The True Vote

For John, BLUF:  In an age of identity theft there are thousands of politicians and bureaucrats, and media types, who think it is everywhere, except in voting.  This kind of thinking seems strange to me.  Perhaps it is form of mass hysteria.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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On Page A4 of The [Lowell] Sun we have an Associated Press article, Dominion Voting sues Fox for $1.6B over 2020 election claims, which seems to wander into propoganda:

The lawsuit is part of a growing body of legal action filed by the voting company and other targets of misleading, false and bizarre claims spread by President Donald Trump and his allies in the aftermath of Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden.  Those claims helped spur on rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent siege that left five people dead, including a police officer.  The siege led to Trump’s historic second impeachment.

That second paragraph deserves a fisking.  I will leave that for another day.

Then, on page A8, we have "Democrats assail Georgia law, make case for voting overhaul".

I am not sure the Democrats are making a case, except in their own minds and the minds of Associted Press Reporters.

Democrats have seized on new voting restrictions in Georgia to focus attention on the fight to overhaul federal election laws, setting up a slow-building standoff that carries echoes of the civil rights battles of a half-century ago.

In fiery speeches, pointed statements and tweets, party leaders on Friday decried the law signed the day before by the state’s Republican governor as specifically aimed at suppressing Black and Latino votes and a threat to democracy.  President Joe Biden released an extended statement, calling the law an attack on “good conscience” that denies the right to vote for “countless” Americans.

And our Senator, Senator Elizabeth Warren, tries to make it about racism, with this quote on Thursday♠:

"The Republican who is sitting in Stacey Abrams’ chair just signed a despicable voter suppression bill into law to take Georgia back to Jim Crow," Warren tweeted.

Yes, another move by Democrats to alienate my vote.  I wish for elections that are both free and fair.  Poisoning the well by suggesting I am a throw-back to the Jim Crow era is not just insulting, it is unjust.  The good news for Democrat operatives is that I am old and will soon be ineligible to vote.♥

To make matters worse, here is a Tweet about a quote from CNN, which shows the nonsense being thrown about regarding the "voting rights" act before Congress:

"The bill does far more than expand voting access . . . It also would amend the Constitution to overrule Citizens United, a controversial Supreme Court decision that determined corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money in elections."

The big takeaway is that the US Congress may not amend the US Constitution.  It make kick off an effort to pass an Amendment to the US Constitution, but the States are involved.

Yet here in Lowell we are cracking down on voter rolls and residency requirements, as today's Editorial, "Lay case shows need for election residency review", shows.  The Editorial ends:

In any case, we’d also encourage Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin to undertake a review of what constitutes a candidate’s legal residency, so we don’t have to rely on a judge’s interpretation of competing facts to make that determination.

I think the Commonwealth Secretary of State should take the extra step and check on what constitutes a voter's legal residency.  The scandal of the dead voting has tainted our elections for far too many decades.♦

Regarding the Editorial, the penultimate paragraph reads:

Should Lay eventually prevail in court, we hope he takes advantage of this opportunity to engage in constructive debate on the issues facing this diverse school district of more than 14,000 students.

Exactly.  The education of our youth here in Lowell is much too important to take a laissez faire approach.  Once out in the "real world" our students will have to compete against fellow adults who have had many advantages in life.  We need to be equipping our students for the struggles of adulthood.

In the mean time, we, as the Citizens of this Great Nation, should examine electoral facts with care, demanding the Fourth Estate go down every rabbit hole, and tell our elected representatives that we want fair elections, with everyone having a chance to vote, but no one having a chance to abuse that privilege.

The other thing is we should look into is how the rest of the world votes, from Voter ID to fingers dipped in ink, †o show one has voted.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  To make matters worse, Senator Warren is confronting the solid Democratic Party and Media meme that there is no fraud in elections.  I don't think it is hypocrisy, which would be a harsh judgement.  However, it could be short term memory loss.
♥  Except as a Democrat.
♦  Except in Lowell.

Bad Counting Diminishes Our Reputation as a Nation

For John, BLUF:  Yes, this is almost a week old, but it is still on topic, since several States still haven't achieved settled vote totals.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The U.S. Inability To Count Votes is a National Disgrace. And Dangerous.

Here is the sub-headline:

Nations far poorer and less technologically advanced have no problem holding quick, efficient elections.  Distrust in U.S. outcomes is dangerous but rational.

From Greenwald at Substack, by Reporter Glenn Greenwald, 4 November 2020.

Here is the lede plus one:

The richest and most powerful country on earth — whether due to ineptitude, choice or some combination of both — has no ability to perform the simple task of counting votes in a minimally efficient or confidence-inspiring manner.  As a result, the credibility of the voting process is severely impaired, and any residual authority the U.S. claims to “spread” democracy to lucky recipients of its benevolence around the world is close to obliterated.

At 7:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the day after the 2020 presidential elections, the results of the presidential race, as well as control of the Senate, are very much in doubt and in chaos.  Watched by rest of the world — deeply affected by who rules the still-imperialist superpower — the U.S. struggles and stumbles and staggers to engage in a simple task mastered by countless other less powerful and poorer countries: counting votes.  Some states are not expected to finished their vote-counting until the end of this week or beyond.

The same data and polling geniuses who pronounced that Hillary Clinton had a 90% probability or more of winning the 2016 election, and who spent the last three months proclaiming the 2020 election even more of a sure thing for the Democratic presidential candidate, are currently insisting that Biden, despite being behind in numerous key states, is still the favorite by virtue of uncounted ballots in Democrat-heavy counties in the outcome-determinative states.  [One went to sleep last night with the now-notorious New York Times needle of data guru Nate Cohn assuring the country that, with more than 80% of the vote counted in Georgia, Trump had more than an 80% chance to win that state, only to wake up a few hours later with the needle now predicting the opposite outcome; that all happened just a few hours after Cohn assured everyone how much “smarter” his little needle was this time around].

Further on Mr Greeewnwald wrote:

After the pervasive voting problems in the 2018 midterms, I wrote an article with my Brazilian colleague Victor Pougy describing the extraordinary speed and efficiency with which Brazil — a country not exactly renowned for its speed and efficiency — counts its votes.

Brazil is not a small country. It is the fifth most-populous nation on the planet.  Although its population is somewhat smaller than the U.S.’s (330 million to 210 million), its mandatory voting law, automatic registration, and 16-year-old voting age means the number of ballots to be counted is quite similar (105 million votes in Brazil’s 2018 presidential election compared to 130 million votes in the 2016 U.S. presidential election).  And on the same date of its national elections, it, too, holds gubernatorial and Congressional elections in its twenty-seven states.

And yet Brazil — a much poorer and less technologically advanced country than the U.S., with a much shorter history of democracy — holds seamless, quick vote counts about which very few people harbor doubts.  The elections are held on a Sunday, to ensure as many people as possible do not have work obligations to prevent voting, and polls close at 6:00 p.m.

For the 2018 presidential run-off election that led to Jair Bolsonaro’s victory, 90% of all votes were counted and the results released by 6:00 p.m. on the day of the election: the time the last state closed its polls.  The full vote tally was available within a couple of hours after that.  The same was true of the first-round voting held three weeks earlier — which also included races for governor, Senator and Congress in all the states:  full vote totals were released by computer shortly after the polls closed and few had any doubts about their accuracy and legitimacy.

That is an indictment for sure.  This election is an embarrassment to our nation.  Specific examples of vote counting, like Philadelphia, PA, is especially embarrassing.  Worse, it is a slap in the face from Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and his apparatchiks.

Then there was the tampering with the information available to the voters by social media.  This says that social media is part of a partisan press and does not deserve exemption from being sued.

We need to get back to honest elections.  Gsining office is not more important than personal integrity.  In addition, throwing the bums out does not justify cheating to achieve that goal.

And, no, I am not advocating a voting age of 16.  I would like to return to 21.  As for Sunday voting, that would be fine with me.  Mail-in voting is fine, but the envelope has to be returned by the day before the election.  No late ballots, no excuses.

Regards  —  Cliff