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Elections Have Consequences; Stolen Elections Have Catastrophes
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Mar 16, 2023 09:15:14   #
ForThePeople
 
By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/elections_have_consequences_stolen_elections_have_catastrophes.html

"Put the adults back in charge," they whined. "Donald Trump will break the world," they lied. Well, they manipulated election rules to certify suspicious vote totals that preposterously portrayed senile Joe Biden as the most popularly elected president in history; censored and locked up anyone who complained; and covered up their crimes with J6 show trials drenched in untruths meant to hide from history the Uniparty's underhanded machinations in outright stealing a presidential election. The whole mess was so banana-republic-yucky that Biden was inaugurated behind barbed wire and a show of military force befitting the small junta who attended the successful coup's celebration. And as a result of the Uniparty's installation of Dementia Joe as White House marionette, the American people have been plagued with crime, inflation, political persecution, COVID tyranny, deadly battlefield retreat, open borders, staggering drug deaths, proxy wars, bankruptcies, bank runs, endless new regulations, a plummeting standard of living, economic panic, and social volatility. Elections have consequences, but stolen elections have catastrophes.

For over two years, the State-controlled press and the permanent political class have accused anyone who challenges the ruling regime's legitimacy of being an "election denier" pushing the "big lie" that the 2020 race was rigged. That resort to low-minded name-calling always seems like the "big tell" that they know that the people know that they're full of it. Never mind that Time ran an exposé shortly after the election diagramming in great detail how "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, work[ed] together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information." Never mind that the American people later learned that Facebook CEO "Mark Zuckerberg and other left-wing actors commandeered election operations in blue hubs of swing states in 2020" by "strategically bankroll[ing] and staff[ing] local government election offices, which are in charge of voter registration, voting, and vote counting." Never mind that leftist agitators had spent months in the run-up to the election threatening to unleash mayhem if Biden "won" the so-called "national popular vote" but lost the Electoral College. Never mind that those same leftist agitators also spent months seeding a public narrative that a "red mirage" would show Trump winning before days of ballot-hunting eventually overturned those ephemeral victories. Nope — put all those public admissions and "color revolution" propaganda campaigns aside, you dumb deplorables, and blithely accept the authorities' assurances that Biden's election was on the up-and-up. People with power crossed their hearts and promised they were telling the truth; what more could Americans without power possibly require?

Here's an idea: when more than half the country believes that "cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election" and that future election outcomes cannot be trusted, then that crisis in confidence reflects catastrophic government failure. In functioning republics with reliable voting systems, allegations of electoral malfeasance are a "big deal." When nothing less than the people's faith in the democratic process is at stake, then representative government will not survive unless the people perceive that process to be fair, transparent, and above reproach. When they instead judge elections as corrupt, manipulated, and unverifiable, the blame for such disastrous public perception lies entirely with government officials. The burden of ensuring secure elections, swift results, and trusted outcomes rests with those in power, and loss of public confidence reflects government abrogation of its own civic and legal duties.

In 2020, when COVID's ongoing "state of emergency" conveniently provided a pretext for making sweeping changes to the ways in which votes were cast and collected, irrespective of binding statutory law, mail-in ballots with scant security checks or signature verifications flooded battleground states in Democrat-controlled zones that tilted Trump victories to Biden victories days after the actual election. During that days-long window, ballots were lost and found; election workers inexplicably stopped and started their work; and numerous allegations of improper collection, derelict verification, unlawful voting, mixed sorting (where suspect ballots were separated from mail-in envelopes before verification but nonetheless included with good ballots), and double counting were never resolved. Still, pundits pretended everything was perfectly normal, despite the reality that, among global peers, America alone is incapable of tabulating its elections promptly or providing results that can be transparently verified and reproduced.

Rather than investigating any of these issues, Secretaries of State looked past clear violations of election law and testimonial evidence alleging various instances of fraud to certify vote counts; state and federal courts, deferring to those bureaucratic certifications despite deficiencies, refused to investigate the matters any further; and the Supreme Court ran like a frightened child when a "case or controversy" of the highest national concern finally reached its doors. So fearful, apparently, of replaying some version of the contentious judicial events that settled the 2000 election between Bush and Gore (or so terrified of the left's certain campaign of terror arriving outside their own families' homes), the courts threw up their hands and permitted perhaps the least trusted election in American history to be rubber-stamped as valid.


Voters, having attempted to invite disinterested third parties to review these serious issues but receiving no help from anyone empowered to do so, looked to American history for answers. In such circumstances, when vote fraud or other election crimes have been suspected of having directly affected the electoral outcomes for federal offices, voters have successfully delayed the certification of those elections until the allegations could be either fully resolved through the courts or settled through negotiated compromise. In this matter, voters similarly encouraged lawmakers and Vice President Pence to delay certification of the Electoral College's 2020 vote tallies until all election-related cases could be exhaustively resolved and, by doing so, uphold their constitutional duties to certify only lawful, honest elections.

Rather than taking advantage of such a possibility, the vice president insisted that he had no choice but to certify the Electoral College vote, regardless of whether or not its results were tainted by fraud, and Congress used the J6 election protests as a pretext to invoke an "emergency session" and sidestep the substantial election issues entirely. In essence, the vice president and members of Congress followed the Supreme Court in concluding that their constitutional duties required them to rubber-stamp a disputed election. The federal government once again proved itself little more than a coalition of cowards and criminals. The people were then expected to watch this constitutionally questionable process play out — during which none of their allegations of election illegality were ever fully scrutinized or resolved — and somehow respect the outcome as fair, reasonable, and legitimate.

That expectation was hooey then and is still hooey today. When a majority of Americans see election fraud and a near unanimity of lawmakers see none, then America's ruling Uniparty is willfully blind. When Americans' efforts to pursue all available legal remedies are unceremoniously quashed at every turn, then justice is no longer blind. When Congress decides to ignore all the evidence for 2020 vote fraud and instead pumps out years of propaganda about an "insurrection" that never happened, then more Americans have their eyes wide open and can finally see. When the consequences of a stolen election are nothing less than impoverishment, persecution, crime, and war, then the people can see ever more clearly that justice delayed is justice denied.

When those who run the government have no vision and those punished by the government have committed no crimes, then the blind won't see what they've destroyed until it's too late. Trust is a tricky thing to restore. Once it's gone, systems just break.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 09:26:35   #
microphor Loc: Home is TN
 
ForThePeople wrote:
By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/elections_have_consequences_stolen_elections_have_catastrophes.html

"Put the adults back in charge," they whined. "Donald Trump will break the world," they lied. Well, they manipulated election rules to certify suspicious vote totals that preposterously portrayed senile Joe Biden as the most popularly elected president in history; censored and locked up anyone who complained; and covered up their crimes with J6 show trials drenched in untruths meant to hide from history the Uniparty's underhanded machinations in outright stealing a presidential election. The whole mess was so banana-republic-yucky that Biden was inaugurated behind barbed wire and a show of military force befitting the small junta who attended the successful coup's celebration. And as a result of the Uniparty's installation of Dementia Joe as White House marionette, the American people have been plagued with crime, inflation, political persecution, COVID tyranny, deadly battlefield retreat, open borders, staggering drug deaths, proxy wars, bankruptcies, bank runs, endless new regulations, a plummeting standard of living, economic panic, and social volatility. Elections have consequences, but stolen elections have catastrophes.

For over two years, the State-controlled press and the permanent political class have accused anyone who challenges the ruling regime's legitimacy of being an "election denier" pushing the "big lie" that the 2020 race was rigged. That resort to low-minded name-calling always seems like the "big tell" that they know that the people know that they're full of it. Never mind that Time ran an exposé shortly after the election diagramming in great detail how "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, work[ed] together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information." Never mind that the American people later learned that Facebook CEO "Mark Zuckerberg and other left-wing actors commandeered election operations in blue hubs of swing states in 2020" by "strategically bankroll[ing] and staff[ing] local government election offices, which are in charge of voter registration, voting, and vote counting." Never mind that leftist agitators had spent months in the run-up to the election threatening to unleash mayhem if Biden "won" the so-called "national popular vote" but lost the Electoral College. Never mind that those same leftist agitators also spent months seeding a public narrative that a "red mirage" would show Trump winning before days of ballot-hunting eventually overturned those ephemeral victories. Nope — put all those public admissions and "color revolution" propaganda campaigns aside, you dumb deplorables, and blithely accept the authorities' assurances that Biden's election was on the up-and-up. People with power crossed their hearts and promised they were telling the truth; what more could Americans without power possibly require?

Here's an idea: when more than half the country believes that "cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election" and that future election outcomes cannot be trusted, then that crisis in confidence reflects catastrophic government failure. In functioning republics with reliable voting systems, allegations of electoral malfeasance are a "big deal." When nothing less than the people's faith in the democratic process is at stake, then representative government will not survive unless the people perceive that process to be fair, transparent, and above reproach. When they instead judge elections as corrupt, manipulated, and unverifiable, the blame for such disastrous public perception lies entirely with government officials. The burden of ensuring secure elections, swift results, and trusted outcomes rests with those in power, and loss of public confidence reflects government abrogation of its own civic and legal duties.

In 2020, when COVID's ongoing "state of emergency" conveniently provided a pretext for making sweeping changes to the ways in which votes were cast and collected, irrespective of binding statutory law, mail-in ballots with scant security checks or signature verifications flooded battleground states in Democrat-controlled zones that tilted Trump victories to Biden victories days after the actual election. During that days-long window, ballots were lost and found; election workers inexplicably stopped and started their work; and numerous allegations of improper collection, derelict verification, unlawful voting, mixed sorting (where suspect ballots were separated from mail-in envelopes before verification but nonetheless included with good ballots), and double counting were never resolved. Still, pundits pretended everything was perfectly normal, despite the reality that, among global peers, America alone is incapable of tabulating its elections promptly or providing results that can be transparently verified and reproduced.

Rather than investigating any of these issues, Secretaries of State looked past clear violations of election law and testimonial evidence alleging various instances of fraud to certify vote counts; state and federal courts, deferring to those bureaucratic certifications despite deficiencies, refused to investigate the matters any further; and the Supreme Court ran like a frightened child when a "case or controversy" of the highest national concern finally reached its doors. So fearful, apparently, of replaying some version of the contentious judicial events that settled the 2000 election between Bush and Gore (or so terrified of the left's certain campaign of terror arriving outside their own families' homes), the courts threw up their hands and permitted perhaps the least trusted election in American history to be rubber-stamped as valid.


Voters, having attempted to invite disinterested third parties to review these serious issues but receiving no help from anyone empowered to do so, looked to American history for answers. In such circumstances, when vote fraud or other election crimes have been suspected of having directly affected the electoral outcomes for federal offices, voters have successfully delayed the certification of those elections until the allegations could be either fully resolved through the courts or settled through negotiated compromise. In this matter, voters similarly encouraged lawmakers and Vice President Pence to delay certification of the Electoral College's 2020 vote tallies until all election-related cases could be exhaustively resolved and, by doing so, uphold their constitutional duties to certify only lawful, honest elections.

Rather than taking advantage of such a possibility, the vice president insisted that he had no choice but to certify the Electoral College vote, regardless of whether or not its results were tainted by fraud, and Congress used the J6 election protests as a pretext to invoke an "emergency session" and sidestep the substantial election issues entirely. In essence, the vice president and members of Congress followed the Supreme Court in concluding that their constitutional duties required them to rubber-stamp a disputed election. The federal government once again proved itself little more than a coalition of cowards and criminals. The people were then expected to watch this constitutionally questionable process play out — during which none of their allegations of election illegality were ever fully scrutinized or resolved — and somehow respect the outcome as fair, reasonable, and legitimate.

That expectation was hooey then and is still hooey today. When a majority of Americans see election fraud and a near unanimity of lawmakers see none, then America's ruling Uniparty is willfully blind. When Americans' efforts to pursue all available legal remedies are unceremoniously quashed at every turn, then justice is no longer blind. When Congress decides to ignore all the evidence for 2020 vote fraud and instead pumps out years of propaganda about an "insurrection" that never happened, then more Americans have their eyes wide open and can finally see. When the consequences of a stolen election are nothing less than impoverishment, persecution, crime, and war, then the people can see ever more clearly that justice delayed is justice denied.

When those who run the government have no vision and those punished by the government have committed no crimes, then the blind won't see what they've destroyed until it's too late. Trust is a tricky thing to restore. Once it's gone, systems just break.
By J.B. Shurk br br https://www.americanthinker.c... (show quote)


After the Russian Collusion Delusion, if I saw a Democrat on fire and he told my he was on fire, I still wouldn't believe it. I will never believe a Democrat Politician again. "Smoke and Mirrors" the Democrat way. If they're on fire, they need to piss on themselves, I'm busy that day!

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 09:38:05   #
padremike Loc: Phenix City, Al
 
ForThePeople wrote:
By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/elections_have_consequences_stolen_elections_have_catastrophes.html

"Put the adults back in charge," they whined. "Donald Trump will break the world," they lied. Well, they manipulated election rules to certify suspicious vote totals that preposterously portrayed senile Joe Biden as the most popularly elected president in history; censored and locked up anyone who complained; and covered up their crimes with J6 show trials drenched in untruths meant to hide from history the Uniparty's underhanded machinations in outright stealing a presidential election. The whole mess was so banana-republic-yucky that Biden was inaugurated behind barbed wire and a show of military force befitting the small junta who attended the successful coup's celebration. And as a result of the Uniparty's installation of Dementia Joe as White House marionette, the American people have been plagued with crime, inflation, political persecution, COVID tyranny, deadly battlefield retreat, open borders, staggering drug deaths, proxy wars, bankruptcies, bank runs, endless new regulations, a plummeting standard of living, economic panic, and social volatility. Elections have consequences, but stolen elections have catastrophes.

For over two years, the State-controlled press and the permanent political class have accused anyone who challenges the ruling regime's legitimacy of being an "election denier" pushing the "big lie" that the 2020 race was rigged. That resort to low-minded name-calling always seems like the "big tell" that they know that the people know that they're full of it. Never mind that Time ran an exposé shortly after the election diagramming in great detail how "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, work[ed] together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information." Never mind that the American people later learned that Facebook CEO "Mark Zuckerberg and other left-wing actors commandeered election operations in blue hubs of swing states in 2020" by "strategically bankroll[ing] and staff[ing] local government election offices, which are in charge of voter registration, voting, and vote counting." Never mind that leftist agitators had spent months in the run-up to the election threatening to unleash mayhem if Biden "won" the so-called "national popular vote" but lost the Electoral College. Never mind that those same leftist agitators also spent months seeding a public narrative that a "red mirage" would show Trump winning before days of ballot-hunting eventually overturned those ephemeral victories. Nope — put all those public admissions and "color revolution" propaganda campaigns aside, you dumb deplorables, and blithely accept the authorities' assurances that Biden's election was on the up-and-up. People with power crossed their hearts and promised they were telling the truth; what more could Americans without power possibly require?

Here's an idea: when more than half the country believes that "cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election" and that future election outcomes cannot be trusted, then that crisis in confidence reflects catastrophic government failure. In functioning republics with reliable voting systems, allegations of electoral malfeasance are a "big deal." When nothing less than the people's faith in the democratic process is at stake, then representative government will not survive unless the people perceive that process to be fair, transparent, and above reproach. When they instead judge elections as corrupt, manipulated, and unverifiable, the blame for such disastrous public perception lies entirely with government officials. The burden of ensuring secure elections, swift results, and trusted outcomes rests with those in power, and loss of public confidence reflects government abrogation of its own civic and legal duties.

In 2020, when COVID's ongoing "state of emergency" conveniently provided a pretext for making sweeping changes to the ways in which votes were cast and collected, irrespective of binding statutory law, mail-in ballots with scant security checks or signature verifications flooded battleground states in Democrat-controlled zones that tilted Trump victories to Biden victories days after the actual election. During that days-long window, ballots were lost and found; election workers inexplicably stopped and started their work; and numerous allegations of improper collection, derelict verification, unlawful voting, mixed sorting (where suspect ballots were separated from mail-in envelopes before verification but nonetheless included with good ballots), and double counting were never resolved. Still, pundits pretended everything was perfectly normal, despite the reality that, among global peers, America alone is incapable of tabulating its elections promptly or providing results that can be transparently verified and reproduced.

Rather than investigating any of these issues, Secretaries of State looked past clear violations of election law and testimonial evidence alleging various instances of fraud to certify vote counts; state and federal courts, deferring to those bureaucratic certifications despite deficiencies, refused to investigate the matters any further; and the Supreme Court ran like a frightened child when a "case or controversy" of the highest national concern finally reached its doors. So fearful, apparently, of replaying some version of the contentious judicial events that settled the 2000 election between Bush and Gore (or so terrified of the left's certain campaign of terror arriving outside their own families' homes), the courts threw up their hands and permitted perhaps the least trusted election in American history to be rubber-stamped as valid.


Voters, having attempted to invite disinterested third parties to review these serious issues but receiving no help from anyone empowered to do so, looked to American history for answers. In such circumstances, when vote fraud or other election crimes have been suspected of having directly affected the electoral outcomes for federal offices, voters have successfully delayed the certification of those elections until the allegations could be either fully resolved through the courts or settled through negotiated compromise. In this matter, voters similarly encouraged lawmakers and Vice President Pence to delay certification of the Electoral College's 2020 vote tallies until all election-related cases could be exhaustively resolved and, by doing so, uphold their constitutional duties to certify only lawful, honest elections.

Rather than taking advantage of such a possibility, the vice president insisted that he had no choice but to certify the Electoral College vote, regardless of whether or not its results were tainted by fraud, and Congress used the J6 election protests as a pretext to invoke an "emergency session" and sidestep the substantial election issues entirely. In essence, the vice president and members of Congress followed the Supreme Court in concluding that their constitutional duties required them to rubber-stamp a disputed election. The federal government once again proved itself little more than a coalition of cowards and criminals. The people were then expected to watch this constitutionally questionable process play out — during which none of their allegations of election illegality were ever fully scrutinized or resolved — and somehow respect the outcome as fair, reasonable, and legitimate.

That expectation was hooey then and is still hooey today. When a majority of Americans see election fraud and a near unanimity of lawmakers see none, then America's ruling Uniparty is willfully blind. When Americans' efforts to pursue all available legal remedies are unceremoniously quashed at every turn, then justice is no longer blind. When Congress decides to ignore all the evidence for 2020 vote fraud and instead pumps out years of propaganda about an "insurrection" that never happened, then more Americans have their eyes wide open and can finally see. When the consequences of a stolen election are nothing less than impoverishment, persecution, crime, and war, then the people can see ever more clearly that justice delayed is justice denied.

When those who run the government have no vision and those punished by the government have committed no crimes, then the blind won't see what they've destroyed until it's too late. Trust is a tricky thing to restore. Once it's gone, systems just break.
By J.B. Shurk br br https://www.americanthinker.c... (show quote)


Great article. Thank you.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 09:49:09   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 




Republicans Can’t Beat Democrats’ Election-Industrial Complex By Adopting Its Strategies
BY: JOSEPH ARLINGHAUS AND WILLIAM DOYLE, PH.D.
MARCH 16, 2023
8 MIN READ

The sudden rise of well-funded election activist nonprofits represents a paradigm shift away from persuading and motivating voters, and toward manipulating the election process to benefit Democrats.

Over the last several months, a growing number of Republicans, including Donald Trump himself, seem to be having a change of heart about universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting.

While few Republicans are ready to completely abandon policies that support election integrity and transparency, more and more seem willing to follow the old adage “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” and suggest that Republicans become significantly more reliant on universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting to win elections. There is no worse idea in politics today.

Conservatives do not have the institutional or financial support to match Democrats in election activism and ballot harvesting, nor are they likely to be able to any time in the near future. The advantages Democrats have accrued over the last 20 years in election manipulation and “lawfare” are nearly insurmountable.

But this is not necessarily a portent of gloom and doom. The growing number of ultra-left Democratic candidates are deeply unpopular and would be unelectable outside deep-blue areas under the election norms that prevailed prior to the Covid-19 lockdowns and the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats’ performance in 2020 and 2022 would almost certainly have been far worse under conditions that involved persuading voters to go to the polls on Election Day, rather than relying on a complex web of wealthy nonprofits and armies of election activists to churn out mountains of mail-in ballots, submitted by indifferent voters, during greatly extended early voting periods.

Raw Institutional Power
Republicans need to better understand the vast institutional power that is arrayed against them on the left in the form of lavishly funded 501(c)(3) nonprofits and charitable foundations, along with legions of election lawyers, data analysts, and election activists.

Consider the shadowy Arabella Advisors, a nonprofit consulting company that guides the strategy, advocacy, impact investing, and management for high-dollar, left-leaning nonprofits and individuals. Arabella provides these clients a number of services that enable them to enact policies focused on left-of-center issues such as election administration and “voting rights.”

Arabella Advisors also manages five nonprofits that serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center nonprofits: the New Venture Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Windward Fund, and the North Fund. The New Venture Fund was the second-largest contributor, behind Mark Zuckerberg, to the Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020. The Sixteen Thirty Fund spent $410 million during the 2020 election cycle, which was more than the Democratic National Committee spent.

These nonprofits have collectively supported hundreds of left-wing policy and advocacy organizations since the network’s creation. In 2020, Arabella’s nonprofit network boasted total revenues exceeding $1.67 billion and total expenditures of $1.26 billion, and paid out $896 million in grants largely to other left-leaning and politically active nonprofits.

There is no comparable organization with anything close to this level of financial clout in the Republican world.

Beneath philanthropic foundations and holding companies such as Arabella, there is a world of left-of-center 501(c)(3) nonprofits focused on elections. The Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute has identified at least ten 501(c)(3) nonprofits that we believe played key roles in the 2020 election on behalf of the Democrat Party.

These groups were already in place and ready to implement strategies calculated to give Democrats an electoral advantage long before state-by-state legal barnstorming transformed the norms of American voting systems in the name of Covid-19.

Some of these groups are mainly policy-oriented, focused on increasing Democrat votes by promoting vote-by-mail, ballot drop box initiatives, extended early voting periods, and the relaxation of voting standards such as voter ID. These organizations ranged from local efforts such as the New Georgia Project to national projects like Democracy Works, The Voter Project, and the National Vote at Home Institute.

Another group of nonprofits sprang into action in 2020 to finance the implementation of the Democrats’ election agenda, including hiring new personnel, voter canvassing, ballot harvesting, new election infrastructure such as ballot drop boxes, targeted public relations campaigns, and expensive ballot “curing” efforts.

These organizations, which ended up spending well more than $400 million in 2020, include the now infamous Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), the Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME), and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), among others. Once again, there is no similar complex of election-oriented institutions in the Republican world.

Democrats’ ‘Election-Industrial Complex’
These organizations are not arms of political campaigns nor “dark money” partisan advocacy groups, both of which are normal parts of the traditional electoral process. They have nothing to do with persuading voters or “getting out the vote” in the traditional sense, but are instead devoted to gaining an advantage for Democrat candidates by changing election laws, manipulating the election process, and promoting new voting technologies.

This complex web of lavishly funded nonprofits and foundations is not just large and extremely powerful: It is without comparison on the right.

The institutions that support the left’s election activism are so large and so powerful, one might refer to them as an “election-industrial complex.” Election activism is a multi-billion-dollar per year business in the world of Democratic Party politics.

The Democrats’ election-industrial complex burst into full view in 2020 with CTCL’s $332 million Covid-19 Response Grant Project, funded almost entirely by Facebook founder Zuckerberg, which was aimed at gaining control of election offices in areas that were critical to Democrat campaigns in 2020 through large, “strings attached” grants.

The bulk of that money was spent in a sophisticated effort to increase turnout among a specific profile of voter in order to benefit Democrat candidates. All large CTCL grant recipients were required to “encourage and increase absentee voting” mainly through providing “assistance” in absentee ballot completion and the installation of ballot drop boxes, and to “dramatically expand strategic voter education & outreach efforts, particularly to historically disenfranchised residents.”

It has yet to sink in among many Republicans that the CTCL, and the myriad other election activist nonprofits they partnered with in 2020 to carry out their plans, represent a substantively different challenge than Democrats outspending Republicans in conventional election spending.

The sudden rise to prominence of these institutions represents a paradigm shift in the way elections are organized, away from persuading and motivating voters, and toward manipulating the election process, introducing new voting rules, and supporting voting technologies that benefit Democrats and handicap Republicans.

This is the paradigm that many Republicans now propose to embrace, with virtually no institutional or financial support.

Conservatives Must Rebuild Classic Electoral Norms
Conservatives are supposed to be involved in conserving things, and there are few things more worth conserving than the U.S. election system as it has existed throughout most of American history. U.S. elections used to be the envy of the world even 10 years ago, but since then have deteriorated to the point where a large and growing proportion of the population views election results with deep skepticism.

Viewing the grotesque Covid-19 era distortions in the present electoral landscape as an unalterable fait accompli means abandoning our election system to a vast institutional complex that seeks to make the voting booth a relic and Election Day an anachronism.

Even worse, the left’s election-industrial complex seeks to reshape voting into a private activity, to be undertaken at home at the initiative of community organizers and activists, as opposed to a public activity that takes place in a neutral public square, and which relies on the initiative of the voters. In the liberal election utopia, the sanctity of the voting booth and the secret ballot must give way to the collective intimacy of the kitchen table and the oversight of neighborhood political bosses.

For Republican activists to commit to a long-term strategy of universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting would not only be a losing proposition from a practical standpoint, it would also contribute even further toward the transformation of our political system away from the control of civically engaged voters, and toward the consolidation of control in the hands of a small cadre of partisan activists and community organizers, as well as their numerous partners in the nonprofit world and administrative state.

There is a larger argument to be made, that universal absentee ballots and ballot harvesting must be opposed, not just from a practical standpoint, but also from a moral and philosophical point of view. We will have much more to say in the future about how universal mail-in ballots represent an objectively disordered way of deciding elections, which must therefore be unconditionally opposed.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 09:51:14   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
Here’s Where GOP Election Officials Stand On Their State’s Ties To A Leftist-Controlled Voter Roll ‘Maintenance’ Group
BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD
MARCH 15, 2023
7 MIN READ


The Federalist pressed GOP state election officials about their participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center.


Since Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia’s recent withdrawal from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) — a widely used voter-roll management group with ties to left-wing activists — last week, America’s legacy media have been in freak-out mode. In uniform fashion, leftist outlets have labeled the legitimate concerns raised by the aforementioned states as “conspiracy theories” promoted by “election deniers” and “right-wing media.”

As The Federalist’s Victoria Marshall reported, publications like The New York Times and Associated Press have gone out of their way to run grossly dishonest headlines such as “G.O.P. States Abandon Bipartisan Voting Integrity Group, Yielding to Conspiracy Theories” and “Election conspiracies fuel dispute over voter fraud system.” Predictably, these articles whitewash the issues surrounding ERIC, particularly its refusal to “require member states to participate in addressing multi-state voter fraud” and allowance “for a hyper-partisan individual to be an ex-officio non-voting member on its governance board.”

While painted as a nonpartisan venture by corporate media, ERIC is a voter-roll management system founded by far-left activist David Becker that was sold to states as a “quick and easy way” to administer their voter rolls. When states become ERIC members, they give voter data to the group — including the records of unregistered voters. Currently, ERIC has control of voter-roll data in more than half of states and the District of Columbia.

In addition to founding ERIC, Becker is also notable for launching the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of the major groups that received millions of dollars from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Such grants were then poured into local election offices throughout the country to push Democrat-backed voting policies. Analyses have shown these “Zuckbucks” were heavily skewed toward Democrat municipalities, especially in swing states, effectively making it a giant Democrat “get out the vote” operation.

As The Federalist reported, ERIC transmits the voter-roll data it receives from states to CEIR, which “then develops targeted mailing lists and sends them back to the states to use for voter registration outreach.”

While currently a non-voting member of ERIC’s board, Becker announced on Tuesday he “will not accept renomination” to the board “when [his] term expires this week,” citing Republican criticisms of the group.

Despite these alarming ties, there are still several leading GOP state election officials who continue to participate in ERIC. In light of Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia’s collective withdrawal from the coalition, The Federalist reached out to these officials to inquire whether they’re reconsidering their state’s ERIC membership.

Alaska
While speaking with state lawmakers last week, Alaska’s Division of Elections director Carol Beecher revealed she was reconsidering the state’s partnership with ERIC, citing membership costs as the primary reason. A spokeswoman from the Alaska lieutenant governor’s office confirmed this assertion but noted the state “has not decided on whether to continue” as an ERIC member.

“List maintenance is an essential process to ensure our voter list is as accurate and current as possible, and ERIC is one of the tools that Alaska uses to assist in this process,” spokeswoman Tiffany Montemayor told The Federalist. Montemayor did not, however, address whether Alaska shares the concerns about ERIC raised by Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia.

Georgia
When pressed by The Federalist on whether Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger was reconsidering his state’s ERIC membership and if he shared the concerns espoused by the three aforementioned states, Raffensberger spokesman Mike Hassinger declined to answer, instead replying, “If you really believe that ERIC is ‘an interstate alliance controlled by Democrat operatives that encourages partisan outreach efforts under the guise of simple voter roll maintenance,’ you’re an idiot.”

Ohio
While once describing ERIC as “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has reversed course and is threatening to withdraw his state from the organization. In a letter sent to ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin last week, LaRose demanded the group comply with his proposed reforms in its Friday meeting.

“I will not accept the status quo as an outcome of the next meeting,” LaRose wrote. “Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to an[d] including our withdrawal from membership.”

As The Federalist reported, “LaRose’s proposed reforms include removing ‘ex-officio membership positions’ from ERIC’s bylaws so as to cut left-wing activist David Becker from its board, as well as no longer requiring states to send out voter registration mailers to unregistered residents.”

Iowa
According to the Associated Press, Iowa GOP Secretary of State Paul Pate is among the nation’s leading Republican election officials “who said they [have] no intention” of leaving ERIC and who have “signaled strong support for the effort.”

“ERIC is an effective tool for ensuring the integrity of Iowa’s voter rolls,” Pate told the outlet.

Texas
In Texas, state lawmakers have introduced legislation that, according to The Texas Tribune, would end the state’s participation in ERIC. Under HB 2809, the Texas secretary of state would be required to “cooperate with other states and jurisdictions to develop systems to compare voters, voter history, and voter registration lists to identify voters: whose addresses have changed,” “who have been convicted of a felony,” or “who are registered to vote in more than one state.”

A companion bill (SB 1070) has also been introduced in the state Senate.

In a statement provided to The Federalist, Assistant Secretary of State for Communications Sam Taylor said that “Texas has always used the many sources at its disposal – including the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics, local Registrars of Death, probate courts, U.S. Attorneys’ offices, and County Voter Registrars – to identify and remove ineligible and duplicate voter registrations from the rolls and update voters’ addresses.”

“Our office will continue to use every tool in our toolbox to ensure Texas’ voter rolls remain accurate and up-to-date, including by working with other states and jurisdictions – as required by Section 18.062 of the Texas Election Code, which has been law since 2015 – to identify potential cross-state registrants, movers, and deceased individuals on the voter rolls,” Taylor said.

Virginia
Unlike most U.S. jurisdictions, Virginia doesn’t have a secretary of state, meaning the state’s elections department is tasked with overseeing election administration. When pressed on whether the department is reconsidering its participation in ERIC in light of Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia’s decision to withdraw, an agency spokeswoman didn’t provide a definitive answer on the matter.

“The Department of Elections engages in ongoing and extensive list file maintenance processes,” she said. “If there are any changes made to any of these processes, they will be announced publicly.”

South Carolina
In a statement provided to The Federalist, South Carolina State Election Commission spokesman John Catalano said that while the commission has “many sources of information to remove unqualified voters for a variety of reasons,” ERIC is currently their “only source for access to critical sets of data,” including the Social Security Administration’s death files and the “list of South Carolina voters who have registered in other states.”

“While our state’s health department provides us with reports of people who have died in South Carolina, these reports do not include South Carolinians who die outside the state’s borders. The Social Security Administration death data we receive through ERIC allows us to identify these voters and make them inactive,” Catalano said. “The State Election Commission’s view is that ERIC is a valuable and currently irreplaceable tool that allows us to remove unqualified voters from the voter registration rolls.”

Leading GOP state election officials from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Utah did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.

This article has been updated to include statements from election officials in South Carolina and Texas.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 09:51:54   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
dtucker300 wrote:
Here’s Where GOP Election Officials Stand On Their State’s Ties To A Leftist-Controlled Voter Roll ‘Maintenance’ Group
BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD
MARCH 15, 2023
7 MIN READ


The Federalist pressed GOP state election officials about their participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center.


Since Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia’s recent withdrawal from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) — a widely used voter-roll management group with ties to left-wing activists — last week, America’s legacy media have been in freak-out mode. In uniform fashion, leftist outlets have labeled the legitimate concerns raised by the aforementioned states as “conspiracy theories” promoted by “election deniers” and “right-wing media.”

As The Federalist’s Victoria Marshall reported, publications like The New York Times and Associated Press have gone out of their way to run grossly dishonest headlines such as “G.O.P. States Abandon Bipartisan Voting Integrity Group, Yielding to Conspiracy Theories” and “Election conspiracies fuel dispute over voter fraud system.” Predictably, these articles whitewash the issues surrounding ERIC, particularly its refusal to “require member states to participate in addressing multi-state voter fraud” and allowance “for a hyper-partisan individual to be an ex-officio non-voting member on its governance board.”

While painted as a nonpartisan venture by corporate media, ERIC is a voter-roll management system founded by far-left activist David Becker that was sold to states as a “quick and easy way” to administer their voter rolls. When states become ERIC members, they give voter data to the group — including the records of unregistered voters. Currently, ERIC has control of voter-roll data in more than half of states and the District of Columbia.

In addition to founding ERIC, Becker is also notable for launching the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of the major groups that received millions of dollars from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Such grants were then poured into local election offices throughout the country to push Democrat-backed voting policies. Analyses have shown these “Zuckbucks” were heavily skewed toward Democrat municipalities, especially in swing states, effectively making it a giant Democrat “get out the vote” operation.

As The Federalist reported, ERIC transmits the voter-roll data it receives from states to CEIR, which “then develops targeted mailing lists and sends them back to the states to use for voter registration outreach.”

While currently a non-voting member of ERIC’s board, Becker announced on Tuesday he “will not accept renomination” to the board “when [his] term expires this week,” citing Republican criticisms of the group.

Despite these alarming ties, there are still several leading GOP state election officials who continue to participate in ERIC. In light of Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia’s collective withdrawal from the coalition, The Federalist reached out to these officials to inquire whether they’re reconsidering their state’s ERIC membership.

Alaska
While speaking with state lawmakers last week, Alaska’s Division of Elections director Carol Beecher revealed she was reconsidering the state’s partnership with ERIC, citing membership costs as the primary reason. A spokeswoman from the Alaska lieutenant governor’s office confirmed this assertion but noted the state “has not decided on whether to continue” as an ERIC member.

“List maintenance is an essential process to ensure our voter list is as accurate and current as possible, and ERIC is one of the tools that Alaska uses to assist in this process,” spokeswoman Tiffany Montemayor told The Federalist. Montemayor did not, however, address whether Alaska shares the concerns about ERIC raised by Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia.

Georgia
When pressed by The Federalist on whether Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger was reconsidering his state’s ERIC membership and if he shared the concerns espoused by the three aforementioned states, Raffensberger spokesman Mike Hassinger declined to answer, instead replying, “If you really believe that ERIC is ‘an interstate alliance controlled by Democrat operatives that encourages partisan outreach efforts under the guise of simple voter roll maintenance,’ you’re an idiot.”

Ohio
While once describing ERIC as “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has reversed course and is threatening to withdraw his state from the organization. In a letter sent to ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin last week, LaRose demanded the group comply with his proposed reforms in its Friday meeting.

“I will not accept the status quo as an outcome of the next meeting,” LaRose wrote. “Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to an[d] including our withdrawal from membership.”

As The Federalist reported, “LaRose’s proposed reforms include removing ‘ex-officio membership positions’ from ERIC’s bylaws so as to cut left-wing activist David Becker from its board, as well as no longer requiring states to send out voter registration mailers to unregistered residents.”

Iowa
According to the Associated Press, Iowa GOP Secretary of State Paul Pate is among the nation’s leading Republican election officials “who said they [have] no intention” of leaving ERIC and who have “signaled strong support for the effort.”

“ERIC is an effective tool for ensuring the integrity of Iowa’s voter rolls,” Pate told the outlet.

Texas
In Texas, state lawmakers have introduced legislation that, according to The Texas Tribune, would end the state’s participation in ERIC. Under HB 2809, the Texas secretary of state would be required to “cooperate with other states and jurisdictions to develop systems to compare voters, voter history, and voter registration lists to identify voters: whose addresses have changed,” “who have been convicted of a felony,” or “who are registered to vote in more than one state.”

A companion bill (SB 1070) has also been introduced in the state Senate.

In a statement provided to The Federalist, Assistant Secretary of State for Communications Sam Taylor said that “Texas has always used the many sources at its disposal – including the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics, local Registrars of Death, probate courts, U.S. Attorneys’ offices, and County Voter Registrars – to identify and remove ineligible and duplicate voter registrations from the rolls and update voters’ addresses.”

“Our office will continue to use every tool in our toolbox to ensure Texas’ voter rolls remain accurate and up-to-date, including by working with other states and jurisdictions – as required by Section 18.062 of the Texas Election Code, which has been law since 2015 – to identify potential cross-state registrants, movers, and deceased individuals on the voter rolls,” Taylor said.

Virginia
Unlike most U.S. jurisdictions, Virginia doesn’t have a secretary of state, meaning the state’s elections department is tasked with overseeing election administration. When pressed on whether the department is reconsidering its participation in ERIC in light of Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia’s decision to withdraw, an agency spokeswoman didn’t provide a definitive answer on the matter.

“The Department of Elections engages in ongoing and extensive list file maintenance processes,” she said. “If there are any changes made to any of these processes, they will be announced publicly.”

South Carolina
In a statement provided to The Federalist, South Carolina State Election Commission spokesman John Catalano said that while the commission has “many sources of information to remove unqualified voters for a variety of reasons,” ERIC is currently their “only source for access to critical sets of data,” including the Social Security Administration’s death files and the “list of South Carolina voters who have registered in other states.”

“While our state’s health department provides us with reports of people who have died in South Carolina, these reports do not include South Carolinians who die outside the state’s borders. The Social Security Administration death data we receive through ERIC allows us to identify these voters and make them inactive,” Catalano said. “The State Election Commission’s view is that ERIC is a valuable and currently irreplaceable tool that allows us to remove unqualified voters from the voter registration rolls.”

Leading GOP state election officials from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Utah did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.

This article has been updated to include statements from election officials in South Carolina and Texas.
Here’s Where GOP Election Officials Stand On Their... (show quote)

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 09:52:26   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
Records: Missouri County Used Taxpayer Money To Join Democrats’ Private Election Takeover Scheme
BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD
MARCH 15, 2023
4 MIN READ

Newly obtained records reveal that Boone County, Missouri, used taxpayer dollars to join a coalition of left-wing nonprofits that employ private money to influence election operations in local election offices throughout the country.

Through a series of public records requests, the Honest Elections Project discovered that Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon paid a membership fee of $1,600 to the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, an $80 million venture by left-wing nonprofit groups to “systematically influence every aspect of election administration” and advance Democrat-backed voting policies in local election offices. Notably, a majority of Boone County voters supported Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the 2020 election (54.9 to 42.4 percent).

Launched last year, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is comprised of left-wing nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). During the 2020 election, groups like CTCL received hundreds of millions of dollars from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. These “Zuckbucks” were poured into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections are administered, such as by expanding unsecure election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, the grants were heavily skewed towards Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.

Leading up to the 2020 contest, CTCL distributed roughly $6.8 million “Zuckbucks” to local election offices in Missouri. In response, state Republicans passed HB 1878, which stipulates that “neither the state of Missouri nor any political subdivision thereof that conducts elections shall receive or expend private moneys, excluding in-kind donations, for preparing, administering, or conducting an election, including registering voters.”

To replicate CTCL’s strategy ahead of the 2024 elections, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is attempting to skirt existing “Zuckbucks” bans by providing election offices with “scholarships” to cover Alliance membership costs. These scholarships are then “instantly converted into ‘credits’ that member offices can use to buy services from CTCL and other Alliance partners.”

In Georgia — where lawmakers adopted a law prohibiting private election funding two years ago — DeKalb County officials attempted to violate the spirit of the state’s “Zuckbucks” ban by accepting a $2 million grant from the Alliance. To avoid explicitly breaking the law, DeKalb officials used a loophole in the statute by having their finance department apply for the funds instead of the county’s election board. The Georgia Senate has since passed a measure that, if approved by the House and signed into law, would tighten up the language in the state’s “Zuckbucks” ban and require DeKalb to return the money to the Alliance.

While there’s currently no evidence to suggest Boone County has accepted private money from the Alliance or its partners, Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead says that the locality’s lack of transparency in using taxpayer dollars to join the coalition is concerning.

“While all of the other offices that have joined, at least the ones that we’re aware of, have been very public in joining, I have not seen anything pushed out from Boone County yet,” Snead told The Heartlander. “They just spent $1,600 in taxpayer funds to join a highly partisan left-wing organization, and they haven’t told the public that they’re doing this.”

In a statement provided to The Federalist, Snead explained that since Missouri prohibits local election offices from accepting private funding, Boone County essentially “bought their way” into the Alliance.

“This is precisely why CTCL ‘pivoted’ (their characterization) from their original model to a fee-based membership model,” he said. “For jurisdictions that are permitted to receive grants, those fees are effectively waived. But jurisdictions that cannot receive private grants can still buy their way in for a relatively small sum, allowing the Alliance to spread its influence even in states where lawmakers have tried to prevent it.”

The Missouri secretary of state’s office did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment on whether it plans to investigate Boone County for its decision to join the Alliance.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 09:53:24   #
dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA
 
Democrat Activist To Resign From Voter Roll Operation After Pressure From GOP States
BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL
MARCH 15, 2023

After Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia announced their withdrawal from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) last week, nonvoting board member and founder David Becker tweeted that he would not accept renomination to ERIC’s board.

As previously reported by The Federalist, ERIC markets itself as a voter roll management system used by at least 30 states and the District of Columbia. It operates under the guise of helping states update their voter rolls by removing dead and duplicate registrants and comparing data with other member states. But ERIC does more to inflate state voter rolls than clean them, as it requires member states to engage in partisan voter registration outreach. Becker founded ERIC in 2012, but later changed his role to be a nonvoting member of ERIC’s board.

Becker is a left-wing activist with a history of working as a lobbyist for the George Soros-funded advocacy group People for the American Way and as a Justice Department attorney with a vendetta against conservatives. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of two groups that funneled $419 million in grant money from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to fund the private takeover of government election offices in 2020. Such grants targeted predominantly blue areas of swing states, running pro-Democrat get-out-the-vote operations from election offices themselves. As noted by good government group VerityVote, ERIC shares voter roll data with CEIR to create lists of eligible but unregistered voters whom ERIC member states are then required to target for voter registration efforts.

Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia withdrew from ERIC last week after ERIC’s board failed to implement changes requested by their secretaries of state, among which was a demand to remove Becker from the board. Shortly after, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose sent a letter to the board threatening Ohio’s withdrawal unless the board removed “ex-officio” members — aka, Becker — from its bylaws, and allowed member states greater freedom in how they utilize ERIC’s data-sharing services.

In what appears to be a response to LaRose’s demands, Becker announced he would not be accepting a renomination to the board on Tuesday.


In the tweet thread, Becker slandered ERIC’s critics as “election deniers” and accused them of spreading lies about the group. He argued that ERIC is the best tool for states to keep their voter lists accurate and detect fraud. But others have pointed out that states have the technological wherewithal to clean voter rolls themselves and have access to data like the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address Program, which records when people move out of state.

In a further attempt to appear nonpartisan, Becker linked a letter by 26 signees who describe themselves as “Republicans and conservatives” who wrote, Becker claims, “in support of the truth and our bipartisan/nonpartisan work.” Among those who signed the letter are Maricopa County election officials Stephen Richer and Bill Gates, who are responsible for the maladministration that occurred during the 2022 election in Arizona’s largest county; and Georgia Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling, who, among other things, has dismissed documented cases of election fraud as “everyday Georgians who are just trying to exercise their right to vote.”

While Becker’s departure from ERIC is a welcome development, his influence still looms large, as CEIR and ERIC are intricately linked.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 10:54:32   #
Kevyn
 
ForThePeople wrote:
By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/elections_have_consequences_stolen_elections_have_catastrophes.html

"Put the adults back in charge," they whined. "Donald Trump will break the world," they lied. Well, they manipulated election rules to certify suspicious vote totals that preposterously portrayed senile Joe Biden as the most popularly elected president in history; censored and locked up anyone who complained; and covered up their crimes with J6 show trials drenched in untruths meant to hide from history the Uniparty's underhanded machinations in outright stealing a presidential election. The whole mess was so banana-republic-yucky that Biden was inaugurated behind barbed wire and a show of military force befitting the small junta who attended the successful coup's celebration. And as a result of the Uniparty's installation of Dementia Joe as White House marionette, the American people have been plagued with crime, inflation, political persecution, COVID tyranny, deadly battlefield retreat, open borders, staggering drug deaths, proxy wars, bankruptcies, bank runs, endless new regulations, a plummeting standard of living, economic panic, and social volatility. Elections have consequences, but stolen elections have catastrophes.

For over two years, the State-controlled press and the permanent political class have accused anyone who challenges the ruling regime's legitimacy of being an "election denier" pushing the "big lie" that the 2020 race was rigged. That resort to low-minded name-calling always seems like the "big tell" that they know that the people know that they're full of it. Never mind that Time ran an exposé shortly after the election diagramming in great detail how "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, work[ed] together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information." Never mind that the American people later learned that Facebook CEO "Mark Zuckerberg and other left-wing actors commandeered election operations in blue hubs of swing states in 2020" by "strategically bankroll[ing] and staff[ing] local government election offices, which are in charge of voter registration, voting, and vote counting." Never mind that leftist agitators had spent months in the run-up to the election threatening to unleash mayhem if Biden "won" the so-called "national popular vote" but lost the Electoral College. Never mind that those same leftist agitators also spent months seeding a public narrative that a "red mirage" would show Trump winning before days of ballot-hunting eventually overturned those ephemeral victories. Nope — put all those public admissions and "color revolution" propaganda campaigns aside, you dumb deplorables, and blithely accept the authorities' assurances that Biden's election was on the up-and-up. People with power crossed their hearts and promised they were telling the truth; what more could Americans without power possibly require?

Here's an idea: when more than half the country believes that "cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election" and that future election outcomes cannot be trusted, then that crisis in confidence reflects catastrophic government failure. In functioning republics with reliable voting systems, allegations of electoral malfeasance are a "big deal." When nothing less than the people's faith in the democratic process is at stake, then representative government will not survive unless the people perceive that process to be fair, transparent, and above reproach. When they instead judge elections as corrupt, manipulated, and unverifiable, the blame for such disastrous public perception lies entirely with government officials. The burden of ensuring secure elections, swift results, and trusted outcomes rests with those in power, and loss of public confidence reflects government abrogation of its own civic and legal duties.

In 2020, when COVID's ongoing "state of emergency" conveniently provided a pretext for making sweeping changes to the ways in which votes were cast and collected, irrespective of binding statutory law, mail-in ballots with scant security checks or signature verifications flooded battleground states in Democrat-controlled zones that tilted Trump victories to Biden victories days after the actual election. During that days-long window, ballots were lost and found; election workers inexplicably stopped and started their work; and numerous allegations of improper collection, derelict verification, unlawful voting, mixed sorting (where suspect ballots were separated from mail-in envelopes before verification but nonetheless included with good ballots), and double counting were never resolved. Still, pundits pretended everything was perfectly normal, despite the reality that, among global peers, America alone is incapable of tabulating its elections promptly or providing results that can be transparently verified and reproduced.

Rather than investigating any of these issues, Secretaries of State looked past clear violations of election law and testimonial evidence alleging various instances of fraud to certify vote counts; state and federal courts, deferring to those bureaucratic certifications despite deficiencies, refused to investigate the matters any further; and the Supreme Court ran like a frightened child when a "case or controversy" of the highest national concern finally reached its doors. So fearful, apparently, of replaying some version of the contentious judicial events that settled the 2000 election between Bush and Gore (or so terrified of the left's certain campaign of terror arriving outside their own families' homes), the courts threw up their hands and permitted perhaps the least trusted election in American history to be rubber-stamped as valid.


Voters, having attempted to invite disinterested third parties to review these serious issues but receiving no help from anyone empowered to do so, looked to American history for answers. In such circumstances, when vote fraud or other election crimes have been suspected of having directly affected the electoral outcomes for federal offices, voters have successfully delayed the certification of those elections until the allegations could be either fully resolved through the courts or settled through negotiated compromise. In this matter, voters similarly encouraged lawmakers and Vice President Pence to delay certification of the Electoral College's 2020 vote tallies until all election-related cases could be exhaustively resolved and, by doing so, uphold their constitutional duties to certify only lawful, honest elections.

Rather than taking advantage of such a possibility, the vice president insisted that he had no choice but to certify the Electoral College vote, regardless of whether or not its results were tainted by fraud, and Congress used the J6 election protests as a pretext to invoke an "emergency session" and sidestep the substantial election issues entirely. In essence, the vice president and members of Congress followed the Supreme Court in concluding that their constitutional duties required them to rubber-stamp a disputed election. The federal government once again proved itself little more than a coalition of cowards and criminals. The people were then expected to watch this constitutionally questionable process play out — during which none of their allegations of election illegality were ever fully scrutinized or resolved — and somehow respect the outcome as fair, reasonable, and legitimate.

That expectation was hooey then and is still hooey today. When a majority of Americans see election fraud and a near unanimity of lawmakers see none, then America's ruling Uniparty is willfully blind. When Americans' efforts to pursue all available legal remedies are unceremoniously quashed at every turn, then justice is no longer blind. When Congress decides to ignore all the evidence for 2020 vote fraud and instead pumps out years of propaganda about an "insurrection" that never happened, then more Americans have their eyes wide open and can finally see. When the consequences of a stolen election are nothing less than impoverishment, persecution, crime, and war, then the people can see ever more clearly that justice delayed is justice denied.

When those who run the government have no vision and those punished by the government have committed no crimes, then the blind won't see what they've destroyed until it's too late. Trust is a tricky thing to restore. Once it's gone, systems just break.
By J.B. Shurk br br https://www.americanthinker.c... (show quote)


Whoever shat out this fairytale manifesto needs to put down their crack pipe and check into rehab or a mental hospital.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 11:55:50   #
ForThePeople
 
Kevyn wrote:
Whoever shat out this fairytale manifesto needs to put down their crack pipe and check into rehab or a mental hospital.


And be forced to be with you?

I doubt it.

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 14:46:52   #
LogicallyRight Loc: Chicago
 
Well summarized and chronologically laid out. FACTS

Reply
Mar 16, 2023 14:48:24   #
LogicallyRight Loc: Chicago
 
Kevyn wrote:
Whoever shat out this fairytale manifesto needs to put down their crack pipe and check into rehab or a mental hospital.


Where you will find Kev cleaning out the bed pans full of democrat lies and other schitt.

Reply
Mar 17, 2023 05:38:27   #
bggamers Loc: georgia
 
ForThePeople wrote:
By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/elections_have_consequences_stolen_elections_have_catastrophes.html

"Put the adults back in charge," they whined. "Donald Trump will break the world," they lied. Well, they manipulated election rules to certify suspicious vote totals that preposterously portrayed senile Joe Biden as the most popularly elected president in history; censored and locked up anyone who complained; and covered up their crimes with J6 show trials drenched in untruths meant to hide from history the Uniparty's underhanded machinations in outright stealing a presidential election. The whole mess was so banana-republic-yucky that Biden was inaugurated behind barbed wire and a show of military force befitting the small junta who attended the successful coup's celebration. And as a result of the Uniparty's installation of Dementia Joe as White House marionette, the American people have been plagued with crime, inflation, political persecution, COVID tyranny, deadly battlefield retreat, open borders, staggering drug deaths, proxy wars, bankruptcies, bank runs, endless new regulations, a plummeting standard of living, economic panic, and social volatility. Elections have consequences, but stolen elections have catastrophes.

For over two years, the State-controlled press and the permanent political class have accused anyone who challenges the ruling regime's legitimacy of being an "election denier" pushing the "big lie" that the 2020 race was rigged. That resort to low-minded name-calling always seems like the "big tell" that they know that the people know that they're full of it. Never mind that Time ran an exposé shortly after the election diagramming in great detail how "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, work[ed] together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information." Never mind that the American people later learned that Facebook CEO "Mark Zuckerberg and other left-wing actors commandeered election operations in blue hubs of swing states in 2020" by "strategically bankroll[ing] and staff[ing] local government election offices, which are in charge of voter registration, voting, and vote counting." Never mind that leftist agitators had spent months in the run-up to the election threatening to unleash mayhem if Biden "won" the so-called "national popular vote" but lost the Electoral College. Never mind that those same leftist agitators also spent months seeding a public narrative that a "red mirage" would show Trump winning before days of ballot-hunting eventually overturned those ephemeral victories. Nope — put all those public admissions and "color revolution" propaganda campaigns aside, you dumb deplorables, and blithely accept the authorities' assurances that Biden's election was on the up-and-up. People with power crossed their hearts and promised they were telling the truth; what more could Americans without power possibly require?

Here's an idea: when more than half the country believes that "cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election" and that future election outcomes cannot be trusted, then that crisis in confidence reflects catastrophic government failure. In functioning republics with reliable voting systems, allegations of electoral malfeasance are a "big deal." When nothing less than the people's faith in the democratic process is at stake, then representative government will not survive unless the people perceive that process to be fair, transparent, and above reproach. When they instead judge elections as corrupt, manipulated, and unverifiable, the blame for such disastrous public perception lies entirely with government officials. The burden of ensuring secure elections, swift results, and trusted outcomes rests with those in power, and loss of public confidence reflects government abrogation of its own civic and legal duties.

In 2020, when COVID's ongoing "state of emergency" conveniently provided a pretext for making sweeping changes to the ways in which votes were cast and collected, irrespective of binding statutory law, mail-in ballots with scant security checks or signature verifications flooded battleground states in Democrat-controlled zones that tilted Trump victories to Biden victories days after the actual election. During that days-long window, ballots were lost and found; election workers inexplicably stopped and started their work; and numerous allegations of improper collection, derelict verification, unlawful voting, mixed sorting (where suspect ballots were separated from mail-in envelopes before verification but nonetheless included with good ballots), and double counting were never resolved. Still, pundits pretended everything was perfectly normal, despite the reality that, among global peers, America alone is incapable of tabulating its elections promptly or providing results that can be transparently verified and reproduced.

Rather than investigating any of these issues, Secretaries of State looked past clear violations of election law and testimonial evidence alleging various instances of fraud to certify vote counts; state and federal courts, deferring to those bureaucratic certifications despite deficiencies, refused to investigate the matters any further; and the Supreme Court ran like a frightened child when a "case or controversy" of the highest national concern finally reached its doors. So fearful, apparently, of replaying some version of the contentious judicial events that settled the 2000 election between Bush and Gore (or so terrified of the left's certain campaign of terror arriving outside their own families' homes), the courts threw up their hands and permitted perhaps the least trusted election in American history to be rubber-stamped as valid.


Voters, having attempted to invite disinterested third parties to review these serious issues but receiving no help from anyone empowered to do so, looked to American history for answers. In such circumstances, when vote fraud or other election crimes have been suspected of having directly affected the electoral outcomes for federal offices, voters have successfully delayed the certification of those elections until the allegations could be either fully resolved through the courts or settled through negotiated compromise. In this matter, voters similarly encouraged lawmakers and Vice President Pence to delay certification of the Electoral College's 2020 vote tallies until all election-related cases could be exhaustively resolved and, by doing so, uphold their constitutional duties to certify only lawful, honest elections.

Rather than taking advantage of such a possibility, the vice president insisted that he had no choice but to certify the Electoral College vote, regardless of whether or not its results were tainted by fraud, and Congress used the J6 election protests as a pretext to invoke an "emergency session" and sidestep the substantial election issues entirely. In essence, the vice president and members of Congress followed the Supreme Court in concluding that their constitutional duties required them to rubber-stamp a disputed election. The federal government once again proved itself little more than a coalition of cowards and criminals. The people were then expected to watch this constitutionally questionable process play out — during which none of their allegations of election illegality were ever fully scrutinized or resolved — and somehow respect the outcome as fair, reasonable, and legitimate.

That expectation was hooey then and is still hooey today. When a majority of Americans see election fraud and a near unanimity of lawmakers see none, then America's ruling Uniparty is willfully blind. When Americans' efforts to pursue all available legal remedies are unceremoniously quashed at every turn, then justice is no longer blind. When Congress decides to ignore all the evidence for 2020 vote fraud and instead pumps out years of propaganda about an "insurrection" that never happened, then more Americans have their eyes wide open and can finally see. When the consequences of a stolen election are nothing less than impoverishment, persecution, crime, and war, then the people can see ever more clearly that justice delayed is justice denied.

When those who run the government have no vision and those punished by the government have committed no crimes, then the blind won't see what they've destroyed until it's too late. Trust is a tricky thing to restore. Once it's gone, systems just break.
By J.B. Shurk br br https://www.americanthinker.c... (show quote)


Great post thank you

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Mar 17, 2023 13:28:01   #
older and wiser
 
microphor wrote:
After the Russian Collusion Delusion, if I saw a Democrat on fire and he told my he was on fire, I still wouldn't believe it. I will never believe a Democrat Politician again. "Smoke and Mirrors" the Democrat way. If they're on fire, they need to piss on themselves, I'm busy that day!


The perfect definition of being a democrat!

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Mar 17, 2023 13:31:16   #
older and wiser
 
Kevyn wrote:
Whoever shat out this fairytale manifesto needs to put down their crack pipe and check into rehab or a mental hospital.


That’s where all of the Biden regime belongs, a mental hospital or prison of the don’t qualify as a mentally I’ll fool!

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