COVID-19 became the excuse for vulnerable mail-in-ballots and lazy voting

The year 2020 is already infamous, and they’re still counting the votes!  The fact that votes were still being tabulated a month after the November 3rd election is yet another demerit against an already delinquent start to this 203rd decade.  Most Americans agree that 2020 anno Domini felt like anything but the Lord’s, and for good reason.  The strangest of viruses, with its origin traced back to Wuhan, China, COVID-19 turned into a worldwide pandemic even though roughly 40 percent of people that have the virus are asymptomatic.  Millions of Americans have been tested to find out if they have the virus because they are experiencing no symptoms.  Let that marinate overnight. 

With COVID-19 producing a fatality rate in the United States of two-tenths of one percent, healthy people were ordered to stay home except for essential travel, such as keeping doctor’s appointments and grocery shopping, while wearing masks when inside businesses and other public buildings became the rule, with few exceptions.  There is little evidence that any of these efforts have slowed the spread of the virus.  Today the United States is experiencing record numbers of COVID-19 related hospitalizations and deaths.  What makes COVID-19 so scary, even with favorable odds against it, is that for those people that get really sick and require hospitalization, the symptoms are terrible.  Not being able to breathe is a horrible experience.  Spending the last weeks of your life suffocating to death is horrific.  Watching a loved one die like this is gut-wrenching. 

How COVID-19 impacted the 2020 presidential election will be debated for years to come.  President Trump received over 74 million votes…more than any President in U.S. history.  His challenger, Joe Biden received over 80 million votes…more than any candidate in U.S. history.  There are 10 bellwether counties in the United States that have always voted with the winner of the presidential election.  Those 10 counties are listed as follows:

1.    Essex County, Vermont

2.    Juneau County, Wisconsin

3.    Sawyer County, Wisconsin

4.    Vigo County, Indiana

5.    Westmoreland County, Virginia

6.    Wood County, Ohio

7.    Washington County, Maine

8.    Valencia County, New Mexico

9.    Ottawa County, Ohio

10. Hidalgo County, New Mexico

Given the long history of these 10 counties voting for the winner of our presidential elections, it would be surprising if 3 of these counties voted for Trump.  It would be astonishing if 7 of these counties, which have never been on the wrong side of a presidential election, voted for Trump.  But all 10 counties voting for Trump – how can this be described?  Yet that’s exactly what happened in 2020.  All 10 of these bellwether counties voted to re-elect President Donald J. Trump to a 2nd term in office.  Despite this impressive history of picking presidents, Joe Biden has been declared the winner.  All 10 counties picked the wrong candidate in 2020. 

Over 150 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election.  The passion voters felt either for or against President Trump certainly contributed to some of the record turnout – but not all of it.  The effort to make voting easy had as much to do with the record-breaking voter participation as did the candidates. It is estimated that 66.5 percent of eligible voters cast votes in 2020, making it the largest percentage of voter participation in any presidential election since 1900.   Approximately 65 million votes were cast via a mail in ballot.  That’s approximately 43 percent of all votes for the President of the United States arriving in the mail or by being collected from ballot drop boxes.  Scrutiny and security of these mail-in ballots varied greatly from city to city and state to state.  Any adult that denies these mail-in ballots were not vulnerable to fraud is not being honest with themselves.  Political players with bad intentions, from either political party, could have easily breached whatever flimsy security perimeter was in place to give the appearance of effort to maintain the integrity of the 2020 vote. 

It was Sir Winston Churchill that is credited with first saying “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.  Democrat Rahm Emanuel adopted the sentiment during the 2008 recession, and democrats have been perfecting the strategy ever since.  COVID-19 has proved to be not only a ‘good crisis’ but a great crisis to further the liberal agenda.  When it comes to voting, the democrats want every person in the United States to be able to vote – regardless of citizenship status.  The radical left does not believe any person is in this country illegally.  They’re not illegal aliens, they’re undocumented workers according to the liberals, and therefore should be able to vote in our elections. 

Democrats also oppose voter identification requirements because they claim, without evidence, that requiring a photo ID to vote disenfranchises minority voters.  If this is true, then the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is disenfranchising minorities from traveling.  Where’s the good Reverend Al Sharpton when we need him? 

So why do democrats favor playing loose with voter laws?  It’s simple math.  The democrats believe that they’ll benefit the most by making voting effortless.  COVID-19 created the avenue and excuse to make voting in the 2020 presidential election easier than ever before in some states.  Many states with Democrat governors mailed out ballots that were not requested.  There was nothing stopping whoever received the ballot from filling it out and sending it back.  Some people have testified that they received 5 ballots.  Other people report having received ballots for a recently, and not so recently deceased loved one.  Cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and elsewhere didn’t make a verifiable effort to match each signature on a mail-in ballot with voter registration records, so who knows if the vote was legal or not.  Democrats tell us that there is no evidence of voter fraud, while refusing the tedious exercise of matching signatures to records.  There certainly is no evidence if fair-minded people are not allowed to examine the scene to determine if a crime has been committed. 

Computer software is fallible.  Computer tabulation software is not a guarantee that the final vote totals are accurate.  Computer programs are as honest as the programmer.  And if an honest programmer creates an honest software program, it only remains honest until it is hacked.  New programming can be written and introduced via a USB port by any person with bad intentions.  Programs can be written to be introduced into tabulation software so as to alter or reassign values, and the revert back to the honest parameters of the primary program once the jump drive is removed.  This isn’t rocket science for any average programmer.  What is rocket science is trying to figure how half the U.S. population, along with the news media suddenly believe that computer software is not easily corrupted by men and women with criminal intent. 

The question we are faced with moving forward is this.  Do we want secure elections, or do we want easy voting in the United States?  If a computer is involved in our vote casting and tabulation process, our election is less secure.  If in person voting is not required, then our election outcomes will be questioned by the losing candidates along with their supporters.  If some of our votes are received by mail with no verification of identity, and the rest are placed into a computer, our election is vulnerable to voter fraud.  When the security of votes is lacking, so is trust in the election results.  Just look at the mess we’re in right now!  74 million people voted for President Trump and it is estimated that 70 percent of those voters believe that Joe Biden stole the election.  That means nearly 52 million Americans believe that their votes did not count because of election fraud.  In 2016 half of the democrats believe Trump stole the election due to Russian collusion.  This is why we’re such a divided nation.  Our faith in our voting system is compromised. 

When it comes to security, Israel does a lot of things right.  Their very existence has depended on it for decades.  How the Israelis protect the integrity of their elections is no exception.  Israel has been voting with ballot boxes, paper ballots, and in-person voting for 70 years.  On Election Day, the majority of public polling stations are open between 7:00 AM and 10:00 PM. All eligible voters are assigned to a polling station closest to the address they provided when registering to vote.  When voters arrive at their assigned voting station on Election Day, their identification is checked against the voter registration record.  Voters must demonstrate that they’re who they say they are before they are allowed to vote in Israel.  Now there’s a concept worth exploring!

After identification has been verified, a polling station official will check the voter’s name off the voter list.  Next the voter receives an envelope and goes behind a privacy divider to make his or her vote selections.  The ballot is then sealed in the envelope and placed into the ballot box.  The ballot box used is simple in design, but not effectiveness.  It has a tamper-proof slit in it large enough for the voter’s envelope only. The ballot boxes are locked, and only opened once all voting is finished.  Once voting has ended, officials at the polling stations count the votes.  Next, they send a document with the tally results, and the ballot boxes with the votes inside, to one of the twenty-five nationwide counting centers for recounts and verification.  Israelis know that software can be corrupted.  That’s why Israel does not employ electronic voting.  In the United States, both Republicans and Democrats seem to favor electronic voting.  It’s as if both parties want there to be a few backdoors just in case.  This is not acceptable.

Referred to as the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, it grants the 50 states authority to determine the times, places, and manner to hold elections.  Setting up a uniform voting system will take agreement and cooperation between the states.  Change to a secure voting system nationwide can occur – one state at a time.  It will take people coming together to convince state lawmakers that adopting an in-person, identification required, paper ballot only voting system is the best way forward if we hope to restore integrity in our voting process.  If we do nothing, we will continue to live in a society with nearly half of the population believing that their vote didn’t really count – that their candidate lost the election due to corruption and fraud.  Trying to heal the divide between us begins with restoring faith in our vote.