Election integrity fight never ends

The Friday Letter / #510 / Sept. 16, 2022
Updated with a typo correction at 11:31 a.m. Sept. 17
Saturday, Sept. 17, is Constitution Day

Election fraud in 2020 took various forms. Pennsylvania counted 2.6 million mail-in ballots, 10 times more than in previous elections. Thousands of them rained magically from the sky in the days after the polls closed, many of them mysteriously marked only with votes for Biden.

Georgia operatives in solid-Democrat Fulton County manufactured fake ballots by the thousands and stuffed them into unattended (but videotaped) drop boxes. Wisconsin is one of many states that subcontracted – in clear violation of state election law – ballot processing to leftist activist organizations funded by Mark Zuckerberg. Duly elected or appointed local election officials were elbowed aside and instructed not to interfere with the counting.

Regarding Wisconsin, Mollie Hemingway writes in Rigged, “Even though state law clearly states that the city clerk is in charge of the election, Democratic Green Bay mayor Eric Genrich delegated that authority to agents from outside groups and gave them leadership roles in collecting absentee ballots, fixing ballots that would otherwise be voided for failure to follow the law, and even supervising the counting of ballots.”

Just as in Pennsylvania and Georgia, it's becoming more apparent and more difficult to deny that Trump won Wisconsin's electoral votes. We aren't going to change the recorded outcome (Sorry, President Trump). Still, the Republican-majority Wisconsin State Legislature didn't just sit by and lament that “Well, that's politics,” or to quote humorist Finley Peter Dunne's 1895 character Mr. Dooley, “Politics ain't beanbag.”

The legislature took bold, needed action instead. It passed a bill to outlaw private funding of election processing, 60-36 in the House and 18-14 in the Senate.

And Democrat Gov. Tony Evers did what any self-respecting leftist autocrat would do in order to keep control of election outcomes in Wisconsin: He vetoed the bill.

We might ask why, but if you are waiting for an answer, be sure to bring something to keep you busy.

And so, while some states have moved – many of them tepidly, alas – to bring honesty to their election processes, enough holes remain in too many states' election laws that we are rightly worried about the upcoming midterms.

In Wisconsin, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson seeks his third term against a blizzard of cash carpet-bombing the state from the deep-pocket left, most of it from out of state. He's in the fight of his life against the Marxist lieutenant governor.

The Evers veto of election honesty could determine Wisconsin's senate race, control of the Senate, and the future of our nation. Ask your liberal friends: Should elections be decided by the voters, or by clever political activists?

Elsewhere, Michigan's Democrat-controlled supreme court allowed a constitutional amendment to appear on the November ballot that would allow political operatives to forever control elections by establishing permanent mail-in balloting, unattended ballot drop boxes, taxpayer-funded postage for mail-in ballots, and provisions for private donations to manage elections. The proposed amendment is nothing short of validation of election corruption.

Supporters include the left wing League of Women Voters and the Michigan ACLU. The proposal appears in the wake of a lawsuit against Michigan's Democrat secretary of state for refusing to remove dead people from the voter rolls. See full story at The Federalist.

The basement strategy

Democrats refuse to debate their Republican opponents. A reasonable thesis is their confidence that Joe Biden's strategy works. All they have to do is lie low and the consortium of news media, Zuckerberg's dark money that controls corrupt and malleable election officials, and rigged voting machines will take care of the rest.

To say nothing of FBI storm troopers who intimidate anyone who dares voice an opinion not preauthorized by the rulers. This is what happened just Tuesday night to Mike Lindell, the pillow guy who seems not to care if you don't like his support of President Trump. Now the FBI has seized the phone he uses to run his business while he was in the Hardee's drive-through. If you are surprised by our spinning-out-of-control dictatorship, we can't help you.

Advertisement we might see in a Democrat newspaper (sorry for the redundancy): Help Wanted: Candidates for office. No heavy lifting.

It's like an ad in a franchise magazine: Everything is provided to get you started in this turnkey operation. Sit back and let us put you in business. The only cost is your soul, your humanity, any principles you might (but probably didn't) have, any claim to honesty or regard for your fellow man.

John Fetterman, running for Pennsylvania's open Senate seat, is trying to squirm out of debating his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz. Sen. Patty Murray, running for her sixth term from Washington State, won't debate challenger Tiffany Smiley.

In Arizona, Democrat Katie Hobbs won't debate Kari Lake in the governor's race, calling her too extreme for sharing the stage. If Kari is so extreme, it seems that Katie would have no trouble handling her in a debate. Could it be that Kari Lake, a veteran reporter who is highly skilled on the television stage, would mop the floor with Katie Hobbs?

Fetterman, him we understand. Since his stroke, he is unable to communicate coherent sentences, and the last thing Democrats need right now is another slobbering babbler. They already have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. If he could talk, Fetterman might have to explain (nothing is guaranteed with a friendly press) why he wants to empty the jails and scuttle the police departments, or why he used his shotgun to chase down an unarmed black man with the assumption that any black man running in his neighborhood must be a criminal. (The man was jogging.)

The real problem here is that legislators who vote the tyrannical line with Joe Biden 100 percent of the time might find it awkward to explain themselves. Joe never had to. They don't want to, either.

What do they teach in law school?

We have to wonder what Lindsey Graham had in mind in introducing his bill to prohibit the states from exercising their 10th Amendment rights in the matter of abortion.

His “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act” would make most post-15-week abortions a federal crime. It doesn't matter how worthy such legislation might save innocent lives. The Constitution invests such decisions in the states. That is what the 10th Amendment is all about. That is what the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was all about. Period.

If we are going to insist on constitutional originalism, we must insist on it in all its forms, on all sides of all issues.

Quoted by The Daily Signal, Jeanne Mancini, the president of March for Life, said the pro-life act “provides the bare minimum protections for vulnerable unborn children. Politicians voting against this bill will stand not only against science, but they will stand against the American public, not to mention standing against basic compassion for women and unborn children.”

And so it would – protect the children, that is. She is wrong on the rest of it. Dobbs is not about science. Dobbs is not about compassion. Dobbs is not about women. Dobbs is not about children. Dobbs is about the proper venue for the decisions of government. This is why homeschooling is so important.

In all probability, your children won't be taught to understand these distinctions in government schools. Not much in the Constitution is.

And this why we should all be more involved in the selection, vetting, and promotion of candidates for our state legislatures, because the Supreme Court has finally ruled that this is where these battles will be fought. Quick: Name your state senator. Bet you can't.

Lindsey Graham's attempt to legislate national anti-abortion law is just as wrong as – even though morally superior to – the Marxist Left's attempt to nationalize abortion as a constitutional right, which it is not.

If Graham's aim is to support Mitch McConnell's satisfaction with Republicans staying in the minority, he couldn't have picked a better issue. As we noted last week, informed voters rightly understand that the important issues this November are inflation, open borders, Biden's reckless energy policy, and his attack on working Americans. McConnell is happy to join Democrats in the fantasy that abortion, climate change, and Trump are what drives the polls.

Until Graham came along, voters to some degree were beginning to understand Dobbs. Abortion was declining as an issue as Americans (rational ones, not those on the loony left) gradually came to understand that anyone who really wants an abortion can still get one, albeit inconveniently, and that voters in their own states will make this determination by how they elect their state's representatives and senators.

From a purely political standpoint, Graham's theatrics are difficult to comprehend. His proposed bill will not change a single vote or mind, and he isn't up for re-election until 2026.

Short takes on the news

A partisan Clinton-appointed federal judge with a history of ruling against Republicans in contested elections has struck again, dismissing President Trump's lawsuit against the FBI and the Hillary Clinton campaign for their role in fabricating the Russian collusion hoax. Just the News calls the ruling “a stinging rebuke.” U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks ruled that “Plaintiff's Amended Complaint is neither short nor plain, and it certainly does not establish that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief.” The ruling itself was neither short nor plain, either: 65 pages of lawyer-speak. . .

Reasons not to contribute to the McConnell-allied Republican Senate Leadership Fund (RSLF) or the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). Out fundraised by Democrats, McConnell pulls millions in ad buys from states that are key to winning Senate control, including Ohio, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania – states where Trump-backed candidates won their primaries. Also pulled was money from Arizona and Wisconsin. Wise money goes directly to the individual campaigns. . .

Why we need more revenue agents. A federal inspector general will launch an audit of IRS employees suspected of cheating on their own taxes, the Washington Examiner reports. It comes at the request of Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa.

Recommended reading

“It's the Midnight Hour: Saving America Now Requires Ruthless Offense”
Rod Thomson at American Greatness

Here is the most important story you will read between now and the election. Since at least 2000 we've been told that the next election will be the most important ever, one that will determine the nation's very survival. They were probably saying the same thing when Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden faced off in 1876.

This time it's real, and for keeps. Thomson says we reached the tipping point Aug. 8 when FBI enforcers raided the private home of a former president “and plundered whatever they wanted.” That date “was Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River, the moment when our rulers untethered themselves from the last restraints and embarked upon a no-return option.”

The GOP's usual bromide – haul wrongdoers before congressional hearings for a tongue lashing and finger wagging session – is great for the cameras but the result is always the same. Zilch. That won't work any more. Thomson says it's time to exterminate most of the permanent state and its bureaucracies.

“Put all on notice, the permanency is no longer.,” he demands. With only minimal modification, “Defund everything except the military, the Customs and Border Protection, and Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid and whatever Congress and those areas need for support.”

He then presents a list that will astonish even the most hardline originalist: Agriculture, Energy, EPA, CIA, Peace Corps, Transportation, and many others. Why he omitted the biggest threat of all to our freedoms – the FBI – is either a mystery or merely an oversight. You can see the full list here.

Only after these diseased institutions have been eradicated should the Congress begin full scale investigations, leading to criminal indictments where necessary, Thomson says.

“The revelations must disgust enough Americans to open their eyes and see the moment. And as our forefathers did in 1776, the rebuilt federal government must be one constructed on indelible principles grounded in reality.”

Excerpt:

Make no mistake. The new authoritarians in Washington, D.C., intend to criminally charge President Trump and perp-walk him as the hated avatar for all of us who still believe in the Constitution, the American Dream, and American exceptionalism. The charges could be obstruction of an official proceeding or conspiracy or frankly anything they feel like demanding. Conviction is not the end goal. Destroying the most powerful representative of traditionalist American ideals is. This is the ruling regime’s bald-faced attempt to intimidate and cow traditional America-loving citizens into silence and obedience.

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