By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
When have you ever heard of a president contend that an election will be “rigged” in any context? When has a president been so callous, careless and contemptuous of our electoral system to suggest that it would be corrupted enough to produce a result that he doesn’t prefer?
I am astonished beyond measure at the rhetoric that is coming from Donald John Trump as he seeks to undermine the very electoral system he took an oath to protect.
Trump has been beating the “Democrats will rig the election” drum. He stands before rally crowds and declares that the Democratic Party is seeking to “rig” the 2020 election by sending out “millions of ballots” to people who aren’t entitled to receive them.
For starters, there is not a single shred of truth to Trump’s specious assertion. Beyond that particular lie — which is precisely what it is — there is the very idea that Trump would seek to undermine the electoral system.
Just ponder that for a moment.
Trump’s presidential oath included a pledge to protect the system of government he was elected to run. What in the name of constitutional integrity is Donald Trump seeking to do here? I think I know. He seeks to torpedo the very electoral system by sowing seeds of doubt over its integrity.
His target du jour is mail-in voting. Several states have been conducting all-mail voting for years. Trump says the system invites widespread voter fraud. No! It does nothing of the sort!
My home state of Oregon was the first state to enact a vote by mail system. It did so in 1998. A study by the Heritage Foundation, a noted conservative think tank, has revealed some fascinating data.
During the time Oregon has allowed voting by mail, Heritage uncovered 15 cases of outright voter fraud. How many ballots were cast during the time period examined? Nearly 15.5 million of them!
Fifteen cases of fraud against 15.5 million total ballots. Does that look to you like a case of “rampant voter fraud?”
And yet … Donald Trump keeps hammering at the voter fraud red herring as if it’s the real thing. It is a figment of Trump’s political strategists. It poses a serious danger to our very system of free of fair elections.
To think that this is all coming from the president of the United States. Despicable.