Twitter Fact Checks Trump’s Mail-In Ballots Tweet, Gets Fact-Checked Back
The biggest problem with Twitter’s fact check, aside from the fact that it singles out Trump, is the fact that there is indeed evidence that mail-in ballots can lead to voter fraud.
On Tuesday, President Trump triggered Democrats and Twitter higher-ups in two tweets he posted warning about how mail-in ballots are ripe for voter fraud, suggesting Democratic efforts to make using mail-in paper ballots easier could lead to the presidential election being “rigged”:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255835124539392
….living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
In response, Twitter slapped fact-check notifications on both tweets, which took users to a Twitter page that read as follows:
Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud
On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.
Twitter places fact-check notifications on tweets from President Trump about mail-in ballots https://t.co/4bO6PqGYBB pic.twitter.com/OxuN7Hu1To
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 26, 2020
The biggest problem with Twitter’s fact check, aside from the fact that it singles out Trump while ignoring claims made by Joe Biden and the media, is the fact that there is indeed evidence that mail-in ballots can lead to voter fraud. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said it himself back in 2004:
Jerry Nadler in 2004:
“Paper ballots are EXTREMELY susceptible to fraud…I can show you experience which would make your head spin.” pic.twitter.com/qTjyQLoJWT
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) May 27, 2020
There’s plenty more where that came from, too:
“Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voting fraud” — 2005 report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker
Lay off the fact-checking, @Twitter
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) May 26, 2020
GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel compiled a Twitter thread with examples of mail-in voter fraud:
This Twitter "fact check" system is such a joke.
They cite liberals from outlets like HuffPost, Vox, even the ACLU.
Who don't they cite?
An actual SoS who said TODAY that in the last 5 years, 83% of the fraud in his state has been with mail-in ballots. pic.twitter.com/9TAqMjQshC
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 26, 2020
Don’t believe him because he’s a Republican?
Here’s The New York Times highlighting how “votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.”https://t.co/6kneZaqCAl
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 26, 2020
Twitter falsely claims there is no evidence of mail-in ballot fraud.
That’s odd since NJ’s all-mail primary this month was ‘plagued’ by fraud concerns, with 3,000 votes set aside.
Ballots were stolen out of mailboxes.https://t.co/HvJEpmjNY7
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 26, 2020
The allegations are so bad even liberal election law expert Rick Hasen says:
“There is a genuine absentee ballot fraud scandal going on in Paterson.”
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 26, 2020
Twitter cites Oregon, Utah, and Nebraska as mail-in models.
None of these states mail ballots to inactive voters, which Pelosi supports. Dems are suing states to do this & it has caused chaos in Nevada.
These states took years, not months, to switch to a mail-in ballot system.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 26, 2020
Twitter falsely claims “only registered voters will receive ballots,” yet makes no mention of the numbers of dead voters registered and duplicate registrations plaguing California. https://t.co/BS6cHxMXpM
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 26, 2020
Mailing ballots to inactive voters is a recipe for disaster.
Just look at NV, where live ballots are piling up in the streets.
Ballot harvesting (which CA already has) is equally troubling and Democrats are trying to nationalize it. pic.twitter.com/XqNv5VKrin
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) May 26, 2020
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson did a must-watch segment on this issue Tuesday night and cited numerous examples of illegal ballot harvesting, all of which have happened within the last 20 years:
Just this week, a West Virginia mail carrier has been charged with attempted absentee ballot application fraud, according to WHSV.
As a result of Twitter inserting themselves into the presidential election, Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio are warning there will be consequences:
The law still protects social media companies like @Twitter because they are considered forums not publishers.
But if they have now decided to exercise an editorial role like a publisher then they should no longer be shielded from liability & treated as publishers under the law.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 27, 2020
So is Trump:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265601615261827072
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265649545410744321
Fasten your seatbelts, folks. Things are about to get really interesting.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
Shutter Shi…..ER…..Twitter……
Troll Level: Expert
Use NPR and Nutty Jerry Nadler when they said it was a joke and easily rigged.
One wonders if behind the scenes there is not pressure from Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Schiff and the rest of the crew that brought us the resistance.
Why wonder? Obama moved down the street from the White House and shadowed POTUS visits internationally for the first two years of his Presidency. You think he stopped calling the shots? I don’t.
Proponents of vote-by-mail always base their claims on the system working 100% efficiently with no one ever attempting to take advantage.
Opponents of vote-by-mail have only to ask, “Have you MET any actual human beings???”
Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.
That is very carefully worded to sound like it’s saying something it isn’t.
As one who majored in mail-in voting as an undergrad, I disagree. Who the F is an expert in mail-in ballots?
You must have “data” at your “fingertips”, then. Would 20% fraud be within a reasonable margin of error to be considered “very rarely”?
As usually when the passive voice is being used, it’s important to ask who the actors are who are being omitted from the sentence, so as to avoid giving rise mto some awkward questions:
… rarely linked by whom? Is there anything about them which suggest why they might prefer not to make that link?
“Rarely” linked obviously doesn’t necessarily mean it never happens. It could just mean that it’s hard to identify when it does happen, in which case how prevalent it may be is up for argument. Obviously, the goal of voter/ballot fraud is to affect an election, so it must be on a large enough scale to work, otherwise it’s useless. The Dems would accept any result in which they win. Are they setting up a situation in which, if Trump wins, they can suddenly turn around and claim “massive election fraud” in order to make his second term “illegitimate” and fire up “Resistance 2.0”?
What is the chain of custody of a ballot handed to a voter at an official polling place and compare that to the chain of custody of a mail in ballot from the time one is requested by a voter. Pretty scary isn’t it?
It really is hard to put into words how frighting it is. For anyone to pretend that mail in ballots don’t have a drastically higher risk of fraud don’t you have to assume that they plan on exploiting that potential?
You would think that everyone would insist that our elections be as secure and as trustworthy as possible. Who could not want that? As you say, those who want a system that can be jimmied, that’s who. There is no one else.
None of the people promoting mail-in ballots would ever knowingly get aboard an aircraft that didn’t have a paper trail of maintenance records showing care by certified professionals. But they want our country to “fly” an election without similar safeguards.
So how many Republican mail-in ballots did Jerry Nadler say he ate???
“there is indeed evidence that mail-in ballots can lead to voter fraud.”
The opportunities are blatant, and the temptation is perennial.
Gee, nothing suspicious about that. It’s not as if where from and for whom are important questions when it comes to disqualifying ballots.
In WA state the recent primary REQUIRED voters to check either Democratic Party or Republican Party on the OUTSIDE of the ballot envelope and affix your signature. Postage paid (IIRC) many voters returned them through their rural road-side mailboxes.
That introduces a chain of custody problem such that it depends entirely on my neighbors, drivers-by, and postal person to deliver my ballot intact and unaltered to the county commissioner of elections.
Our postal person is a real flake and liberal – my confidence level in that person is zero – the number of times a neighbor has brought my mail after misdelivery, or I get an envelope re-delivered with someones annotation on the envelope that it had been misdelivered … lost mail – checks I had to chase down …
In no way shape or form should the postal service, which is a partisan organization – be involved in our elections.
PS – neglected to mention – we have had our mail stolen so often, gone up to the road and discovered our mail box open and empty, we opened a PO box to stem the theft.
A few years ago we needed to replace our old mailbox — as did half our neighbors due to a route change — and I’m the only one who opted for a locking mailbox.
For a while our Saturday letter carrier insisted on putting our incoming mail in the outgoing part of the box, from which it could have been stolen. Since we don’t put outgoing mail in the box anyway, I duct-taped that other slot for almost a year to get the point across.
So far, so good.
Self tapping screws work, too. 😉
Our mailman in Norfolk back in the mid ’90s had a habit of randomly writing “No such street address” on mail and sending it back. We lost a bunch of bills that way, and only found out when a fellow non-profit group member called us to see why she had the wrong address for us in her files.
Complaints, with proof were filed with the post office, but he continued doing this to us and others in the neighborhood for about two years before anything was done about it.
Which is why I snort when folks say that privatizing the post office would lead to problems. The problems they site tend to be existing ones that the current post office leadership has no interest (or ability?) to fix.
Did you talk to the postal inspectors? That activity is a crime, and it’s in their bailiwick. Complaining to a counter clerk or a supervisor gets you nothing.
Yes, we did. In particular an overnight delivery that we were waiting for – which USPS.com said was “out for delivery” and then in the middle of the afternoon was updated to “delivery attempted”. We were home, the lazy oaf didn’t want to deliver it as it was a larger parcel (long wall-mounted quilt-hanger).
We complained to the supervisor who made us wait awhile, was insincere about cautioning the carrier and pointed to her earrings, which were some unofficial post-office symbol of having been disciplined, for the same thing – the story of which she boasted about.
We’ve had good and conscientious mail carriers, and we’ve had some real cretins. Being on a rural route, we tend to get the cretins. My neighbor has befriended the carrier and got the scoop … routes like this are bid upon if you can believe it – our carrier was the only bidder – and won’t be replaced until she quits, dies, or does something so egregious there’s no choice but to fire her. The ‘bid’ part flat astounds me … really USPS? We get the low bidder?
Ah well – the future of our democracy, in the hands of the low-bidder and cretins.
Mr. E: TxVet2 wrote: “Did you talk to the postal inspectors? That activity is a crime, and it’s in their bailiwick. Complaining to a counter clerk or a supervisor gets you nothing.”
And you wrote yes, you did. You spoke to a supervisor. Guess I’m missing something there. Did you file a complaint with the Postal Inspection Service? Or just the supervisor? The criminal complaint would have been redirecting first class mail, not being too lazy to actually deliver a large package.
I know I’m lucky that I’ve had nothing but excellent rural carriers for many decades. But if your carrier redirects, or other wise screws with, your first class mail you need to be talking to the Postal Inspection Service, not a local supervisor, counter clerk, postmaster, etc.
Re-read what TXVet wrote – you’re right – I missed it. It was a super I talked to, not an inspector.
In hindsight and since I didn’t know there was a difference between talking to a supervisor and an inspector, I wonder if that’s a common dodge for protecting such carriers or red-tape avoidance?
I found Rubio’s tweet interesting. Can some lawyer types weigh in on his point on fact checking?
His tweet is misleading. S.230 of the CDA explicitly shields online services from publisher liability if they edit user-submitted content. The intent of that is to allow online services to remove things like illegal porn, criminal communication, etc. without suddenly being liable for every bit of text any user has ever injected into their system.
But it doesn’t matter what the intent is, S.230 is worded a lot more loosely than the intent and nobody who understands it wants S.230 to be repealed because the consequences would instantly destroy the Internet as we know it.
Every web site or service that accepts any user submissions, no matter the size or content or topic, would instantly be liable for anything anyone ever posted to it. As a practical matter, that means all forums instantly shut down and all sites instantly remove commenting because it’s simply not feasible to vet anything and everything every user posts.
There’s a credible argument that without s.230 even general web search engines can’t operate, as they could be described as republishing content – and now they’re liable for it.
The really big Social Media sites have the money, the lawyers and the AI tech to weather this and operate under the new legal regime, but all the alternative media will instantly vanish in a storm of lawsuits. And that’s not even accounting for Mobys.
You may have noticed that Facebook, Google, YouTube et al have been conspicuously silent on the topic of repealing s.230 and publisher liability. There’s a reason. They know it only helps them.
Thanks for the reply. I wasn’t really hopeful of a legal challenge to the big social media sites being successful in forcing some kind of change. Hopefully, competition, like Joe Rogan moving to Spotify will hurt them enough financially to make them ease up on the bias.
And we have a hopeless optimistic in our midst.
Not really. Facebook has been hemorrhaging users for some time; it’s generally seen as the place where your mom posts (group chats on phone-based instant messagers are where the majority of “social media” actually happens). Twitter is the new tumblr.
The real problem is that the people most offended by Big Social Media’s antics seem to think they have some kind of Constitutional right to use someone else’s computer for free, and they seem unaware that “the Internet” is more than just four web sites. If everyone offended by Twitter and Facebook’s antics just jumped over to Gab or thinkspot or minds, this whole thing would end.
As Daniel Ream wrote, and as I’ve written here at least a dozen times, Section 230 explicitly gives interactive computer services the right to delete user-supplied content that they find offensive without thereby becoming responsible for whatever they don’t delete. And without that forums like this one that we are using could not exist. Prof J would have to shut it down immediately.
The only way to understand Rubio’s threat is that Congress could change the law. But even if that were desirable, there is no way the current House would agree to it. Such a change would have to wait until after the election. And there’s always the chance that the courts would strike it down, effectively re-implementing section 230 on their own, by reversing the horrible Prodigy case and applying instead the same rule that has long applied to book stores. Remember that book stores have always been allowed to censor their contents, and to be openly political about it, without thereby being liable for what they choose to carry.
But what they can’t do is take down content from Republicans while leaving up equally objectionable content from Democrats.
just think of all the voters that group a few years ago registered, wish I could remember the group. the dead will be voting in droves. the list is endlist
Oh yeah: -> ACORN. An Obama-centric community-organizing group.
And, as I recall, shut down for fraudulent activities and then re-created under another name.
the dead will be voting in droves
You know that old trope about the guys who would go around during a plague crying “Bring out your dead”?
In the current plandemic, those guys will be Democrat activists harvesting ballots.
As someone from Utah who has been getting mail-in ballots for about 3 years… I hate it. I do not mail it back in; my county has a box at the county building to drop them in, so I do that to avoid the possibility of postal malfeasance.
My opinion: Voting is a right, and with rights come responsibilities. If you are not willing to take an hour every 2 or 4 years to vote; if that right is not that important to you to take that responsibility every other year, you should not be voting*. Making it “easier to vote” for people who don’t take that responsibility serious enough to research candidates and issues is not a feature.
*obvious exceptions for the military and those too ill or old to make it to a polling place.
In Utah also, do almost the same thing, I constantly get mail meant for my neighbors, the problem there is chain for the ballots.
I never, NEVER, leave outgoing mail in the mailbox. I drop it at the PO when I’m running other errands. After that, virtually all of the handling is automated until it gets to the delivery carrier – and in the case of high volume like ballots, even the carrier doesn’t actually handle individual pieces, just trays.
I had a problem with my contract carrier misdelivering mail. It took a couple of sternly worded notes and the implied threat to get her contract cancelled to get her to change her ways, but as far as my mail is concerned, she’s pretty careful and I haven’t gotten a misdelivered piece in some time. Of course she’s (apparently) honest, just careless.
Like MrE, I live in WA state and have a rural-style mailbox that I *never* use for outgoing mail. Mail goes into the big blue box next to the grocery store, ballots go into a similar box outside City Hall.
I have a great mail lady, but I still walk down to the street to hand her outgoing mail or I’ll take it to the P.O.
When my polling place changed after 9/11 (from the local NG Armory to a church), I received three voter ID cards, mine and the couple who owned the house prior to me. I could not get them off the voter rolls since they could have moved to a different address in the same precinct. They actually moved to Texas.
I ended up voting late in the day in order to check if anyone used their name to vote. Eventually, enough elections passed so the names had a “check ID/address notice” in the book. At least now, we have voter ID requirement. But, I checked until they were off the roll.
I also just asked for an absentee ballot for the June primary. I think there will be easier rules for mailing it back in by including a photo ID instead of having to get a notary sign the outside envelope. But, the notary signature is under discussion for the presidential election.
At least I can go online to track the absentee ballot as to when mailed and received and if there was an issue with processing. In the past, I checked to make sure that an absentee ballot was not requested.
I also use the USPS informed delivery option so I get an email in the morning showing what’s coming that day.
A guy called the Rick Roberts radio show today, relating the story of his effort to get his mother off the voter rolls. I didn’t catch where he was, but he asked at the registrar’s office about removing her and they told him she had voted in both primary and general elections in 2008 and 2012. He thought that was interesting because she passed in 2007. They refused to remove her until he got with a school friend who was some official who then encouraged them to remove her registration.
The Federal law requiring clearing the rolls is ignored by most states, particularly Socialist-Democrat run states. The graveyard vote has a long history in Socialist-Democrat politics.
Waiting for the Cemetery Vote: The Fight to Stop Election Fraud in Arkansas
by Tom Glaze and Ernie Dumas
From the Inside Flap
Waiting for the Cemetery Vote begins with an overview chapter of Arkansas election fraud since the nineteenth century and then moves on to more specific examples of fraudulent activities over a dozen or so years that coincide with the onset of the modern progressive era in Arkansas. Author Tom Glaze, who was a trial lawyer battling election fraud during this time, is the ideal chronicler for this topic, bringing a memoirist’s intimate insight together with a wealth of historical knowledge. Glaze describes the manipulation of absentee ballots and poll-tax receipts; votes cast by the dead, children, and animals; forgeries of ballots from nursing homes; and threats to body or livelihood made to anyone who would dare question these activities or monitor elections. Deceptive practices used to control election results were disturbingly brazen in the gubernatorial elections in the 1960s and were especially egregious in Conway and Searcy Counties in the 1970s and in special elections for the state senate in Faulkner, Conway, and Van Buren Counties. A clean-election movement began in the early 1970s, led not by party or political leaders but by individual citizens. These vigilant and courageous Arkansans undertook to do what their public institutions persistently failed to: insure that elections for public office were honest and that the will of the people was scrupulously obliged. Prominent and colorful among these groups was a small band of women in Conway County who dubbed themselves the “Snoop Sisters” and took on the long-established corrupt machine of Sheriff Marlin Hawkins.
https://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Cemetery-Vote-Election-Arkansas/dp/1557289654/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Waiting+for+the+Cemetery+Vote+%3A+The+Fight+to+Stop+Election+Fraud+in+Arkansas%2C…&qid=1590659752&sr=8-1#customerReviews
Where free speech is a right and we have equal protection under the law, how can Twitter get away with applying a fact-check / censoring system to PDJT that isn’t applied to everyone else?
Because it is a private company and as long as they aren’t violating any EEOC rule, they are safe to do what they wish with their website.
No. For good or ill, Trump’s tweets have been deemed a part of the official government record, which means the government can control how that’s displayed, as long as they aren’t making content-specific rules. This means that all the government has to do is say that Trump’s tweets cannot be displayed by Twitter with any kind of fact-checking and it’s completely within the law.
They can do it because free speech is a right, and they’re exercising it. They have the right to express their opinion of Trump, just as he has the right to express his opinion of them. They don’t have to be fair, any more than a newspaper has to be fair; and it’s up to the public to take note of that.
Colorado moved to all mail-in balloting and, SURPRISE!!, we’ve become a Democrat controlled state and we’re starting to resemble IL, NY, and CA for socialist behavior, pension abuse and illogical laws…
Here is an overlooked issue; College Students and their ballots.
So if Joe College attends Univ of Michigan, but is an out of state student from California how many ballots will be receive?
He should only get one, based upon where he registered to vote. What if Joe College wanted to register twice, once in California and once in Michigan? What active process prevents that?
If the States are simply mailing ballots out do they have the time to cross check voter registration duplication from other States? Are the inclined to do so? Do they have a statute which requires that they do so?
I can’t imagine that if two states are not actively cleaning up the registration rolls that it would be too difficult to register in those two states.
Not only is this a problem with college out of state students, it is a problem with retirees as well. There are many retirees who have a winter home in southern climes (e.g. FL, AZ) and then return “home” to their northern state for the summer. Obviously not all vote in two states, but enough do for it to be recognized as a problem (I think the most frequent are NY/NJ and FL). There has also been a lesser problem of NYC voters registering to vote in a summer home in Northern NY. Some do it legally in that they claim the summer residence as their primary and only register there. They claim that one Socialist-Democrat vote can have an impact in rural areas whereas they are just another overkill Socialist-Democrat voter in NYC. Others register in two counties. Don’t know if NY state has done anything about the latter.
Edward,
You are absolutely correct. Many states don’t even allow their registration information to be viewed for comparison by other states much less check others themselves.
I chose the college student example because it may be more observable in precinct tally if a university does not have in person fall classes.
Another point in that scenario would be the lack of student volunteers. Some campaign organizations rely on these students for get out the vote activity. If they aren’t on campus it will be difficult to replace them.
You can trust US Mail. They gave you Lance Armstrong.
They palm the “how certain” card, just like they obscure analysis vs. assessment vs. interpretation: both variations of “motte and bailey” rhetoric. Conventional “motte n bailey” is about the scope of the claim.
So, they object when a claim they don’t like lacks mathematical certainty, while when they like something, it’s good enough if they heard from their sister’s uncle’s cousin about this one time at band camp.
Like motte n bailey and some other rhetoric they use, the notion is to stampede you away, using your own honesty. (“Raaaaa-cist!” — they don’t mean it. It’s to cow you, or put you on the back foot: “Am not.” The right response is: “That’s bull****; knock it off.” Whatever their claim, you get more direct n wound up as they throw more, less relevant mud.
The counter move is usually to come right back at them. “Really, let’s find out.” “Really, based on what?”
“Because it’s bull*** and you know it. Can we talk about how we track down how a new viral plague got so far so fast before we knew it? Maybe it didn’t start in Wuhan, but right now, that’s the place to look. If it didn’t start there and we think it did, that’s the first thing to find out — let’s be less wrong about where things start n we can maybe stop them better.”
So, on this one come back with: “You’re saying there’s no mail fraud? Ever?”
“Cool, so if that doesn’t happen can you explain to me “ballot harvesting?””
“Really? “ballot harvesting” isn’t a thing? Great, what were they up to in that CA election … the one the D’s were on about how they were gonna win … ”
You need *one* counter-example, w/ all the facts on it. *Don’t* make your case. You point to the counter-examle vaguely, like it’s understood (by everyone) and make them make theirs. Make them either explain what happened, or say nothing did. Then drip out the contradictory fact. Go after the one hole in their story, the one thing they didn’t say. DON’T politely let that slide, assumed as true. Then the next one…
The point is to have them explaining. When you’re explaining, you look wrong. So you put your argument in the presuppositions before what you actualy say. Then they have to dig them out, argue against, or let them go. Even going after you, they’re explaining.
This is a propaganda / persuasion technique the Screaming D’s use all the time. They don’t think it through: they’ve been handed bleats with the structure built in.
This is exactly right, except for one example.
Actually they have no problem acknowledging that ballot harvesting is a thing, because in itself it’s perfectly legal and above board and there’s nothing wrong with it. They were on about how they were going to win with it, simply because they were doing it and the Reps stupidly weren’t. At least that’s what they said, and what they will say if you challenge them. Because the problem with ballot harvesting is not that it is fraudulent but that it creates an engraved invitation for fraud, just like absentee voting itself. Just as they openly support absentee voting but deny loudly that it’s ever abused, so too they openly support harvesting and loudly deny that it is or ever could be abused.
And I’m not aware of any evidence that they did abuse it; the only reason I don’t believe them is that they’re Democrats, and election fraud is what they do. Given this opportunity for massive fraud I find it hard to believe they resisted the temptation. That there’s no evidence just means they didn’t get caught, which is not surprising because it’s very difficult to catch. If you trawl with a 6-inch net you won’t catch any 3-inch fish.
Other than that, you’re 100% right.
Scott Adams brought up a very interesting point on his podcast this morning: all of the laws, at least in theory, apply equally to Republicans as well as Democrats.
Now, we’re generally means oriented rather than ends orientated, and a voting system extremely susceptible to fraud is a *really bad system*, but it looks like the system we’re going to end up with in a lot of blue controlled states.
So, given the laws that will be in place, what are the things we can do to ensure that the most ballot integrity will actually be present on election day?
If we are worried about serious ballot harvesting manipulation during the election, how about setting up action teams with proper chain of custody control and documentation that can ensure that harvested ballots are not tampered with or manipulated?
If we are worried about rafts of ballots being sent to people who no longer exist, can we set up teams that have legally valid process for finding dumped ballots and ensuring they are properly, traceably disposed of?
And make sure all of it is traced, properly handled, and above reproach, so when the D’s send out their goon-squads to hammer people for making sure things are done legally, we have the documentation and legal teams to ram it back down their throats.
Build over. Build under. Built around. Above all else, Build.
How? The whole point of ballot harvesting is that there’s no chain of custody, and it’s thus wide open to manipulation. Not tampering as such, though I suppose that might happen too. The main avenue for abuse of harvesting is that the harvester can collect votes he believes are for the other party and destroy them. The honest way is for the harvester to refuse to collect such ballots; the dishonest way is to collect them and destroy them. (The honest but stupid way is to collect them and duly deliver them, and if there are Republican harvesters I’d bet that’s what they do.) The only way to forestall that is to have our own harvesters show up at a home after the voter has had time to vote, but before the Dems show up. And I don’t understand how we can arrange that, without becoming a pain to the voters by bothering them every day.
Again, how? Send people out to monitor every mail box every day? If a ballot hasn’t been picked up, how do they know it won’t be? And even if they do know, what can they legally do? Stealing it would be a federal crime.
My daughter lives in Texas with her husband of ten years and two children. She hasn’t lived in our house near Kansas City for almost 20 years, nor in Kansas for almost 15 years. Yet, despite her best efforts, and those of her mother, our daughter is still registered to vote in Johnson County, Kansas.
Today, the mail brought every voting-age member of our household (including, of course, the no-longer member of the household daughter) applications for mail-in ballots.
Prominently noted on one of the outside pages is that the signature on the mail-in ballot application must match the signature on file and the application itself lists several acceptable ID requirements.
Are we really supposed to believe that someone is going to actually compare the signature on the application against the on-file signature, or that driver license numbers are going to be checked to make sure they match the name on the application?
And let’s not gloss over the fact that the ballot can be mailed to an address different from the one to which the application itself was sent.
It takes a very careful reading of the application to learn that voting by mail-in ballot is not required and that in-person voting is still perfectly okay.
Someone receiving this mailer could be easily misled into believing that if they did not fill out this application and send it in that they would not get to vote in either the primary or general elections. But their ballots could also easily be redirected to a different address and votes either stolen or suppressed entirely.
Don’t tell me voter fraud can’t happen. Especially in states that allow “ballot harvesting.”
Well, if they’re doing their job they will compare the signatures. I work the polls in NYC and we are told to do that when someone signs in, and as far as I have observed we mostly do so. To my surprise I actually caught someone last year attempting to vote for his brother. He (probably genuinely) didn’t realize he couldn’t do that, and was quite offended when I refused to give him a ballot.
But people’s signatures do change over time, and if they’re not completely different it’s hard to tell someone they can’t vote just because the signature we have on file is 20 years old.
Actions have consequences, and Twitter is showing that it supports Democrats. Not that this is particularly newsworthy, but aren’t services rendered considered in-kind contributions?
Only if they’re provided to a campaign. The definition of “to contribute” is to give. Twitter is not providing anything to any campaign, so how could it be a contribution? To whom? Independently campaigning for a candidate, without having been asked to do so by the candidate’s campaign, is perfectly legal and protected by the first amendment.
These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others
I wonder if those “others” are as reliably liberal (in the pejorative sense of the word) as CNN and the Post.
These are the authorities they cite as proof that Trump got the facts wrong?!? LOL.
Think about voting in person and how secure it is and then think of the USPS and how insecure it is. Do any of you still mail checks by putting them into your mailbox? Have any of you ever NOT gotten something you have ordered via the mail? In police evidence, there is a custody protocol that requires it to NEVER be unguarded or not signed for. Yet a mail-in ballot can sit for days in an unguarded room and then be sent out with only one person in charge of its security. What if that person is a bitter partisan who thinks it is his/her job to help a candidate win an election? Then multiply these shortfalls in security by thousands of people/places and you can see that mail-in voting is one of the least secure things we will ever do. Where I vote now there is a voter list and I have to show a picture ID to get a ballot. I think that should still be the way we vote.
I regularly receive checks in the mail. How else would they be delivered? If one has ever gone missing I’m not aware of it. And on the rare occasion that I have to send a check I do so through my bank’s bill paying service, which prints a check and puts it in the mail. I’ve never had a complaint that it didn’t arrive.
‘Illegal’: Trump Goes After Tech Giants Google, Facebook For ‘Radical Left’ Bias
https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/16/trump-google-facebook-antitrust/
Fyi
Tucker: Media embrace Big Tech censorship instead of pushing back
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iHrcfdL57ug
Fisher Man:
I was taught growing up that it was a terrible thing that the Nazi’s burned books. Now we’re doing the same thing in the U.S. by deleting posts. Does the left see it, do they care or are they really that evil?
In their eyes, it was only a terrible thing because the Nazi’s did it.
They have no objection to similar thought control measures in the Soviet Union, Red China, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Yes. No. Possibly.
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