What has kept election security reform from happening in many states?
A little while ago I wrote a post entitled “Magical thinking on the right about fixing the voting rules.” In it I wrote:
What do I see, though, around the blogosphere? Statement after statement to the effect of: the GOP could have changed these [lax voting security] rules and they didn’t even try because they don’t want to win. This is said by bloggers, opinion writers in publications on the right, and commenters galore. But I believe it’s a case of magical thinking, for the most part.
Compared to the volume of comments like that, I see very little realism about just how that should be done in states that are either blue or purple. I’m not even sure most people understand the formidable obstacles in the way, and I see very little acknowledgement of the many efforts the GOP actually has made to change things.
Then I went on to list just a few of those efforts and what became of them. So why am I writing another post on this today? Because I keep seeing those same statements all around the right side of the internet, and the ignorance is overwhelming. The result, of course, is people on the right dropping out of the entire voting process, which only helps the left.
One of the most frustrating states is Arizona. See this for an angry description of how that state, which has had a legislature and a governorship controlled by Republicans, failed to pass measures to tighten up security. One of the main factors blamed by the author is the GOP leadership in that state, held by GOP “moderates” who don’t like the populist wing of the GOP and who are accused of having squelched quite a few efforts by some of the legislature rank-and-file to make things better. However, although I didn’t see it mentioned in the article, the GOP control of the Arizona House and the Arizona Senate post-2020 has been very thin: 16 to 14 in the Senate and 31 to 29 in the House. That means that unless nearly all the Republican members are onboard, including the RINOesque ones, voting security measures will not pass.
Another fact the article does not see fit to mention is that Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who ended up winning the governorship in 2022, has been Secretary of State in Arizona, tasked with the following:
The highest profile duty of the office is oversight and administration of secure and accurate elections. The Secretary of State serves as Chief Election Officer for the State. One of the goals of the office is to register more voters and encourage their active participation in elections. As part of elections administration, the office certifies: voting devices, election results, candidates and measures to the ballot, as well as the results of statewide elections.
Please let that sink in: the person running on the Democratic ticket for governor in the state of Arizona is the very same person assigned to oversee the security and accuracy of the election. This is unconscionable, and prior to the election there were plenty of calls for her to recuse herself (some of them even from Democrats), but Hobbs simply refused.
But even apart from that, secretaries of state have a lot of power to block voting reform bills by engineering collusive lawsuits in court. If you don’t know how collusive lawsuits work, here’s a description of how the process worked in Minnesota:
The League of Women Voters, a solidly Democratic organization, is “suing” Minnesota’s Secretary of State, left-wing activist Steve Simon. The lawsuit seeks to suspend Minnesota’s election laws, ostensibly on account of COVID-19, so that persons mailing in absentee ballots won’t need to satisfy the statutory requirement of a witness to verify their identity. Without that requirement, voter fraud will be even easier than it is at present. If a Democrat finds a ballot lying around, as will happen many thousands of times in Minnesota, where the voter rolls include hundreds of thousands of names that are dead or otherwise not eligible voters, he can fill it out and send it in, no questions asked.
Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon, who consistently abuses his office to facilitate voter fraud, quickly agreed to the “settlement” that his party wanted…
…[A]collusive “settlement” is the easiest path to voter fraud.
Or certainly to blocking Republican efforts to stop it. And I have little doubt Hobbs would have done this, had the Republican reforms passed. However, they did not, but not due to lack of trying by the conservative wing of Arizona’s GOP. The problem was that there weren’t enough of them to pass the legislation in such a narrowly divided legislature, and the legislative leadership of the Arizona GOP didn’t seem strongly invested in pushing it nevertheless.
Here’s a different look at the same set of circumstances, written in March of 2022 when the process was ongoing. It is from NPR, and so of course there’s a leftward skew to it. But it mentions a lot of efforts by the GOP in Arizona, and how the opposition framed them:
By last count at the Arizona State Capitol, close to a hundred voting bills have been introduced, part of a nationwide push by far-right Republican-controlled legislatures to pass restrictive voting laws.
The swing state of Arizona is front and center — home to 10% of all the proposed legislation…
So there were many efforts. Some details:
Fillmore represents one of Arizona’s most conservative districts around Apache Junction, in the suburban desert east of Phoenix. The businessman often seen in a bolo tie says many of the proposed bills, which range from measures to require all ballots be hand counted to restrictions on ballot drop off boxes, are a response to concerns by his constituents.
What happened?:
“The fact that our elected officials in this country could even be introducing bills that so thoroughly undermine our democracy sends a really bad message,” says Sean Morales-Doyle, acting director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, which has analyzed every voting rights bill introduced in state legislatures since 2011…
…[A]nalysts are worried that their very mention and news coverage of them could lead to further distrust in the electoral system among the general public.
So mere discussions of bills to enhance voter security – designed to encourage trust in the minds of the enormous number of Americans who already believe our elections are now fraudulent – are described as causing more voter distrust, in one of those Orwellian twists of which the left is so very fond.
And then there’s – you guessed it – charges of racism:
During a recent debate on his bill to require all voting to be done on election day in a voter’s precinct only, Rep. Fillmore said he wanted to bring voting back to how it was in 1958.
That didn’t land well.
Arizona has a fraught history of Jim Crow laws. Today, Republicans hold just a slim majority in the legislature and Arizona’s population is getting more diverse thanks to in-migration from states like California.
For his part, Fillmore says Democrats are trying to misconstrue what he said, when he really just wants voting to get back to its basics.
“What I was referring to was back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, you had voting in the precinct, with government identification,” he says. “You had counting done in the precinct reported that day and that night.”…
“You can say that you didn’t mean it, but you said it,” [a black newspaper owner and former member of the Arizona legislature named Campbell] told NPR, in reference to the 1958 comment. “I think that to a certain extent a lot of people feel that they want to go back to the quote un-quote good old days for them, that wasn’t good ole days for everyone.”
The main guy who blocked the legislation was named Boyer:
Last year when Boyer refused to join Republicans who were trying to seize voting records from Maricopa County, party activists tried to recall him. He was also threatened and briefly had police security at his home. Today, Boyer says he’s disturbed by the GOP’s move toward populism, deficit spending and a cult of personality with Donald Trump.
So this guy is essentially the Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney of Arizona, and he has a lot of power in such a close legislature. Boyer declined to run again in 2022, by the way. The narrowly-divided party breakdown in the Arizona Senate has not changed as a result of the 2022 election, and same for the House, although now Hobbs will be governor and able to veto anything they might want to pass.
But from that history, you can see that, even in Arizona – the swing state the failed to tighten voter security after 2020 and yet had at least a chance of doing so – there were many bona fide efforts that were able to be stopped by one or two people. This is the problem with narrow majorities and a party that is divided against itself.
I could go into the history of state after state – in particular, Pennsylvania. But it would be a very long post. Suffice to say that in Pennsylvania, the Democrat governor was able to veto all efforts, and if that had failed the leftist appeals court would always be willing to fill in to the same effect. You can see some of this history here and here.
I fail to see how the GOP can get election security reform bills passed without a strong enough legislative majority, the governorship of the state involved, an appeals court that is not skewed to the left, and a secretary of state who is also Republican. However, states that have all of that in place probably don’t have voting security problems in the first place, or have already fixed them – such as, for example, Florida.
This continuing belief on the part of so many voters on the right that the GOP could wave a magic wand and fix it if only they wanted to do so, and that their failure to accomplish this task means that they didn’t try and don’t want to, is both ignorant and destructive – destructive because it causes some voters on the right to compound the problem by giving up and not voting at all.
It’s instructive to do some basic research and discover what actually was tried, and what failed, and why, and what the obstacles are that need to somehow be overcome. But the left feeds on ignorance – not only of its own voters, but of some GOP voters as well.
It’s not necessarily “magical thinking” rather than simply wanting to skip a step. The first thing you have to do is take over the state party apparatus. No so sexy as elections, or national battles. But essential.
What is the end result of no voter id of ranked choiced voting of mass mail voter thats what matters
How do you explain a Paul Boyer or a Bill Gates of Maricopa Co.? A fluke? Bad luck; better luck next time? I think not. They are mere cogs in a machine or a plan. We don’t know exactly what that plan is, but it clearly engages numerous elements within the GOP.
A few more election cycles of the status quo and the current trends and it genuinely won’t matter if you vote or not.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/surprised_by_the_midterm_election_results_take_a_look_at_the_data.html
“… there were many bona fide efforts that were able to be stopped by one or two people. This is the problem with narrow majorities and a party that is divided against itself.”
Disagree. This is the problem with democracy which the Founding Fathers roundly rejected; and then instituted as THE principal method of voting in legislatures. Voting 50%+1 in an election is possibly practical. It is criminally stupid in a Congress.
“Statement after statement to the effect of: the GOP could have changed these [lax voting security] rules and they didn’t even try because they don’t want to win.”
The widespread perception that the GOP is governed by Gen. McClellans rather than Gen. Grants is not mistaken. Attempts to argue otherwise are attempts to put lipstick on a pig.
When the democrats knock the republicans down, with few exceptions most Congressional republicans just lay there, waiting for the democrat to walk away. Then they get up, brush themselves off and express how committed they are to ‘bi-partisanship’.
We have Mail In balloting here in CO. I have confidence in the voting, at least here in my county. So far I haven’t seen much voter fraud, the kind were people voted twice (very hard to do here) or voted someone elses ballot like a deceased relative.
I think Ranked Choice Voting is much more dangerous. They just instituted in Fort Collins and I would expect a big push statewide.
Oklahoma has a very good system – paper ballots scanned into voting machines, procedures the same in every county, no internet connection, voter ID, limited early voting days, absentee ballots have to be notarized and be at the Election Board by election day, and so on. The count was completed by 11 pm on election day.
https://oklahoma.gov/elections/security-integrity/election-security.html
It does help to have a Republican governor and state houses. Now, if they can stay that way and start working on improving the state universities.
I agree that it takes change to occur at the state level and work its way up to the federal level. I think that the current concern about local school boards is good place to start.
Pennsylvania was run rough shod on voting laws for years, 2020 was the worst but 2024 will see the same if different faces from the governor and SoS.
In many states like Pennsylvania, the overall outcome in state-wide elections is controlled by the turnout of a single population center (like Philadelphia) so the party “controlling” that center’s election can control the entire state’s result. There is then a stimulus for the controlling party to “cheat” and/or to strike a deal with the opposition outside of the center to allow the cheating which is deemed necessary. In Pennsylvania a Democratic governor can block efforts by the “Republican” majority legislature to enact any election security “reform” that might endanger Democratic control of Philadelphia election returns. That governor knows that his office is dependent on Philadelphia, so a circle of corruption is created. Pennsylvania is just one example of state capture by a population center where the interest in weak election security leads to control by corruption. The situation is different in states like Illinois where the population center (Chicago) has grown large enough to control Cook County and the state legislature such that any attempts at election security by the downstate minority are still born.
Maybe I’m thick, but I don’t see where the narrative “Republicans need supermajorities to pass the reform necessary to make elections fair again” is any less suppressive than “Republicans can’t be bothered to pass the reform necessary to make elections fair again.”
They amount to damn near the same thing, albeit with a little less circular firing squad on the former.
Boobah:
I have no idea why you don’t understand. But you’re apparently not alone.
First of all, no one said they need supermajorities – unless there is a Democrat governor whose veto must be overridden. That’s just basic math and should not be difficult to understand.
Otherwise, a majority of even one vote would be enough if there was not a single person dissenting. The Democrats learned that recently with Manchin and Sinema, for example, when they could not end the filibuster and that stopped them from passing all sorts of legislation they deeply wanted to pass. Not every single person in a party is going to agree, and if every single person is needed, then it’s not unusual for legislation to fail. A majority of even 2-6 people, while not a supermajority, provides some padding. I am old enough to remember when it was commonplace for parties to not vote in a solid and total bloc, nor was it expected.
Trying to do something and being blocked from doing it by one or two people is a lot different from not trying and not wanting to do it. The first can be remedied by electing a few more people and the second cannot be remedied.
These are very simple principles.
Since when does the governor of any state have a say or vote in each states voting laws? The U.S. Constitution which is the highest law of the land gives state legislatures only the power and duties of election laws. Only the state legislatures can certify the elections and not governors. The governor has no vote on it, period!
Also, the state legislatures can delay certification because of voter fraud. Just do not certify. Have a do over vote statewide! Just do it!
Yoder:
State legislatures set the rules and governors have veto power. That is the way it is now. You are referring to a radical interpretation of law that is not generally accepted at present. See this for a longer explanation.
And see also this for some information relevant to a future case that could bear on the question.
Geoffrey Britain:
I can only conclude you either did not read the post or did not understand it.
Jack Wayne:
Historically, parties often did not vote in a completely unanimous bloc.
TommyJay:
Why do you feel the need to explain someone who has a different opinion? There will always – or almost always – be such people. It’s part of human nature. That’s why a majority of one or two is always a tenuous proposition.
So even if a star like DeSantis is running in2024, he has no chance.
Neo, the same reasons can also be applied to the GOP talking a good game on energy independence and immigration, but not delivering, for years,
Except in 2016, we elected someone who delivered on the conservative agenda in those areas, teeing these issues up for Congress to lock that agenda in with legislation, They did not, and Biden easily reversed that agenda in those areas.
That history is a big reason why many think that the problem with the GOP is a lack of will, not a lack of power. And the fact that they Dems keep getting THEIR agenda ratcheted in place reinforces that take.
But you point to two reasons I will comment upon, that this is happening:
Seniority-based leadership – that rewards those who play the virtual-reality game of career politics the best and longest (our rights be damned) by putting them in the leading positions – is given too much power to set the legislative agenda. Even if you have a supermajority of prudent legislators, that leadership can block their prudence from being turned into policy,
He doesn’t understand that by-and-large voters who support Trump do so, not as a cult-of-personality, but because he delivered on confronting the Progressives and delivering on conservative policy that respects our unalienable rights … and done so to a greater degree than any other President since Coolidge, with the exception of Reagan.
Such voters, like myself, view Trump like Johnny Rico’s superiors in the cinematic Starship Troopers viewed Johnny: “You have the job, until you’re killed or I find someone better.” And at this time, I don’t see anyone better – though DeSantis may be as good – in terms of respecting me as a free man, and expecting me to take the responsibility to get through life making my own decisions.
Mr. Boyter doesn’t like it that “statesmen” like himself are not respected, even though they focus on mere appearances and the virtual-reality game, more than they do their primary reason for being a legislator: to secure our rights.
After all, he Knows Better™.
If he and his fellow legislators had delivered on securing our rights, not only would they be more respected, Trump might not have entered politics as a candidate at all.
Such legislators, however, are a reflection of US, who have been conditioned to prioritize “nice” over our rights, and vote accordingly.
That is what needs to change, badly, Do we really value our rights, if we are not willing to elect even an Ashchol to secure them … for ourselves, for our neighbors, for our children and grandchildren?
Surprise
https://ballotpedia.org/Kelly_Tshibaka
https://ballotpedia.org/Sarah_Palin
IIRC this is the same Boyer who has blocked Arizona’s endorsement of a Convention of States (Article 5 of the Constitution) to consider ammending the US Constitution without going through the Congress (Mark Levin).
Wouldn’t be prudent, or just content with the status quo?
Entrenched, much like McTurtle.
When you have the facts and the law on your side, you can overcome the fraud of Democrats and the slander of the news media. See e.g. Ron DeSantis.
One thing we know about the kind of liberals that Neo has described as her friends and family that vote D — they are very concerned about feeling that they are moral (even morally superior). So take that away from them. Seriously. They support evil. They support the elimination of the right to vote in neighborhoods controlled by criminal gangs. Make absolutely damn sure that they know and know and know the evil that they support. Get the truth in their faces so that they cannot possibly pretend to be ignorant of their responsibility in degrading our elections.
Bypass the corrupt news media and take the case directly to the people. Do it relentlessly. Money spent on advertising on this one issue is more important than ten times, perhaps 100 times, as much spent during campaigns.
If every single honest person in America makes this a priority, it can happen. Because the Democrats have no legitimate arguments to support their fraud. Only lies and slanders.
We have the worst election integrity in the world. Make sure every American knows this. Over and over and over.
Blacks ARE smart enough to get an ID. Make damn sure that every American KNOWS that Democrats are the racists who believe that blacks are too stupid. Over and over and over.
Once the facts are known, the laws will change. It may take a few years, but they will change. They will be made to align with the same election procedures in place around the world. Anyone who fails to agree will have a spotlight on them for being corrupt fraudsters. Shine it bright.
Stan, with all due respect, you are dreaming. As Republicans ramp up awareness, Dems will just ramp up back door voting and cheating. Its a game that honest methods cannot win any time soon.
The only way I see is to out gun the Dems at their own game. Learn the ins and outs from their own agents. Then out perform them through organized but legal methods, and pay more for use of the jackals to do the dirty work. Where do you think much of the Dems campaign donations go toward….have you noticed they don’t do much traditional campaigning lately?
“…have you noticed they don’t do much traditional campaigning lately?”
Indeed, now we can be quite sure—that is, if we weren’t already—why Biden’s master strategy of staying in his basement bunker (for-the-most-part) during the 2020 campaign so “effectively” helped him “capture the imagination of the nation”…
(And why he “won”—sorry, make that “had to win”—a RECORD number of votes(!)…)
neo,
I read your post and understood it perfectly well. I simply disagree with your rationale. I freely admit that your thinking may be more accurate than mine, I simply am not persuaded of it. Actions speak louder than words and, IMO the Republican Party’s actions far too frequently do not comport with their words.
We all have a point where we can no longer extend to another the benefit of the doubt. I’ve reached that point with the GOPe and clearly you haven’t reached that point.
Seniority doesn’t amount to much in the Arizona legislature. Senators and representatives are limited to four two-year terms. Of course, there’s nothing stopping a term-limited senator from running for the state house, and many do.
In my legislative district, one of the two representatives was the Speaker. His actions were not popular. People who had supported him for decades walked away(he was seen as blocking reforms). He didn’t even bother to show at the district meeting to make his pitch. He lost in the primary for the state senate, since he was term-limited on his house seat. The man that defeated him has decades of legislative service, and who thought he was out of it until they dragged him back. He’s an interesting guy, who is helping me learn the players and the issues.
There is definitely a battle between populists and the old Arizona GOP elite. There are good people on both sides of this. But the elite definitely look on the populists with disdain. And Arizona has grown so much in population in 50 years that the old assumptions simply don’t apply.
A Maricopa County commissioner represents more people than a U.S. congressmember. The state water commission and corporation commission have enormous power over ratepayers and future development. There’s a fair number of state agencies that haven’t changed how they operate–but now there’s five times more people.
And Neo is correct that a 31-29 majority in the state house doesn’t work the way it does in Pelosi’s house. Two members can block legislation, and did.
The reason the count takes so long is that none of the early votes are processed before election day. Thus, all of the votes on the day at the polls are counted quickly. But all of the mail in and dropped off mail ballots must have their signature verified, and they actually do verify. Then the ballots are taken from the outer envelope and counted.
And it doesn’t help that the election officials, while nominally Republican in Maricopa county, are of the GOP elite, and don’t bother to hide the contempt they have for the populists. This is why the county recorder got death threats; he pretty much gave anyone with concerns the finger.
Was it honest? I don’t know but I think it was, mostly. Remember the great September abortion craze? The timing was no accident. The Democrats used that to nail down their core in early voting. Then, on election day, computer screw ups probably cost at least 7500 Republican votes.
And then if the elite refuses to vote for Kari Lake and Blake Masters, because they defeated the elite choices, well, that was enough.
Slickieboy, all that the approach you are suggesting will do, is embed the compromises in the electoral process so they can’t be replaced with measures that will assure integrity. We might as well get out the lotto-ball machine, assign each candidate a ball slot, and let the highest number rule us.
But Stan, I think that it will take more than uncovering the cheating to bring the (D) voters around for good. They BELIEVE the confession Reagan warned us about: that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. And therefore they will remain susceptible to the pitch of these miscreants who define “our democracy” with the obligation that we SUBMIT to their elite rule as though they are omniscient and infallible.
They have to see – without regard to even the best of intentions on the part of that elite – that this Pedestaled Elite is not only structurally incapable of solving their problems from the top down, their attempts to do so trample upon the unalienable rights of at least some of us like bulls in the china shops of our lives.
They have to perceive that this Pedestaled Elite is HUMAN, regardless of their CVs, because they lack the proximity- and consequence-informed insight into each individual. And that much of what they proclaim as “fact” and “logic” is based in BELIEF that approaches cargo-cult levels of blindness.
And … they have to realize that they have more capability to solve the vast majority of problems in front of them – alone, or with their neighbors – than that Pedestaled Elite. And therefore, they should look to that Elite as advisers at most, and insist that they retain decision-making authority over their lives.
They have to realize that the faceless, industrial, one-size-fits-all top-down approach of “helping us” that has been in vogue for over a century is not suited for solving problems involving 330 million dynamic variables.
They have to perceive that the corrosive effects of greed are not exclusive to those honest enough to publicly state their intent to profit … that the scientist, the educator, the activist are all susceptible to greed in their own ways, as much as any CEO.
They have to realize that not all problems can be resolved simply by following inflexible rules; that human judgment still has significance in tempering the rules and making them effective.
Ultimately, they have to realize that the only “common good”/”greater good” government can reliably deliver upon starts with the words “we hold these truths to be self-evident” … and that any other “good” needs to be sorted out by us and our neighbors, away from government, its money-printing presses, and its monopoly on coercive force.
If we’re to reverse this lemming parade we are on now and make it stick … getting ordinary people to QUESTION the world around them, then build trust in their own insights and NOT delegate their decisions to others – even if that looks like more risk and effort for them – is essential to diminish the power of The Pedestaled and engage the vast distributed intellect of that 330 million.
Perhaps the first question to ask a True Believer in (D), is … how can the “experts” and “leaders” you put so much trust in, ever know YOU well enough to get the answers right for YOU from the top down?
Neo,
A poll taken ten days before the election had Kari Lake up by 11. While polls are hardly perfect, given that there was no major news between then and the election tells me there was fraud or severe irregularities to produce a result where she lost. Now what?
There IS validity to the notion that the RINO wing of the party doesn’t want to do what is necessary to win.
Within that group are politicians like McConnell and Romney (who, along with 10 other “Republicans” in favor of the “defense of gay marriage” bill now going through Congress) and allegedly Republican pundits like Allapundit and Jazz Shaw. They seem to view true conservative (Trump-endorsed or not) candidates as “icky.” You won’t get invited to the most desired parties in DC by legislating in favor of the Bill of Rights or against abortion.
At the state level, I have a friend who is a Republican state legislator in our red state. He confirms that most of them are “moderates” (who campaign as conservatives). They are overly influenced by lobbyists, to the extent that the lobbyists write portions of, or even entire, bills. Very, very few would risk reelection to take a stand on principle.
While I very rarely cite the NYT, this article seems factually correct even though its premise (everything we do should be taxed) is nonsensical: https://kansasreflector.com/2022/11/25/new-york-times-investigation-shows-how-sports-gambling-industry-exploited-kansas-legislators/ The stereotype of R legislators — that they can be influenced by great cigars and great parties — has a lot of truth to it. The D’s, on the other hand, rarely divert from what their party wants when it is an important issue.
To the people who say that we should elect more “moderate” R’s in order to win in the general elections, I say that is the way to insure America, as we have known it, goes away. It will be the same result as electing Democrats but the result (dishonest elections, loss of our freedoms) will take slightly longer.
The only hope I see is electing hard-nosed true conservatives whenever they are available and then each of us has to donate (to each candidate, not the national party) or work for them. Sitting around and wringing our hands no longer cuts it. Our nation and our liberty are at stake.
I should add that traditionally, the populists are not willing to hang around and do the grunt work needed to keep the party going the way the elite do. This means that the elite fill all those unappreciated jobs, and show up early to make coffee and set out the folding chairs. This matters.
The last time Ron Paul ran, his Ronulans showed up and took over the caucuses in Minnesota. They elected themselves to the party support positions. And then, after the convention, they vanished, and wouldn’t even take phone calls.
It may be this is changing in the Republican party. Kari Lake has a serious organization that she can keep going, and be fully positioned to run in 2024. Meanwhile she gets her people into some of those party positions, and then it’s a new game.
Ronald Reagan was the populist outsider in 1976, and very nearly won against Ford. Four years later he had all the ducks lined up and won the nomination fairly easily, without ever doing any negative campaigning.
If Kari Lake runs again, without the Trump endorsement (she won’t need it), some of those elite will reconsider her.
I think the fact they pursued joe arpao over the ‘crime’ of enforcing immigration law, then they had the opportunity to steal the county for synema in 2018, then they went for kelley* in 2020 and the big steal,
* i find it very convenient how the tucson shooting eventuated to ‘snuff the sails’ of the tea party, by a shooter who had been let loose by chief dupnik,
Is the GOP overall tepid in its support of making the elections more secure?
Yes, a horrible example is how the gop supports the Jan 6th useful idiots, vs how the Democrats supported Blm and Antifa rioters.
Democrats have a huge, aggressive machine built up of lawfare, and the GOP does not. Yes, the 40 year settlement on gop voter fraud efforts, that only ended when the judge died had an impact.
As does an entire gop culture of fighting is uncouth, which is part of why Trump is so hated by the gop establishment, he fights.
The gop establishment likes power, and has a symbiotic relationship with campaign consultants. Maga types are a threat to power, so the eGOP does not mind when Maga candidates lose due to fraud. If the system was cleaned up, more populist gop candidates would win, diluting the power of the establishment gop.
And also due to hatred of Trump, the establishment gop does not want to touch election fraud. Many states with gop majorities, such as Texas, could do a lot more. Florida is an example of what can be done. Ga is one that seemed to do a little to address fraud issues.
Cleaning State voter rolls is a huge opportunity, which Mike Lindell is funding. Where is the gop party? What I read is the gop party / consultants are worried on losing control of the junk voter data they have and sell to candidates.
In California some gop used ballot harvesting and got elected. It seemed to be done without party support. Why?
Lots of questions on why the gop is so timid on election reforms. My guess answering Cui Bono explains a lot.
RaySoCa:
You seem to be ignoring the points I made in my post. There have been plenty of efforts made by they GOP, and I explain also why they have failed.
No surprise here:
Cyrpto-Thieves FTX Funded Katie Hobbs Campaign
Once the fraud line is crossed, it’s “Katie bar the door.”
“Not today,” she says.
Neo
No, I was expanding on this point:
“a party that is divided against itself.”
The biggest issue is the GOP Powers as a whole are not setting addressing voter fraud as their top priority, and it shows in getting meaningful results.
I acknowledge the point in your post that a few GOP Legislators blocked efforts in multiple states on fraud efforts. My point is why? There is a reason behind the behavior. I doubt it’s just worries of being labeled Racist.
And yes, Democratic Governors can veto efforts to reduce voter fraud. But why then little Gop lawfare to counter this. My gut feel, no proof, is Democratic Lawfare is at least 10X the size of gop efforts.
Why in California gop no voter initiative to clean up our election system?
Clean State voter rolls are another huge opportunity.
Another issue that is kryptonite to many gop state officials is the issue of the 2020 election steal. No Gop official wants to admit they allowed the election to be stolen from Trump in Az, Ga, Pa, and Wi. And this issue also prevents them from fixing the problem.
Gop leadership in congress hates Trump, and candidates he backed. They spent in primaries trying to defeat them. And if they won the primary, then did not support them meaningfully in the general election. Gop leadership has made talking about election fraud a no go issue, since they see any talk as supporting Trump.
Another issue is fear of lawfare from Dominion.
Even defending against a lawsuit has a huge cost.
Fox, OANN, Guillani, Powell etc were all sued. One of them for over a billion dollars.
the halderman report that judge totenberg has a copy of, curiously does not get much attention, recall marc elias was the middleman for the steal dossier, get it, and he runs much of the lawfare, apparently from a corporate veil behind the bamboo curtain,
RaySoCa:
There is plenty of GOP-based lawfare to counter it. But for a number of reasons the deck is often stacked against such efforts. I’ve described one reason: collusive lawsuits. No such path is open to the voting security efforts.
It is easy to claim certain things didn’t happen when in fact you have no idea what was actually tried. It’s not just “a few.” However, efforts in deep blue states always fail. Efforts in red states are ordinarily not needed. So it’s confined mostly to swing states. One could write a book about all the efforts that have been made, and what happened. I described Arizona, where plenty of efforts were made.
You are ignoring facts. But plenty of people are doing the same.
RaySoCa:
By the way, if you’re interested in efforts to clean up voter rolls, see this, this, this, this, and this. That’s just a small sample.
You specifically ask about California. Are you aware of this? Read the whole thing.
Learn what has actually been tried before you criticize what you think hasn’t been tried.
Kudos to Judicial Watch for that effort. Our current Senator, when he was AG, fought that effort.
From first hand experience, the CA State Voter Rolls still have issues.
1. A convicted Felon, currently in Federal Prison for violating his parole and firearm possession, had his ballot sent to my parents house this year. They also got it in 2020. They returned it marked “in prison” both years per my Father.
2. A convicted felon for elder abuse, received her ballot at my parents house.
Thankfully they were evicted through my efforts, so they are no longer at my parents house. What a soap opera that was.
In OC there was a meeting about election integrity a while back, I read about it in Robin Itzler’s newsletter. What surprised me, was the statement no recordings would be allowed. The speakers were afraid of being canceled.
Matt Taibbi, of TK News has a great example of youtube having a double standard on “rigged elections”
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/youtube-censors-reality-boosts-disinformation
Basically if you are a Democrat, it is OK. If you are Republican, you get banned.
Those ballot drop boxes are not secure are they? Watched 24/7? Things other than ballots could be dropped inside……..
Removing relict entries and facially ineligible parties from the voter roll can be done as follows:
1. The Secretary of State compiles a database of all death certificates issued
2. The Secretary of State compiles a database of all civil commitment orders and guardianship orders entered by trial courts in the state, and their resolution.
3. The state department of corrections maintains a census of the prison and jail population of the state, stock and flow.
4. The state department of revenue maintains a database of each person who has filed a state income tax form in the last twenty-four months, and the address from which they filed the return.
5. Local boards of elections assign teams of two – one Democratic clerk, one Republican clerk – to check every voter registration card on file over a biennial cycle (in addition to checking each new registrant every work day). Times of the year busy with the mechanics of elections could be blocked off. During the rest of the year, stock checks would be ongoing. Each alphabetic segment would be checked at the same point during each biennial cycle. In a county with an ordinary population (430,000), it would require fewer than ten teams to do a full scrape of the county voter roll every two years.
6. The state board of elections has one or more teams of clerks – one Democrat, one Republican, who undertake spot audits of randomly selected entries in each county’s voter roll, publishing data on the share of anomalous entries found in each county’s roll.
Judicial Watch’s effort to clean up the voter rolls in California is great, but I wonder…
What I found online was lots of talk of it could be up to 1.5 million removed in la county in 2019 articles, but what I missed, perhaps my Google fu skills lack, was how many were actually removed.
another article mentioned San Bernardino county with 1.29 million voters, removed 14 as of Nov 2021, due to the 2019 settlement.
This recent article does not sound good for la county:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/12/did-inflated-voter-rolls-and-botched-signature-review-wrongly-thwart-recall-of-woke-l-a-da-lawsuit-says-yes/
I was vaguely aware of the Ca voter roll lawsuit, but I don’t pay a huge amount of attention to ca politics. It’s a one party state, and I vote, but I have a hard time finding good reliable news. The local paper I read for years, la times, is a joke.
It’s painful for me to echo Geoffrey Britain, already disabused by Neo. But Rs who were the Country Club set in Colorado and lose readily, who are the Old Big Business and US Chamber of Commerce establishment folks like Romney or McConnell, of McCainiacs of duopoly mindset “moderates” in AZ, these folks are everywhere.
And denying this fact does not alter the Truth that they cannot be scared or reformed into virtuous fighting against the Evil Left. Not to add the stupid Christian pacifists, forever turning their crimson cheeks and never demanding their righteous Tons Of Flesh!
Let the Evil traitors within be purged by Every Means Necessary — or go home and cower forever.
The problem is that once they win they never ever ever give it up. cf: Colorado. I continually hear the same thing… (involved in the GOP in a VERY blue county) but when I explain that to change the laws you need a GOP legislature, it’s like they don’t hear it. Your right, and then they don’t vote because we don’t have candidates for county positions. But they CAN sway a state election (but don’t because they don’t vote, get involved and donate.) Look, the voter suppression of republican in democratic held counties is unrelenting in small consistent ways. Heck, they even get GOPers to pile on ( “Oh your one of the three GOPers from that blue county, giggle giggle) while they then infight in their own strong red counties so they can lose too. Peanuts “ARGHHHH” scream here
The problem is that once they win they never ever ever give it up.
Electoral process has seen corruption and improvement the world over for generations, in this country as well as others. Eeyores are unproductive bores.
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