"Right-wing" election observers and officials? Say it ain't so!!!

 

I had to laugh at an alarmist report from Pro Publica last week.

Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.

After Bannon’s endorsement, the “precinct strategy” rocketed across far-right media ... Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.

. . .

What’s different this time is an uncompromising focus on elections themselves. The new movement is built entirely around Trump’s insistence that the electoral system failed in 2020 and that Republicans can’t let it happen again. The result is a nationwide groundswell of party activists whose central goal is not merely to win elections but to reshape their machinery.

“They feel President Trump was rightfully elected president and it was taken from him,” said Michael Barnett, the GOP chairman in Palm Beach County, Florida, who has enthusiastically added 90 executive committee members this year. “They feel their involvement in upcoming elections will prevent something like that from happening again.”

There's much more at the link, most of it field reports from various states and regions saying the same thing over and over again.  The article is being taken as a harbinger of a major threat by left-wing media outlets (see, for example, this MSNBC opinion piece.  Gasp!  Shock!  Horror!  The Trumpists are coming!)

The one thing the report does not mention is that electoral fraud in November 2020 was blatant, real and unarguable.  For all that Democrats and progressive leftists call such allegations "lies" or "unproven" or whatever, there is more than sufficient evidence to prove that there's fire behind the smoke.  We covered the subject in detail back then, and not one of the allegations advanced by objective analysis has ever been disproven or rejected by a competent authority.  In fact, when taken to court, in just about every incident judges rejected the case because the plaintiffs "lacked standing", or because the case was "moot" in the light of subsequent developments, or whatever.  I repeat - the allegations have mostly never been tested in court, largely because partisan "impartial" judges and progressive leftists made sure that they would not be tested.

I'm entirely in favor of more electoral officials and observers taking part in the process.  Frankly, I don't give a damn whether they're Republicans or Democrats, left- or right-wing, old or young, male or female, or any other distinction(s) you care to make.  I care only that they be honest, upright citizens who want to ensure a free, fair election that's not tainted by electoral fraud.  We saw abundant evidence in November 2020 that in some areas at least, electoral officials were biased and partisan beyond belief.  (Who can forget, in Detroit, seeing Republican poll observers being excluded from the vote count, and openly jeered at by Democratic poll workers as they were removed, and then screens being put over the windows to prevent them looking in?)  To counter such blatant bias by electoral officials, I'll gladly support Republicans (or anyone else) seeking to elect or appoint more of their own people to monitor and expose such shenanigans.

Openness.  Honesty.  Fairness.  Transparency.  Anything and anyone who can help to ensure more of them should be welcomed with open arms.  Their political views are irrelevant compared to their personal integrity.

Peter