If not now, when? If not us, who?

Reagan knew that time is limited, the hills are steep

The Friday Letter / #507 / Aug. 26, 2022

Our most urgent need right now is to fix our broken voting system before the November election. If we don't, our ability to confront the other urgent problems is seriously weakened, some of it permanently. This is up to the states, not the federal government.

Because Democrats can't prevail in the arena of ideas, they must win by other means. Deception, outright lies, government-sanctioned censorship, and stealing fill their trick bag. Democrats don't have a monopoly on deception, but they have cornered the markets on lies and stealing.

Despite the leftstream media's tired refrain of Trump's “baseless claims” of 2020 election fraud, they are losing their grip on the fantasy. Beginning with D'Souza's film 2000 Mules and Mollie Hemingway's Rigged, the truth can't be contained any more than water in a perforated bucket. There are others, including the Wisconsin Supreme Court's finding of voting law violations.

We voters must reject outright the idea of voting by mail, long periods of early voting, drop boxes, and high-tech, low-quality electronic processing equipment.

We are highly skeptical of the U.S. Postal Service's new division to handle mail-in ballots. And don't forget that the postal workers union contributes millions of campaign dollars 100 percent to Democrats.

As we were reminded this week about never-delivered ballots from 2020 that mysteriously appeared in Baltimore, postal workers have a built-in ability to “lose” ballots that may be addressed to voters who live in unapproved neighborhoods – and to helpfully “assist” voters in approved areas. Nursing homes and inner city black neighborhoods come to mind.

We have documented on these pages outright 2020 ballot fraud in Pennsylvania and Georgia. But the focus now must be on November. Any state that still allows drop boxes, mail-in, no-questions-asked absentee voting, and early voting of more than a few days must come under intense heat from voters and it must start immediately.

It's not difficult. Go to your state's House and Senate website and find your representatives and senators and their email addresses. Most have small staffs and may not respond, but they can read.

And any state that still foolishly uses untraceable electronic voting machines should come under withering attack by outraged American citizens who rightly suspect foul play, even if there isn't any. They must tell their incumbent and challenger state legislative candidates that the nonsense must stop – now.

Last week we repeated a report on how France conducts its elections. Here is a missive from our correspondent in Wales, J.C. Madoc-Jones. Dr. Madoc-Jones is a retired physician from the National Health Service and an occasional Friday Letter contributor. (If our readers would co-operate, we could demand that he write more for us.)

Over here we vote by marking a cross in pencil on a ballot paper and dropping it into a serious-looking, big, black, tin, sealed box which is opened at the count where representatives of all candidates wander around checking. Everything is done according to the book.

An impartial Returning Officer supervises the entire process. If a candidate is unhappy with the result he is entitled to demand a recount, there and then. It is satisfying to vote in this way. I enjoy the simplicity of it, and it is impossible to fiddle the results once the ballot boxes have arrived.

There are people here who say the process is old fashioned and we should copy the way you do it in the US but, from what you say, this brings problems. My only complaint is that my candidates seldom win. However, I always vote.

My grandmothers were born before the franchise was extended to women and their parents had to satisfy rules that discriminated against the poorest people. The universal franchise and freedom of speech are the only political principles I have.

Our acceptance of voodoo ballot-counting with costly equipment that enriches its manufacturers and delays results for sometimes weeks without providing voters with a scintilla of confidence in its reliability – or downright honesty – in the face of cheap 18th century devices (pencil and paper) that are 100 percent accurate used in European countries is breathtaking.

With restored election integrity, we can work to restore the rule of law and its bedfellow, equal protection under the law. We can't do that if Republicans don't win elections. Traditional, swamp-dwelling Republicans such as Mitch McConnell aren't interested in leading. It's too much work.

McConnell, who effectively threw in the towel on winning back the Senate majority, is most comfortable heading the minority where Republicans have dwelled for most of the last century. The pay is good, and the benefits even better – cozy deals with campaign contributors and corrupt foreign business/government interests, chauffeurs, servants, and yes-men to satisfy their every whim, free haircuts and free liquor, a glamours social life, jobs for relatives, and taxpayer-paid junkets to “inspect” hell-holes like Paris and the French Riviera.

The great work of 'journalism'

An Obama-appointed federal judge overturned part of Florida's new law that restricts drop boxes, third-party voter registration, mail voting, and electioneering near the voting booths. Here is how NBC News played the story:

The ruling “is the first major invalidation of a spate of restrictive new election laws passed in Republican-controlled states last year, fueled by voter fraud anxieties and President Donald Trump’s stolen election lie.”

How's that for fair and honest reporting? Our answer: It's not reporting, it's journalism. See the difference?

Short takes on the news

Now he tells us. Or, Stories Worth Following Department. Headline in the New York Post: “Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan Facebook was wrong to ban The Post's Hunter Biden laptop story.”

We don't often enough prowl the pages of Campus Reform, but when we do, it's always a challenge to pick the best story to link. See for yourself:

“White people banned from common spaces at UC Berkeley's off-campus housing”
“Students (at Portland State University) must pass new 'Race and Ethnic Studies’ requirement to graduate”
“Study: Whiteboards are racist because they collaborate with white organizational culture”
“Animals are victims of ‘human supremacy,’ growing student organization claims”
“Law school orientation makes students learn about pronouns”
“Master’s candidate submits thesis on 'Teaching White Privilege’”

Recommended reading

“What We Know About the Mar-a-Logo Raid”
Paul du Quenoy at American Greatness

“Where Are 87,000 IRS Agents Going To Come From?”
Blaine Pardoe at American Greatness

Quotes for today

“Progressivism isn’t a theory to be tested by practice. It’s a faith, a worldview.” – Mark Bauerlein, from a piece at American Greatness, “The Plight of the Progressive Teacher”

“Notwithstanding the predilections of the institutional Left, political dynamism rooted in public policy designed to actually improve people’s lives currently resides within only one of the two major parties, and it’s not the party of Johnny Reb, Jim Crow, and World War II internment camps. . . The Democratic Party’s sordid political history and baleful present makes it deserving of nothing so much as an ignominious and painful demise.” – Richard J. Shinder, on why the Democrat Party must be defeated if the country is to survive, at American Greatness.

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