an Uncensored Mind

From Fox News:

Pelosi says Biden shouldn’t debate Trump: ‘I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him’

Note, too, that the article claims that her statement was unprompted and not in response to a relevant question or comment. Together with other suggestions to cancel the debates, it seems that Pelosi’s statement be part of a long-term ploy to win media support for canceling of the debates. Eliminating the debates would avoid exposing Biden to a public review of his faculties.

 The article also suggests that Biden has not committed to an additional debate requested by Republicans, one to occur before early voting begins in many states.

I’m deeply disappointed with Governor Sisolak of Nevada, who saw fit to sign AB4. I had hoped that he’d veto this highly-partisan election reform bill that passed the legislature in a rushed special session on a strict part-line vote.

For those who are unaware, AB4 allows for the governor to declare a health emergency, thereby forcing a different set of rules on the Secretary of State for a pending election. For instance, due to the coronavirus pandemic the State of Nevada will send a mail-in ballot to every registered voter’s last known address. Perfectly reasonable, right? Well, almost…

The law also makes significant changes to current election law “…in order to align all the provisions and make them uniform in their operation for Nevada’s elections…” (a fancy way of saying “we needed to make a change that you might not need or like and we didn’t want you to notice”). These changes include the introduction of ballot harvesting to Nevada elections, an activity that was previously prohibited. This allows anyone – even partisan political operatives – to collect up and deliver ballots to the post office or directly to the registrar. These ballot harvesters are not required to identify themselves to either the voter, post office or the registrar, and no records are kept of their activities or which ballots they pick up and/or deliver. This means that if any suspicions of vote tampering arise there will be no way to identify the likely suspects. It effectively breaks the chain of ballot custody and opens the door for widespread and rampant fraud.

Yes, yes, I know; “experts” claim that voter fraud is rare. But we are moving to mail-in ballots on a scale never before attempted. Do we really want to weaken security at the same time by allowing unknown individuals to handle our ballots? What would you say if the registrar allowed random people for whom they had no information and who were not required to identify themselves to handle your ballot at a precinct polling location? Would you find that acceptable? If not, then why should ballot harvesting be acceptable?

The argument made by democrats is that some voters would be unable to return their ballots without help. A few critical points to make on this claim:

1) If a voter received their ballot via the mail, then they can return it by mail, too. They only have to place it back in the mail box. No one who received their mailed ballot can possibly be prevented from returning it the same way. While in the mail system the ballot will be protected by federal law, discouraging theft or tampering.

2) If there are some few people who are unable to return their ballot via the same mail system that delivered it, the number will be exceedingly small. With such a small number of ballots to harvest, there is no reason why the ballot harvester should not be required to identify themselves on the ballot envelope as having picked up and delivered the ballot and to register with the registrar as a ballot harvester. The registrar or post office should refuse to accept any harvested ballots without the harvester having identified themselves to the registrar and on each ballot itself. This will at least preserve a chain of custody that can be used later to investigate any possible wrongdoings.

3) Each ballot should have a unique identifier that the voter can use to look up their vote online and confirm that their vote was delivered and counted. I’m sure the ballots are uniquely identified (at least I hope so!!), so this would not be much of a change for the system. Remember, it’s easy to claim that voter fraud is rare if you make it impossible to detect!

The reality is that no one who can receive a mailed ballot can be prevented from returning it the same way, so vote harvesting is simply unnecessary. But with the state of Nevada mailing a ballot to everyone’s last known mailing address, I can see a lot of potentially mis-delivered ballots falling into the wrong hands. Couple this with the elimination of the chain of ballot custody enabled by vote harvesting and I see the potential for widespread fraud with no possibility of ever detecting that it took place.

I can’t help but think that the democrats who passed AB4 know all this, too. In fact, I think they’re counting on it.

In a normal election, a bi-partisan collection of poll and other election workers are hired and vetted. The ballots have a documented chain of custody up to and including the point where they are counted. We know exactly who has contact with your ballot, and we know that no one party controls any single component of the process. But no more.

Now your ballot is being handled by a partisan group who has announced their support for a particular candidate (Joe Biden). Worse, they are leveraging the need for their services in the upcoming election to stop long-overdue budget reforms, implying that election itself is in jeopardy.  Worse still, they are blaming the current administration (Trump) for the budget reforms, even though they have been in the making for nearly a decade.

Who is this group? The unionized workforce of the U.S. Postal Service.

Is it possible that they won’t work to skew the election towards those willing to pass legislation to reverse their budget cuts? That the ballots “…left behind on the workroom floor or docks…” won’t be those from areas more likely to support the opposition?

Don’t be so naive.

The U.S. Postal Service has long been derided for its inability to turn a profit, as well as for its underfunded pension/retirement system. But that will not stop postal worker unions from leveraging the coronavirus-driven vote-by-mail push to their advantage. The largest postal workers union has made a claim that ongoing (and long-standing) efforts to cut costs at the USPS will prevent postal workers from delivering election ballots per the required schedule, thus undermining a mail-based election. According to Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union:

“The post office is now the key to making sure tens of millions of people can get to the ballot box.”

I see this as a thinly-veiled political effort by the nation’s largest postal workers union to prevent much-needed cost control at the USPS while seeking support for a government bailout of their pension system. The Washington Post, however, sees it differently; they instead put forth the position that cost-cutting at the USPS is itself a political effort by the Trump administration to undermine a mail-based election:

“…changes implemented by Trump fundraiser-turned-postmaster general Louis DeJoy are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting.

So who do we believe?  To recap, our choices are:

1) A political effort by unionized postal workers is threatening the integrity of the election, or

2) Long-overdue cost cutting efforts at the USPS are being implemented as a political effort to undermine absentee voting.

I’m leaning towards the former, and I’ll tell you why: The same union noted above – the American Postal Workers Union – recently announced their support of the Biden presidential ticket. Their stated reasons:

“In their decision, the Board recognized [Biden’s] record of advancing the cause of unions, his support for the public Postal Service, postal workers, and his opposition to postal privatization.”

The announcement of support for a particular candidate by a major union representing USPS workers – the very same people who are now responsible for making sure that your ballot is delivered on time, intact and unaltered – is very troubling. It also exposes the claims of the USPS union leaders for what they really are – political efforts to benefit their membership at the expense of the taxpayer.

The political rhetoric just seems to be getting more and more extreme, and the politicians aren’t helping. If any one political group manages to muster 50.1% control, they simply ignore the other 49.9% (and common sense) and do whatever is likely to benefit their faction. For instance, it’s one thing to make sure all can vote by mailing everyone a ballot; it’s quite another to to remove safeguards that ensure the ballot’s unaltered return to the registrar.

Ballot harvesting – when 3rd parties (potentially political operatives) are allowed to pick-up and return ballots to the registrar – is being adopted in many states as a result of partisan lawmaking. The argument provided for ballot harvesting is that many cannot return their mailed ballot and thus need someone to return it for them, but that argument is ludicrous. If the voter can receive a ballot via mail then they can return it by mail, too; there is simply no need for ballot harvesting.

Previous law allowed for ballot return by a family member, which at least gives some assurance for its safe return; the new law, however, does not have any such limitation. Anyone can now collect and return your ballot – even political operatives with a vested interest in the return (or non-return) of your ballot. These laws in many cases (as in my state) have no provision for the identification of the ballot harvester, either to the voter or the registrar. Can you imagine voting at a precinct voting site where the ballot handlers were unknown to the registrar? Would that be acceptable to you?

It’s easy to game a ballot-harvesting system. The easiest method is to collect ballots in an area that represents your candidates opponents, then destroy the ballots. Yes, there are significant fines and penalties for such behavior, but since harvesters are not required to identify themselves to the voter or registrar, how would you expect to catch them? And even if we could catch them, the election would be long over and the result certified. What would you do then?

The other, more obvious way to game this system is to also collect uncompleted ballots delivered to the wrong address under the guide of destroying them, then complete them for your own candidate. Given that my state will send a ballot to every registered voter without verifying their address, I would expect a lot of mis-delivered ballots to be up for grabs. And again, with no records of the ballot harvester identities there would be no way to punish anyone if such fraud is discovered after-the-fact.

In short, ballot harvesting is unnecessary and enables the potential for massive, untraceable fraud during the course of an all-mail election. At a minimum, ballot harvesters should be made to identify themselves when picking up and delivering ballots so that a chain of custody can be maintain.

Democrats are – according to Newt Gingrich – allegedly supporting a Republican candidate in a senate primary, spending PAC money to help him win. They are doing this because they believe that the Democratic candidate for this seat has a better change of beating this particular Republican over the other Republican candidates running.

If Republicans did this to a Democratic candidate the media would be screaming its bloody head off….