“Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote” by Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund (Encounter Books) is a deep dive into the issues that threaten America’s elections today and proposes remedies and solutions to fix our broken system.
The book will be available for purchase starting Nov. 2. hereAnd other thingse. The following excerpt is from the “Introduction” to the book:
An essential requirement for a functioning democratic republic is election integrity.
Free and fair elections are the foundation of our democracy and freedom in the most free nation on the planet. Every American must be able trust the process to choose a president or mayor of the United States. If it fails, the democratic system is doomed.
When someone commits election fraud, the process is no longer fair, everyone’s vote gets diluted, and in some cases, election results are changed. There are many reasons why problems can arise. These include intentional misconduct by individuals who try to exploit the weaknesses in our voter-registration system and election process. However, there are also administrative errors made by election officials.
Election fraud is a serious problem, contrary to what many on the left claim. When the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter-ID law in 2008, John Paul Stevens, the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court at the time, wrote for the 6-3 majority “flagrant examples of such fraud … have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists … that demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real, but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”
The National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, similarly concluded that fraud “could affect the outcome of a close election.”
California, Florida, New Jersey and North Carolina have seen instances of fraud in which local elections were overturned.
In spite of the fact that hundreds of people have been convicted over recent years, election fraud is often not detected. And even when it’s discovered, overburdened prosecutors rarely prioritize these cases.
Fraudsters may steal votes and alter the outcome of elections in many ways.
- Forging voter signatures on petitions for candidate ballot qualification.
- Voting in someone else’s name in person or through absentee ballots.
- Registering and voting in a false name or in a district that the individual doesn’t actually reside.
- Filing fraudulent, altered or forged absentee votes.
- Multiple registrations in a single state or in different states is possible to vote multiple times in one election.
- Voting even though they’re not eligible because they’re felons or noncitizens.
- Coercing, coercing, and intimidating people to vote on certain candidates.
Unfortunately, many left-leaning parties are trying to make election fraud easier by attempting to fight laws that require ID, a commonsense reform that is overwhelmingly supported by the American people. They’ve pushed to get noncitizens and jailed inmates to vote, and they oppose all efforts by election officials to certify the citizenship of registered voters through federal databases and other means.
And they’ve sued states that have tried to clean up their voter rolls by removing individuals who have died, moved away, or are registered multiple times in several states.
The changes that were rammed through for the 2020 “COVID” election, including switching to universal all-mail elections or dramatically increasing the use of absentee mail-in ballots, are unwise and dangerous.
Absentee ballots are the preferred tool of vote thieves. They are the only ballots that are cast without the supervision of election officials. This destroys transparency, which is a fundamental hallmark in a healthy democracy.
Absentee or mail-in ballots also have a much higher rejection rate than votes cast in a polling place since there are no election officials present in someone’s home to answer questions or resolve any problems a voter may be having.
Add to that the problems of delayed delivery and missed delivery by the Postal Service and it becomes obvious that mail-in ballots can be a poor alternative to voting in person.
America’s great experiment is only possible with free and fair elections. All Americans must trust the process and its results.
Something as critical as election integrity can’t be left to a simple honor system or the delivery of ballots by unknown third parties. One of the most important roles of government is to safeguard the electoral process and ensure that every voter’s right to cast a ballot is protected and not diluted by fraud or administrative errors.
Two fundamental civil rights apply to voting. The first is the right not be intimidated, blocked, impeded, or otherwise prevented by anyone voting. To end discriminatory state laws, we fought a long battle to pass a voting rights bill. These gains must be preserved and built upon.
Second, everyone also has the right not to have their vote canceled out by someone who shouldn’t be voting, whether that person is dead, has moved out of state, is a noncitizen, is under age, hasn’t paid his or her full debt to society after imprisonment, or doesn’t even exist.
We can protect both rights and ensure the future of our republic by protecting them.
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