Democracy Died in the Broad Daylight

An Honorary System Without Legal Constraints

Recently, a Nebraska election official told me the greatest ballot harvesting done in Nebraska was done by Trump’s campaign. I did not bother to respond but wanted to say, “that we know of”. The fact is Trump was a Democrat and knew from day one what was wrong with mail-in ballots. But the rebuttal is “all his court cases failed”. This is not because there was no election fraud, but because the US election system is mostly an honorary system with few actual legal restraints.

This is why prominent conservatives are beginning to embrace ballot harvesting (https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-change-of-strategy-gop-organizers-embrace-legal-ballot-harvesting-following-midterms_4872441.html) yet many conservatives reject the approach, including in Nebraska (https://rumble.com/v1yc2wy-gop-grassroots-leaders-threaten-election-integrity-efforts.html).

The term “ballot harvesting” is a bit vague. States do have laws regarding the handling of ballots (https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_harvesting_laws_by_state). Such laws by themselves are not much of a problem until you add drop boxes, mail-in ballots, and early voting. These options allow for evasion of enforcing such laws due to an overwhelming amount of mail-in ballots and lack of supervision. 

Much of our elections are based on an honorary system. For example, the question on the voter registration form below does not have to answer truthfully, and non-citizens can supply a Social Security number (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10096.pdf).

Also, with mail-in ballots, the assumption is the signature on the envelope presumes the signer actually filled out the ballot and comes with no enforcement measure but to challenge the signature itself, if even allowed. “Hey, Mom! I signed the envelope. Can you fill the ballot out for me?” And how do we determine if a voter ate marijuana edibles before voting, let alone consume a few shots of whiskey? You can’t rule it out.

Also, when requesting a mail-in ballot, the voter is put under surveillance from political operatives who want to make certain the ballot is returned. Partisan affiliation is known and there are reasons to persuade some voters over others to vote. This means until the voter turns in the ballot, communications will be made to the desired voter to turn it in, a form of electioneering with no governance.

Some organizations such as unions and churches may actually take their membership lists and check it against voter registration to make certain all their members are registered to vote. They can encourage their members to vote by mail and in turn, check to make certain their members have returned their ballots. Since party affiliation is known, the organization may merely encourage one partisan group of voters to vote over another. Left-wing organizations are more likely to deploy such measures. However, there is always the risk of a ballot not being returned and this does happen in the thousands.

Now, a lot of people are going to say there is nothing illegal being done in the previous paragraph. However, if the voter says they do not know who to vote for, the person calling them might say “well, request a mail-in ballot and when it arrives, come in and we will help you with it”. And, the voter may be encouraged to leave the ballot with the organization to deliver. This is made easier with early voting. The most likely outcome of the election is incumbents will have an easier time being elected due to name recognition among ignorant voters compelled by others to vote. Say goodbye to all the sanctimonious talk about the secrecy of the ballot box. 

Please note, such actions can be done without any nefarious intent. Omaha Public Schools have students speaking up to 108 different languages (p12 of annual report https://www.ops.org/Page/312). In part, this is why remedial English courses have so many students at UNO. So merely helping people with different languages vote probably occurs. In fact, Senator Tony Vargas’ district is a Hispanic-majority district (https://nebraskalegislature.gov/media/images/maps/2021/legislature/District07.pdf) and has many residents who do not speak English.

Many still want to dismiss voter fraud. However, fraud has three goals. First, not to get caught and second to be effective and third, to be easy. This means contentious elections tend to increase fraud attempts as well as what I refer to as gray voting. An example of gray voting is dual-residence which often is the case for owners of multiple homes, students, and gay persons.

I had concerns about defeating Senator Hunt as it would be difficult but not impossible. However, voters came out in force in the general election. Also, Hunt appears to have had a lot of money and saw no reason to invest in signs. I suspect voters in her district as well as other eastern districts claimed residence in District 20 to elect John Fredrickson, a gay man when they resided somewhere else. Also, some from eastern Omaha may also have been encouraged to claim residence in Hunt’s district to vote for her. 

Perhaps I am wrong. Many people do not know this but in the western part of District 20, many white gay people have settled into the apartments in the area as well as students. This is because I-80 and 680 connect in the area, making road travel to other places such as Lincoln, downtown Omaha, Kansas City, and Iowa easy. The gay migration out of downtown (where there are gay bars) to this area has expanded in part because of the George Floyd riots. These types of voters would vote for Don Kleine for County Attorney and Aaron Hanson for Sheriff but support John Frederickson. This would explain a lot of the ticket-splitting splitting in this election, but I am just tea-leaf reading. However, going from one John (McCollister) to another John (Fredrickson) should raise concerns about the voting demographics of this district.

This was a really weird election. More will be known in the months ahead. The question really will be what changes to the election process will be needed and without change, how should election campaigns be run differently?