Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Is Election Integrity Undemocratic?

 https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/ensuring-election-integrity-anti-democratic/

According to basically 100% of of European countries -- if you read the whole article, election integrity is critical to democracy.

When it comes to absentee voting, we Americans, accustomed as we are to very loose rules, are often shocked to learn that 35 of the 47 European countries—including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—don’t allow absentee voting for citizens living in country. Another ten European countries—including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain—allow absentee voting, but require voters to show up in person and present a photo ID to pick up their ballots. It isn’t like in the U.S., where a person can say he’s going to be out of town and have a ballot mailed to him.

Mexico believes you ought to know your vote actually counts. 

...Mexico recently instituted strict reforms. Voters must present a biometric ID—an ID with not only a photo, but also a thumb print. Voters also have indelible ink applied to their thumbs, preventing them from voting more than once. And absentee voting is prohibited, even for people living outside the country.

Wow, with such harsh "voter suppression" measures, the number of people voting must have really dropped in those repressive countries.

Those who oppose election integrity reform here in the U.S. often condemn it as a means of “voter suppression.” But in Mexico, the percent of people voting rose from 59 percent before the reforms to 68 percent after. It turned out that Mexicans were more, not less, likely to vote when they had confidence that their votes mattered.

Democrats, the media, and the State Bureaucracy oppose any voted integrity measures in the strongest terms.

Here, for instance, is President Biden speaking recently in Philadelphia, condemning the idea of voter IDs: “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Sadly but predictably, he went on to suggest that requiring voter IDs would mean returning people to slavery.

The horror of it! Nearly all the people in Europe are living in SLAVERY! Just ask Joe (on one of the few days he is coherent). 

What kind of "bullies, merchants of fear and peddlers of lies"  have suggested that mail in voting encourages (and has been demonstrated to) enable massive voter fraud? Well Jimmy Carter for one -- and though he is definitely a "peddler of lies", I really can't imagine anyone calling Jimmuh a "bully". 

Sixteen years ago, in 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform issued a report that proposed a uniform system of requiring a photo ID in order to vote in U.S. elections. The report also pointed out that widespread absentee voting makes vote fraud more likely. Voter files contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, and deceased voters, a fact easily exploited using absentee ballots to commit fraud. Citizens who vote absentee are more susceptible to pressure and intimidation. And vote-buying schemes are far easier when citizens vote by mail.

Would you like it if your bank would allow cash withdrawls from your account without photo ID? How many times are you required to show a photo ID? Flying, increasingly buying liquor, shipping a package via UPS, checking into a hotel ... the list just keeps getting longer. 

So we know that insuring voter integrity doesn't reduce voting -- it tends to INCREASE it because people know their vote counts.

Other than a history of voter fraud and a strong desire to continue and increase it,  it seems impossible defend measures like HR1. Therefore, the media mostly ignores what is actually in it, and merely repeats the obvious propaganda that it is racist, voter suppression and somehow a "return to slavery".  

The linked short article is worth the read.

 

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