Election Integrity Insincerity

Are you sick of people telling you elections in America are secure?

Accidents. Errors. Glitches. Cheating.

These problems occur every cycle in a multitude of states. And not in vanishingly small numbers, as the media insists. Often, said issues involve thousands of votes. Enough to swing contests.

If you are like the 62% of us who feel "state and federal officials are ignoring evidence of widespread fraud," consider bookmarking this as permanent confirmation of how right you are. For everyone else who refuses to put the pieces together, allow me to do it for you.

What follows is a comprehensive breakdown of how our democratic republic has been rigged.

Lay Of The Land

Modern voting is highly susceptible to fraud. That's not some well-kept secret or a fictional statement. According to one well-known polling company, "17% of mail-in voters say that in the 2020 election, they cast a ballot in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident."

Unfortunately, virtually all of us are afraid to do anything about it because of the repercussions associated with challenging the 'secure elections' narrative. Quite simply, very few people want to admit that our political system is tragically fragile. I'm no different. Lord knows I've been hesitant to address this topic in polite company for fear that it would make me a social pariah.

Instead, I've spent the last two years tracking headlines related to election fiascoes of various sizes. In that time, I've compiled well over 100 shocking tales that should make anyone think twice before regurgitating the idea that ballot result manipulation is super rare. [If there's one quality I am known for, it is going into overkill mode when gathering evidence to back up my assertions!]

It should barely matter whether these failures stemmed from accidental mortal goofs or coordinated digital mistakes. Along those lines, it is almost immaterial if errors were caught and dealt with expeditiously. While some will argue this is proof that those in charge deftly handled potential snags, I contend that it illustrates just how many ways the vote count can be flat-out wrong. Furthermore, it draws attention to all of the cases that slip through the cracks.

Given these parameters, let's start by establishing that electoral races have indeed been flipped...

Oops, Our Bad

One of the more publicized events of the 2020 presidential battle occurred in Antrim County, Michigan. Biden appeared to win this staunchly Republican area until it dawned on experts that no one had updated the election management software meant to combine results from individual machines. Once this "human error" was discovered, the recalculations revealed Trump had won 61% of the vote. [As you work your way through my reporting, you'll notice bureaucrats blaming people for computer inaccuracy is a rather common refrain.]

In 2022, a DeKalb County, Georgia candidate received zero votes in 36 of the 40 precincts in her commissioner primary. The New York Times quickly confirmed that about 3800 votes had been ignored due to "a series of technical errors." That woman, Michelle Long Spears, is now in office.

Kennesaw, about an hour's drive away from DeKalb, held a special election for city council during that same cycle. Thanks to an overlooked memory card with 789 votes on it that had not been uploaded, Lynette Burnette was awarded the spot Madelyn Orochena believed she had earned.

Moving up the Atlantic coast to New Jersey, we find that Monmouth County double-counted some votes that potentially affected a school board race. In this situation, workers reloaded data that the machines were unable to recognize as duplicate information.

Speaking of double-counting, the Frederick County (MD) Board of Elections had to decertify the whole 2022 primary after over 50,000 votes were cast because about 100 of them were feasibly run twice. Once a recount was done, the incumbent council head lost by exactly one vote.

Across the county line, it took three weeks beyond when primary polls closed in July for residents of Maryland's most populous region to learn who would sit in its Executive chair. Why? A combination of 102 sealed provisional ballots being magically "identified" and an inability to "locate an empty provisional ballot envelope where it should have been." These factors played an outsized role in determining Montgomery County's future given the final delta was 35 votes.

[Don't get me started on how the 8000+ previously logged provisionals were treated. But even that pales in comparison to the absolutely ludicrous notion that a state would allow facsimiles of ballots to be home-printed onto regular paper and then sent in for hand duplication on official forms. Only the naivest Americans would expect perfect transcriptions by unknown (to them) office underlings in a scenario where a 1% flaw/cheat rate can overturn elections.]

In Pennsylvania, the county of Northampton had to wrestle with a contest that was turned upside down because of a "coding error... the county's elections staff failed to pick up during testing." [Yet again, men and women were thrown under the bus to protect the sanctity of software.]

Boston had one of the most blatant shams of all. Representative Lenny Mirra was ousted thanks to a recount that turned his ten-vote win into a one-vote loss. Among other things, the 'neutral' arbiters supposedly greenlit five spoiled ballots from one town without extending that same courtesy elsewhere. When the scales of justice were summoned to intervene, the judge wouldn't hear it.

The judicial system also left a lot to be desired in an almost unbelievable saga around Mississippi's capital. After accusations of a candidate "going into boxes, bringing in thumb drives, bringing in ballots to be inserted into machines," his opponent's case was dismissed for filing paperwork a day late. While that might sound run-of-the-mill, I can assure you it was not. You see, Hinds County government just happened to be hit with a cyberattack on the deadline day in question. What are the odds?!

Rewinding the clock back to 1948, I want to draw your attention to the infamous Box 13 scandal that literally altered the history of American politics. In short, LBJ only became a national figure because 200 bogus votes in Jim Wells County, Texas gave him the 87-vote margin he needed statewide to grab his party's nomination and, eventually, catapult him into the US Senate. How do I know they were bogus? Well, normally the last 202 votes on a sheet don't break 200 to 2 while also being in alphabetical order and written in the same handwriting with the same pen...

Washoe Woes

Before we move on, I want to highlight one extremely suspect modern-day Box 13 equivalent even though I cannot outright prove the election was stolen. For all intents and purposes, razor-thin midterm results handed the Democrats control of the Senate by the slimmest of margins. Yet while the media had us focused on Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania that November, only hardcore political junkies tracked the role Nevada played in that calculus.

Did you know that the livestream cameras in the vote-counting room of Washoe County "went dark" for over eight hours? Interestingly, once things were restored and the final tally was released, the state's second-largest county delivered Catherine Cortez Masto victory by roughly 8000 votes... which mirrored her margin statewide.

Organizations like Politifact, of course, claimed "vote counting wasn't affected." The linchpin of their argument was that officials found no wrongdoing when reviewing building badge scans and security footage from the garage to the hallways. Last time I checked, cheaters aren't known for driving to the most visible spot and whipping out their IDs while committing crimes!

Sadly, common sense is not welcome when it comes to this (or any) discussion. Journalistic outlets across the continent are quick to paint those who question it with the "Big Lie" brush.

The craziest part is that Washoe seems even shadier today. The county has moved onto yet another interim registrar after the resignation of the last one. This new woman had no association with the Silver State until just recently. On top of that, she apparently has had real burnout concerns everywhere she goes, including at her pre-Nevada job scooping ice cream in North Carolina. But if residents are upset about being unable to view ballots and signatures, she won't entertain their emotional pleas. "Observe the rest of it," she said. Democracy in action!

Even if someone beyond reproach was installed as registrar, it's hard to imagine any election in western Nevada will ever be accurate again thanks to the heavy adoption of mail ballots. When probed by the Ballot Battleground: Nevada podcast, the current interim said they are "a lot more labor-intensive." Specifically, she walked listeners through the steps required when processing mail-in ballots: date stamp ballots upon receipt, machine sort them, verify signatures, a second sort, then batch, cut, extract, hold, scan, and tally them. By my count, that's at least ten stations per voter where what used to be an easy process can go off the rails.

As if that wasn't enough, until a few weeks ago, the local mail in and around Reno was going to be rerouted to California before coming back to town. Sounds like a controversy waiting to happen, right? Don't take my word for it... the Secretary of State avowed it "has the potential to disenfranchise thousands of Nevada voters and would unquestionably impact the results of Nevada's elections." Here's the thing though... this reprieve might only be temporary if the Postal Regulatory Commission decides USPS institutional goals eclipse national election security. Yikes!

Quick Interlude

Documenting the full set of unsavory electoral circumstances in the USA would take a lifetime. Still, significant substantiation is absolutely necessary to convince naysayers. Ergo, I went to the mats to guarantee this essay would be exempted from DC Equalizer's 10-minute-read cap.

In exchange, I give you my blessing to skim from here through the penultimate section if you're experiencing information overload. I recognize that savvy readers might not need to digest each sentence contained within to get the gist.

Throwback Methods

Our elections are being hit from every conceivable angle during every stage of the process. Before the first early vote is cast, the main vector of worry surrounds voter roll gamesmanship. Senator Ron Johnson maybe put it best when he succinctly summarized how inactive voters let dishonest officials "make it easy to cheat."

According to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a bunch of states are in need of a serious purge of outdated or obsolete name/address information. In New Jersey, their research revealed over 8200 duplicate names that patently jeopardize the whole mantra of one person, one vote.

Another government watchdog, Judicial Watch, found that voter registration in Alaska clocked in at 111% of the number of eligible voters. That's clearly shocking; particularly when you ponder how much harder it is for people to physically enter and exit Alaska relative to the lower 48 states. It threw me for a loop... which was surprising given my knowledge of how dirty politics are there.

These conditions aren't set in a vacuum either. Politicians, bureaucrats, and judges use weak voter suppression talking points to keep former residents on rolls. The nationwide trend is best exemplified by the election board nominee in Fulton County, Georgia who was rejected because he dared to challenge voter rolls with over 100,000 more names on them than potential voters, per census data. In a close second place, Michigan Secretary of State Benson fought tooth and nail to keep 26,000 'former' residents of a different stripe on the list: dead people!

Once election season is in full swing, vote-stifling accidents (tactics?) border on the absurd. Luzerne County, Pennsylvania had enough "polling locations running out of paper for voting machines" that a judge stated point blank how voters were "disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote." A Pinal County, Arizona election director was removed due to numerous voting sites lacking ballots. As the Washington Post detailed, 60,000 Virginia voters "received notices directing them to incorrect polling locations." In the city that never sleeps, NYC primary voters in 2022 encountered locked doors because of lost keys, missing equipment, relocation of voting sites, and a lack of ballots. And in Houston there were accusations that Harris County officials "deliberately created ballot paper shortages" that swung elections.

After the polls officially close, the insanity continues. Staying in Harris County, an audit cited by the Texas Secretary of State uncovered at least 300,000 ballots that suffer from chain of custody concerns, mismatched records, or incomplete documentation. Think that might poison the results? Moving from our southern border to the northern one, Wisconsin election clerks have until recently been 'curing' ballots (by filling in missing information from envelopes) as well as embracing the act of 'spoiling' them (replacing old absentee ballots with new overriding ones).

Fulton County, Georgia appears again because of major issues with overseas/absentee tracking, ballot duplication observation, and flimsy requirements for the monitoring of satellite processing offices. Don't forget, this is the same place that was made famous for counting while no one was watching and a dubious water main break. It appears the only trick they haven't pulled yet is to evacuate election facilities during the counting phase due to fentanyl powder concerns. As nuts as that sounds, it happened last year in six of Washington's key counties.

Mailing It In (And Dropping It Off)

Whether that previous example was a true terroristic threat or just a way to shoo prying eyes away from fraudulent activity is up for debate. What is certain? Elections are frequently tampered with via the mail system.

Just last week, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors sent a joint letter to the US Postal Service warning of the severe impact procedural changes and mail delays would have on elections. Case in point: California had over 100,000 mail-in ballots rejected in 2022 because they arrived late.

Slow processing of mail-in ballots was the problem in Howard County, Maryland, where a delegate saw her 2000-vote cushion morph into a 16-vote loss weeks later. In the state known for Groundhog Day, time isn't the issue; rather, it is Pennsylvania officials going back and forth about whether to count mail-in ballots that arrive without dates and signatures on their envelopes.

Requests for mail-in ballots are a whole other ball of wax. A whistleblower in Orange County, Florida (which does not automatically send ballots out to everyone on the roll) said people who have been dead for up to twenty years were miraculously demanding them.

Many places don't even have that ultra-low barrier to entry. "Back-end" voter registration is becoming more common... meaning people must proactively opt-out to stop their ballot from being sent. This practice has been flagged for how it accidentally opens the door further to unsanctioned noncitizen voting. Do the scheming wonks promoting 'reform' care? Nyet.

[In breaking news, a lawsuit claims almost 4,000 noncitizens voted in Nevada during the last presidential cycle. That was before the state became an "all mail-in" enterprise two years hence. Doing some quick napkin math, half of the senatorial margin in 2022 conceivably could have come from individuals who had no business interacting with a ballot.]

It gets worse when you think about the other ways mail-in voting can be used fraudulently.

The first component that springs to mind: specialized drop boxes. I can't tell you the number of jurisdictions that incorporated these into elections in conflict with the law. Wisconsin sure did. Even cities where the results are a foregone conclusion utilized them weirdly. For instance, the inept leaders of DC decided it would be a good idea to put the electoral drop boxes directly next to virtually identical looking bins full of germs from unprocessed Covid tests!

Next, check out this headline. "Drop boxes have become key to election conspiracy theories. Two Democrats just fueled those claims." Unparalleled cognitive dissonance** from the Associated Press regarding a mayoral race in Bridgeport, Connecticut scarred by videos of box stuffing so egregious that it led a state judge to order new elections in the state's biggest city.

When the above is combined with ballot harvesting, trust in our elections diminishes at an exponential rate. Vote poachers target citizens living in nursing homes, dementia wards, rehab centers, halfway houses, and other facilities for the unwell. In Victoria County, Texas, a woman pled guilty to 26 felony counts of voter fraud related to a utility board election. Arizona has had an oversized share of class 6 felony harvester busts. [Not to mention thousands of overlapping drop box visits by "ballot traffickers."] And an envoy for an out-of-state election registration outfit dropped off as many as 10,000 "clearly fraudulent" voter applications in Muskegon, Michigan. For context, that amount is between 70% to 90% of the number of municipal ballot casters that cycle.

But perhaps no story offers the level of specificity evident in the Orlando area midterm. Summarizing the words of a (Dem) county commissioner candidate, there is a "long-running, widespread ballot harvesting operation in the African American communities" that pays $10 per ballot to brokers who, she says, have been known to "steam open the sealed envelope" or "just throw them out."

Software Scandals

Technology has added entirely new layers of chaos into the mix. What we are told is perfectly normal now was off limits two decades ago. It should make us impugn the motives of career politicians who cry "suppression" at the drop of a hat. As in, how does Jerry Nadler now support electronic voting when video exists of him saying, "If, in fact, someone were deliberately hacking these machines, you could steal millions of votes and no one would even know it..." in a televised interview where he also professed that one machine in one county documented an extra 11,000 votes for George Bush in 2004? [Bonus line: "You can't prove (hacking) won't happen next time."]

These aren't once-in-a-lifetime flukes. I could go on for hours; instead, I'll offer up a small taste of the recent headlines. For starters, "at least six Kentucky counties saw reports of issues with ballot-marking machine touchscreens" during an election where the governorship was at stake. Baltimore's 2022 cycle had flash drives get misplaced and new ones loaded with data. Don't fret though -- the Elections Director pinky-promised the public this led to no votes being lost!

Wisconsin Public Radio ran a sub-header that defies belief: "Demonstrations have shown even machines disconnected from the internet can be breached -- but state and local officials say not to worry." That statement is preposterous on its own... still, I must also disclose that tens of thousands of voter roll names continue to have placeholder numerical fields because of a statewide data merge from before Obama took office. This provides obvious cover for bad actors.

If the 'glitches' didn't cripple democracy, you'd almost have to applaud them for how devious they are. Like how Republican stronghold precincts in Maricopa County, Arizona struggled through a tidal wave of disruption in 2022 due to font and paper sizes not lining up with election equipment. [Multiple voting/printing experts assert this had to be intentional.]

Colorado, which is often referred to as the most accessible state in the union, "mistakenly" sent about 30,000 postcards out to noncitizens encouraging them to register to vote. Their Secretary of State, in predictable fashion, blamed it on a hiccup.

Residents of Clermont, Florida had the name of their street temporarily changed on the rolls without their knowledge or permission. The group who unearthed this Red Belly Road nugget surmise it was done to either snub out votes in that neighborhood or give impersonators virtually untraceable ballots.

Maryland's election administrator stepped down after information went missing-in-action for a spell. In her case, up to 75,000 votes on the official website "vanished for more than twelve hours." Across the Chesapeake in Prince William County, Virginia, two precincts reported machines with more votes than actual ballots. This might sound like small potatoes if that region wasn't already saddled with a former registrar accused of election impropriety emanating from well over two thousand "tabulation errors" in 2020.

Leave it to Georgia to throw caution to the wind with a "new online portal that appeared to let anyone submit a voter cancellation for any state resident..." That's some next-level elections management there! It makes the Floyd County gaffe involving a memory card with over 2500 votes on it look like child's play. Ditto the Coffee County cyberattack "that forced the county to sever its connection to the state's voter registration system." Do you want the cherry on top? Officials in the Peach State see no harm in putting off software updates until after the upcoming election even though CISA noted vulnerabilities. Reason given: "It's such a massive undertaking."

I would be derelict in my duty if I didn't take a moment to reference international 'black hats.' Villains like the "two Iranian defendants (who) tried to compromise voter registration websites in eleven states." [In the process, these foreign hatchet men nabbed 100,000+ individuals' personal information.] We hear about foreign threats all the time. This proves it is possible. Do you think Teheran, Chengdu, or Moscow would be nearly as effective at weaseling with paper ballots?]

Computer forensics maven Rebecca Mercuri, who is the face of the voter verified paper audit trail, would have a field day with these disasters. I'm not sure whether this is a direct quote or my own paraphrase of her viewpoint, but during my research I ferreted out a passage where the core contention was: 'technology alone does not eliminate responsibility of corruption and incompetence in elections... it merely changes the platform on which they may occur.'

Nuclear Lawfare

The only concept scarier than software subterfuge has to be what the companies behind proprietary voting tools will do to people who object to them. We're talking a scorched earth strategy to destroy anyone who points out flaws in the system.

My own editor has instructed me to gingerly tiptoe around naming these litigious parties. Thus, the best I can do is suggest search engine queries related to skinheads, heroin, backdoor access, and servers abroad. It is terrifying when one realizes lawfare has the power to curb stomp truth.

Judicial rulings play such a huge part in the outcome of elections. Strong cases are dismissed before they get an honest day in court because of cop-outs like lack of standing. On the flip side, corners are cut to haphazardly ignore real election integrity laws already on the books. Remember those aforementioned Pennsylvania mail-in ballots with inaccurate/blank dates on their envelopes? Last month, a court decreed they should be counted going forward. In the lone dissenting judge's opinion, the decision was "a wholesale abandonment of common sense."

When election officials forgot to send out over a thousand absentee ballots, a Cobb County judge just extended the deadline. [On its face, this seems reasonable until you weigh it against the opportunity for artifice in tight Georgia races.] Meanwhile, thousands of Texans with PO Boxes on their voter registrations were not disqualified thanks to a judge blocking a state law meant to prohibit establishing residency using spaces inside post offices meant for mail accumulation.

Those who dare to put up an honest fight risk drastic punishment. Maricopa County supervisors felt "under duress" to certify a 2022 election where observers reported 72 of the 115 vote centers they visited "had material problems with the tabulators not being able to tabulate ballots..."

Just this month, a series of articles introduced Michiganders to a Kalamazoo election official who was preemptively sued by the ACLU to ensure he would certify future results. Everything about that story reeks, but nothing more than the publication uncritically mentioning how "Michigan law makes clear that certification is not optional for canvassers." Please mull that over for a second.

Noncitizen Voting & Outlawing Hand Counts

Things get really nasty around the most heated political talking points. In 2024, few things raise people's dander more than noncitizen voting. The cases we've covered already only hint at how incredibly pervasive it is. Like so many other subjects, a deep dive vindicates so-called 'election deniers.'

Frankly, most states (including Alabama) have a ton of noncitizens on their voter rolls. Minnesota might illustrate the most flagrant display of potentially enticing international individuals to vote. Anyone with a brain can see the likelihood of fraudulence caused by handing out 80,000+ driver's licenses to noncitizens as part of a 'Driver's License for All' initiative while letting voters then turn around and register online with -- you guessed it -- a state driver's license. Alas, MN did it anyway.

Estimates pegged the number of federal-only voters in Arizona at over 11,000 in 2020. For background, the federal government twisted the state's arm to allow people who choose not to prove citizenship the right to vote in national races by merely signing a sworn declaration. 48% of them cast ballots that year... meaning a huge chunk of the presidential margin was tainted by this group. [Notice how the media leaves out these details when running the counternarrative.]

It is illegal for noncitizens to be registered to vote in the Lone Star State. So why do so many foreign Texans hold that status? Thankfully, 6500 of them were taken off the rolls in recent years. Bear in mind, they were the ones Republicans were permitted to remove. I've seen earlier reports stating countless more are on the docket there. Yes, there's a difference between registering and voting; but it sounds like the reality is splitting hairs according to this step-by-step guide.

[Save the "but it's a felony for them to vote" talk. First off, the facts establish noncitizens regularly skirt the law by registering. Intentionality is moot. Furthermore, history shows the odds of government punishing even a tiny fraction of election scofflaws is miniscule, at best.]

Amongst the presumably legal voters, there's a separate election-weakening crusade going on: the constant push to make hand counting a bygone relic.

Nye County, Nevada was ordered to stop implementing old-fashioned tallying in 2022. Small towns in remote parts of Wisconsin couldn't avoid the mania. Thornapple and Lawrence had the DOJ sniffing around based on the argument that hand counting violates the rights of the disabled community. And, stereotypically, California passed a dystopian bill (AB 969) that made "hand-counting votes illegal in CA elections with more than 1000 registered voters."

Pima County, Arizona is home to a judge who ruled "the county board of supervisors overstepped its legal authority by ordering the county recorder to count all the ballots cast in the election... rather than the small sample required by state law." Cochise County underwent a similar situation. Another Arizona county, Mohave, made news when various governmental lawyers floated the possibility of personal repercussions against hand count advocates on the board of supervisors. Can you imagine the uproar if electronic counting supporters were threatened with liability?

The silencing of voices who demand hand counts begs an uncomfortable question. Are judges taking as gospel the words parroted by journalists like Bob Christie? You know, the guy who had the temerity to proclaim "exhaustive reviews have found no issues" with ballot counting machines. Or is it possible gavel clutchers are scared traditional methods will expose how filthy our modern elections have become?

Crooked Politicians

There's a final driver of election rigging that predates the Constitution: namely, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians. Let's peruse some memorable slimeballs of the last decade, shall we?

Republican incumbents in Utah are currently engaged in something resembling a prolonged effort to shatter their base's confidence in elections. It would be fascinating if it wasn't so Orwellian. Back in 2022, Utah House member Phil Lyman flagged constituent comments about machines switching a handful of votes. The peanut gallery chimed in with the usual "undermine the integrity of our elections" drivel. Not long after, Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson succeeded in convincing a judge to dismiss/block an unrelated request for data in Juab County. Her reason? She thinks contesting election results might "cast doubt on county and state administration of elections." In a karmic twist, the clerk of that very same county was caught shredding or 'losing' ballots in the midst of that pending recount lawsuit. Henderson's take? "We have no reason to believe (the clerk's) actions affected (the election's) outcome." Fast forward to 2024. Lyman primaried the RINO in the governor's mansion, Spencer Cox. By the time the state convention rolled around, Lyman easily garnered the Republican Party endorsement. [Cox got roundly booed.] Yet, Lyman lost the primary two months later. Rumors immediately arose that Cox's candidacy was tarnished (and maybe made invalid) by a signature-gathering org accused of "irregularities." And who's in the catbird seat when it comes to adjudicating this mess? Cox's lieutenant and running mate, Deidre Henderson. It's going precisely how you'd bet it would...

[Last-minute update: texts have emerged alleging a mother and son who share the Lyman surname were offered $1000 and a steak dinner by the Cox campaign to run as write-ins!]

A clerk in Southfield, Michigan received a felony misconduct in office charge for "allegedly fraudulently altering the Qualified Voter File in 2018 to falsely void absentee ballots cast..." The deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission was fired for "allegedly obtaining military absentee ballots for fake voters through a state-run website." An Iowa congressional candidate's wife was "convicted of 52 counts of voter fraud" across two of her spouse's campaigns. Former Pennsylvania congressman Ozzie Myers bribed election judges to "pump up fake votes for his candidates." This payoff led to counterfeit voting machine receipts getting certified.

New Jersey takes the cake in terms of getting caught red-handed. A candidate for mayor in Plainfield was charged with getting cronies to "fill out blank voter registration applications and bringing nearly a thousand of them to a post office." Over in Paterson, the city council president was accused of destroying and/or replacing ballots stolen from mailboxes that didn't support his candidacy. And an Atlantic City ex-councilman gambled and lost after being exposed for paying agents to pose as "messengers" in order to pick up ballots and then hand them to his team.

As despicable as these transgressions are, none involved household names. The same cannot be said for what happened in the toss-up states of Arizona and Georgia. Katie Hobbs, a poster child for election rot (based on her gubernatorial run as the sitting elections administrator), had to attest that 6,000-ish folks got incorrect ballots that would not allow them to vote in her own race. Honestly, how many forms of deceit haven't been used in the cactus capital of the United States?

Governor Brian Kemp's 2023 admission is the worst of all because it has presidential implications. This man, who for years has stuck to the gimmick that nothing is wrong in his state, confessed, "If you give anybody a voting machine, they can hack it." Realizing his blunder, Kemp then stumbled into damage control mode by offering up word salad about transparency in elections... which, at this point, we know is a total crock.

Time For The Opponent To Concede

While I've concentrated on 21st Century anecdotes, this stuff has been transpiring forever.

In his book Down for the Count, author Andrew Gumbel walks his readers through a history of election equipment debacles. The initial fight to replace hand counting with newfangled machines in the 1950s. [Despite being celebrated because they "cannot get tired, cannot get cranky, cannot forget," these lever contraptions ended up being duds because they could get hacked with screwdrivers and cuticle sticks, as was the case in the 1979 Louisiana governor's race.] Punchcard frustrations popping up from Florida to California to West Virginia. A computer age that doubled down on the instability, leading Gumbel to quote industry pioneer Ken Thompson, "A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect."

As awful as the tools associated with voting can be, the specter of dishonest elections is primarily rooted in the actions of humans. Rampant repeat voting and ballot box stuffing in the Reconstruction South. Alaskans who genuinely think political operatives "changed the election system" using a trojan horse ballot measure. County recorders in Arizona who ignore bills designed to cancel registrations of those not qualified to vote. If government apparatchiks won't sanitize the rolls when official legislation is passed, how can they claim we have clean elections?

With each passing moment, the democratic process gets perverted more. Vermont legislators overrode vetoes in order to lower the voting age in Brattleboro and give noncitizen residents equal footing in Burlington. These ploys are portrayed as self-contained local efforts, but you don't have to be a genius to see how it increases the chances of confusion in statewide and national races while also establishing a dastardly beachhead for expansion via precedent. In Nevada, tribal members got unique electronic voting options akin to the military and overseas voters. While I acknowledge there is some merit to the decision, I firmly agree with experts who alert it ushers in further erosion of election security.

Of all the horrible ideas on the horizon, phone voting stands head and shoulders above the rest. Call me a right-wing reactionary if you must, but I don't trust the intentions of a guy who says "mobile voting is our final shot at saving democracy" when he's trying to sell a book titled Vote With Your Phone while running something called the Mobile Voting Project in parallel. This is especially true when that guy, Bradley Tusk, is an Uber-rich venture capitalist with a history of government string-pulling who bases his argument on lamebrain justifications like young voter turnout will increase because they're familiar with phones. [Paper is too complicated, apparently.]

Looking at the big picture, we should be wary of any suggestion coming from the 'save democracy' cult. Candidly speaking, these are the same radicals who want to abolish the Electoral College, make wholesale changes to the Supreme Court, and view the Constitution as "dangerous." Mass media connections then unashamedly syndicate messaging like "fake voter fraud claims enabled election fraud try" on their behalf. Tech firms almost definitely "shift opinions and voting preferences" using algorithmic 'ephemeral experiences' or the spam folder. The lot of them slap debunk labels on every scintilla of criticism before conceding inconsistencies in the very next breath. As a last resort, their camp makes a mockery of election (and civil) protections by assembling hit squads of juris doctors dedicated to chilling speech and action.

So, yes, our electoral system is utterly broken. This is especially and increasingly true in purple enclaves. It's high time that we own it, commit to fixing it, jettison those who fight it, and, for the love of everything holy, incarcerate anyone who violates it.

Note: the post above may contain commentary reflecting the author's opinion.

** If you have the energy, check out our companion piece on combatting the weaponization of the term 'conspiracy theory.' **