Tag Archives: Voter fraud

national news

Trump to NC voters: Hey, break the law! Vote twice!

Donald J. Trump, who in 2016 invited Russia to hack into our electoral system, has now encouraged North Carolina voters to commit an illegal act.

He says they should seek to vote twice to test the state’s voting system, to see if it is as fail safe against voter fraud as state officials insist it is.

What in the name of good government have we come to in this country? The president of the United States, who took an oath to follow the law and to be faithful to the U.S. Constitution, is now suggesting that voters in one of our states break the law.

He is encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail and by voting in person at the polling place. Good grief! This individual is nuttier than a fruitcake.

To think that he continues to cling to the support of roughly 40 percent of the voting public — give or take a point or two — simply blows my mind!

Trump is unhinged. Get a load of what Reuters is reporting as well: Voting more than once in an election is illegal and in some states, including North Carolina, it is a felony not only to vote more than once but also to induce another to do so.

Do you know what this means? It means we have a felon sitting in the Oval Office.

Arrest that man … and lock him up!

national news

Voter fraud lie creates more secure system?

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It occurs to me that Donald Trump’s incessant, relentless lying about “rampant voter fraud” involving mail-in voting might have a positive outcome.

Trump’s fraudulent assertion has alerted state and local election officials to do all they can to ensure voting security.

Indeed, Trump’s aim is to suppress voter turnout. More voters, in Trump’s view, means less likelihood that he’ll be re-elected on Nov. 3. That’s OK with me. I also favor greater turnout because is spreads electoral power among more people, diluting the power and influence of special interests.

I tend to favor in-person voting. I likely will vote in person on Election Day. However, I have no qualms about voting by mail if Texas election officials hand me that option in time for the presidential election. Am I concerned that my vote won’t count? No. Not in the least.

Indeed, all this attention being paid to Trump’s specious and malicious assertions of “rampant fraud” is likely to make mail-in voting even more secure than it already is in the states that allow or require it.

I have been able to watch local election officials do their job with professionalism. My career in print journalism gave me an up close look at county clerks in Oregon and in Texas, where I practiced my craft for nearly 37 years. They all performed their duties with professionalism. They were conscientious about the integrity of the system they managed.

Now that Donald Trump has raised a phony specter of “rampant voter fraud,” it stands to reason that he has alerted the officials on the front line of this process to be sure it remains safe and secure.

Thanks, Mr. President.

Now … shut the hell up!

national news

Sowing fear of democracy

Donald J. Trump’s fear campaign is kicking into high gear.

It is despicable, deplorable and disgraceful. All at once. There are many more angry adjectives to attach to it.

He wants us to believe that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt. He floated the bizarre and unlawful idea that he would seek to delay the Nov. 3 election, claiming he wants to ensure a corruption-free balloting process. He can’t do anything of the sort and congressional leaders pushed back … hard! Trump has backed off that idiocy.

However, he has sown the seeds of doubt in the minds of many Americans. This is a preposterous and dangerous affront to an electoral system that works well in the states that employ it. Voter fraud? It’s infinitesimal! Indeed, it can be argued that mail-in voting is more secure than the conventional method.

That won’t stop Trump from seeking to block efforts to encourage voting in this Pandemic Era. He doesn’t give a rat’s a** about anything other than assuring his re-election.

He is denigrating the work that state and local officials do to protect against voter fraud. Why in the name of electoral integrity can’t we solicit the advice and counsel of state election officials on how they conduct all-mail voting? Of course we can! Donald Trump, though, will continue to hammer home the idea that this method of voting is somehow corrupt.

It … isn’t!

The Demagogue in Chief must cease his disgraceful campaign of fear. Sadly, he won’t.

national news

Stop lying about mail-in voting, Mr. POTUS

Donald Trump wants to suppress the vote in the November presidential election.

To do so he is lying about mail-in voting. He says it is too fraught with voting fraud. It’s corrupt. He insists people get ballots who shouldn’t have them.

The Liar in Chief is filling me with rage. He doesn’t want to lose his fight for re-election, so he’s doing whatever he can to sow seeds of fear and doubt in an all-mail election.

Flash to The Donald: We’ve got a pandemic out there that’s infecting and killing Americans. I prefer to cast my vote in person on Election Day, but if I can vote by mail and prevent potential exposure to a killer virus, I am more than willing to do precisely that.

Joe Biden is leading Trump in every public opinion poll out there. The range goes from about 7 percent to 15 percent. More ballots being cast reportedly bodes well for Biden. That is why Trump is seeking to suppress that vote.

The fraudulent voting canard is a made up issue. It’s as phony as Trump University.

Trump keeps yammering about the lie. He cannot be allowed to get away with peddling “fake news.”

national news

Follow the Nixon lead, Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump just cannot commit to accepting the election results in November … if he loses to Joe Biden.

He sought to justify his skepticism of the results, casting doubt on their legitimacy, in an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

Simply by refusing to accept those results, Donald Trump is seeking to undermine the work done at the state and local levels of government to ensure that our elections are safe, free and secure. That’s how the president rolls. He said the same thing prior to the 2016 election, that he might challenge the results if Hillary Clinton won that contest. It turned out that Trump won; I don’t recall Clinton holding out for a possible challenge after she conceded defeat to Trump.

This is part and parcel of Trump’s background, starting with the obvious lack of public service experience. He was bred on the notion that everyone in business is out to cut someone else’s throat; therefore, they weren’t to be trusted. Had he an ounce of public service experience, Trump might take a different, more magnanimous approach to election results.

I harken to the 1960 presidential election. Vice President Richard Nixon lost that contest by a whisker to Sen. John F. Kennedy. JFK’s plurality totaled 112,000 votes nationally. Questions arose about the vote count in Illinois, where Kennedy won that state’s 27 electoral votes by just a handful. Republican operatives urged the VP to challenge the Illinois vote count, to tally up the ballots all over again. Nixon chose instead to let the vote count stand, to allow the president-elect to begin his transition to the most exalted office in the land.

Nixon put the country ahead of any personal political gain. To be sure, had Illinois’ electoral votes gone to Nixon, he still would have lost the electoral vote. But my point is that the vice president didn’t want to subject the nation to additional and, to his mind, pointless turmoil. His eight years as VP in the Eisenhower administration and his time in Congress taught him something about the value of public service.

Donald Trump has zero understanding of that need and will do all he can to sow seeds of doubt and discord in an electoral process that we all cherish.

national news

POTUS won’t commit to accepting results if he loses? Wow!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a presidential candidate, let alone the incumbent president, say he cannot commit to accepting the results of a free and fair election if he loses.

OK, I’ll concede that we’ve heard it said once: Donald Trump made the same threat four years ago when he was one of two non-incumbents running for the office.

There he was today, on Fox News Sunday, telling reporter Chris Wallace that he cannot commit to accepting the results if he loses to Joseph R. Biden Jr. this fall.

As I think of that statement, all I hear is the president of the United States saying he doesn’t trust a government system of which he is in charge.

Trump told Wallace that since he didn’t commit to accepting the 2016 results if he lost that his saying the same thing now is no big deal. Actually, it is a big bleeping deal.

Trump has been hurling unfounded and unwarranted allegations of voter fraud for as long as he has been president. He declared that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in 2016, which provided her with the 3 million popular vote lead over Trump. He is asserting much the same thing this time, with Biden’s team conspiring to collect illegal votes.

Trump alleges that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption, even though the states that conduct such balloting now stand firmly behind the integrity of their electoral systems.

Trump wants to suppress the vote. He doesn’t want to open the system up to every eligible voter. He has said that mail-in voting would make it damn near impossible for Republicans to win the presidency … ever again!

Donald Trump is sowing the seeds of suspicion on a system that works. For the president to in effect condemn that system by refusing to commit to accepting the results is yet another exercise in shameful demagoguery.

Still, I chuckled when I read the response from the Biden campaign. The Biden campaign responded: “The American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

You know, that might be worth waiting to see if it occurs.

national news

‘Most corrupt election in history?’ Really, Mr. POTUS?

Donald J. “Tweeter in Chief” Trump has made a ridiculous prediction, which of course isn’t all that unusual.

He says the 2020 presidential election will be the “most corrupt” in U.S. history.

There you have it. Does the imbecile masquerading as president offer a scintilla of evidence to back up his allegation? Of course not! He just tweets this idiocy out there.

Donald Trump is running a campaign of division, of anger, of suspicion. This is the guy who promised to “unify” the nation after the 2016 campaign, which was pretty damn divisive. He never even tried to unify anything or anyone. As former Defense Secretary James Mattis noted, Trump’s aim is to divide the nation.

So now he campaigns for re-election by issuing blind threats of corrupt election results.

I only am presuming that he is going to issue the corruption charge if former Vice President Joe Biden manages to win the election in November. If hell freezes over and Trump wins, well, my strong hunch is that he won’t say a word about “corruption” or “fraudulent voting” or “phony ballot counts.”

What is most disturbing about Trump’s latest allegation about ballot “corruption” is the absolute absence of any evidence. That is Donald Trump’s modus operandi. He blurts out these allegations, giving his base reason to cheer his nonsense; the allegations grow legs and somehow keep circulating, casting doubt over a process where none should exist. I should add that in the process Trump casts aspersions on the dedicated county and local election officials who toil to preserve the integrity of our electoral process.

Indeed, the only “corruption” I can see will occur when the Russians, the Chinese or some other hostile foreign power attacks our process as the Russians did in 2016.

If this is the best that Donald Trump can do to persuade voters to return him to office for another four years, then I submit we have an incumbent president with no plan for the future, no constructive agenda, no sense of how he intends to lead the nation or where he wants to lead us.

What’s more, if enough American voters are foolish or stupid enough to buy into this idiot’s shtick to re-elect him, then our revered system of government is far more seriously damaged than any of us ever imagined.

State news

Growing fonder of vote by mail

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I am not King of the World, but if I held that title, I would mandate that we all vote on Election Day, in person, in the privacy of a polling booth.

However, since I cannot do that, I am left to deal with the real world. Reality at this moment rests in a pandemic that threatens the health of voters who want to cast their ballots for president of the United States. They fear that voting in person would expose them to COVID-19. So they want to cast their ballots by mail.

I do, too.

Thus, I am baffled, flabbergasted and confused by the opposition to vote by mail by Texas’ top elected officials. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have formed a troika that opposes vote by mail.

Why? They contend it invites rampant voter fraud. They parrot Donald Trump. They’re all Republicans. They are launching a sickening end-around game that seeks to suppress voter turnout.

The Texas Tribune also reports — and this is rich, man! — that all three of them (four if you count Trump) have cast ballots by mail in the past. They have done so out of convenience, I reckon. The TT reports that Paxton regularly votes in person in his Collin County precinct, but has voted by mail. Same for Patrick and, yes, for Abbott.

So what’s the real problem here? Is it voter fraud as they contend? I think not!

I am not necessarily a fan of all-mail voting. You know that already. However I prefer it by a wide margin over not voting at all. I am one Texas resident who has a concern about potential exposure to a possible killer virus.

I also want Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton to stop hiding behind a phony excuse as justification for refusing to allow as many Texans as possible to cast ballots for the next president.

Rampant voter fraud does not exist. Nor will it exist if we develop a secure system of voting by mail.

political news

Voter fraud issue is, um, a fraud

I want to give a serious full-throated shout-out to The Hill newspaper for providing a marvelous bit of perspective on the phony issue of voter fraud as it concerns the possibility of an all-mail vote for president of the United States later this year.

To sum it up: The fraudulent vote issue is a fraudulent allegation.

There you have it.

The Hill takes pains to point out that mail fraud is the rarest of political events in the United States. Moreover, it points out that in the state that began all-mail voting, the instance of mail fraud is even more rare than it is nationally. Oregon, the state where I was born, was the first of our states to conduct all-mail voting and has enjoyed great success in protecting the sanctity of this cherished right of citizenship.

Read The Hill story here.

Voter fraud has become a red herring, a canard, a phony excuse to keep more Americans from voting. Republicans are leading the amen chorus seeking to persuade Americans that mail-in voting invites fraudulent ballot-casting. The leader of that chorus is Donald John “Stable Genius in Chief” Trump, who of course tosses out that demagogic rhetoric without a scintilla of evidence to back it up.

All-mail voting is not the way I want to cast my ballot, but if the coronavirus is going to suppress the balloting because Americans fear potential deadly exposure to the virus, then all-mail voting is reasonable — and secure — alternative.

The voter fraud demagoguery needs to be called out for what it is: a bald-faced effort to suppress voter turnout as a dodge to protect certain politicians’ from losing their cherished perches of power.

political news

Patrick swills the voter fraud Kool-Aid

Texas Gov. Lt. Dan Patrick must’ve been mighty thirsty.

So what does he do? He grabs a helping of the Kool-Aid being served by Donald Trump and his Republican pals to put down efforts to expand all-mail voting in time for the 2020 presidential election.

Patrick, a Republican, says all-mail voting is a ploy by Democrats to “steal an election.” Do you get where he’s coming from?

He allegedly thinks that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt, that it promotes rampant fraudulent voting. Well, it doesn’t. State election officials where mail-in voting occurs swear by its integrity.

However, at the risk of being accused of engaging in “what-aboutism,” I want to offer this brief note.

If Patrick thinks Democrats are trying to “steal” an election by encouraging more voters to cast ballots, it’s fair to wonder if Republicans are trying their own game of theft by limiting voter participation.

In some quarters, they call it “voter suppression,” which is what many GOP officials have tried to do in several states.

So, for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to toss out the voter theft accusation against Democrats, he ought to come clean on whether his own objection to mail-in voting is based on his own version of trying to “steal” an election.

What’s more, it isn’t “laughable,” as Patrick suggests, for anyone younger than 65 to fear voting “in person.” Really, Dan? He should talk to any of the family members of younger victims of the killer disease. Tell them how laughable it is.