Election Fraud: If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again

One of the many ways Americans are divided, is in the way we see election integrity. For anyone who has seen conservative author and commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s movie, “2000 Mules,” they are convinced that evidence of election fraud during the 2020 presidential election on a massive scale is right before their eyes. Others say it proves nothing. But for those who believe they witnessed irregularities all on their own, or who just have a gut feeling that something wasn’t right, there is something new to consider. If what was presented in “2000 Mules” was right, those practices may be put to voters state by state to legalize it.

In Arizona, one of the states in question during the 2020 election, a group called “Our Voice Our Vote,” has collected more than enough signatures to get something called ironically, the “Arizona Fair Elections Act,” on the November ballot. The group says that Arizona Republicans have spent the time since the 2020 election “taking measures aimed at limiting who can vote and how.” The group also claims that the Arizona GOP has “moved to kick people off the permanent early voting list and made it easier for election officials to remove people from the voting rolls. Once again, likely removing dead people and those who have moved away off voting rolls constitutes “voter suppression.”

We are all familiar with the tactics from 2020. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic (hmmm…topic for another day), early and absentee voting, and voting by mail were greatly expanded. We later learned that mail in ballots were basically voter fraud waiting to happen. Some households received multiple ballots. ABC News even ran an article on its website entitled, “Received Two Ballots? Here’s What to Do,” with the comforting subtitle, “No reason for concern about the integrity of the 2020 election, experts say.” Well, what could possibly go wrong there?! Experts? Count me in then!

That reassuring tidbit aside, the easiest way to explain the Arizona Fair Elections Act is like this, whatever questionable shenanigans that were pulled in 2020, would be made legal if the Act makes it on the November ballot and Arizonans vote it into law. It would automatically register anyone to vote who applies for and receives a driver’s license or state ID card. It would allow for same day voter registration at polling places. The Act would rescind changes made in 2021 that require election officials to stop sending early ballots to voters who do not use them.

Does it get “better” you ask? Of course, it does. It would expand the number of ballots to be counted. Currently, early ballots must be in the hands of election officials by 7 p.m. on election day. The proposed Act would allow mail-in ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if they arrive after election day. And signatures? We don’t need no stinkin’ signatures! The Act would expand the number of early ballots with signatures that do not match to be “cured” by election officials who can verify the signature with the voter.

Some other provisions of the Act include, making it harder to get citizen initiatives or referendum efforts with technical and clerical errors off the ballot. Also, any groups wanting to challenge a ballot measure would have to do so by challenging the number of valid submitted signatures, not the contents of the measure. If you are a candidate, the amount of money your campaign will be allowed to receive will be slashed from $6,250 to either $1,000 or $2,500 depending on what office a candidate is running for.

Will Arizona voters, or voters in any other state for that matter fall for what is essentially making cheating illegal? It’s hard to say. What is happening in Arizona, and possibly in other states, is based on what many people saw in the movie, and that the New York Times has dubbed ballot drop box “stakeouts.” Of course, the New York Times wants you to believe that these are groups of armed vigilantes just waiting to run off poor unsuspecting liberals who are just dropping off a ballot for grandma. Wrong. They have seen enough to be convinced that this was a viable occurrence, and if those that were elected by the people are not going to see to it that there is at least an effort at election integrity, then the people will do it themselves. What it amounts to is groups of people who bring their camp chairs, some snacks, and a few drinks, and just make sure that it is all on the up and up. Add some football jerseys and you would have a tailgate party.

More and more Americans are asking, what happened to election day? When did we cease going to the polls on one day, and casting our one vote? If you were going to be out of town, or if you were disabled, you voted absentee, and election officials knew who you were because you signed your ballot? We even used to know who won that very night. Not now, early voting, extended voting, questionable ballot practices, and most disturbing of all, questionable people voting.

There is a reason for all of it. Most people have a theory or two on what that reason might be. But one thing is certain. If we allow election day to be tampered with, our Republic is in dire straits. Americans cherish our right to vote and fair elections like no other people on earth. We have fought and died for that right. We have gone from, if our side wins, then great, if we lose, we regroup and live to fight another day, to the other side saying, win. Win at all costs. If we do not rescue the sanctity of election day, the “mules,” and those that empower them are the real winners.