I believe on 20 January 2021, Joseph R Biden will be inaugurated as our President. That is not an assertion of support, but a prediction.
So, this blog post has NOTHING to do with the final determination of the election. Stow that election nonsense.
What it is intended to be is a sobering assessment of whether our election was honest, was not honest, could have been honest, had no chance of being honest?
What is the question, Big Red Car?
I raise a simple series of questions:
Was the 2020 election fair and honest?
If not, why not? What evidence is there to support that assertion?
What amount of cheating is allowed within an honest election?
What amount of fraud is allowed within an “honest” election?
What amount of maladministration is allowed within an honest election?
If we have proof of cheating, fraud, and maladministration did we, in fact, have an honest election?
I will not attempt to answer all the questions I have raised — in a nod to Socrates and his method of addressing critical thinking, I will ask you to reflect upon the discussion and form your own thoughts and conclusions.
The Voter Roll
Today, I will limit the discussion to the Voter Roll as a good starting point as that is where all elections start. To do justice to the discussion, I may have to spread this over 4-5 blog posts.
The Forward Edge of the Battle Area (a nod to my old infantry and combat engineer buddies) is the Voter Roll kept by every county in the United States. This database is the list of all registered voters and only those whose name is on that list may vote.
To get on the Voter Roll, a voter must register or use a form of “automatic” registration such as the state provisions of the Motor Voter laws. By law every state is required to have such a function when drivers’ licenses are initially issued or renewed.
[Editorial note: I think the Motor Voter laws are an invitation to cheat and they have been utilized for that purpose in a myriad of states.]
The rub point is always: at the time of issuance of a driver’s license does the local DMV ascertain voter eligibility and citizenship?
The short answer to that critical questions is “no.” This is the reason I am not a fan of the Motor Voter laws.
The Voter Roll is where the good bumps into evil and the mischief starts.
Some Considerations of the Voter Roll
The Voter Roll is kept by the county election official — an elected County Clerk in some jurisdictions, an election clerk in others, and other forms in other jurisdictions.
1. The administration of the Voter Roll is overseen by this official noted above. In most jurisdictions, this office — such as a County Clerk in my own Travis County, Texas — is held by a partisan politician who has been elected in a contested election.
2. This County Clerk or election clerk hires her staff and the jobs are often political patronage jobs, but one thing you can count on is that the staff of the County Clerk will be from the same political party as the County Clerk.
This sets up the second friction point in the creation of the Voter Roll for any county — the injection of partisan politics in the supervision and staffing of the office that will oversee “honest” elections.
Does this partisan construct increase the potential for fraud, cheating, or maladministration?
3. As young people attain voting eligibility age, eighteen years old, they must register to vote and are then added to the Voter Roll.
In many states, you must be on the Voter Roll for thirty days prior to the date of the election.
In some states, you may register the same day as the election. Clearly, this provides a point of friction as it relates to ensuring the Voter Roll is pure.
In these “same day” registration states, I may be able to show up with a driver’s license from another state and a utility bill or a lease showing that I am a resident of the current state.
This is a weak addition to the Voter Roll and one that is fraught with peril.
4. As persons — old or young — die, they should be eliminated from the Voter Roll. This is always a problem as there is no central location for listing deaths.
The Social Security death rolls are a good start, but they are difficult to crosscheck from a software perspective and, thus, many deletions from the Voter Roll are done manually — by the partisan county staff.
If a 138 year old voter casts a vote it may be a bit more nefarious than just an inability to cull the Voter Roll correctly.
5. As persons move into the applicable county, they must register again to vote even if they were registered in their former location.
6. As persons move out of the applicable county, they should be dropped from the Voter Roll as they are no longer residents of the county and thus ineligible to vote. This rarely happens.
7. In addition, each state has some automatic mechanism to delete voters who have not voted in some protracted period of time. This is a source of enormous friction as again this depends upon the partisan county staff to take this action.
The State of Texas is Republican whilst the County of Travis (home to Austin By God Texas) is very Democrat. It happens.
Though the state law may be clear, though the state may be controlled by one party, the party controlling the County Clerk position is the one called upon to administer the rolls in accordance with law.
As you can see, it is a very simple database, but it requires administration and that administration will be done by partisan politicians.
Homework assignment: Is it possible that the Voter Roll is manipulated as part of a scheme involving cheating, fraud, and maladministration?
It will be an easy assignment.
Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers. I hope you have much to be thankful for and that you enjoy the goodwill of those you love even if you cannot come together over a turkey. God bless us all.
