Punching Back Against Big Tech
“If we want everyone in the world to have access to all the opportunities that come with the Internet, we need to keep the Internet free and open.”
So said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
On July 12, 2017.
How times have changed. Zuck and his fellow Big Tech oligarchs have long since renounced their belief in a “free and open” Internet, throwing in instead with the cowards and tyrants who use their power to censor and deplatform those with whom they disagree.
Take Parler, for example. We challenge any red-blooded, Liberty-loving American to visit the company’s now-pathetic home page and read the posts from CEO John Matze, Senator Rand Paul, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and the platform’s part-owner Dan Bongino and come away with anything but a sense that Big Tech is evil.
Rachel Bovard, writing in American Consequences, rightly sees Big Tech as a cabal of “mega-corporations capable of distorting speech, thought, and behavior — not to mention privacy and data property rights — on an international scale, exerting unprecedented levels of influence over billions of people.” She says it’s “a growing threat from mega-corporate power that rivals — and in some cases, arguably supersedes — that of the government.”
Those who love the marketplace of ideas and our Constitution’s First Amendment have certainly been bloodied, but that doesn’t mean the fight is over. It just means we need to dispense with our naïve belief that Big Tech is fundamentally decent; that its oligarchs are in any way committed to the “free and open” Internet they championed back in 2017.
As Allysia Finley writes in The Wall Street Journal, “Big tech companies today more closely resemble the old telephone monopolies that Congress sought to regulate as common carriers in 1930s than broadband providers do. They have used their market power to suppress speech and competitors, even while pretending to defend an ‘open and free Internet.’ … Democratic states including California and Washington have since imposed their own net-neutrality policies. Which leads to an idea: While Republicans now have little clout in Washington, those in Florida or Texas might consider imposing their own neutrality rules on Big Tech.”
Finally. A punch thrown in anger.
Bovard, too, can throw a punch. She sees Big Tech companies as monopolistic, and she proposes breaking them up. She also notes that this interventionist approach isn’t necessarily at odds with conservative and libertarian thought. “Generations of classical liberal and libertarian-minded thinkers,” she writes, “have understood that when left unchecked, both democracy and capitalism can be susceptible to tyranny — the former to tyranny of the majority, the latter to tyranny of monopoly or cartels.”
Unfortunately, those in government with any inclination to rein in Big Tech have no power to do so. Senator Josh Hawley, for example, can lead by denunciation — but little else. As he wrote recently in a New York Post op-ed, “The cancel culture agenda will only succeed if we let it. We need live in fear only if we choose to say nothing. In this time of testing, conservatives must not shrink back. We need to stand up for the right of every American to be heard. We need to stand up for the basic principles that join all Americans together — the right to speak freely, to debate openly, and to address our differences graciously without fear of being silenced or punished for dissenting views.”
Hawley is right, of course, but again: He’s a senator. As John Hinderaker points out, the states are better equipped to punch back at Big Tech. “The solution,” he writes, “is to work through the states. There are plenty of states controlled by conservatives — or at least people who believe in free speech — to make this happen. In my opinion, if a critical mass of states, say 10 or 15, enact such legislation, authorizing substantial statutory damages for each violation along with attorneys’ fees, the social media platforms will have no choice but to stop suppressing conservative voices.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would seem to be on board, and his state is acting accordingly. One feature of a pending Florida bill: It bars social media platforms from deplatforming political candidates during an election campaign, with substantial fines.
As The Daily Wire reports, “[He] blasted the mainstream media and Big Tech for their suppression of the Hunter Biden story while claims were made that the story was based on ‘hacked information.’”
To that charge, DeSantis fired back with both barrels: ‘You’re trying to tell me if there was hacked information that could damage me you guys wouldn’t print it? Give me a break. You can whiz on my leg, but don’t tell me it’s raining.’“
Thanks, governor, for the quote of the week. The Patriot Post
Bezos, Amazon, and the Dems' $15 Minimum Wage Boondoggle
The biggest headline hitting business news yesterday was the announcement that tech centibillionaire Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon and one of the billionaire archenemies of Liberty, was stepping down from running the company he started out of his garage back in 1994. Bezos isn’t leaving Amazon entirely but is transitioning to the role of executive chairman. At age 57, the world’s second-wealthiest man with an estimated net worth topping $188 billion plans to spend more time focusing on his other ventures, which include a space exploration company called Blue Origin and The Washington Post, as well his philanthropic endeavors.
Meanwhile, socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden and the Democrats are loudly pushing the boondoggle of a $15 per hour minimum wage as part of their larded-up $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. What does this have to do with Bezos? Well, one of the biggest advocates of the $15 minimum wage has been Amazon. Ironically, Bezos only ensured that Amazon met that wage threshold with its nearly one million employees just two years ago.
The ugly truth is that Bezos’s motives are far from altruistic. Rather, they are the cold and greedy calculations of a massive power-hungry corporation seeking to squelch competition. The $15 minimum wage most impacts the small businesses that employ millions of low-income American workers, while Amazon’s biggest competitors like Walmart or Target will hardly be impacted. Bezos knows this, as he was once that little guy, starting a small book-selling business out of his garage.
However, with Amazon now worth over $1.6 trillion, Bezos touts the Democrats’ economy-chilling minimum wage, as it will only work to further secure his own elitist status. If Bezos was really so concerned about ensuring that American workers are fairly compensated with a “livable wage,” then why wasn’t he seeking to pay his own employees not merely the minimum wage but a maximum wage? Evidently, for Bezos and his ilk, it’s better to look or sound good than to be good.
Democrats, of course, are merely interested in votes. They’re the ones who want to pay workers more, not those stingy Republicans, you see. The dirty little secret is, again, that the real minimum wage is $0, which is what people without jobs will earn when small businesses can’t afford to hire them. And that doesn’t bother Democrats or Jeff Bezos in the slightest. ~The Patriot Post
Dems Fight GOP Efforts for Ballot Integrity
“We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” — socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden, October 2020
Arguably at no time in living memory has there been less faith in the American electoral system than today. Three months after the 2020 presidential election, and weeks after socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s inauguration under a phony banner of “unity,” a strong plurality of Americans believe he is not the legitimate president.
An early December poll released by Quinnipiac found 77% of Republicans and 35% of independents believe there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 elections. More than a third (34%) of registered voters believe socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s win was illegitimate, a result very similar to the findings of a Politico survey.
It doesn’t help that the same Democrat Party that spent four years claiming President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was the result of Russian interference, and for the last year warned Russia was rigging the 2020 election for Trump again, have suddenly declared there is not one iota of evidence of election fraud now that socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden has been declared the victor and installed in the White House.
But such a cynical and convenient about-face doesn’t wash with non-Democrat voters, who are deeply disturbed by clear evidence of widespread voter fraud and election manipulation.
Moreover, as political analyst John Hinderaker correctly notes, “The Democrats like voter fraud. That has been true for a long time. In 2020, they saw how helpful to their cause lax voting procedures, that both enable fraud and make it hard if not impossible to prove, can be. They will fight tooth and nail to preserve their fraud advantage in future elections. All of which could make the bitterness over last year’s election a mild preview of things to come.”
And therein lies the problem. The decisive voter fraud in 2020 was not to be found in sensational stories like Dominion voting machines (which top Democrats expressed concerns over in 2019) switching votes from Trump to socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden. Rather, it’s to be found in the much more mundane but devastating efforts by Democrats to overwhelm the system with unverifiable ballots through a strategy of bulk-mail balloting and ballot harvesting.
Using the pretense of the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrat governors and secretaries of state in key states ignored election law and engaged in the mass mailing of ballots, rendering the desired results.
Over 40% (65 million) of the ballots cast in the 2020 election were cast by mail, a vast increase from previous years. Yet we’re supposed to believe that each of these ballots had the voter’s signature verified by election workers to make sure the vote was legally cast and that, despite the massive increase in mail-in ballots, the dramatic decrease in rejected ballots is no cause for concern.
In order to restore lost faith in the American electoral system, Republicans in state legislatures across the U.S. are already working on legislation to tighten up ballot security and voter verification.
Though just weeks into the states’ legislative sessions, Republicans have introduced triple the number of bills to secure the voting process compared to last year — 106 bills in 28 states so far — including Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, which found themselves in the center of the post-election storm.
In Georgia, proposals for ending no-excuse absentee voting have been floated, as well as a photo ID requirement for voting outside of voting precincts. Voters would be required to show photo ID both when requesting the absentee ballot and when returning it.
It is no coincidence that the biggest states where no voter ID is required — California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oregon, and North Carolina — have been dominated by Democrats. North Carolina is the only state in that list won by Trump in 2020.
In Georgia, dominated by Republicans for the last two decades, failed Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams has run a relentless campaign to weaken election laws over the last decade, culminating in Georgia’s electors going for a Democrat for the first time since 1992 and the loss of both Republican-held U.S. Senate seats.
In fact, after registering 115,000 new Democrat voters between the November election and the January runoffs in Georgia, worthless-Abrams openly bragged about decimating the state’s signature-verification requirement.
This is the same worthless-Abrams who previously flooded Georgia’s secretary of state with tens of thousands of fraudulent voter applications while smugly insisting, “[The law] requires that we turn in all application forms we collect, regardless of concerns over validity. It’s the job of the secretary of state to determine the status of the applications.”
Of course, when thousands of these applications were rightly rejected, worthless-Abrams cynically screamed “racism.”
Because requiring a photo ID to vote is racist, but requiring a photo ID to attend the Democrat National Convention or the NAACP national conference or to visit socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden at the White House is not racist. Many black voters think this claim is ridiculous.
Democrats are not through with their efforts to make voter fraud systemic though. Not by a long shot.
House Democrats under scumbag/liar-Pelosi introduced HR 1, the grossly misnamed “For the People Act of 2021.” This monstrosity would federalize election law in violation of the U.S. Constitution (which gives that power to the states), and it would, among other things, prohibit states from requiring photo ID from voters.
This will set up a constitutional showdown between Republican states tightening election laws and a Democrat-controlled Congress seeking to treat legal and illegal voters the same.
President Trump’s Supreme Court appointments are looking pretty good right about now. ~The Patriot Post
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden Immigration Orders
“If you can’t get the votes … you can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We’re a democracy. We need consensus.” — socialist/ scumbag/liar-Joe Biden in October
In his first 10 days, socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden carpet-bombed America with 25 executive orders. And he isn’t done, signing three more on Tuesday, all related to immigration.
“There’s a lot of talk, with good reason, about the number of executive orders that I have signed,” socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden said. “I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy.”
Well then.
The first immigration order is titled “Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans.” Unfortunately, almost every one of those words is exactly the opposite of what socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s policy will be. socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and the Democrats are utterly undermining our legal immigration system by treating illegals with such favor. Why wait in line and do it the right way when you can skip all that rigamarole and get amnesty, with taxpayer benefits along the way?
As for “integration and inclusion,” America was once a melting pot, but that’s now considered xenophobic and white supremacist. Almost everyone wants the kinds of immigrants socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s order praises — hard-working entrepreneurs who fuel our economy and build our country. But we want them to become Americans, both legally (by following the law) and culturally. Democrats instead want to solidify cultural divides for their own political advantage.
His second order is enormous in scope, but fairly specific in impact. Titled “Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework to Address the Causes of Migration, to Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and to Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border,” the key components are twofold: directing U.S. engagement with nations to our south that generate the vast majority of migrants, and rescinding President Donald Trump’s asylum policy.
Stopping the flow would help, if that’s what socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden’s efforts would really do. The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t have the capacity to quarter every immigrant seeking asylum, so most were simply released into the country until their case could be adjudicated. Trump stopped all that. Biden will restart it with his newly confirmed DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas.
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s third order is titled, “The Establishment of Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families.” That’s almost self-explanatory; it’s focused on reuniting families separated by the Trump administration in holding facilities.
The Left mischaracterizes Trump’s policy as “immoral” and “cruel,” but there’s a wrinkle in the narrative: Many of the children separated from their parents were separated long before they were trafficked across the border. Why? Because their parents are using their kids to get here themselves, which the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden administration tacitly acknowledged … and offered to assist. The Washington Examiner reports, “[White House Press Secretary Jen] Psaki told reporters cases would be assessed individually, but she suggested some deported parents could be brought back to the U.S. and given legal status to stay in the country.”
The socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden- lowlife/liar- Harris immigration plan is one that puts illegals first, to the detriment of legal immigrants and American citizens. That isn’t compassionate or humane, as the administration keeps insisting; it’s lawless and unfair, and the nation will pay the price. ~The Patriot Post
Keystone Was More Than a Pipeline
First of all, let’s disabuse ourselves of the notion that the Keystone XL pipeline was merely about getting oil from A to B. It wasn’t. Keystone was about opportunities, dreams, jobs, and lives. It was about real people. It was also about the ennobling nature of work, and especially hard work — and all this is why Beltway elitists like socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden and lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris and hanoi-John Kerry and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could so blithely shut it down.
Just the stroke of a pen. That’s all it took.
A brief history: The 1,700-mile Keystone pipeline was first proposed in 2008 during the George W. Bush administration. When completed, it was expected to carry some 800,000 barrels of oil per day from the oil sands of the western Canadian province of Alberta to the Bakken formation spanning eastern Montana and western North Dakota, where it would be mixed with American light crude and then sent southward to our refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
Predictably, the pipeline was rejected by the scumbag/liar-nObama administration, but the project was revived by President Donald Trump, who clearly understood the wisdom of energy independence — and the wisdom of not sending billions of American dollars every year to countries that hate us.
On his very first day in office, though, ol’ Scranton socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden signed an executive order halting construction of the pipeline by revoking its permit. It was premeditated, and it immediately killed 1,000 real, tangible, rewarding jobs — most of them union jobs. (So much for the Democrats being the party of labor.) It was also part of a wealth-redistribution scheme that The Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Continetti dubbed the blue-state clawback.
“The alternative energy sector overwhelmingly favors Democrats,” Continetti writes, no doubt remembering the $535 million in taxpayer dollars blown by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama on the scam known as Solyndra. “Its political investments have paid off. The old-style extractive industries, mainly based in GOP strongholds, will suffer. In some cases they are targeted for extinction. The knock-on effects are serious. ‘Wyoming state superintendent Jillian Balow notes that her state depends on some $150 million a year in oil and gas federal royalties to fund K-12 schools,’ says the Wall Street Journal editorial board.”
But, again, behind the revenues are the people — people like Laurie Cox, for example. She owns the old Stroppel Hotel in Midland, South Dakota, a place that many of these Keystone workers have come to call home. As the Washington Examiner’s Barnini Chakraborty reports, “Over the months, Cox had become somewhat of a den mother to the pipeline workers … staying at her hotel. She made them food, ran errands, and even drove two hours to get them groceries while they were at work. In a few months, they have become family. So it was especially hard that two hours after Biden was sworn in, her ‘family’ was about to be ripped apart. The pipeline workers she affectionately called ‘her guys’ returned to the hotel. Their faces were forlorn, and they had already started wondering where they’d get their next paycheck. ‘I tried to choke back my tears because they were still packing up, and their families still had to be told, and the last thing they needed was an innkeeper sitting here crying on them.’”
Gaylord Lincoln, a semiretired mechanic and a fellow South Dakotan, wasn’t holding back. “Come down here,” he challenged the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden administration. “See the destruction you caused. See the pain of job loss. You took our chance to have a decent life with a stroke of the pen. It’s all bulls—t in Washington. They are playing with our lives.”
All this makes us wonder what on earth West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin thinks he’s doing as a Democrat. His party used to fight tooth and nail for blue-collar jobs, but now it kills those jobs without thinking twice.
Manchin’s coal-rich state went for Donald Trump by 39 points. And given lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris’s recent heavy-handed visit, his switchboard back home should be lit up like a Christmas tree. ~The Patriot Post
The Democrats' Larded Pandemic Lotto
So, what’s in this latest $1.9 trillion COVID-19 “stimulus plan,” and why are Republicans rightly outraged?
The simple answer is that a lot of the Democrat agenda items are unrelated to the China Virus pandemic. As Representative Jason Smith (R-MO) warned, “Democrats are desperate to use this process to achieve any number of policies that will reward special interests while harming America’s working class, increasing the cost of living for American families, destroying jobs and weakening the economy.”
For background, note that a substantial amount of the original $2.9 trillion CARES Act funding has not been spent. Likewise, 80% of the $900 billion in additional funding approved a month ago has not been spent.
In addition to printing $1,400-per-person checks and padding that with a $400-a-week unemployment bonus (a disincentive to return to work), the Dems’ plan includes a massive $350 billion bailout for mismanaged Democrat-controlled states, $130 billion for schools (read: “teachers unions”), $190 billion for minority-owned businesses (constitutionally questionable), and another $35 billion for public and predominately black colleges. In other words, a lot of graft for Democrat constituents.
Speaking of unrelated items, Democrats also tacked on an economy-crippling $15-per-hour minimum wage. The real minimum wage is $0, and struggling businesses can’t hire back more people if it costs them so much more to do so. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2019 that the Democrats’ pitch would kill millions of jobs — and that was before the pandemic.
The socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden/ lowlife/liar-Harris regime extended a phony bipartisan hand, inviting 10 GOP senators for a confab with socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden. The Republicans pitched a bill that is a mere third of the cost of the Democrats’ bill. In a letter to Biden, the GOP senators noted: “In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a COVID-19 relief framework that builds on prior COVID assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support. Our proposal reflects many of your stated priorities, and with your support, we believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support.”
Following that meeting, Democrat House and Senate leaders scumbag/liar-Nancy Pelosi and Chuck scumbag/liar-Schumer began running a campaign essentially against any bipartisan deal, instead demanding that Republicans either get on board or get lost. “President socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden believes, and I agree with him, we need a bold, strong action,” scumbag/liar-Schumer stated. “Now, we’d like to do that with the Republicans, but if we can’t, we’ll have to go forward on our own using this process, reconciliation.”
There are some wavering Democrat senators, however. lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris is putting pressure on Joe Manchin (WV) and Krysten Sinema (AZ) in their home states to ensure they toe the party line and Democrats can ram through their $1.9 trillion. However, Manchin has already signaled he will not toe the line: “I’m not going to do it just down the lines, just a party-line vote. It has to make sense.”
By tabbing the legislation with the “reconciliation” label, Senate Leader Chuck scumbag/liar-Schumer (D-NY) can avoid a filibuster, but he still needs every Democrat vote. As things stand, unless either Manchin or Sinema or both hold fast to their demand on passing a bipartisan relief bill, the Democrats will get their way via reconciliation. ~The Patriot Post
The Quest for Unity
President socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden in his inauguration speech called for “unity,” promising he’d be the president for all Americans, even the ones who didn’t vote for him. I was reminded of the words of the noted philosopher Inigo Montoya (from “The Princess Bride”) to his associate, Vizzini. The criminal mastermind Vizzini kept using the word “inconceivable” over and over until Montoya finally replied, “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Apparently, unity doesn’t mean the same thing to socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s supporters or his party. Since then, we’ve heard nothing but what the Left wants to do to Republicans who supported President Donald Trump. I’m not feeling the love!
Representative commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told MSNBC the Republican Party is filled with white supremacist sympathizers, racists, misogynists, and insurrectionists who nearly killed her, don’t you know. And “they” are not suffering any consequences for their behavior, she complains.
scumbag/commie-John Brennan, the former head of the CIA, told MSNBC that the pro-Trump “insurgency” that harbors “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians” is much more dangerous than foreign terrorists. There are more of us than the foreign terror groups and we have “weapons” to carry out deadly attacks, he said, referring to the storming of the Capitol.
CNN’s Don Lemon likewise called Republicans domestic terrorists who frighten him more than foreign terrorists. He cites online radicalization, demonization of the “enemy” (anyone who disagrees with the Left) to justify their violence, and devotion to a “cult leader.”
House Speaker scumbag/liar-Nancy Pelosi claimed, “The enemy is within the House of Representatives.” She’s frightened by the evil Republicans. She needs more money to protect Democrats from the Republicans.
I’m only scratching the surface of the insane, inflammatory rhetoric coming from leftists. They want Senators Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton impeached because they asked questions about possible voter fraud. How dare they?!
We’ve seen social media partnering with mainstream media to eliminate any point of view that doesn’t support the Left’s cause. Now that socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden has won, they feel free to completely block anyone they want. Having the “wrong” opinion will get you canceled. Having worked for the Trump administration could cause you to never be able to find a job to provide for your family.
The First Amendment will only apply to those who have the “correct” opinions. The Second Amendment will be next in line to eliminate. It happens whenever socialism takes power. Communism is not far behind. Hello 1984!
Everyone condemned the assault on the Capitol. The media refuses to investigate any influence of antifa and how protesters were shown into the Capitol. And yes, some Trump supporters, stuck on stupid, were a factor.
But the Left’s hyperventilating over January 6 in DC when it was silent during the “Summer of Love” is hypocritical. Nearly $2 billion dollars of property was destroyed, several dozen people were killed, hundreds of law enforcement officers were injured, and the Left said NOTHING!
I’m not seeing anything that would indicate socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden or his supporters are the least bit serious about bringing unity to our country. They’re fully aiming to turn this country into something our Founding Fathers could never have imagined.
As Patriots, now is not the time to let discouragement take over. Thomas Paine said it better than I can: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women.”
Something to think about? ~The Patriot Post
HANS VON SPAKOVSKY
Election fraud is real.
The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, which has chronicled more than 1,300 cases of election fraud, proves that election fraud does occur in American elections.
Errors and omissions by election officials and careless, shoddy election practices and procedures or lack of training can also cause and have caused problems for voters and candidates alike.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. States can, and should, take action to restore integrity to our elections.
Here’s a list of best practices states should adopt for elections.
1.) Verify the accuracy of voter registration lists. Computerized statewide voter registration lists should be designed to be interoperable so that they can communicate seamlessly with other state record databases to allow frequent exchanges and comparisons of information.
For example, when an individual changes the residence address on his or her driver’s license, that information should be sent to state election officials so that the voter registration address of the individual is also changed to his or her new Department of Motor Vehicles residence address.
2.) Verify citizenship of voters. Only lawful citizens can vote in federal elections. States should, therefore, require proof of citizenship to register to vote, as well as verify the citizenship of registered voters with the records of the Department of Homeland Security, including access to the E-Verify system.
3.) Require voter ID. A voter should be required to validate his or her identity with government-issued photo ID to vote in-person or by absentee ballot (as states such as Alabama and Kansas require). Government-issued IDs should be free for those who cannot afford one.
4.) Limit absentee ballots. Absentee ballots should be reserved for those individuals who are too disabled to vote in person or who will be out of town on Election Day and all early-voting days.
5.) Prevent vote trafficking. Vote trafficking (also called “vote harvesting”) by third parties should be banned. That would ensure that candidates, campaign staffers, party activists, and political consultants are prohibited from picking up and potentially mishandling or changing absentee ballots and pressuring or coercing vulnerable voters in their homes.
In other words, a political group can’t offer to pick up ballots and then bring them to the polling place and/or mail them, with no third party supervising that group’s behavior in the interim.
6.) Allow election observers complete access to the election process. Political parties, candidates, and third-party organizations should all be allowed to have observers in every aspect of the election process, because transparency is essential to a fair and secure system. The only limitation on such observers is that they cannot interfere with the voting and counting process.
However, a representative of the election office should be present to answer the questions of the observers. They should be legally allowed to be in a position—exactly like election officials—to observe everything going on, other than the actual voting by individuals.
Election officials should be prohibited from stationing observers so far away that they cannot observe the process, including such procedures as the opening of absentee ballots and the verification process.
7.) Provide voting assistance. Any individuals providing assistance to a voter in a voting booth because the voter is illiterate, disabled, or otherwise requires assistance should be required to complete a form, to be filed with poll election officials, providing their name, address, contact information, and the reason they are providing assistance. They should also be required to provide a photo ID.
8.) Prohibit early vote counting. To avoid premature release of election results, the counting of ballots, including absentee and early votes, should not begin until the polls close at the end of Election Day. However, if a state insists on beginning the count before Election Day, it should ban the release of results until the evening of Election Day, subject to criminal penalties.
9.) Provide state legislatures with legal standing. State legislatures must ensure that they have legal standing—either through a specific state law or through a constitutional amendment, if that is required—to sue other state officials, such as governors or secretaries of state, who make or attempt to make unauthorized changes in state election laws.
For example, if a secretary of state extends the deadline set by state law for the receipt of absentee ballots, legislatures should have legal standing to contest that unilateral change that overrides state law. They should be classified as a necessary party in any lawsuit.
And voters should be provided by state law with the ability to file a writ of mandamus against any state or local official who fails to abide by, or enforce, a state election law requirement.
In 2020, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar made changes to election law unilaterally. We need to ensure that can’t happen again in other states or in future elections.
Along with these nine (and other) reforms, there are specific measures states shouldn’t take.
For instance, there should be no same-day registration for voting. Registration should be required before Election Day to give election officials sufficient time to verify the accuracy of the registration information contained on a registration form and to confirm the eligibility of the potential voter.
There also shouldn’t be automatic voter registration. States should comply with the National Voter Registration Act and provide registration opportunities at state agencies. However, all individuals should be asked at the time of the state agency transaction, such as the application for a driver’s license, whether they want to register to vote.
No one should be automatically registered without their consent or knowledge, since this can lead to multiple registrations by the same individual, as well as the registration of ineligible individuals, such as noncitizens.
As we all know, elections have consequences. That’s why it’s crucial to ensure that every vote counts and isn’t diluted by election fraud and other problems. It’s time for states to implement these reforms to ensure voters will have faith in our elections. ~The Patriot Post
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