A few days past Christmas and congress has reverted to its worst swampy instincts, with a multi-trillion, 5,600-page monstrosity as a Christmas present to the nation. Happily, President Trump appeared to be on the verge of vetoing it. Sadly, he eventually signed it.
But we have a problem, a national problem of election fraud of sufficient scope and breadth to flip what appeared to be a Trump landslide into a comfortable Harris – Biden win. That fraud was focused on seven swing states: Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
What new was done in those states? Mostly using the excuse of COVID, election laws were changed on the fly by democrat executives, state and federal judges to open the door for massive mail-in voting, extensions on early and late voting, a myriad of related changes in local election laws. Mark Zuckerberg dropped just short of half a billion dollars into non-profits that specifically targeted local election law changes that would preferentially turn out democrats. And we have what appears to be the Dominion / Smartmatic election machine system which seems to be specifically designed to make election fraud easier. Sadly, it even looks like some unknown number of Postal Unions were involved in the fraud, receiving and processing ballots delivered across state lines.
The result of all this ended up being the worst stolen election since the 1960 Kennedy victory over Nixon. Now, if you have an appreciable amount of the nation’s voters (pushing 80 million) who no longer believe elections in this nation are open, fair, transparent, and honest, we as a nation are treading the path toward a banana republic. Something MUST be done to restore integrity, trust and transparency to elections at all levels.
The problem is what to do about it. This is where congress comes in. Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution says the following:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
It is past time for congress to get off the snide and create a set of standards with penalties for elections at all levels. I would suggest the following as a possible list:
- No voting without a Real ID.
- Voting by mail is no longer allowed.
- Ballot harvesting is no longer allowed.
- Per the US Constitution, only legislatures may change election law. And those changes must be complete no less than 180 calendar days before any election.
- Election days are strictly controlled. No voting earlier than 7 days before election day. Any absentee ballot post-marked after election day does not count.
- Voting machines will be available for forensic audit no less than a month before any election and available for audit for 6 months after the election. All system logs will be retained indefinitely.
- Anyone convicted of election or voting fraud forfeits their right to vote in all subsequent elections, work on any political campaign, or in any election in any capacity. This is a federal felony conviction.
- State election rolls will be scrubbed on a regular basis to remove citizens no longer in the state or deceased.
- Finally, there needs to be some sort of nationwide signature matching standard for accepting absentee ballots.
Historically, all these standards have been addressed at the state level. But this time around, these seven states demonstrated that they were ready, willing, and able to change those standards at the drop of a hat to elect Harris – Biden. As such, they have forfeited the right to set their own standards.
Open and transparent elections are one of the foundations of this nation. Congress needs to get to work and clean up the current mess. Should they fail to do so, the citizenry will clean up the problem by alternate means, which won’t be nearly as pretty. Ignoring the problem, putting fingers in our ears and singing “La, la, la, la, la” isn’t going to hack it anymore.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
