My biggest worry this election is the "margin of cheat"

 

I'm not too worried about how Americans vote in today's elections.  We are, after all, a constitutional republic, and we're entitled to vote as we see fit.  Even if I don't agree with the policies of the winner(s), that's just too bad - the electorate will have spoken.  That's their right.

I am, however, very worried about the amount of cheating that appears to be going on.  We've seen many examples already so far this election cycle, as highlighted in news reports from many places.  Pennsylvania is a particularly good example.  The way votes are cast and counted might as well have been deliberately planned to allow cheating to prosper.  There are so many ways in which additional votes can be sneaked into the counting process that it boggles the mind.

American Spectator sums up the problem.

Given Pennsylvania’s recently decreed rules for receiving and counting mail-in ballots, there may be no percentage of honest votes large enough to overcome the voter fraud already underway in the Keystone State. These new rules have been put in place by a Democrat majority (Pennsylvania judges are elected) on the state supreme court. In addition to allowing mail-in ballots to be received and counted up to three days after the statutory Election Day deadline, the new judicially conjured rules for processing mail-in ballots can be boiled down to this aphorism: no postmark, no matching signature, no problem!

You read that right. Here in Pennsylvania, our state supreme court has mandated that a mail-in ballot received up to three days after Election Day must be counted and cannot be rejected merely because it is not postmarked by the statutory Election Day deadline or bears a signature that doesn’t match the one on record for the purported voter.

Care to guess how many such unverifiable ballots will mysteriously turn up after Election Day?

There's more at the link.

If that's not bad enough, Pennsylvania's Attorney-General, Josh Shapiro, tweeted on October 31st:

Think about that for a moment.  The Democratic Party Attorney-General of Pennsylvania - the highest law enforcement official in that State - has categorically stated - before Election Day - that the Republican Party candidate in this Presidential election is going to lose.  Just how partisan can one get?  Just how objective can such an official be in overseeing the electoral process and the counting of the votes?  I'd say "Not at all!"  If you agree, then you see my problem.

It's not just Pennsylvania.  There appear to be many places around the country where voter records are, to say the least, concerning.

Judicial Watch has released a comparison study of Census Bureau population statistics and state voter registration data to reveal a notable disparity. The watch dog group is now warning of potential voter fraud and “dirty” voter rolls.

The study found that 352 U.S. counties in 29 states managed to have 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens.

. . .

The study found eight states showing state-wide registration rates exceeding 100%: Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont,” reported Tom Fitton, president of the watchdog group.

. . .

“The new study of excess — or ghost voters — highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and ballot applications to voter registration lists. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections,” Mr. Fitton noted.

Again, more at the link.

Such inaccurate voters rolls make it too easy to cheat.  As long as a name is on the rolls, a postal ballot from that voter will most likely be accepted and tallied - even if that voter doesn't exist, or has died, or has moved elsewhere.  Last week we learned of an attempt in Broward County, Florida, to register dead people as voters.  In how many jurisdictions has that also happened, but not been detected?

Lack of detection is an important part of the problem.  Voting regulations such as Pennsylvania's make it almost impossible to detect cheating.  It's all very well for the (highly partisan) Philadelphia Inquirer to pontificate that "there is no evidence whatsoever that anything nefarious will happen during the [counting] process", but that's the point.  It won't be possible to gather such evidence, under current rules.  The system might as well have been (and possibly was) designed that way.

I therefore hope that, whoever wins, they do so with such a clear, unmistakeable majority in every State or electoral district that it's big enough to overcome any possible "margin of cheat".  If 95% of the total number of possible ballots in a constituency have been counted, and the winning margin is already (say) 5% or better, it's going to be mathematically impossible to overcome that winning margin by late-counted votes - including votes surreptitiously slipped into the system in an attempt to change the result.  Similarly, if more than 100% of the adult population of a constituency vote, that's a physical and mathematical impossibility that should raise red flags all around.  To my mind, it'll be sufficient grounds for an urgent court application to invalidate all of the votes cast, and hold the election again for that district in a more honest and verifiable manner, one that eliminates the possibility of such contradictions in terms.

Dear readers, I hope that all of you will exercise your democratic right and vote today.  I care very much care that the winning candidates for office, irrespective of party or policy, should be elected honestly, fairly and transparently.  If they're not, we all lose.

Peter