Category Archives: rights

A Bureaucratic State

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The Hong Kong protestors have called for Hong Kong’s legislators to resign, which would trigger elections right there in Hong Kong and which would also serve as a popular referendum on Hong Kong’s—and the PRC’s—government policies.

Hong Kong’s response? From Chief Secretary Carrie Lam:

There are no arrangements in place for a so-called referendum in Hong Kong’s electoral and political system….

The bureaucrat is incapable of imagining doing anything non-standard, the bureaucracy cannot find a way to accommodate the people when there’s nothing in their written-down procedures to show them the way. The bureaucracy, any bureaucracy, is incapable of dealing with the noise of democracy, whether popular or republican or any other form. Bureaucracies simply have no flexibility.

Yes, I’m being generous in laying this off to bureaucracy and not anything else, but the point is valid in any event: despotism is even more inflexible, especially regarding things of which the despot disapproves.

Vote!

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Today’s the day. It’s not only your right, it’s your duty, to vote for your choices to represent you in Congress (and in 2016 for your choice for President, too) and for your choices in any other question on your particular ballot. Keep in mind, too, that if you don’t vote, you give increased weight to another’s vote—and he may not be voting for your interests.

As our Declaration of Independence says,

[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

And

…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This is your chance to do so.

No Voter Fraud?

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From Hans von Spakovsky, of the Heritage Foundation, via The Wall Street Journal, comes this.

In the past few months, a former police chief in Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to voter fraud in a town-council election. That fraud had flipped the outcome of a primary election. Former Connecticut legislator Christina Ayala has been indicted on 19 charges of voter fraud, including voting in districts where she didn’t reside. (She hasn’t entered a plea.) A Mississippi grand jury indicted seven individuals for voter fraud in the 2013 Hattiesburg mayoral contest, which featured voting by ineligible felons and impersonation fraud. A woman in Polk County, Tenn., was indicted on a charge of vote-buying—a practice that the local district attorney said had too long “been accepted as part of life” there.

Don’t look for recourse—or even for these cases to survive IMNSHO—from the Barack Obama/Eric Holder Justice Department.

Look to your voting next week. And check your ballots before you push that last CAST or ENTER button.

No Voter Fraud

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Voting machines that switch Republican votes to Democrats are being reported in Maryland. One voter reported

When I first selected my candidate on the electronic machine, it would not put the “x’ on the candidate I chose—a Republican—but it would put the “x” on the Democrat candidate above it.

This happened multiple times with multiple selections. Every time my choice flipped from Republican to Democrat. Sometimes it required four or five tries to get the “x” to stay on my real selection

And

Queen Anne County Sheriff Gary Hofmann said he encountered the problem, too, personally[.] … It occurred on two candidates on my machine. I am glad I checked. Many voters have reported this here as well[.]

And in Illinois, to Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan:

I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent. You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.

And in North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Utah. So far.

It’s never in the other direction, either. There’s never any accidental switch of a Democrat’s vote to the Republican candidate. This isn’t random error. It’ll be…instructive…to see who wins in the toss-up states and by what margin.

Review your votes, as you cast them and at the final review before you push the CAST or ENTER button that finalizes your choices, to be sure that it’s really your choices that are being registered.

But, there’s no voter fraud. Mm, mm.