A PLAN TO SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY
Democrats Warn That The Democracy Is In Danger If Republicans Are Elected. They Don't Have a Plan To Save Us. I Do.
On November 2, 2022, speaking to a crowd in Phoenix, President Obama warned that
If the Republican candidates here are successful, Obama argued, “Democracy as we know it may not survive in Arizona.”
“That’s not an exaggeration,” he added. “That is a fact.”
According to Obama, because candidates Kari Lake (Governor), Blake Masters (Senator), and Mark Finchem (Secretary of State) don’t believe that the 2020 selection of Joe Biden was legitimate, those candidates represent an existential threat to our system of government.
However, evidence from around the country proves that America’s system of partisan control of elections is the real cause of distrust, and Obama and the Democrats have no interest in fixing it. Instead, they want to make it worse.
Just in time for Thanksgiving dinner conversation, I’m going to give you the tools to disarm that annoying relative who wants to argue ad nauseum about January 6, 2021.
Faith-Based Elections in Texas - Believe In Democrats
In Harris County, Texas, Democrats are complaining because
state and local Republicans are deploying monitors to oversee the handling of ballots in the Democratic enclave. Local Democratic officials have said the move is an effort to intimidate voters — and asked the Justice Department to send federal observers in response.
Reading the rest of the article you learn that Democrats don’t appreciate that Republicans don’t trust how Democrats run elections. Democrats don’t explain why the presence of Republican election monitors would intimidate eligible voters. Would the presence of Democrat observers cause similar intimidation?
When someone resists being observed, you naturally assume that they are doing something wrong and you become suspicious about what they are trying to hide. Basically, Republicans are expected to have faith in Democrats. However, Obama and other Democrats don’t have to reciprocate and place their faith in Republicans who will be in charge of running elections in Arizona.
Democrats Are Increasing Distrust In Elections
A cadre of opinion writers at The Atlantic, The Bulwark, The Dispatch, The New York Times, Washington Post, and other basions of Progressive Politics solemnly warn that “election denial” is the most important issue for these elections. Any candidate who expresses any skepticism of Biden’s election should be disqualified. William Saletan wrote:
Election denial is the most important issue, because without respect for election results, democracy will collapse. And if democracy collapses, people won’t be able to hold the government accountable for respecting or addressing any of their concerns.
This is an interesting hypothesis, but it is not supported by the evidence. Democrats did not respect Presidential election results in 2000, 2004, and 2016. Stacy Abrams disputed her loss in the 2018 Georgia State Governor’s race without the downfall of Democracy. Even if the hypothesis had some validity, it doesn’t follow that voting for Democrats whose policies increase crime, increase inflation, surrender control of the border, and subject kindergartners to explicit sex education is a superior alternative.
If you actually cared about the sanctity of our elections, and you wanted to respond to the concerns of the Stop The Steal crowd, then you would build a system of Evidence-Based Elections operated by non-partisan staff.
Instead, writers like Saletan and politicians like Obama prefer to weaponize the distrust of our Faith-Based System of Elections as an irrational act of bad faith on the part of the Super MAGA crowd. These Progressives want to inflame the divisions and distrust over elections by proposing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act (HR 1) that would have prevented States from requiring voter identification for registering voters and ensuring that only eligible voters cast ballots.
Constructive Solutions Versus Fomenting Discord
I’ve written extensively about the Intelligentsia Industrial Complex (IIC) of opinion writers who thrive on emotional diatribes to foment conflict rather than proposing win-win solutions that could end the conflicts. Perhaps, this is due to my economics, finance, and business background compared to the members of the IIC who tend to be Literature, Philosophy, or Political Science majors. Their rhetorical tactics are tiresome.
If any of these writers actually advocated for the kinds of Evidence-Based Election proposals I’ve suggested, then they wouldn’t be able to submit enough copy to their publishers that attract readers who are addicted to drama and conflict. They have a strong profit motive to sustain endless conflict and angst with their readers. This is why you should ignore them, and all of their fellow travelers babbling on televsion.
However, if you really wanted to silence the Stop The Steal voices, then you would listen to their grievances and propose Evidence-Based Election reforms.
Start with a National Voter Registry that compiles a comprehensive list of all living US Citizens over the age of eighteen with their current address. This database could be shared with all the State Voter Registration offices so that they can remove ineligible voters (deceased persons, those who moved, etc.) and keep their rolls clean and up to date. The Eligible Voters on these lists could be automatically registered to vote in the proper State and precinct without having to re-register every time they move.
Then adopt all the measures that I’ve outline before to create a transparent system of running elections that could be audited by non-Government actors, and that creates an audit trail that identifies sources of fraud by precinct and by poll worker.
In addition to all these reforms, we should eliminate the practice of entrusting these operations to partisan actors. Elections are so important that we should demand that everyone in the Voter Registrar’s office down to the lowly poll worker must be politically celibate. This means that they cannot be eligible to vote, they cannot partake in any political activities, and they cannot be related by blood or marriage to anyone who holds elected office.
Conclusion
If you really wanted to build trust and respect for our Electoral System, then these are the kinds of steps that you would take to fix the problem.
When someone argues about how Democracy in America is on the verge of collapse because the Stop The Steal crowd doesn’t believe in the 2020 Election Results, then you should challenge them to answer, Would you oppose moving away from Faith-Based Elections over to a system of Evidence-Based Elections?
In the words of the great Don Draper, “If you don’t like what is being said, then change the conversation.” Don’t engage with rabid partisans who demand that you have faith in their Faith-Based, partisan-staffed electoral systems. Don’t submit to demands that you adopt their beliefs without seeing the evidence.
At its core their argument is that you are unreasonable if you demand an Evidence-Based System of Elections. If you refuse to believe that there is unequivocal proof that Biden won in 2020, then they will brand you as an insurrectionist and a threat to Democracy just like the Religious Authorities in Iran label females who fail to wear the veil as heretics.
Be careful when they try to place the burden of proof upon you to demonstrate that any fraud occurred. After all, Trump lost every lawsuit claiming fraud, and he offered no evidence to support his claims. This trick works in court where the presumption is that the Faith-Based Elections are clean and you, the heretic, have the burden of producing evidence of fraud. This is equivalent to the taxpayer accused of cheating on his taxes asserting that the IRS has no proof that he cheated, and therefore has no basis for conducting an audit! The current election system is run in such a manner that no evidence can be produced, except through confessions of fraud by the persons who work inside the system.
The unfortunate truth is that without an Evidence-Based System of Elections, Trump and the Stop The Steal crowd has no way to prove that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 elections.
Therefore, the Stop The Steal crowd has an obligation to actually make concrete proposals beyond eliminating electronic voting machines and hand-counting ballots if they expect to convince the vast majority of the American public that they are serious about reforming our election system. If they merely replace the Democrat high priests with their own partisan high priests, then we haven’t solved the fundamental problems afflicting our Elections.