Mail-in Mayhem

Mail-in voting is the newest shiny object being pursued by the Democrats as necessary for the 2020 election, ostensibly to deal with the ravages of COVID-19. Advocates for mail-in voting proclaim it is safe, well proven, and would result in more people being able to vote. Critics say that it is fraught with drawbacks and that COVID-19 is being used as cover to enable widespread voting fraud. We have a different theory, but first some context.

There is a lot of confusion surrounding mail-in voting, much of it intentional, and it begins with conflating the terms “mail-in voting” and “absentee voting”. Democrats and the media want you to believe these are essentially the same things. Since there is little historical evidence of fraud in absentee voting, why should anyone believe there would be fraud if this same method of voting were expanded beyond just absentees? Absentee voting and mail-in voting are fundamentally different. Do not believe any news story or politician that tries to say otherwise. Here is the difference:

• Absentee voters must request a ballot from their state of residence. The fact that you must make this request forces you to prove you exist and provide at least some identifying information prior to receiving a ballot. Sixteen states go one step even further and require that you must also provide a valid excuse for why you can’t vote in person.
• Mail-in voters do NOT need to provide any excuses or even request a ballot. Ballots are automatically mailed to every registered voter in the state. You receive a ballot even if you don’t intend to vote. If you recently moved out of the state or died, and the voter registration database in the state has not been purged of your information, a ballot will still be sent to your old address. If that ballot is filled out and returned by someone else, the state will never know since there is no identity check.

It only takes a few minutes of analysis to see how mail-in voting can be much more easily compromised than absentee voting. In addition, we must consider a significant new variable introduced by mail-in voting that is not present with absentee or in-person voting: the adequacy of the US Postal Service.

Traditionally, the number of absentee voters is relatively small in national elections and their numbers do not stress the capacity of the postal services. However, the volume of mail that must be sent/received in a short time period if mail-in voting were to be conducted nationally is orders of magnitude larger than is the case with normal absentee voting. Suddenly, the security, capacity, and timeliness of the US postal system will be integral to the integrity of a national election as it has never been in the history of our country. Individual states have little control over this aspect of mail-in voting since the Post Office is a federal entity. The US Postal Service operates in chronic financial deficit and is hobbled by its own restrictions and workforce shortages due to COVID-19. The likelihood of delays, non-delivery, and overwhelmed postal workers is a near certainty.

Notwithstanding the confusion, delays, and potential fraud that would inevitably accompany mail-in voting, it may not change the outcome of the Presidential race¹. The Electoral College works as a safeguard. California provides the best example of how this works. Political offices in California are occupied almost entirely by Democrats from the Governor on down. Ballot harvesting, the practice of delivering a ballot personally to the voter and “assisting” them in its completion, is performed regularly and there is video evidence that the practice is misused. Additionally, in a statewide mail-in election, there would be no way to know how many ballots were returned by the large illegal alien population within California. There could be rampant cheating, and the Democrat candidate for President could amass many more illicit votes within the state of California than he/she would with in-person voting. However, none of these detrimental factors would affect the outcome of the national election for President. California has become so ideologically skewed toward the progressive end of the spectrum, the Democrat Presidential candidate would win by a landslide in this state with or without in-person voting and with or without cheating. This has been the case for the last seven Presidential elections in California. But because of Electoral College rules, it doesn’t matter if the Democrat margin of victory in California is 1 vote or 10 million votes. The winner is awarded California’s 55 electoral votes in either case. Mail-in voting in California would make no difference in the national election outcome for President.

The California example doubtless applies to all the “blue” states that voted decisively for the Democrat candidate in 2016. At the other end of the spectrum, states controlled by Republican legislatures would be much less likely to switch to mail-in voting for this election. They tend more towards the view that conducting a well-planned, socially distanced in-person vote carries a minimal public health risk. As such, the mass disruption of switching to mail-in voting isn’t necessary. If any red states did make the switch (because of COVID fears), their rules would likely include an ID precondition, as they presently require for in-person and absentee voting. Therefore, those “red” states that voted decisively Republican in 2016 would probably remain that way in 2020.

Thus, mail-in voting would only have the potential to change the outcome in a handful of “swing” states. There are six key swing states in 2020 – Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. None of those six states is completely controlled by Democrats. Five have divided legislatures and one (Florida) is under complete Republican control. It takes all three branches of a state government to change/create voting system law. With divided state governments, it would be a long shot for any of these swing states to make the switch to an entirely mail-in voting system. Also, five of those six states presently require a photo ID for in-person voting. It would be implausible that any of them would switch to a system with no ID requirement. In the unlikely event that any of these states did switch to mail-in voting, it can be guaranteed the entire process would receive extraordinary scrutiny and oversight from that state’s leaders and election officials. It would be exceedingly difficult for cheating to go undetected. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that despite the much greater opportunity for fraud in a mail-in voting scheme, the odds are it will not affect the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. This is because mail-in voting is unlikely to be used in the states that would make the most difference in the electoral college result.

COVID-19 is the reason given for needing to switch to mail-in voting. In our view, this is a smoke screen and has no legitimacy whatsoever. Social distancing would be easy to maintain for in-person voting. Most precincts are typically arranged such that there is already six feet of distance between voters. They typically have stalls or barriers of some kind separating people for privacy while voting. Waiting in line to check in to the precinct would be managed the same way we wait in line to check out at the grocery store (now an accepted practice with COVID-19).

So why are Democrats still pushing so hard to make mail-in voting happen? The Democrats know all too well everything we’ve pointed out about mail-in voting being unlikely to change the result of the national Presidential vote. If they were as confident of Biden’s assured victory as all the polls say they should be, you would think the Democrat Party would want to get the election over with as soon as humanly possible so they could start basking in the glory of their triumph. Mail-in voting would only delay that outcome and serve to mute the celebration.

Here’s our theory – We believe the Democrats fully expect Biden to lose. They are planning and doing things designed to disrupt, not change, the foregone conclusion of a Trump 2^nd term. Just like in 2016, that disruption starts with sowing doubt as to the integrity of the election. With the Russian boogieman now vanquished as an election “meddler”, COVID-19 and the need for mail-in voting is the made-to-order replacement. The real goal of mail-in voting for the Democrats is to prolong the election result from becoming “official” for as long as possible. This gets people used to the idea that the result could be tainted. Consequently, it gives Democrats the same kind of pretext for proclaiming a 2^nd term Trump Presidency to be illegitimate as did the fabricated Russian collusion story for his 1^st term. It would be just a continuation of the Democrats’ refusal to accept the will of the voters.

A less probable but theoretically possible outcome of a delayed election result would occur if there was still no official vote count by Inauguration Day (January 20^th, 2021). Since this has never happened before, there is no historical precedent for that eventuality. Democrats and their media pundits believe that on Inauguration Day, absent an official election result, the Presidency would devolve to the Speaker of the House (which has never happened in our Country’s history).³ The House of Representatives would then proceed in one of two ways:

1. Form a Congressional committee to try and validate the disputed vote count by a preset date and report back an “official” result. A similar circumstance occurred in the 1876 election between Samuel J. Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes.² In that case, the controversy was resolved by Congress before Inauguration Day, and the Presidential transition proceeded as normal.
2. Resolve the election in the way directed by the Constitution as if the election had ended with no majority winner in the electoral college. In that circumstance, the Constitution dictates the House of Representatives will conduct a vote to determine the President, with only one vote allowed from each state. Such a scenario occurred in the 1824 election when, in fact, no candidate received an electoral college majority. John Quincy Adams was then elected by the House of Representatives, with one vote per state, as the 6^th President of the United States.⁴ However, the winner of the 1824 election was also resolved before Inauguration day and no one needed to serve as a temporary President.

While an interesting scenario to contemplate, we think the probability of House Speaker Pelosi becoming a temporary President is exceedingly low. Also, any advantage for the Democrats in this scenario pre-supposes that control of the House is retained by the Democrats in the upcoming election, which is not a certainty. The new Congress is scheduled to be sworn in on January 3^rd, 2021, more than 2 weeks prior to Inauguration day. If the voting results for House seats are delayed in equal fashion to the voting results for President, there would first be a dispute as to which party is in control of the House of Representatives. That would have to be resolved before any House vote for President could occur. Wouldn’t that be fun?

In sum, we believe the Democrat Party has internally and privately conceded that the 2020 National Election will be won by Trump. They have therefore decided to proceed as the old saw advises, “If you can’t dazzle the public with your brilliance, then baffle them with your bullshit.” The sole purpose of the Democrat push to have the states use mail-in voting is to create confusion, delays, and obliterate confidence in our national election processes and results. With a Party like this, who needs meddling Russians?

¹Cheating could be more consequential in the local races and those for congressmen and senators. These races are not national like the Presidency, and their results are entirely determined by vote totals across the state, Congressional district, or local municipality.

²When the votes were counted in the 1876 election, the Democratic controlled states of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana were cited for widespread fraud perpetrated by preventing black Americans from voting.  This enabled the Democrat candidate (Tilden) to win in those states. The Congressional investigation that followed determined that because of the misconduct in those three states, their electoral votes would not be counted. This result gave Hayes (the Republican) a one-vote victory in the electoral college.

³Just one week ago on MSNBC, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe described the scenario of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi becoming President in this circumstance. Of course, Tribe forgot to mention that this scenario pre-supposes the same voting maladies that would grievously affect the Presidential vote would not affect the vote for Congressional seats. Secondly, he also pre-supposes the Democrats would have retained control of the House after the vote. Thirdly, he assumes that a Democrat majority in the new House of Representative would still elect Pelosi to be their speaker. That’s a lot of ifs.

⁴The present makeup of the House of Representatives has the Democrats in control by a comfortable 34 seat margin. This is due in part to the large number of Democrat representatives furnished by just two states, California and New York. That lead vanishes in the situation where each state can only have one vote, as it would if no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. Since the Republicans presently retain a majority of representatives in each of 26 states, the single vote from each of those states would presumably be for the Republican candidate (Trump). The Democrat candidate (Biden or a last minute Dark Horse) would lose the election by one vote in this scenario.