been overturned because of voter fraud in Miami, Florida, East Chicago, Indiana, in Essex County, New Jersey, and Greene County, Alabama among other locales.
And who can forget Al Franken’s 312 vote victory in Minnesota’s Senate race, when later over one thousand felons (most probably Democrat voters) were found to have voted.
In 2020, the Pacific Interest Legal Foundation published a meticulous analysis of voter databases in which 144,000 cases of potential voter fraud were documented. These included dead voters, voters who had moved, and voters who supposedly lived in vacant lots, restaurants, and gas stations.
The report was sent to the 42 states in which fraud was uncovered. Not a single official or prosecutor asked for the relevant information for their state. Not one. The stunning New York undercover operation also garnered little attention, either from media or law-enforcement agencies. Neither did the Florida reporter’s discoveries. You see the pattern.
Fraud must be looked for to be detected and most election officials aren’t that enthusiastic about investigating for fraud. Why give yourself a black eye?
Honest researchers admit no one knows how much fraud is out there. Defenders of the status-quo like to point out the lack of proven fraud cases associated with mail-in voting, but unless someone confesses, the crime is essentially non-detectable.
Look at how bulk-mail compares with in-person voting, long the gold standard of election security. At the voting site, voters are protected from undue influence. Only after the list of eligible voters is checked and their ID is presented are they given a ballot. They are monitored while they vote. The secrecy of the ballot is maintained at all times. Finally, a formal chain of custody assures that ballots are handled securely until counted.
By contrast, bulk-mail voting, in Arizona and other states, begins with unrequested ballots being mailed to millions of names on poorly maintained voter lists, some of whom don’t give a hoot about voting. Most ballots are received by their intended recipients, voted, and returned. But others get lost in the mail or are delivered to people who have moved or died. Yet others go to voters, some mentally incapacitated, who are “helped” by third parties to cast their vote. Some ballots are even sold.
Many of the votes are returned by “ballot harvesting,” where party activists collect the ballots and then return them or place them in a dropbox. There are no chain of custody violations, because there is no chain of custody.
Finally, signature matching is used as a substitute for actual ID verification. But signature matching is an imprecise “art”—with no objective standards—which has been demonstrated many times to be unreliable.
Bulk-mail voting is popular and growing, both with those who innocently appreciate its convenience and with those who cherish the inexplicable election wins that can be achieved by it.
But the value of a vote in a democratic society depends on the integrity with which it is cast and counted. A majority of Americans don’t believe their elections are secure, nor will they until we reject voting processes that are so porous to fraud and deceit.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Jul 22, 2022 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
The debate over election fraud versus voter suppression is high-stakes and high-intensity. Trump loyalists insist the election was stolen, mechanically rigged, and rife with fraudulent actors. Democrats continue to insist that fraud never happens, an argument easily swatted away by the existence of thousands of documented incidents.
But Democrats have a point in that the problematic behaviors—bulk mail voting, ballot harvesting, and related practices—were permitted by law in most states. That means, according to the “fact checkers,” all reasonable people must agree that there was no fraud.
Trump fought the wrong war at the wrong time. While he was ranting about corrupt voting machines, rogue election workers, and a cascade of assorted allegations, Democrats in the last two elections were cleverly creating election rules intended to generate a permanent majority.
Trump and his supporters were never able to prevail in a court of law. In the end, they were outsmarted and lost the election to a pathetically weak candidate.
Attorney General Bill Barr was an astute, loyal adviser to Trump during the election. Unfortunately, his advice to stop exploring rabbit holes was not heeded. Yet he would see the traps the Democrats were setting in September 2020.
Bulk mail balloting is not your father’s absentee voting, he explained on CNN. “Instead of requests coming from a specific address, we are now going to mail them to everyone on a voter list, when everyone knows the voter lists are inaccurate.”
“People who should get them don’t get them…and people who get them are not the right people. They are people who have replaced the previous occupant…and sometimes multiple ballots come to the same address with several generations of previous occupants.” That’s no way to run an election, he concluded.
He’s right. For generations, America had voting laws that produced fair, reliable results. The laws required that all voters register beforehand and present a secure ID. All votes were cast confidentially. Absolutely no intimidation or persuasion was allowed in or near a polling station.
Importantly, there was a strict chain of custody to make sure that there could be no tampering and that all legally cast ballots would be counted. Voting was done mostly on site although accommodations were made for those unable to vote in person on election day.
That was the American way of conducting elections. Now all that has changed. Millions of ballots are sent automatically to voters just because they didn’t opt out of receiving one. Nobody knows what happens to them until they are returned.
Helpful party workers can collect them, offer aid with voting, and often leave them anonymously in drop boxes. The notoriously unreliable signature verification often is the only ID required.
Today, this is all perfectly legal. Of course, it’s illegal to vote a ballot not your own, to unduly influence another voter, or to fail to deliver certain ballots. But with bulk mail voting, none of this is detectable.
Once a mail-in ballot is opened and separated from its envelope, any possible proof of fraud is lost, no matter how many audits and investigations are performed. We have a voting system obviously prone to fraud and coercion yet opaque to any misdeeds committed within it.
Arizona voters, thanks to their legislature, will have a chance this year to close one gaping flaw in our system by approving a requirement of voter ID for bulk mail voters. There is no coherent reason to require ID at the polls while bulk mail voters get a pass.
Although the media continue to insist that those who support voter ID are “vote suppressors,” Americans smell a rat. According to a Quinnipiac poll, only 60% of voters overall believed the last election to be legitimate.
In the end, it may not matter how much “provable fraud” can be discovered. So long as we have a slipshod, non-secure system like bulk-mail voting, it will be difficult to convince voters of the integrity of their vote.
In a closely divided country, it is critical that citizens have confidence in elections and the legitimacy of the government. As Bill Barr says, “we are playing with fire.”
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
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