Sham That Is Ballot Harvesting Has Finished the GOP
It was Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, when my friend John had just reached me.
"Sid," he said, "I just want to tell you how unhappy I am that everything you predicted came true."
The "everything" John was referring to was the dual U.S. Senate election of the night before. Yes, being right is not all it is cracked up to be when you correctly predict disaster.
I responded, "John, if you think losing control of the United States Senate is a huge disaster, consider my next prediction."
It goes like this, "Donald Trump will be the last Republican president of the United States of America."
I continued, "Donald Trump will also be the last non-Democratic president of the United States of America."
In other words, the America we know, our constitutional republic, our checks and balances, our consent of the governed, is gone.
It’s not coming back.
What happened? Ballot harvesting happened.
Very few Republicans understand the fundamental election changes brought about by ballot harvesting. So let me state it this clearly. The Democrats could not lose those Senate elections in Georgia. And the Republicans had no chance of winning.
The Democrats could have run candidates named Satan and Lucifer.
They still would have won. The Republicans could have run guys named Washington and Lincoln and they still would have lost.
That’s how powerful ballot harvesting is.
How so?
America’s first presidential election occurred in 1789. A guy named Geroge Washington, and his vice-presidential running-mate, John Adams, ran unopposed. (That never happened to anyone else in American history).
Eligible voters who chose to participate registered with their local supervisor of elections, they then found out where their local voting station was located and the times it was open.
These voters then garnered the appropriate information to make informed choices.
This format remained essentially the same through 2016.
It no longer exists.
And it will never be the same again.
Yes, technology moves on. Paper ballots became voting machines. Election "Day" became the end of an "early voting" period. Yet, the exercise of one’s voting privilege was still personal, private and optional. 1789-2016. RIP.
Then, in 2018, California passed a broad Ballot Harvesting bill.
Virtually anyone could collect ("harvest") your ballot and turn it in on your behalf.
The collectors, "ballot harvesters," could be partisan, paid --- and agenda driven.
The assembly line was being built. All of a sudden people marginal to the voting process became precious assets. If they could get registered, with help, they could request, also with help, a mail-in ballot, formerly called an "absentee ballot."
The "new" voter got their mail-in ballot. The ballot harvester, often paid, stopped by to collect the ballot.
Sometimes they were even kind enough to assist the voter in the ballot completion. Other times they might take the ballot and complete it on behalf of the voter.
Kindness comes in many forms.
A couple of digressions: First, absentee ballots were a courtesy extended to a sliver of the electorate that could not be in town at election time, like out of state college students.
It was never seen ae the main voting procedure for a major political party.
Too late.
That genie is never going back into that bottle.
Then there is the issue of paying the Ballot Harvester. I will say no more.
And third, the private, volitional act of voting is now a rather public, not always volitional part of a collectivized, massive vote producing scheme.
Add to that the proximity of voters to each other in our urban centers and Voila, an election victory is born. So here we are in 2020 and the Democrats are the "mail-in" party.
Every registered Democrat; the informed, the indifferent and the go-along-to get-along have built an unstoppable, Democrat election machine, Let me repeat myself, "Donald Trump will be America’s last Republican President."
As a postscript, let me point out that I made no accusations of illegality or immorality. I’ll leave that for others. My thesis is that the concept of ballot harvesting can only be used for Democrats, that there is no Republican equivalent, that it can and will be used in all 50 U.S. states and that the Republican Party as we know it is finished.
Dead men walking. Zombies.
After all, election reforms require bipartisanship.
Enough said.
No comments:
Post a Comment