Category Archives: voting

Well, Of Course

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Given the vasty numbers of mail-in ballots expected in the Progressive-Democratic Party stronghold of Illinois, State officials are predicting delays of as much as two-weeks post-election before results from the current mid-terms will be known.

The bulk of these mail-ins will be coming from Chicago and Cook County—Party fortresses within that stronghold.

Of course it’ll take those two weeks to get the mail-ins counted. Party will need the time to get the numbers from downstate (i.e., from outside Cook County) and so the numbers from Cook County and Chicago that are needed, and so how those mail-in ballots should be counted.

Party’s machine politics in action.

Facts Don’t Matter

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Especially when they contradict settled conclusions drawn beforehand. Here’s Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Georgia’s governorship, Stacey Abrams:

We know that increased turnout has nothing to do with suppression.

And

Suppression is about whether you make it difficult for voters to access the ballot. And in Georgia we know difficulty has been put in place for too many Georgians[.]

Never mind that voter suppression is so strong that not only Republican voter turnout exploded in the just concluded Georgia primaries, so has Democratic voter turnout:

Democratic turnout increased 30% over the last midterm in 2018 [which is pre-Wuhan Virus situation]….

The pre-set conclusion is all that matters.

Nothing to See Here

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No need for signature verification on mailed-in ballots. Never mind what the law requires.

A study of Maricopa County’s mail ballots in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election estimates that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures were counted without being reviewed, or “cured”—more than eight times the 25,000 signature mismatches requiring curing acknowledged by the county.

And

Of the 1,911,918 early voting mail ballots that Maricopa County received and counted in the 2020 presidential election, the county reported that 25,000, or 1.3%, had signature mismatches that required curing, but only 587 (2.3%) of those were confirmed mismatched signatures.

What the county’s nominal rules require:

Under Maricopa County election rules, a reviewer first compares a signature on an envelope with the signature on file for the voter, which takes about 4-30 seconds. If the signature does not appear to match, the ballot is cured, which takes three or more minutes and includes attempts to contact the voter to determine whether or not the signature is a match.

But taking that time would have been…inconvenient.

The existence of such a failure by the Maricopa County’s election monitors contributes heavily to the county’s motivation for fighting so strenuously against any sort of investigation of their performance.

It’s unlikely that such “laziness” was widespread enough to change an election outcome, but the existence of error and outright fraud is well established; Maricopa County’s failure to perform provides a particularly dramatic example of that. Beyond that, whether or not the failures are widespread, the errors need to be corrected, loopholes and enforcement procedures that facilitate such errors need to be corrected, those committing fraud need to spend time in jail contemplating their sins.

But the Progressive-Democratic Party; their communications arm, the press; and the Left in general want this sort of thing covered up. They want the possibilities such things create for Party.

The Judge is Mistaken

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Federal Judge Lee Rudofsky, of the Eastern District of Arkansas says he’ll toss an ACLU suit against that State’s new voter redistricting law unless Biden-Harris’ DoJ joins the suit.

His rationale is this:

After a thorough analysis of the text and structure of the Voting Rights Act, and a painstaking journey through relevant caselaw, the Court has concluded that this case may be brought only by the Attorney General of the United States[.]

Rudofsky is sort of correct to make his threat—the suit should be dismissed. There is no advantage or disadvantage to any race in the new voter map, only to this or that political party. All voters, after all, look alike under law, including voter law.

However, the judge has made a number of errors in this. First, there’s no need to delay a dismissal of the case. DoJ has already communicated its decision to not be a party through its current non-participation.

Second, State districting for Federal elections is an internal State matter per Art I, Sect 4:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.

DoJ is not Congress, and Congress has not asked—nor is it likely to—DoJ to make a case. It’s more basic than that, though. Congress can intervene in a State’s voting law only to make changes to existing law; it cannot rewrite State law, or originate State law for that State.

Voter Discrimination

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Alabama, pursuant to the latest decennial census, has drawn its electoral map, and the outcome supposedly yields a House delegation of six white Republicans and one Black Democrat for the Federal Congress.

Opponents of the map say it disadvantages black voters. So far, the map stands, as the Supreme Court ruled that the map mustn’t be changed this close to an upcoming Federal election, but it’s a temporary ruling: the Court said it will hear the full case in its next term, starting in October. Thus the map will be the one in effect for next November’s midterms.

The “disadvantages black voters” bit rings hollow to me. There’s no doubt that the map is gerrymandered to favor one group of Americans over another, but that’s what gerrymandering does, and both parties have been doing it, for good or ill, ever since there were two dominant parties in our Republic.

What makes the beef ring hollow though, it the bit about disadvantaging one group of Americans over another. That suggests, strongly, that it would be OK to advantage that group of Americans over the other, currently advantaged. Or even merely to seek some version of “equity” or “equality.”

Either way—explicitly targeting one group of Americans separately from another, regardless of purpose—is nothing but rank identity politics. While there remains bigotry afoot in our republic, this is no longer the 1950s. We have come far closer today to realizing our ideal—as carved into the Supreme Court building—of all Americans being equal under law, just as we are—as acknowledged in the opening sentences of our Declaration of Independence—equal under God.

There is no need, any longer, to explicitly carve out districts to favor any race or ethnicity over any other: we’re all the same voters; we’re all American voters.

The answer, of course, for all that it’ll be easier written than done, is to do away with gerrymandering altogether. Divide each State up into squares of substantially equal populations of citizens, beginning at the State’s geographic center, and deviating from straight-line district boundaries only at the State’s boundary with an adjoining State.