The Crime of Voter Fraud

The Crime of Voter Fraud

We are entitled to our opinion, as the old cliché goes, but conventional standards of honesty dictate that our opinion should be backed by fact and by evidence. Otherwise hearsay, conspiracy speculation, half-truths extracted from isolated statistics, meaningless factoids and outright lies become the order of the day. Honesty calls for the correction of misinformation and the exposure of lies. Otherwise falsehoods, especially when hatched by interested parties, might threaten the social order and often contribute to a dangerous atmosphere of bigotry and hate.

Such a self-serving lie, one that serves the dual purpose of galvanizing supporters and stoking hatreds against opponents, is promulgated by Democrats who claim that Republicans conspire to disenfranchise black voters. This big lie demonizes and scapegoats Republicans by re-enforcing the false stereotype that they have something against black men and women. The perpetrators of this fraud could care less about fanning the flames of racial division with such a lie as, indeed, this is exactly their intention. They charge racial conspiracy in order to emotionally energize black voters, many of whom appear to be losing interest in their leftist policies and agenda.

This self-serving lie allows the Democrats to turn the tables on reforms being implemented by various states, both liberal and conservative, to reduce voter fraud. Such efforts include a reasonable means to provide registered voters with free ID and the culling from voter rolls of voters who have either died or moved out of state. These attempts to preserve the integrity of one man one vote are opposed by those who engage in voter fraud. The fraudsters change the subject by intoning racist insults against black people by absurdly suggesting that they are not capable of obtaining free voter ID at the voting booth.

Is voter fraud a real problem? The liberal Washington Post, in an Oct. 24, 2014 article entitled: Could non-citizens decide the November Election? found that 6.4% of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2% in 2010. The article speculates that non-citizens in Minnesota may have elected Al Franken, who won his election by only 312 votes, and that non-citizens may have carried North Carolina for Obama in 2008. The Post estimates that 80% of the non-citizen vote went to Democrats. During this election cycle, reports have been verified that in Illinois and Maryland voting machines have been calibrated to vote Democratic. Absentee ballots and voting my mail, which is now done exclusively in Washington State and Colorado, presents obvious opportunities for fraud. There is no way of determining who sent in the ballot and this is exacerbated by millions of ballots mailed to outdated voter lists. Problems also exist around College students voting in their home state by absentee ballot and in the state where they are attending College.

From the time of the American Revolution until the present, hundreds of thousands of American men and women in uniform have sacrificed their lives in order to uphold the principle of one man one vote. The Civil War ended the sweltering oppression of chattel slavery and established the right of blacks to vote. The Civil Rights Acts further insured the integrity of the black vote. Women suffragists struggled to achieve the vote for women. These great advances in terms of enfranchising more Americans are now threatened by those who would deliberately conspire to dilute those sacred votes with self-serving acts of fraud.

By compromising the integrity of the vote they engage not only in a war against women and a racist attack on the integrity of the black vote but they are at war with the most basic institution of American democracy. They are compromising the right of the citizen to have their vote counted in an honest election by which the vote of the citizen is the purest and most basic expression of self-government.  

Ethnography: The New Hampshire Primary - 2020

Ethnography: 

The New Hampshire Primary - 2020

          The New Hampshire Presidential Primary was held on Tuesday, Feb. 11^th 2020 and I traveled to Manchester, NH, on February 9^th and 10^th. I previously observed New Hampshire Primaries in Manchester in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Manchester is the largest city in the state and is where the national media and most of the campaigns are headquartered. Manchester, in the days leading up to the primary, provides an inexact and informal glimpse into presidential candidates and national political trends.

           I visited the Manchester campaign offices of Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttagieg, Andrew Yang and Elizabeth Warren and I hung out at the Doubletree Hotel which serves as an informal headquarters for the national and Boston media. I drove Uber passengers on both days and in that capacity I spoke with local Manchester citizens, most of whom seemed oblivious to the political goings on in their city, and media figures who offered me a great deal of inside information. I drove the nephew of candidate Tom Stryer, who was serving as his campaign coordinator. My conversation with him revealed strategies and memes that Democrats will likely employ against President Trump in the general election.

          The Bernie Sanders office staff was serious and determined, quiet and focused. The atmosphere in his office was one of confidence and calm. One of the volunteers described to me in detail their ground game strategy and how they were canvassing door to door. Sanders positions are clear and are well known. Sanders people were hard at work and I sensed that they were going to win, although, the office generally lacked the energy and enthusiasm of 2016, the year Sanders achieved a major New Hampshire victory even though all the delegates went to Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the Sanders campaign, having been previously ripped off by the Democratic Party, was a bit cynical, perhaps a bit wary and jaded.

          The Elizabeth Warren office was spare and looked threadbare and the few volunteers who were there and who were tugging in seemed demoralized and depressed. The general attitude among Democrats I spoke with in other campaign offices and on the street was that Warren is despised and, to toss in a bot of editorial commentary, for good reason. In all my years of coming to New Hampshire primaries, My opinion: I have never witnessed a more disreputable presidential candidate and a phonier person running for President than Elizabeth Warren.

         The Pete Buttagieg staff seemed motivated but confused in terms of how to answer questions about his positions. I didn’t get much of a sense of who Buttagieg is or why I should support him. On the wall of the Buttigieg office was photos of Buttagieg, his boyfriend or husband, and, presumably, two of their dogs. I got the same sense from Buttagieg that I got from Barack Obama when I visited Manchester during the primary in 2008. He looks good, he sounds intelligent, he came out of nowhere and he says little of substance but he does so with elegance and a phony intellectual accent. Like Obama, Buttegieg has a nice smile. This worked for Obama but I’m not sure this same trick will work for Buttagieg, at least I hope not. Like Obama, Buttegieg poses as a moderate and garners conservative cross-over support. Buttagieg, however, lacks Obama’s chrisma and cult following, at least outside the gay community, and I don’t sense that even they are all that enthusiastic about him.

          Andrew Yang had strong and even passionate support both from his office staff and from people walking in off the street. Yang appears to be not as vague or as slippery as Buttagieg and, I suspect, a lot of his supporters will end up supporting President Trump after he drops out. For the same reason that Buttagieg had high numbers of gay people in his office, Yang had a good number of Asians in his. Democratic candidates, and their electorate, often promote and exploit identity politics which is a problem for Biden and an even bigger problem for the faux Native American Warren. Joe Biden and is followers were virtually invisible and he was never mentioned. I saw one bumper sticker and that is all. I witnessed Amy Klobacher get on her bus of green festooned with as giant AMY.

          The real rock star of the New Hampshire primary this year, by any objective estimation, and the candidate who captured the lions share of the energy, was undoubtedly President Trump who held a rally at the SNHU Center on the Monday before the Tuesday vote. While I didn’t attend the rally itself, I observed the goings on outside and at the Doubletree Hotel which was the media center nearby. Trump supporters were out in force, both at the rally and on the street both days that I was there with their handmade signs and their carts of merchandise. They possessed an air of subversive excitement. To quote the King in the Pogo Comic: The peasants are revolting! 

          In the lead-up to the Trump rally, streets were closed and people were streaming in like they were going to Woodstock. The atmosphere was festive and stood in stark contrast to the scowling media figures prowling around at the virtually empty Doubletree. A few straggling anti-Trumpers stood on the periphery of the rally holding vulgar and obscene signs while the liberal media doyens inside the empty hotel muttered obscenities as they sipped their Chablis and drowned their sorrows by gorging themselves in Fois Gras and other indescribable food popular with liberal types.  

          My general impression of the Trump supporters was that they can be a bit rough around the edges, unfashionable according to liberal standards, but they are genuinely sincere and well-meaning working people. My impression is that the mainstream liberal media falsely portrays the Trump supporters, and President Trump himself as somehow hateful. I saw no evidence of this.