Election mechanics in a post-COVID world
Some thoughts to ponder, although this only applies to certain states (I’ve cued it up for just a few minutes that I want to call your attention to):
Victor Davis Hanson also has thoughts on the election. As usual with Hanson, they are worth reading. I can’t say I disagree much with any of them. An excerpt:
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, American elections radically changed to mail-in and early voting. They did so in a wild variety of state-by-state ways. Add ranked voting and a required majority margin to the mess and the result is that once cherished Election Day balloting becomes increasingly irrelevant.
Election Night also no longer exists. Returns are not counted for days. It is intolerable for a modern democracy to wait and wait for all sorts of different ballots both cast and counted under radically different and sometimes dubious conditions.
The Democrats – with overwhelming media and money advantages – have mastered these arts of massive and unprecedented early, mail-in, and absentee voting. Old-fashioned Republicans count on riling up their voters to show up on Election Day. But it is far easier to finesse and control the mail-in ballots than to “get out the vote.”
To summarize the messages from D’Souza and Hanson: the right must pay far more attention to the changed mechanics and landscape of elections, because at least for the moment they are realities, especially in potential swing states. And they deeply affect the outcome.
In addition, I’m going to link to a blogger I don’t usually link to: Sundance at Conservative Treehouse. That’s because I believe that this article, in which he points out the differences in strategy and tactics between an election campaign focused on votes (the right) and one focused on ballots (the left), is spot on. We’re living in a post-COVID ballot-world, and we must adjust in order to do better.
I believe that this is the most important thing to learn from the elections of 2022.
NOTE: Yes, it would be very very nice to tighten up the voting rules in the states that need tightening. But most of these states are not under the control of the right. Unless and until they are, it is important to learn how to operate successfully under the present rules.
The Dems have successfully cheated for years. See, e.g., Al Franken’s first win. And they cheated on a massive scale in 2020.
It was political malpractice by the RNC not to fix this after 2020. And Trump should have been on the case during covid. It must be JOB ONE before the next election.
We look like fools. No results in AZ and NV? Absurd.
Jesse Waters on Fox News discussed the vote/ballot distinction last night.
Something MUST be done.
Good post neo. I recall just prior to the election commenters saying Republicans voting early are allowing the cheat and other various things to suggest the only purist thing to do was vote Election Day. Over at AoS, alias Buck Throckmorton noted how this played at in Harris County, TX. Democrats will just cheat with not enough ballots to vote with on Election Day. Or in Maricopa, AZ; not enough voting machines working on Election Day.
I do think voting by mail is foolish, because we’ve seen the video of postal workers just dumping the ballots from heavy conservative districts. Otherwise, why limit GOP voting when the Democrats are running the field on the options available. You can rant about removing the options, but you cannot do it when your party is out office and doesn’t get to make the rules. Take them to court? Well, Republicans did in Harris County, and the conservative Texas Supreme Court (rightly I think) ruled not to give Harris County more time to vote to make up for the delays caused by lack of ballots.
Fight with what you have, not with what you think should be used because it is a fair fight. The other side doesn’t care how it looks. They only care about who shows up to be sworn into office. When you defeat them; then you can set the rules.
I read the Conservative Treehouse article and I was thinking of commenting on it but you beat me to it. I agree that Republicans are way behind in adjusting to the new world of voting and I think this, more than any other reason, is why the midterm results were so disappointing despite having an overall Republican turnout advantage.
The RNC is close to useless in directing resources to where they need to go and implementing an effective strategy to deliver ballots. My daughter witnessed this first hand working for the Parrot campaign in Maryland’s 6th district, which unfortunately despite being close, is on the verge of being lost. The district boundaries in Maryland were recently redrawn making Maryland 6 a very winnable race for Republicans and yet the Parrot campaign depended on a handful of volunteers with no political experience. They were outspent and overmatched and yet still came within a few batches of suddenly discovered mail-in ballots to winning.
I’m actually a little surprised Republicans did as well as they did given the incompetence of their leadership.
meanwhile they dropped the charges against konnech’s eugene yu, after they put engelbrecht and phillips in jail to try to extract the name of the whistleblower in jail,
The ballot vs voter emphasis leverages the very large proportion of uninformed ‘potential voters’ – i.e. people who wouldn’t vote if they had to make much effort. Younger people and women tend to dominate this population and are easy pickings for the Democrats. They’re far less likely to be competent voters and more likely to believe what they’re told by partisan media sources.
I’ve lost count of how many college educated women I’ve spoken to who believe that abortion is no longer legal – and resent being corrected. They seem to relish the belief, in an almost masochistic way.
its rather sad, how they visit misery upon themselves, the cohort who are hooked on lethe, (pot) are equally misdirected,
I’m having a hard time understanding WHAT we need to do. In this election cycle, the RNC was very active in going to court before the election to stop illegal stunts by Dem-controlled cities, counties, and states. In NC, with a fairly secure system, I got lots of emails and phone calls urging Rs to vote early.
How are Rs supposed to operate in states which allow mass ballot mailings? Any state where Rs control should be instituting Florida-like systems ASAP. If they win in Arizona, their first step should be to pass legislation outlawing anything other than paper ballots and optical scanners which are not internet-connected.
All good stuff, but my complaint is one of emphasis. The Conservative Treehouse speaks of “ballot collection” and “ballot centric processes,” and then says that the result of this does not accurately reflect the old system where voters vote.
So it’s fraud. It’s certainly not democracy. It’s also not shenanigans or a harvesting process or any other tame descriptor. If Republicans and conservatives don’t get out in the media and shout “criminal” and “fraud” and “the end of democracy” things will just get worse.
“…the following 11 states have no laws on the books regarding “who can return an absentee or mail ballot on behalf of a voter” or “other restrictions on collecting absentee or mail ballots”: Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Many of the 26 states that allow third-parties to collect and deliver absentee ballots appear to have limited oversight or laws to prevent ballot harvesting.”
It looks like ballots are the name of the game. In Washington state the limitation is any person can return a ballot, as long as they’ve not been paid to do so.
Voter turnout in 2022 was 72%. Since every voter is mailed a ballot, that’s a lot of ballots out there. We need to be harvesting those ballots at every opportunity.
It would only take one election cycle for the Democrats to be on board for better election protections.
And yet, Brian E, from that list, Idaho, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming reliably vote conservative/R. Perhaps they’d better pass restrictions before Ds start gaining in their states.
The local news here in New Jersey just reported that “lost” ballots have been found!
Some how or other those in charge lost or misplaced thousand of votes in Mercer county. Today, they reported that they found them.
Just where have the ballots been? The news didn’t report that detail, nor did they name the people who misplaced them, the people who found them, etc.
While the number might or might not have any impact on the overall election it still brings into question how valid is the vote count? If I was in that county I would be pissed – as in was it MY vote that was misplaced? Was MY vote counted?
Years ago, I knew people who worked as poll workers and they told me that they had a police escort to take the voting machines from their town to the county seat. There was a “chain of custody” that had to be accounted for. Today that seems to no longer be the case.
The abortion issue is a strawman, but the Dems used it effectively here in WA. Patty Murray’s most effective ad was probably the one where she stated that it was wrong for the government to stand between a woman and her reproductive health care. To a low info voter, that sounds very reasonable and right. (Never mind that the government stood between doctors and patients in mandating an experimental vaccine.)
The Democrats used abortion and Januiary6th to appeal to the under 35 voters. Student loan forgiveness’ (even though it’s probably not legal) was also attractive to the under 35 voters.
Turns out that turnout in this age group appears to have been higher than usual.
“Turnout in battleground states was even higher for this key demographic, at around 31 percent.
In previous midterm elections, young voter turnout hovered around 20 percent.
Data show young voters tend to support democratic candidates.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/researchers-say-2022-election-had-second-highest-young-voter-turnout-in-last-30-years/ar-AA1400lD
This could be one factor in why the “Red Wave” didn’t appear.
Kate:
The D’Souzas made some specific suggestions in the video. They’re not cure-alls, but they might help.
Here’s an assessment of Gov. Kemp’s GOTV apparatus in Georgia, which ran separately from the Republican party because of its alleged favoritism for Perdue in the primary. The organization is now being put at the disposal of the campaign to get Walker over the line in the runoff.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/11/11/theres-a-new-partnership-in-the-fight-for-the-senate-n1645027
Republicans all over the country should be looking closely at the Kemp and DeSantis operations to see how it’s done.
JJ, how many of those are make believe voters that don’t really exist?
@ Gregory > “I’m actually a little surprised Republicans did as well as they did given the incompetence of their leadership.”
Well – fools, or knaves?
Two items to consider. (in separate comments)
The first is a long, involved story, with lots of insider details, so I will skip to the bottom line.
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/09/13/ive-been-condemned-by-the-scgop-why-does-it-matter-to-you/
Number 2: Direct eye-witness report. Adds some details to the now-common boiler-plate news articles.
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/11/10/maricopa-county-election-judge-speaks-out/
Nothing Trump did or didn’t do affected what happened here or in the previous story.
Whomever dedicates him or herself to prosecuting Democrat electoral fraud in the previous and upcoming elections has my vote. Democrats must be stopped before they completely destroy our elections. Nothing else matters.
Chases Eagles: “JJ, how many of those are make believe voters that don’t really exist?”
The sixty-four-dollar question. Here in WA, I believe the California model is now operative. IMO, the Dems harvest ballots in the usual places – low-income areas, nursing homes, obituaries, colleges, government offices, teachers’ unions, etc. The GOP can win only on the eastside of the mountains, but Joe Kent lost over there this time.
The issues don’t seem to matter. How the elections are run seem to matter the moist difference.
Unless we get rid of this system, WA is now, and will remain, a one-party state
From my perspective in rural Pennsylvanian, I observe the following. Our idiot republican-dominated legislature twice amended our Voting Law; once to allow extended voting period and no-excuse mail-in ballots and the other time to eliminate straight party voting. The former was allegedly to accommodate Covid lock-downs and the latter was simply their too-clever-by-half way of allowing republicans to vote for down-ticket candidates without also voting for Trump (although never admitted to be the reason). This allowed democrat machines in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh to cheat and resulted in the 2020 electoral steal and the more recent fiasco, whereby we got Shapiro as governor and Fetterman as Senator. My original position was that these legislative changes should be reversed and a return to one day voting, in person, with adequate ID should be the goal. That has now been eliminated as a possibility,, so it is clear that the republicans must, if they wish to assume majority status again, adopt democrat methods and means by targeting voters, giving them the widest possible latitude in voting and essentially playing the democrats’ game until control can be retaken. I am not sure that is possible, however, given the utter idiocy of the 18-39 voting cohort, which overwhelmingly went democrat. Clearly, these spoiled children of privilege do not know what is best for them; it is the tiktok voting cohort, which goes along with the urgings of their idiot “influencers.” Since we know beyond any doubt that tiktok is a Chinese propaganda scheme, it should be banned immediately, although I am sure another similar malignity will spring up to replace it. I have deluged my state and local representatives with emails providing them with incentives to start playing the game smarter, but I fear that the republican party here is dominated by Mitch McConnell types whose only goal is to retain their sinecure with all its perks. At most they might pay lip service to some reforms, but they have no interest in actually reforming anything. They prefer to be the leaders of the losers rather than chancing their positions.
That description of what happened in Maricopa County is vote fraud, plain and simple.
Debbie D’Souza said if voting is concentrated on one day and there are problems you may not be able to get to vote; true enough, but if everyone has to vote on that one day whatever problems occur affect all parties equally. That is also the incentive for those supervising elections to do their jobs correctly; can anyone name an Elections Supervisor who has been fired for incompetence or “voting irregularities”? That job seems to be a quite comfortable, and very secure, sinecure.
Is voting a responsibility or a convenience? Republicans, I sense, view it as a “responsibility,” Democrats view it as a “tool,” something that can be wielded to gain what they want. To that end, they have learned, quite well, how to use that “tool,” beginning with debasing the process of “voting” by emphasizing “convenience” over “responsibility.”
Republicans are, as usual, way behind the curve in Learning How Things Actually Work.
Way back when, voting was established to occur on one day, both as an organizational requirement – there was no reliable mechanism in place to deliver ballots in a timely manner – and to perform as a “marker in time.” Voters had to travel, on foot, by horseback, by carriage, to the polling place and arrange to be there on the day of voting. It was not uncommon for voters to arrange their schedules around voting day, sometimes arriving early and staying overnight so as to be at the polling place on voting day.
The “vote versus ballots” discussion is prescient; Republicans and Conservatives view “voting” as a definitive act; Democrats and Liberals view “ballots” as a process. It’s obvious Democrats are much, much better at “ballots” than Republicans are at “voting.”
There is, in my mind, certainly a need for change: First, “voting” must be a definitive act, not a “process;” Second, 12 hours may not be enough, it should, at the very least, be conducted over a 24-hour period, and perhaps 48 contiguous hours is justified; Third, absolutely airtight record keeping must be the standard, even if it requires voters to re-register every 4 years; Fourth, any and all electronics beyond the tallying of paper ballots must be banished from any association with voting – a verificable and permanent record must be created by the voter at the moment of voting to allow for review (this may require separating “voting” activities, i.e., having one paper ballot for persons competing for offices and a separate ballot for “all the other measures.” Can scanners be manipulated? Certainly, because they use software, and the defense against that is pulling random samples to confirm that the vote total corresponds with the statistical valid analysis of the samples. Perfect? No; better than what we’re doing now? Absolutely).
If Republicans cannot return voting to an “event” but instead allow it to continue as a “process” they might as well turn off the lights at the RNC and go home – the Democrats will never allow them to win another “election.”
Actually, we have early voting in NC, and no-excuses absentee ballots by mail. But there are controls. Even though the Dems have so far managed to prevent voter ID, when appearing in person at early voting, one has to state complete name and address. Our ballots and tabulators are voter-controlled, reliable, and auditable. To get a ballot by mail, a registered voter must send an application by mail, and that application has to contain the last four digits of either the drivers’ license or SS #. Without that, no ballot can be mailed.
Reliable paper ballots marked by voters by hand and tabulators seem to be key. Any ballot-marking device which either counts votes or produces a ballot with a bar code for counting should be outlawed. Our tabulators are simply optical scanners, scanning the marks that voters made.
Another problem is that all of these new voting techniques call the secrecy of the ballot into question.
With the business world so around-the-bend woke, I suspect that there are a lot of closeted conservative voters who would not be thrilled if their employers or customers knew how they vote. Voting by mail or drop box increases the number of potential SJW bureaucrats who could could find out how a person votes and leak that information. This isn’t an unreasonble fear. From lone wolfs (Reality Winner) to the highest-level officials (Kamala Harris and the IRS) leaking confidential government information is a go-to tactic for the left.
As destructive as they new voting novelties are, I agree that D’Souza is right and I agree that the right needs to figure out how to play them as the left does. Maintaining the secrecy of the ballot is going to be a big issue, though.
On the Treehouse’s comment about ballots vs. votes: Look at how Trump has approached elections since he first announced in 2015. He runs terrific rallies and energizes voters. He won doing this in 2016 in great part because the Dems never thought he could possibly win. In 2018, 2020, and now 2022, the Dems fired up their vote fraud schemes and effectively countered voter enthusiasm. Based on how he operates, Trump is the last guy we should expect to overcome the fraud machine in 2024. I regret that this is so.
Kate – You may recall that the Romney team was very optimistic about their chances in 2012 because of the energy at their rallies in October of that year.
It may just be that voter enthusiasm doesn’t matter as much when significant numbers of people vote early or by mail. We’re not excited about paying bills that come in the mail, but we do it. I wonder if people approach mail-in voting the same way.
I think there’s an argument that Trump’s style is uniquely ill-suited to this environment. Suppose there’s a group of voters who don’t love Democrats, but find Trump off-putting. Before the new voting novelties, they probably just stayed home. Now a ballot shows up in their mailboxes (or they receive 10 texts a day from a Democrat-controlled PAC telling them to request a ballot until they finally do). Now when the ballot arrives, they see Trump or a Trumpy candidate and some Democrat that they don’t know as much about. (Remember that Democrats have been peppering the airwaves with ads tying the Republican to Trump since before the primaries.) I suspect that there are a lot of folks like this and that most of them fill out the ballot for the Democrat and mail it in.
FWIW – I think that scenario is a much more plausible explanation of 2020 and 2022 than massive out-and-out fraud.
Yep, our concerned conservative™ has the answer, OMB. All those voting day “glitches,” drop boxes, ballot harvesters, Zuckerbucks, or even to go back into the olden days, hanging chad’s, aren’t a sign of election fraud. Nope, nothing to see but orange. Nothing goes with orange.
om – Sometimes I think you would rather lose and complain about than win.
Yes, there is fraud in many states. We’ve got to WIN there to put a stop to it.
Michael “Ozzie” Myers, the disgraced former Philadelphia Congressman was indicted and convicted recently for years of voter fraud. Usually in lesser, down ballot races. More votes were recorded than voters had physically been at the polling place. Mail-in voting makes that kind of easy detection impossible.
Both parties believe that they represent the Will of the People. Democrats believe that they speak for large numbers of people who don’t actually vote. Getting the ballots of nonvoters to the vote counters is “fortifying” democracy and “rectifying” the results. For Democrats, it’s giving the silent sufferers a voice in how the country is run and, consciously or unconsciously, they more or less approve of their party stuffing the ballot boxes. When we heard that elections were not about winning over swing voters but about “bringing out the base” maybe we should have expected all this.