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.
Are you considering voting for a Democrat, or not voting for a Republican because you think they’re crazy?
If you’re someone who votes according to the “candidate I like,” rather than the political party, consider what RESULTS your vote will bring to America, Arizona, and your family. A candidate’s likability and respectfulness mean nothing if their actions bring destruction.
You may like a Democrat as a person, and they may seem “reasonable” compared to the Republican alternative, but gone are the days when you could assume both parties have the same goals for America with different ideas to achieve them. Today’s Democrats have the opposite vision for America than Constitutional Republicans.
What is your vision for America, for your everyday life, for your family’s well-being? Don’t give your vote to a politician who will dismantle and eventually destroy your vision. Check the voting record and statements of ANY Democrat. (I’m not saying every Republican is wonderful; only that they will at least do far less damage than any Democrat.) Think I’m exaggerating? Look at what Democrat ideas have done to your daily reality:
THIS is what EVERY Democrat represents—no matter how “reasonable” a person they seem to be. Just look at the results of President Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and virtually every Democrat in power—including every Congressperson. And don’t forget about Mark Kelly who ran as a moderate but votes 94% of the time with Democrats. Mark Kelly = Joe Biden. Katie Hobbs = woke insanity.
This is a different America than we had 20, 10, or even 1 year ago. And the main reason is a Leftist “long march through the institutions,” (Christopher Rufo) and a long strategy grounded in communism and socialism which has overtaken the Democrat party, big business, education, culture, law, and even medicine. Think about it. This is not the America we could have imagined even a few years ago.
“A disastrous and shaming flight from Afghanistan is described by President Joe Biden as ‘a triumphant success,’ while Dr. Anthony Fauci retires with dignity after doing terrible damage to the country with his nonsense about shutting schools, ‘droplets,’ the ups and downs of masking, the ‘abolition of hand-shakes’—almost all of it now thoroughly discredited.
Six years ago, no one could have imagined that these outrages would have occurred, much less that they would be accepted by a bedraggled, degraded, demoralized United States, its federal government in the hands of lawless and authoritarian myth-makers, applauded by the complicit national political media. Can this be America?”
What will your kids and grandkids experience if we keep putting Democrats in power?
It will only get worse.
That’s why a return to Constitutional Americanism is the only way to restore sanity, dignity, productivity, and hope to America.
And the surest way there is to elect Republicans (no matter how flawed one may be) to replace the destructive RESULTS of Democrats (no matter how nice one may seem).
Kim Miller is the President and Founder of Arizona Women of Action. You can find out more about their work here.
A candidate for Maricopa County Attorney has retracted a comment she made last week which provided incorrect information that could lead to voter confusion during the current 2022 primary election.
Gina Godbehere is running on the Aug. 2 Republican primary election ballot against interim County Attorney Rachel Mitchell. And with Maricopa County’s election process under intense scrutiny since late 2020, voters cannot be blamed for presuming candidates have taken the time to get a good grasp on election procedures.
But Godbehere, an attorney and former prosecutor, raised eyebrows July 7 with a campaign newsletter which included a “note of caution” to voters on the county’s Active Early Voting List (AEVL).
The AEVL allows voters to receive their primary ballot by mail. Once completed, the ballot can be returned by postage-prepaid mail, placement in an official drop box, hand delivery to the county recorder’s office, or dropping it off at one Maricopa County’s 200+ voting centers.
The completed ballots must be received by the county recorder by 7 p.m. on Aug. 2, regardless of which return option is chosen.
Godbehere’s newsletter, however, incorrectly described what happens if a voter waits until Aug. 2 “to walk your early ballot into a voting center” and drop it off in a ballot box. In that situation, Godbehere claimed AEVL voters will have their ballot deemed “provisional” which she said meant the ballot would be “counted last” 7 to 10 days after the election.
Various election officials told AZ Free News there is nothing in Arizona law or the state’s Elections Procedures Manual referring to any dropped off ballot as provisional. In fact, the term provisional only applies to ballots cast in-person under specific circumstances.
On Monday, Godbehere’s campaign issued a statement admitting the mistake.
“These ballots are not provisional, but regular ballots,” the statement reads. “We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.”
Maricopa County voters with questions about the election process can call 602-506-1511 or email voterinfo@risc.maricopa.gov
Godbehere and Mitchell are vying to be the Republican who takes on Democrat Julie Gunnigle in a Nov. 8 special election to serve out the remainder of former County Attorney Allister Adel’s term through the end of 2024.
Adel resigned under pressure in March and died the next month.
Democrats may have messed up on inflation, immigration, and Afghanistan, not to mention China, Russia, Covid, and crime, but they are determined to have a win over “voting rights.”
President Biden has declared it his number one issue, surpassing even climate change! With Americans becoming fed up with the Democrat governance, they see “voting rights” as their lifeline to future viability as a party.
So, President Biden echoes many of them when condemning voter ID. “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today – an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in free and fair elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are as Americans.”
He further alleged that “bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundations of our country.” He suggested that requiring ID is the moral equivalent of returning people to slavery.
The mantra is picked up and repeated millions of times. Outraged students conduct a hunger strike. Labor unions protest the loss of the franchise. Letters to the editor are filled with indignant condemnations of the Republican attack. Woke corporations punish Georgia for passing legislation threatening “voting rights” by moving baseball’s All-Star game to Minnesota.
But there’s one thing missing in all the heated rhetoric: any indication of what in the world they are specifically talking about, any evidence that one, even one, eligible voter would be unable to vote or be unduly inconvenienced by the election integrity legislation.
Their claims are belied by our own history and international comparisons. With 34 states involved in election integrity reforms, there are a lot of moving parts, but the sticking points are bulk mail voting and voter ID.
HR 1, the Right to Vote Act before Congress, which the Democrats and their Greek chorus in the media insist is critical to the preservation of democracy, mandates all states to allow bulk mail voting and categorically prohibits photo ID requirements.
But in 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform examined these very issues. The bipartisan commission was headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, a moderate Republican. They sensibly pointed out that absentee voting makes fraud more likely. Absentee voters are more likely to experience pressure and undue influence.
The Commission also concluded that vote buying schemes are far easier when citizens vote by mail. The commission proposed a uniform system requiring all voters to present ID as a condition of voting, like when entering the courthouse, flying in an airplane, or buying beer.
If the election integrity proposals are such a flagrant attack on democracy, then other democracies would not tolerate them, right? But the fact is the US is a distinct outlier among the world’s democracies in not requiring voter ID. Of the 47 European countries, 46 require government issued photo ID to vote, and the UK seems poised to follow suit.
By international standards, we also have shockingly loose rules for voting by mail. 35 of those 47 European countries don’t allow mail-in voting at all for citizens living in-country. 10 other countries allow absentee voting but require voters to appear in person with a photo ID to obtain their ballot. The practice of mailing out ballots in bulk either to all voters or those on a permanent list (Arizona’s practice) is unheard of.
In the US, ballots are typically mailed in bulk without requesting photo ID, no chain of evidence, no safeguards against improper influence or even selling, and then “harvested” for return to authorities.
This is tantamount to begging for fraud, even more so because perps know it would be largely undetectable. Entry-level reform, backed by 80% of voters, would require an ID to obtain any ballot, mail-in or otherwise
The wild charges about returning to Jim Crow and our democracy in peril are blatant scare tactics. Never in our history or anywhere else has there been more open access to voting.
This isn’t about stealing elections or justifying January 6. It’s about strengthening our democracy by assuring Americans they can have confidence in our elections and that their vote will count.
Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) has kept up a consistent front of indecisiveness concerning whether he supports or rejects abolishing the filibuster rule. The latest from the senator came from remarks to Politico on Monday, in which he alluded that he would take abolition into serious consideration if a “real proposal” were introduced. According to Kelly, fellow Democrats haven’t made decisiveness possible because the proposals discussed change “almost weekly.”
Even in the event a real enough proposal comes to fruition, Kelly shied away from any insinuation of partiality to one solution or another, promising to take into account the country’s “best interests.” If Kelly explained what those “best interests” were, Politico didn’t report them.
All throughout the pandemic, Kelly hasn’t been able to give a solid answer to reporters on the filibuster. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) compiled a comprehensive record of Kelly’s remarks to the press on the subject from June 2020 to present. Some of the senator’s closest indicators to a stance on abolishing the filibuster came about in September 2020. Kelly didn’t treat it as a serious solution but rather a political talking point.
“I mean, [the filibuster] really shouldn’t be part of the discussion. It’s also very hypothetical and it’s kind of more of the same stuff from a broken Washington,” said Kelly at the time.
Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green responded to the Politico coverage with an insinuation that Kelly was feigning indecisiveness. Green, a progressive activist powerhouse, had replied to a disgruntled Democrat supporter vowing to stop funding Kelly over his indecisiveness.
“He is fine. Don’t believe this stuff,” wrote Green.
Prior to Kelly’s election, Green expressed doubt that Kelly was a solid choice for the Senate. Green toldThe Intercept in 2019 that Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-07) was a better fit.
During a Tuesday speech at Atlanta University Center, a historically black college in Georgia, President Joe Biden characterized the filibuster as a threat to democracy. The president claimed that he’s an “institutionalist,” which is why he wants to destroy the institution. Institutionalists prioritize traditional organizations at any expense.
“Sadly, the United States Senate — designed to be the world’s greatest deliberative body — has been rendered a shell of its former self. It gives me no satisfaction in saying that, as an institutionalist, as a man who was honored to serve in the Senate,” said Biden. “But as an institutionalist, I believe that the threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills, debate them, vote.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
