A Peaceful Transition of Power?

 

A Peaceful Transition of Power?

Doing so requires the protection and integrity of our elections.

A political narrative is being framed around the dispute between warring camps supporting their respective presidential candidates. If one accepts the premise of the fight to be singularly about the outcome of the November 3 election, giving that victor the right to occupy the White House for the next four years, the terms of the debate are shallow and expose the intents, motives, and insatiable ambitions of those perpetrating this shallow discussion.

Instead, the terms of the debate must reflect the actual issue at hand — whether voter fraud occurred as a critical component of the national election overriding state legislatures, existing law, and the U.S. Constitution. Only then will deliberations prove worthy of the trust of Americans and our great nation’s founding.

On January 20, 2021, there’s an expectation of a “peaceful transition of power” characteristic of this great constitutional republic. Is that peaceful transfer a demand, an expectation, or the result of the integrity of the institution of elections in America? Americans deserve the answer to that question to prove to be the third option. In reality, peaceful transitions of power are a result of a trusted process, not simply an organic outcome.

History demonstrates the peaceful transfer of power began between bitter rivals — John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams, the incumbent, was challenged by Jefferson in 1800 in a bitter election between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, the newly formed partisan parties. Confusion reigned when the Electoral College tied, and the outcome of the election was determined by the House of Representatives casting 36 ballots for Thomas Jefferson to be America’s third president. The process was not pretty, yet the process worked.

Two hundred twenty years later, the electoral process is still in place. But the American public has witnessed drastic changes. A two-tiered system of voting was constructed for 2020. If one voted in person, greater identity verification and security measures were observed, while those casting ballots by mail had to meet a lower bar. As votes were being counted on November 3, some states were observing extensions of the voting period past Election Day through court decisions, not actions of state legislative bodies as specified in the Constitution.

While various groups are engaged in trench warfare to defend or disprove the tallies of November 3, facts are mounting that voting irregularities at best and actual criminal fraud at worst have occurred in many states:

• In Nevada, at least 1,500 listed as deceased, more than 19,000 nonresidents of the state, and almost 4,000 noncitizens cast ballots.
• In Arizona, almost 28,000 duplicate ballots were counted in Maricopa County.
• In Wisconsin, more than 200,000 mailed-in ballots were in question as clerks filled in missing information or harvested ballots.
• In Michigan, a sworn affidavit reflects one review of a sampling of 30,000 absentee ballots revealed 2,660 at invalid addresses and 229 cast on behalf of dead people.
• In Pennsylvania, an accounting analysis alleged that 202,377 more votes were counted than were actually cast.
• In Georgia, there were an estimated 70,000 ineligible votes because of lack of signature verification.

In a 345-page DOJ report entitled “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses,” a sweeping statement is made that we must acknowledge and embrace: “Our constitutional system of representative government only works when the worth of honest ballots is not diluted by invalid ballots procured by corruption. As the Supreme Court stated in a case upholding federal convictions for ballot box stuffing: ‘Every voter in a federal … election … whether he votes for a candidate with little chance of winning or for one with little chance of losing, has a right under the Constitution to have his vote fairly counted, without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes.’”

The truth is that voter fraud has been and remains an issue, and we must insist that legal votes alone are counted and that those committed to illegal voting and corruption are prosecuted.

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