The Latest Election Myth Pushed by the Left

For years, liberal activists—with the help of their company media allies—have been pushing the parable that there’s a wave of “voter suppression” occurring throughout the nation. Because the report registration and turnout numbers in current elections show, in addition to their quite a few losses in litigation present, it is a false declare created by opponents of commonsense election reforms like voter ID.

Now, the newest delusion they’re pushing is that there’s a rising tide of violent threats in opposition to election employees throughout the nation that is “pervasive” and “unrelenting.”

Joe Biden repeated that theme in his current inflammatory speech at Union Station in Washington, D.C., as have federal businesses just like the FBI and the Division of Homeland Safety, which circulated a memo claiming there’s a “heightened risk” of violence in opposition to “election employees.”

Nobody sanctions threats or violence in opposition to election officers, voters, ballot watchers, or anybody else within the election course of, and I say that as a former county election official in two totally different states. Such misbehavior is strictly prohibited by quite a few state and federal prison legal guidelines.

However is that this declare actually true, or is it an overblown evaluation much like the fraudulent claims made in 2016 that the Russian authorities had conspired with the Trump marketing campaign to repair the election?

Nicely, let’s take a look at the numbers.

What number of election officers are there in the US? The U.S. Election Help Fee issued a comprehensive report on the 2020 presidential election itemizing a complete of 132,556 polling locations within the nation and 775,101 election officers.

Due to this supposed “rising risk,” the Biden Justice Division shaped an Election Threats Activity Drive in 2021 that included the Felony Division, the Civil Rights Division, the Nationwide Safety Division, the FBI, the Division of Homeland Safety, and the U.S. Postal Service Inspection Service.

On Aug. 1, 2022, the Justice Division issued a press release on the findings of the duty drive, and its head, Assistant Lawyer Common of the Felony Division Kenneth Well mannered Jr., testified earlier than a Senate Judiciary Committee listening to on Aug. 3 entitled “Defending Our Democracy’s Frontline Staff.”

In response to Well mannered, the duty drive obtained over 1,000 complaints of “hostile” or “harassing” habits. Of these, solely 11% “met the edge for a federal investigation.” In different phrases, only one in 10 of the complaints had been substantial sufficient to warrant even opening an investigation.

After investigating these complaints, what number of did the duty drive discover severe sufficient to warrant prosecution? The reply is 5. Whereas Well mannered claims that “many” of the complaints they investigated had been “hostile,” he admitted that “they didn’t embrace a risk of illegal violence.”

In his testimony, Well mannered describes the flowery lengths to which the Justice Division went with the intention to be certain the whole election group knew about this activity drive, so they’d know who to inform in the event that they had been really threatened or assaulted.

That effort included convening digital conferences with election officers and their organizations just like the Nationwide Affiliation of Secretaries of State, the Nationwide Affiliation of State Election Administrators, the Nationwide Affiliation of Election Officers, the Nationwide Affiliation of Counties, and quite a few different “non-profit organizations appearing as liaisons to the election group.”

But the variety of federal prosecutions for threats or precise violence in opposition to elections officers after greater than a yr amounted to solely 5, a statistically insignificant quantity when in comparison with the three quarters of 1,000,000 election employees throughout the nation.

After all, even one such risk or assault is one too many in opposition to the residents who serve our democratic republic by taking up the usually troublesome and thankless activity of administering our election course of. However is it a rising tide or a “pervasive” and “unrelenting” drawback? The numbers don’t bear that out.

And you need to marvel: In the identical method that too many members of native faculty boards complained that they had been being “harassed” by “hostile” mother and father exhibiting up at public conferences to lift necessary points and asking robust questions on faculty curriculums and whether or not colleges had been miseducating and propagandizing their youngsters, are election officers getting upset as a result of the general public is lastly being attentive to how they’re doing their jobs? And since they’re asking questions?

These members of the general public questioning their election officers aren’t any extra “home terrorists” than these mother and father questioning their faculty boards had been, irrespective of how a lot Lawyer Common Merrick Garland and the Left attempt to label them as such.

Hopefully, no violence will happen on this necessary midterm election. If it does, then state and federal regulation enforcement will little question act, as they need to. However a small variety of remoted instances don’t represent a widespread, systemic drawback that we must be disproportionately involved about. And nobody ought to be fomenting that form of delusion that can unnecessarily scare each voters and election officers.

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