RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/ballot-harvesting-ban-case-hits-supreme-court-daniel-greenfield/

Where are we on voter integrity?

Anyone expecting the Supreme Court to affirmatively protect voter integrity was kidding themselves. We’re far enough behind the ball that we’re hoping that the Supreme Court protects the rights of states to ban grotesque violations like ballot harvesting. 

It’s easy to spit and dismiss that out of hand, but if you want to imagine the political system being a whole lot closer to doomsday, preventing states from stopping ballot harvesting would do it. But there are also bigger stakes in the mix in Brnovich v. DNC.

A major reason why little could be done about the 2020 election is that the Voting Rights Act rigged the system. The Democrats are free to argue that any interference with their electorate is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Republicans can’t make that argument because political affiliation isn’t protected. That’s also why conservatives can be fired from their jobs for their political views, meanwhile other classes are protected by the legal system.

The Voting Rights Act is the nuclear weapon of Democrat election rigging. And the conservative judiciary has been chipping away at its abuses.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/making-every-election-like-2020-11614641809?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

If you thought the 2020 election ran like a finely oiled machine, you’ll love what Democrats plan next. The Senate and House reserved their first bills, H.R.1 and S.1, for voting changes that would make mail balloting in a plague year seem buttoned up. We’ve gone through some details already, but it’s worth another word as the House prepares to vote this week.

Advocates present the legislation as a good-government reform that won’t favor either party. But H.R.1 is packed with provisions that would federalize election rules to dubious result; unsettle longstanding practices; end security measures that local officials think prudent; undermine public confidence; and increase the odds of contested outcomes.

Start with permanent pandemic rules. H.R.1 would create a federal right to a mail ballot, no excuse necessary. Registered voters couldn’t be made to submit “any form of identification as a condition of obtaining an absentee ballot,” except a signature or “affirmation.” State laws requiring mail votes to be notarized or signed by witnesses would be trumped. Late-arriving ballots, if postmarked on time, would be valid nationwide for 10 days after Election Day.

In other words, the bill would entrench last year’s emergency experiment, further turning Election Day into Election Quarter. H.R.1 would give Americans endless opportunities to relive the fun in New York’s 22nd Congressional District, which didn’t have a victor for 97 days. Out of Pennsylvania’s 10,097 late-arriving ballots last year, an alarming 6.6% did not have legible postmarks. A state Senate seat outside Pittsburgh turned on whether or not to count mail ballots that voters neglected to date. One county tallied them. The county next door did not. What if the White House were in the balance?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/23/why-do-the-elections-defenders-require-my-agreement/

Recently, I appeared as a guest on Andrew Sullivan’s podcast. Sullivan is vociferously anti-Trump, so I expected us to disagree—which, naturally, we did. But I was surprised by the extent to which he insisted I assent to his assertion that the 2020 election was totally on the level. That is to say, I wasn’t surprised that Sullivan thinks it was; I was surprised by his evident yearning to hear me say so, too. 

Which I could not do. 

Sullivan badgered me on this at length before finally accusing me of being fixated on the topic, to which I responded, truthfully, that I was only talking about it because he asked. As far as I’m concerned, the 2020 election is well and truly over. I have, I said, “moved on.” 

So I thought. Then I received two emails from a friendly acquaintance who is a recognized Republican expert on elections that suggested he, too, is troubled by my lack of belief. Then came two other data points, which I noticed only after the first draft this essay had been completed. Ramesh Ponnuru snarked (snark seems to be the go-to, indeed the only, device his in literary quiver) that one of the anomalies I cited in my most recent article in the Claremont Review of Books had been “debunked” by the partisan left-wing FactCheck.org. While I appreciate the insight into the sources from which National Review editors get their “facts” these days, the quote provided admits that the statistic I cited is, well, accurate. Ponurru naturally ignores all of the other points raised in my earlier article.

Jonathan Chait wrote yet another (his 12th?) article denouncing me, for this same sin of disbelief. Why did he bother? Is there even a remote chance that a single one of his New York magazine readers either read my article or encountered its argument? Or is he worried that the “narrative” of the election is so fragile that it needs to be shored up?

I wanted to move on, I really did. But when Left (Chait), center (Sullivan), faux-right anti-conservative ankle-biter (Ponnuru), and genuine, if establishment, Right (my correspondent) all agree that my lack of belief is a problem, I wondered why this should be so, and the following observations came to mind. 

Let me begin by repeating something I said to Sullivan: I do not actively disbelieve in the outcome of the 2020 election. I do not assert that the election was stolen. I also do not believe the election was totally fair, “belief” being an affirmative mental state. I say only that I don’t know; I haven’t been convinced either way. One side tried to convince me and failed (at least so far). The other side has made no such attempt but instead mostly shouts in my face that I must believe. The latter effort, in addition to being aggravating and insulting, has been less effective. 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/arizona-senate-passes-bill-strengthening-its-investigative-powers-amid-maricopa-county-vote-audit-dispute_3703145.html

The Arizona Senate passed a bill Thursday that would grant the Arizona legislature the authority to subpoena election records like ballots and tabulating equipment, and ignore any laws to the contrary.

The Senate passed Senate Bill 1408 on its third reading in the state’s upper chamber along a 16–14 party-line vote, with Republicans voting for and Democrats voting against.

The bill amends a portion of the Arizona statutes such that county election equipment, systems and records, and other information that is under the control of county personnel “may not be deemed privileged information, confidential information, or other information protected from disclosure.” It also subjects such records to a subpoena and stipulates that they “must be produced” and the legislature’s authority to conduct related probes “may not be infringed by any other law.”

The rule change is to be retroactive as of Dec. 31, 2019, meaning it would apply to records around the November election.

State Sen. Warren Petersen, a Republican, introduced the bill amid a battle between Republican Senate leaders and Maricopa County officials over the attempt by GOP senators to audit the 2020 election.

Republican lawmakers in the Arizona Senate have issued subpoenas to Maricopa County demanding that it turn over a range of election records, calling for a scanned ballot audit and a forensic audit of ballot tabulation equipment and software. But the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted against complying with the subpoenas, instead seeking judgment from a court about whether they have to comply. Arizona senators filed a countersuit, asking the court to enforce the subpoenas, which was subsequently dismissed.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/anti-trump-election-conspiracy-goes-public-matthew-vadum/

A “conspiracy” between “left-wing activists and business titans” led to “an extraordinary shadow effort” to “protect” the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, according to Time magazine.

Never mind that Trump is the least authoritarian American president in probably a century and the most transparent American president ever – writer Molly Ball claims in an article titled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” that a huge effort was undertaken “fortifying,” but not “rigging” the election.

The American system of government hardly needed to be protected from Trump, who, throughout his four years in office gave away his presidential pay and barely had control over the federal Leviathan, filled as it is with disloyal left-wingers and careerist Democrats.

The same cannot be said of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who view the government as a massive gravy train and a means of imposing one-party rule on the country and cleansing it of undesirables like conservatives and other patriots. Biden and Harris were fine with the deadly race riots that swept the country after drug-addicted career criminal George Floyd inconveniently died in police custody.

The shadow campaign, which was like a huge ACORN-style operation on steroids, “drew energy” from the Black Lives Matter-Antifa riots, which Ball describes as mere “racial-justice protests.” The effort eventually “reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy,” she writes, assuming her readers agree with her baseless assertion that Trump attacked democracy.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17031/hr1-chaotic-elections

H.R.1 packs into one 791-page bill every bad idea about how to run elections and mandates that the states must adopt the very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess. It includes all of the greatest hits of 2020: Mandatory mail ballots, ballots without postmarks, late ballots, voting in precincts where you do not live…. The Senate companion bill, S.1, might be even worse.

In 2020, states such as Nevada and New Jersey sent ballots through the mail to anyone on their registration lists despite having voter rolls full of errors. The Public Interest Legal Foundation documented thousands of ineligible registrations in Nevada alone that received mail ballots. Some were sent to vacant lots, abandoned mines, casinos and even liquor stores.

States also would be blocked by H.R.1 from signature verification procedures.

H.R.1 rigs the system for any lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the law. All lawsuits can only be filed in one court — federal court in the District of Columbia. And all opposition must be consolidated into one brief with only one attorney being able to argue the merits.

There is a federal mandate, passed in the 19th Century, to have one single election day…. Like Obamacare earlier, H.R.1 transitions our federalist Republic to some other brave new system that purports to right generations of structural wrongs, while at the same time entrenching other wrongs.

H.R.1 packs into one 791-page bill every bad idea about how to run elections and mandates that the states must adopt — the very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess. It includes all of the greatest hits of 2020: Mandatory mail ballots, ballots without postmarks, late ballots and voting in precincts where you don’t live. It includes so many bad ideas that no publication has satisfactory space to cover all of them. The Senate companion bill, S.1, might be even worse.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2021/02/like-a-criminal-time-returns-to-the-scene-of-the-crime/

Many scammers have been done in because they couldn’t resist boasting. In regard  to Joe Biden’s dubious but now officially endorsed ‘victory’ in November’s US presidential election, this time the boasting takes the form of a giant, 7000-words piece in Time magazine, an impeccably progressive and anti-Trump journal.

Its scoop is headed, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, with the chief byline belonging to reporter Molly Ball, who was backed by a team of junior scribblers. Over months they sleuthed out the names and modus operandi of powerful cabals that conspired to ensure that Trump would not, could not, win. From Time’s point of view, the conspirators “saved democracy” from Trump. The participants are heroes, in the fading news magazine’s view, with Ms Ball laying out chapter and verse how the assault on a democratic election was planned, mounted and succeeded.

“They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it,” Time claims, playing semantic games while rewarding the conspirators with attention and, albeit unintentionally, exposing their methods and alliances.

An ominous conclusion — passed off by Time as a good thing —  is that since these cabals succeeded while Trump was in power, their own power will be enormously magnified under the aegis of the Biden presidency. One can be certain America’s “fortified” future elections will be welcomed with official endorsement and all the resources, overt and covert, that the Democrat ruling establishment and “the swamp”can muster.

Ironies abound. Trumpers have been relentlessly mocked for conspiratorial thinking. But Time doesn’t just admit the existence of such a conspiracy, it gloatingly reveals how its architects and participants made sure he could not carry the day on November 3. All this was perfectly justified, according to Time, because Trump was an incipient dictator preparing to launch “an assault on democracy”. As it sings hosannas with the Left choir, the magazine feels no need to provide  evidence for that assertion.