THE SALUTORY EFFECTS OF DENYING ELECTION RESULTS

Efforts to Refute Deniers Expose The Shaky Foundation of America's System of Faith-Based Elections

Progressives are alarmed by the number of Republican State officials who are denying that President Biden won the 2020 Election. Many of these officials occupy the Governor’s or Secretary of State offices that would have authority in the management of the 2024 Presidential Elections.

However, during 2020 these Progressives assured us that there was no evidence that any widespread electoral fraud occured. Even if Atlanta Georgia, Detroit Michigan, or Madison Wisconsin ballots were being counted by an overwhelmingly Democrat workforce who hated Donald Trump, you could rest assured that all the votes would be properly tabulated in these swing States.

Thanks for reading The Political Entrepreneur! Please forward this post to a friend you think will enjoy it and want to subscribe. They can Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Why should you believe this? Well, because you cannot produce any evidence that these poll workers did anything wrong counting the ballots so you have no grounds for doubt. In other words, have faith! Don’t be a heretic. No need for “auditing” the ballots.

However, now that the tables are being turned in many States, these same Progressives are asserting that there is a reason to doubt the legitimacy of the count in 2024. In 2024 the new partisanship of the management of the elections and ballot counts will threaten electoral integrity. You are being forewarned now so that you can deny the 2024 results in two years.

The shocking truth is that America has a faith-based system of elections. There is no way for a skeptical third party to independently verify the results of an election with empirical evidence. The futile “debates” about who won the 2020 election expose that it is impossible to decide the question based upon third-party methods of verification.

Therefore, Donald Trump has no way to prove that the election was stolen and Joseph Biden has not way to prove that the election was clean. Both sides have to defer to the high priests operating our elections and ballot counting and place their faith in their pronouncements. This is the fundamental truth that participants in this debate have not grasped, and it is the reason that they will endlessly talk past each other in a fruitless debate.

Both sides of this debate refuse to engage in any kind of constructive and practical recommendations to eliminate the flaws that created doubts and fears about our elections. I believe that the Intelligentsia Industrial Complex of writers at The Atlantic, The Bulwark, The Dispatch, National Review, The Claremont Review of Books, American Greatness, New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, The New Republic, The Federalist, or dozens of other periodicals or blogs lack the ingenuity and motivation to end these arguments. Instead, they profit mightily by fostering fear, hatred, and division.

My blog has arisen to break this Intelligentsia Industrial Complex of pusillanious political pundits who cravenly pander to their intellectually-dessicated readers craving more political absinthe in the form of political bombast. In contrast, you are are reading this blog to crawl outside this box of endless cacauphony and confusion.

If you are truly serious about running clean, evidence-based elections, then there are a lot of technical requirements that must be followed. Anyone who doesn’t invest time and effort understanding what this requires should just shut up and stop yapping about stolen elections and election deniers. These next few sections of this post are very boring and technical. They’re not full of fun philosophical pronouncements. If you yearn for that nonsense, then read the other periodicals I listed. For eveyone else who is serious, please read on…….

FAITH-BASED ELECTIONS VS AUDIT-THREAT TAX RETURNS

Suppose that the IRS wanted to audit your tax returns. Now suppose that you replied, “you have no evidence that I’ve cheated on my taxes so why are you persecuting me, and not trusting me?”

Now let’s look at a company with a controller who receives the invoices, and writes the checks to pay them, and who receives the bank statements, and reconciles the checking account. The company’s CPA advises the owner of the company that he is at a severe risk of embezzlement of company funds by this controller or any other person in control of so many of these tasks. He recommends that the company adopt a Voucher System requiring documentary proof of and written authorization for business transactions where duties and responsibilities are separated to increase the difficulty of collusion for embezzlement.

One person authorizes expenditures.
A second person receives the invoices for goods and services that were delivered
A third person examines the invoices to confirm the quantities ordered, prices, and other elements of the order.
A fourth person makes the payments based on these invoices.

In response, the controller files a lawsuit that she is being harrassed by the owner, and that she feels that her integrity has been questioned, and this has caused her great stress. There had been no evidence of fraud so there is no reason to adopt any anti-fraud measures, now. (Yes, I just mocked all of the Progressives opposed to rudimentary electoral reforms.)

Again, we have the dichotomy between the faith-based and an evidence-based protocol of operating a tax revenue collection service and a business. If you want to trust the taxpayers and the controller, then you place yourself in peril if any of them are corrupt. The same is true for how we run our elections and count the votes.

NOT TAKING YOUR WORD FOR IT

The burden of proof should be upon the managers of the voter registration, election operations, and ballot counting to prove the following:

1.      No mail-in ballots were opened to compromise the anonymity of the voters prior to delivery to the vote-counting facility

2.      No counterfeit votes were manufactured and dumped into the pool of ballots

3.      No non-citizens, under-age, deceased, or incarcerated persons’ votes were counted

4.      No one voted twice in an election

5.      No ballots were destroyed or uncounted

6.      No one coerced or bribed someone to vote for particular candidates on a mail-in ballot, and inspected that ballot before it was sealed into the envelope and mailed out

7.      No one completed someone else’s mail-in ballot and sent it in without their knowledge or consent.

What kinds of evidence-based standards would have to be adopted to prevent or minimize the occurence of these violations?

Easy-To-Remember Voter Identification Number

The foundation of everyone electoral sysem is the registration of Eligible Voters — Garbage In Garbage Out. When you register to vote, you have to provide evidence of your Citizenship, age, and residence to prove that you are a US Citizen, at least 18 years old, and living within a district permitting you to vote for a specific list of candidates and measures.

A Secure Electoral System would require you to provide your Social Security Number and Birth Date. Non-Citizen green card holders have a SSN so States should check with the US Citizens and Immigration Services to confirm Citizenship.

The best way to convert this verification of Eligibility into a tool for authenticating eligibility to vote is to assign every Eligible Voter their personal Voter Identification Number (VIDN). Everyone can remember these numbers fairly easily. Unfortunately, some States like California don’t even bother to collect a SSN or passport or birth certificate that could authenticate the Citizenship of the registered voter with the Social Security Administration. Without this information, you cannot have a serious and secure voting system.

Then your assigned voter identification number (VIDN) is the:

Birth month/Birth Day/Birth Year/last 4 digits of SSN

Someone born Feburary 14, 1984, SSN 550-20-1234, would have the VIDN 0214841234

In addition to a signature on the outside of a mail-in ballot, or in a registrar voter booklet at a polling location, the voter would write their VIDN. The mail-in vote count center could instantly determine if the ballot was valid or not. At the polling place, the poll watchers would have a booklet with the voters’ VIDNs and they could compare the written VIDN provided by the voter with the VIDN in the booklet to determine if this person was an eligible voter.

However, under my system, the poll workers who don’t have access to the database cannot connect the VIDN to an individual voter’s name. The mail-in scanning machine will only have 3 different responses:

• the VIDN is valid so place the mail-in envelope in an Accepted Box

• the VIDN is invalid so place the mail-in envelope in a Rejection Box

• the VIDN is a duplicate so set aside the duplicate envelopes in a Duplicate Box

No Unsolicited Mail-In or Ranked-Choice Ballots Allowed

The most secure method for conducting an election occurs when the voter who meets a government poll worker. This physical interaction is the best manner of ensuring that only Eligible Persons are allowed to cast one vote per election per candidate. This is also the only method for ensuring that only Eligible Voters can cast a Secret Ballot.

Any mail-in ballot must have some kind of personal identification on the envelope containing the ballot. Otherwise, there would be no method for authenticating the eligibility of that ballot. However, persons with access to the voter database could enter the VIDN on the envelope, open the envelope, and inspect and record the votes made by that person. All you have to do is imagine sending in a mail-in ballot for the election of President in North Korea and then deciding whether or not your vote would truly be secret just because your ballot was sent in an envelope that had your VIDN and signature on the outside. It is not. You could be shot for not supporting the Great Leader!

In Oregon, where all ballots are mail-in, they do not have a truly secret ballot. A secret ballot should be a fundamental right, that unfortunately, is not currently protected under our Constitution. In the name of cost and convenience, Oregon sacrifices this fundamental right, and most voters don’t even understand this, and many don’t even value this right because they assume, “Nah, it could never happen here.”

Also, fraud schemes can most easily be executed with mail-in ballots. Groups could purchase votes by enticing voters (or threatening them) by having them present their marked ballots to Vote Buyers who then seal the ballot in the envelope and then have the voter sign the envelope and write their VIDN. The Vote Buyer then deposits the envelope into the mail or a Deposit Box, and exchanges something of value to the voter, either on the spot, or more likely, in a different location and time to frustrate any efforts by law enforcement.

Besides the fact that Ranked-Choice Voting exalts personalities over Parties and weakens accountability for specific Political Platforms, it is a black box of complex calculations and algorithms that requires too much faith in government. A superior alternative is to conduct a runoff election of the top two candidates that fosters a strong two-party system instead of promoting the coalition politics that afflicts Israel, Italy, and Germany. A run-off election is easier to run in a secure manner without relying upon black boxes of rank-choice algorithms whirring along out of sight.

Mail-In Ballots are an ingrained part of the political landscape so we cannot ban them, but we should compel voters to request them to minimize the opportunities for ballots to fall into the wrong hands, or exposing voters to intimidation and bribery.

Poll Workers and Vote Counters Are Tracked On Ballots

Let’s explore the nitty-gritty of running an election. Get your fingernails dirty and enjoy the descent into the mechanics of running an election that very few pundits understand.

In the ideal, secure electoral system, I assume that every ballot at a polling location will be time-stamped when it is handed to a voter. Every envelope containting a mail-in ballot will be time-stamped when it is scanned at a mail-in ballot counting center. Obviously, time-stamping a ballot during a period when the ballot counting center or precinct was not open is eliminated as a possibility, and curtails the opportunity to manufacture fake ballots.

When a voter writes their VIDN into the Precinct Voter Registration Booklet, the poll worker will press their personal stamp mark next to the VIDN to indicate their responsibility for authenticating the eligibility of that voter. That poll worker will also press their personal stamp mark, and time-stamp on the ballot they hand over to the voter along with the precinct number of the polling location.

Ballots without this personal stamp mark and time-stamp are not valid, and they are not counted. This ensures that all ballots can be traced to their source of origin while still preserving the secrecy of the ballot.

The number of VIDNs written in the registration booklet should exactly match the number of ballots deposited for voting. Also, the number of poll worker imprints on the registration booklet should exactly match the number of ballots from that precinct containing that poll worker’s imprint. Any discrepancies can be isolated by precinct and by poll worker.

At a mail-in ballot center, the machine operator present as the envelope containing the ballot is scanned for its VIDN printed on the seal of the envelope, will have their personal stamp mark and vote-counting center number printed on the envelopes that enclose the ballot. The voter will also have their signature alongside the VIDN to prevent poll workers from writing a VIDN of an eligible voter onto an envelope containing a fake ballot.

After separating the fake and duplicate VIDNs, the authenticated mail-in ballots are removed from the envelope are then imprinted with the personal stamp mark of the machine operator who oversees the counting of the votes on the ballot. This could be done with an automatic scanning device or by hand.

As with the poll workers at a polling location, the poll workers at a mail-in ballot center will have to reconcile the number of opened envelopes with the number of ballots that were counted. Any discrepancies can be traced to the poll worker presiding over the opening of the envelopes and the counting of the votes on the ballots.

Reconciling Numbers of Voters, Ballots, Candidate Votes

Under this ideal electoral system, the mail-in votes would not be counted before the VIDNs from the in-person polling places are transferred from the voter booklets into the tablulation database. This prevents counting a mail-in ballot from a voter who cast an in-person vote. Any mail-in ballots coming from VIDNs of persons who already voted in-person will be flagged and deposited into a pile, and submitted to prosecutors for vote fraud charges.

Also, the mail-in system will check for duplicate VIDN submissions. Ideally, these envelopes would remain unsealed until all mail-in ballot envelopes were run through the system. Then duplicate VIDNs could be separated from the other envelopes and excluded from the vote count until the authentic ballot can be ascertained.

Once the mail-in ballots are screened for duplicates, then the envelopes can be opened and imprinted with the personal stamp mark of the poll worker. Likewise, the ballots withdrawn from the envelopes will be stamped. At this point, the following data is available:

Total number of in-person ballots by precinct and by poll worker and total number of VIDNs and signatures marked in the voter booklet by a voter.

Total number of non-duplicate mail-in ballots by vote count center and poll worker

The vote counting won’t occur prior to the announcement of the total number of ballots received. This figure sets an upper-bound on the total number of votes any candidate could receive. Once the total number of ballots is announced, then no additional ballots can be added for counting. Therefore, the authorities should wait long enough to ensure that no “lost boxes” full of ballots are found a week later that failed to be included, as commonly occurs today.

The vote counting of in-person ballots is tabulated by candidate by precinct and by poll worker. The same is done for the mail-in ballots. To eliminate the possibility of a poll worker covering their own tracks in a fraud scheme, the persons who count the votes on the ballots cannot be the same persons who verified the eligible voters and and imprinted their personal samps on the ballots and mail-in envelopes.

If the number of VIDNs and signatures in the voter booklet was less than the number of ballots counted at a precinct, then fraudulent ballots were added. If the number of ballots counted were less than the number of VIDNs, then some ballots were destroyed or lost.

If the number of votes received for all the candidates exceeds the number of ballots, then fraudulent votes were added at some point.

If the number of votes received for all the candidates is les than the number of ballots counted, then some of the ballots were destroyed or lost.

As you can see, this is the kind of process that prevents voter fraud while preserving the secrecy of the ballot. All ballots are traced to an individual poll worker who could be held accountable for any addition of fake ballots.

The case of tracing lost or destroyed ballots is more difficult, but custody of the ballots during transportation to a centralized counting center could further isolate suspects. Again, isolating the perpertrators at the precinct level makes it much easier to investigate the source of the discrepancy.

In cases where the size of the discrepancy was less than the difference in votes tabulated for the winner and the second place candidate, then it would not be material for the outcome of the race. However, it would be imporant for isolating any fraudulent actors in the system. If an election had to be re-run, then you could just run it in those precincts that evidence of fraud, instead of for the entire State, county, city, or district.

All of this information should be posted for public viewing so that everyone will have visibility to any problems in the voting and counting of ballots. Official poll watchers from each candidate campaign must be granted observer positions at all polling locatings and locations where ballots are handled and votes are counted.

Conclusion

If you are exhausted from reading the preceding sections, then just imagine how tedious it was to write it! Building a sound, secure electoral system is hard work. It is expensive. It requires training and adequate staffing. However, anyone who opposes such a rigorous protocol for our electoral process is someone who is not serious about eliminating suspicions or restoring legitimacy to our system of elections in the United States. We should take our voting as seriously as we take our income tax collections and anti-embezzlement procedures in our work places.

Obviously, electronic voting machines do not work in a rigorous, evidence-based protocol described above. For the sake of laziness and speedy vote counts, the electorate makes itself vulnerable to a black box where the hardware and software could conceal fraud. When electronic voting machines are utilized to enter votes into a computer that later prints out a ballot, then that the machine is simply an expensive gadget adding no value. If this data entered into the computer is additionally used to tabulate the votes, then it is fraught with the potential for fraudulent manipulation.

In contrast, the system I outlined could be independently inspected and audited by non-Government organizations like the candidate campaigns that lost, or other public interest non-profits. These independent auditors could go to the “source documents”: the opened mail-in envelopes, the mail-in ballots, in-person ballots, and Precinct Booklets of Registered Voters with sign-ins. With these documents and other reports. These audits and inspections should be monitored by government officials to ensure that no source documents are altered, mutiliated, destroyed, or lost.

With this kind of a Secure Electoral System, Donald Trump could not have asserted that the election was stolen. He would not have needed to trust the election officials in disputed States. Instead, he would have had plenty of evidence at his disposal.

Of course, knowing that evidence existed and knowing that the elections were operated according to my procedures, then he would not have made these claims. Then you could actually write, “asserted fraud without proof,” instead of writing “asserted fraud instead of having faith in what the government tell us are the true election results.”