An arrest in Florida indicates possible election fraud
The Democrats and the media are fond of saying that election fraud barely exists and that we needn’t bother our pretty little heads about it. And yet the assertion has always seemed illogical to me on its face. The stakes in elections are high and therefore the motives to cheat are very great. One way to reassure people that it’s not happening is to make the safeguards against it so stringent that it is extremely difficult (nearly impossible?) to pull off. Instead, we’ve loosened the rules (mail-in ballots sent to all names on voter rolls that are bloated with errors; ballot harvesting; complex electronic voting systems that people inherently distrust; lack of checking for citizenship) and made it forbidden to question results unless you’re a losing Democrat challenging a GOP win.
And then there’s the fact that if fraud is done well it would be undetectable.
The above is an introduction to the following story:
A Palm Beach elections office volunteer just got arrested for STEALING an encrypted access key and computer equipment in the March 24 special election where the Democrat won by 800 votes.
This is the district the includes Mar-a-Lago.
Investigators worry that the encryption — used for training — could be reverse engineered and used to tamper with voter registration
The theft was reported on March 27, a few days after last Tuesday’s special election, per WPTV. The theft occurred on March 19, just days before election day.
Democrats are saying any concern over this is hype, because there’s no evidence that it was used in the election or affected the election in any way. But although it is certainly possible the theft had no bearing on the election, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The guy is apparently a self-described “huge tech nerd.” So perhaps he had the ability to do something with the key that would affect the actual election. He was supposedly detected because the theft was serendipitously caught on surveillance video.
Nor have the “move along, nothing to see here” crowd explained (or as far as I can see, even attempted to explain), his alternate motive for stealing the key at this point in time. Did he want to add it to his wife’s jewelry collection?
Libertarians will say that the problem is that the government is so large and spends so much money that the solution is to shrink government down drastically. Then there would be less money at stake and the incentives to cheat would be less.
That’s fine. In theory. But we don’t live in a theoretical world. By the way, the same libertarians also insist that the problem of 3rd world immigration would go away if we just got rid of the welfare state. But that’s not going away anytime within the lifetime of anyone reading this blog.
So what do we do? I think the penalties for election fraud are probably too lenient. Depending on the severity of the offense and whether or not the accused is a repeat offender, then punishment up to and including what was handed out to Bernie Madoff seems appropriate to me. And along with stiffening up the penalties for election fraud it probably would not hurt to do the same for public corruption involving stuff like insider trading by members of Congress. Tell me with a straight face that the Pelosi family fortune was acquired 100% open, above board, and in compliance with all ethical and legal boundaries.
The claim that ‘there’s nothing to see here folks, move along now’ is a direct indication that there is a lot to see and that the side saying it is full of it. Which begs the question; is not organized voter fraud… treason?
Libertarians will say that the problem is that the government is so large and spends so much money that the solution is to shrink government down drastically. Then there would be less money at stake and the incentives to cheat would be less.
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There’s masses of chicken sh*t you could haul away, but the chicken sh*t is a modest share of total public expenditure. You’re not going to ‘radically shrink down government’ without being derelict with regard to supplying the military and the police, without defaulting on debt service, and without generating a social crisis in re to income for the elderly and disabled, and in re financing medical care, ltc, and schooling.
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We need better elections administration. Babbling about other policy initiatives in lieu of repairing defects in elections administration is stupid.
The Left thinks they have control. The ” all of the sudden” will be a shock.
Appeal, have a do over, and protect the voting. Will it happen? No, not even in FL.
Which reminds me that Demo election hanky-panky in Florida changed me from a Third Party (none of the above) voter to a yellow dog Republican. I refer to the 2000 election. Demos told us that the high number of disqualified voter ballots in Broward County were because voters got confused, and the disqualified ballots should be counted as votes for Democrat candidates.
The problem I had with that assertion is that Democrats controlled Broward County, which meant that Democrats designed the ballots. Which meant that Democrats were responsible for the confusing ballot design.
Those ballots should have been tested by sample groups before being released for use in the election. That shortcoming in ballot design was the responsibility of the Democrats.
It seems it’s easier now to pinpoint what isn’t corrupt rather than what is, which appears to be most everything.
@ Gringo ” The problem I had with that assertion is that Democrats controlled Broward County, which meant that Democrats designed the ballots. Which meant that Democrats were responsible for the confusing ballot design.
Those ballots should have been tested by sample groups before being released for use in the election. That shortcoming in ballot design was the responsibility of the Democrats.”
In all the reporting about the error-prone ballot system (the hanging chads IIRC), I never saw anyone make that connection, which leads to the obvious inference: the confusing design was on purpose.
Maybe that was an early tryout for other vote tampering ideas?
Losing the election after all must have added to the Democrats’ natural distaste for Bush II and the Republicans, and increased their search for other means.
However, Dubya’s actions since 2016 show that they really do object to anyone in government deviating from their preferences by a single iota (as Senator Fetterman explained recently), because since then he has revealed himself as just one of the club.
And we’re not in it.
Posted by Barry a few days ago:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/john-fetterman-reveals-whos-really-leader-his-party