Free and Fair Elections (Updates)

Updated 10 Mar 2022 for corrections, grammer, and content.

If you don't regularly read Kurt Schlichter, shame on you. While Town Hall isn't a "conservative" website that I would normally recommend (tends to be eRepublican), I do recommend Schlichter. Funny, irreverent, on point, and a (nearly) reformed anti-establishment conservative. 

A few days back he posted his ideas for reforming election laws and procedures. It's his response to the attempted, unconstitutional, approach to election "reform" being sought by the current congress and former VP Biden's regime. 

I'll just give you a few of the highlights, but please read his entire column here. And dig into his archives here, it will be well worth your time. I have liberally, probably against blogger etiquette, sampled his top ideas for voter reform. My additional thoughts added. 

• Picture voter ID both to register and to vote. If you are too dumb to get an ID, you should be licking windows instead of casting ballots. Couldn't agree more. Nearly 3/4 of Americans, spread across nearly all demographics support voter ID laws. In my humble opinion it is condescending, at best, to believe that certain folks don't have the ability, or capacity, to obtain a basic form of ID. Nearly every state in our semi-fractured union offers free picture ID.

• No same day registration. There’s no way to confirm your identity the same day you sign up. Another awesome point. Also do away with automatic voter registration at places like the DMV. Way, way, way too easy to to register people who don't have legal status. I have no doubt whatsoever the voter rolls in states like California and Oregon are full of people who can't legally vote in national elections. Update 10 Mar 2022: In California, over 400,000 people were resently excused from jury duty due to citizenship issues. In other words, illegal immigrants wre summoned to serve on a jury, which is illegal. Jury summons are based on DMV and voter registration rolls. Think about that the next time one of your progressive friends say illegals are not voting. 

• One day voting, on Election Day. If it’s too much trouble to vote on Election Day, don’t. Here is where Kurt and I have a difference of opinion. While I don't believe in person voting should be pinned to one day, I also think the days can be narrowed a lot. Three days max. Added: It's kind of a conundrum, voting should be difficult, yet easy. It should be difficult as to avoid fraud. Voter IDs, tough vetting, specificity on when and where. But it should be easy so as many as possible can cast their ballot. An extra day or two to cast ballotsin person, availabilityof absentee ballots, etc. 

• In-person voting. If you are deployed with the military or in an iron lung, you can vote absentee. Everyone else shows up in-person. Only absentee ballots arriving by 5 pm on election day get counted. Now we are really divergent. I work a job that doesn't allow me to vote in-person on a regular basis. Not allowing me to vote via absentee ballot would make voting difficult, if not impossible, for me personally. Now if Kurt is referring to the large scale vote by mail schemes that went on in various states in 2020, we are in agreement. But vetted absentee ballots must remain. Added: I do agree with the 5pm drop dead time. There has to be limits. See note below about absentee ballots. 

• No ballot harvesting. That nonsense ends. Yep, yep, and yep. Up until the large scale mail in ballots was the latest way progressives cheated, this was probably the most abused (i.e. democrat cheating) method of gathering ballots that had been created. Added: Before ballot harvesting was a thing, you almost never heard of large chunks of ballots, nearly always republican cast ballots, found in dumpsters or roadside ditches. California's San Joaquin Valley, outside of Sacramento and Stockton, has always voted conservative. Lots of small towns and farm communities. This was true up to the point in time when ballot harvesting was allowed. After ballot harvesting was started, several of these districts went blue. Coincidence? Maybe.

• Paper ballots only. We want an audit trail. I do agree, to a point, with this. But it certainly doesn't eliminate cheating as we observed in Atlanta when vote counters pulled out suitcases full of ballots from under tables after the (now verified as a bald-faced lie) water main break. What needs to be changed is after elections ballot security. Whether by paper ballots or electronic ballots, security needs revisited. There are ways that would satisfy all but the most partisan.

• No ballots not counted within 12 hours of the polls closing get counted. We’re done with dumps and “found” ballots. OK, we are now back on the same page. Seen too many elections decided by these found ballots. Added: When we arrived in Washington State after a tour overseas there was a hotly contested election for governor going on between democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi. On election night Rossi looked to be the winner. He carried 32 of 39 counties. Only in King County was Gregoire's margin of victory above 3%. Rossi was declared the winner, initially and after the mandatory recount. Lo and behold, somebody found a box of ballots in a trunk in King County, which of course contained enough votes for Gregoire to carry the election. If I'm not mistaken, the final margin was about 150 votes. Interestingly enough, does anyone recall when the situation of found ballots turned a close democrat victory into a narrow republican victory. Me neither. 

• Every vote gets counted in public with lots of observers. Total transparency. For all the issues that occurred in Florida back in 2000, one can't argue that it wasn't conducted in the open. That might be the lesson the progressives took from that event. Do whatever can be done to limit observation of the process. Eyes on prevents cheating. Progressives vote processing schemes are like vampires; can't survive the light of day. 

• Large urban centers must report votes first. This makes it hard for Democrat pols to know how many ballots to find. What an awesome idea. Why didn't I think about this idea? Well, Kurt is considerably smarter than I am, for one. 

• No changes to election laws or procedures within 180 days of the election. That gives time for us to litigate the scams. While many of us have called the past presidential election a fraud, the changing of election procedures in key states had as much to do with the outcome as did the outright fraud that occurred. I would argue these changes is what allowed the fraud to be accomplished so blatantly and so easily. ADDED: As time has gone along, as audits and investigations have occurred in various swing states, we are beginning to see the carnage these unconstitutional election law changes have wrought. Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania have all shown that changes did have an impact. 

I am going to add one more idea. Although I am certain he thought of this, he didn't include voter rolls. These need to be cleaned up post haste. There is an organization out there that is using a powerful program that has been discovering voter rolls from red, blue, and purple states are in horrible shape. Click here for an article at American Thinker that should get your attention. It only scratches the surface on an issue that is huge. 

NOTE: Some of my progressive friends like to compare absentee ballots with mail-in voting. They are NOT equal. One has fail-safes (in theory), the other is pretty much willy-nilly. In my home state, to obtain an absentee ballot one must provide proof of residency. Drivers license, home ownership, etc. If you move to a different part of the state, you are required to update your location. If you get and cast a ballot from your old location, the ballot is tossed. Mail-in ballots have nearly no fail-safes. The election officials use the voter rolls and mass mail out ballots. No vetting done. If you lived in Forks (District 24) but moved to Long Beach (District 19), and didn't update your location, you are voting in District 24, which is not correct and illegal. If you lived in Centralia, but died last year, well, under mail-in ballots you will be casting a vote in District 20, most likely for a democrat. We all know, left and right, the voter rolls are notoriously out of date. No one but the most illogical progressive can argue otherwise. 

We are a long way from free and fair elections. And as long as we let then progressives control the narrative, we never will. In fact, it will get worse unless we conservatives begin to fight back and wrest control of the process from organizations and people who wish to do away with our representative republic. When that happens conservatives will be unable to win an election for anything other than dog catcher.