There is a coordinated movement to abandon in-person voting in favor of mail-in ballots. Part of the left is using the pandemic to force a solution to a problem that does not exist and to create conditions conducive to vote fraud.
Democrats across the country are using Covid-19 as an excuse to send ballots to people who did not request absentee ballots — both lively and inactive voters on ballots that often have not been updated by removing relocated or deceased voters.
The fresh voting procedures pushed by Speaker Pelosi and some state leaders are clearly unnecessary from a public health perspective. If we can go to the grocery store, we can vote in person.
This would be imposed by House Democrats’ last-minute addition to the Senate coronavirus relief bill constant changes to election protocols that would enable vote fraud.
Democrats’ demands included making absentee voting universal, banning “identification to obtain an absentee ballot,” allowing “another person” to drop off an unlimited number of absentee ballots, ensuring that provisional ballots will always be counted (so they will no longer be “provisional”) and providing “blank” (without printed name) absentee ballots for citizens and military overseas. These changes would destroy the nation’s ability to maintain voting security and individual voter preferences.
The left, which has failed to achieve these changes through Congress, has simply shifted its efforts to states where it is rapidly moving to change American election security forever. A few misguided or faint Republicans are moving in this direction.
While many argue that voter fraud does not exist, SOUR AND ACRU action they have been tracking and combating electoral fraud for many years. ACRU has sued multiple counties that refuse to spotless up their voter rolls.
Absentee ballots should be strictly controlled and have very constrained uses. It has been repeatedly shown that they are tough for officials to manage and are a convenient tool for vote fraud. Recent examples such as Harris County, Texas and recent indictment a U.S. Postal Service employee in West Virginia for tampering with mailed ballots is just the tip of the iceberg.
Postal voting also makes vote fraud much easier through double voting. Most recently ACRU senior fellow and Heritage Foundation senior attorney Hans von Spakovsky exposed cases of double voting in an editorial:
“Charles Eugene Cartier Jr. from New Hampshire just admitted to voting twice in the 2016 general election, voting first in New Hampshire and then again in neighboring Massachusetts. He was the fourth person found guilty of double voting in New Hampshire last year alone…Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose referred 18 cases of double voting in his state to the appropriate prosecutors – all detected through the state’s participation in the Center’s electronic registration information system.”
The ACRU was so concerned about fraudulent ballot harvesting in senior care homes across our country that we launched a fresh initiative, Protect the voices of older peopleto protect defenseless citizens from those who would seek to deceive them into voting by mail by filling out absentee ballots with an activist’s choice, not a senior citizen’s.
The left maintains that we can go to Walmart and Home Depot, but we can’t go to the polls because of the coronavirus. This is absurd. The United States dealt with voting during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and other countries with far fewer resources dealt with even greater threats by maintaining in-person voting.
ACRU Action Ambassador J. Kenneth Blackwell is also a board member of the non-partisan International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). Although IFES is not involved in national elections, it is internationally recognized as a leader in electoral administration.
As Amb. Blackwell recently recalled: “In 2014, as the Ebola virus raged across West Africa, a pivotal election was about to be held in Liberia. Some argued that in-person voting should be suspended, but that doing so could undermine the legality of the results because of the sheer possibility of widespread fraud. Instead, IFES helped develop protocols for voters and election workers that kept them safe while enabling Liberians to participate in free, fair and in-person elections.”
“Maintaining the continuity of elections is important to protect the integrity of the vote. If the rules of the game change at the last minute – especially like this it seems to benefit one political party rather than its opposition – democracy itself is degraded and delegitimized.”
“If Liberia was able to safely conduct in-person elections in the face of the Ebola epidemic, there is no reason why we cannot do the same here in the United States in the wake of this pandemic. It will take planning, resources and carefully crafted protocols, but adhering to our existing set of election rules is worth it.”
America has the resources and institutional knowledge to make in-person voting work. There is no reason for US lawmakers to be afraid. It is time to renew our commitment to free, fair and secure direct elections.
Lori Roman is president of the American Constitutional Rights Union, a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy organization dedicated to protecting the constitutionally protected civil rights of all Americans.
