Election Integrity Remains in the Spotlight
The question of election integrity is not going away. As Justice Clarence Thomas recently pointed out, addressing weaknesses and opacity in election processes and voting laws isn’t just about 2020. The efforts being undertaken currently across the substantial majority of states are about finding a way that American voters can regain confidence in the security of their elections before the 2022 and 2024 seasons. Otherwise, those elections will also be questioned, potentially compromised, and our democratic process rendered illegitimate in the minds of tens of millions of Americans.
With the courts having closed their doors, the states are now taking up the issue of election integrity with just such an eye to the future. Analysis reveals at least 300 new bills being considered across 43 states to address voter integrity and election security. Many of these bills are in states that were the most controversial and closely contested in November, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These proposals have been met with shrill and knee-jerk cries of “Racism!”—including from quarters which should know better, such as the CEOs of Delta and Coca-Cola (in response to Georgia’s newly enacted laws). However, a recent poll confirms that 75 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of African Americans, support the common-sense idea that voters should show identification before voting. We show IDs to board planes, rent cars, check into hotels and pick up baseball tickets, so why not to cast a ballot, the highest responsibility and privilege of citizenship?
The pivotal question now is, will states be allowed to reform their laws and improve their processes according to the clear will of their citizens, or will the federal government (through H.R. 1) and captured Corporate America stop them? H.R. 1 is particularly pernicious in that it would override state laws, abolish voter ID requirements, and enable congressional redistricting by an “independent” commission guided by H.R. 1. While H.R. 1 has passed the Democrat-controlled House, it is likely to run aground in the Senate, where the filibuster remains a powerful line of defense.
Corporate interference may be the more immediate issue. Our largest corporations have been engaged in what has been openly acknowledged by mainstream media as “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information” regarding elections.
State lawmakers have a battle on their hands. Those who have the courage to follow the expressed will of their constituents will stand up and resist corporate blackmail. Those who don’t are likely to be turned out of office next year. Executive Order 13848, regarding foreign interference in U.S. elections, may be a means to confront corporations acting under the pressurized influence of the CCP and its agents. Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey just signed a law banning any official from accepting outside funding to administer elections. He said: “With public confidence in our elections in peril, it’s clear that elections must be pristine and above reproach—and the sole purview of government.”
On Wednesday, hundreds of executives of America’s largest corporations signed a letter challenging voting law reform, a rebuke that fires a shot across the bow of the GOP and conservatives generally. Corporations need to be extremely careful here. Privileges such as MLB’s anti-trust exemption can be reviewed and rescinded. The same tools of confrontation, shaming, and boycott successfully employed by the left for decades are available to conservatives. By dint of sheer numbers, this group, once awaked to action, will be a very powerful force to remind corporations that they too serve at the will of the people.
And the people they serve remain upset. It is now approaching six months since the 2020 elections, and Americans still have no acceptable answer as to what happened on November 3. As I wrote in late December:
Election integrity is not a partisan matter. All Americans should want to know if there were systemic flaws in the elections, whether intentional or accidental, and take steps to improve the process before the 2022 election cycle. Democrats should be equally interested in understanding what happened, if for no other reason than to de-bunk any falsehoods or unfounded conspiracies, and to regain some confidence and a legitimacy that is clearly missing now.
At that time, two national polls indicated that somewhere between 35 percent and 40 percent of all voters believed that the election was stolen and should be contested. Because so little has been done since then to clarify what happened, Americans’ viewpoints have not moved much. Indeed, a recent poll affirmed that 34 percent of all voters, including 36 percent of unaffiliated voters, still believe that Biden did not win fairly.
Widespread media claims of “no evidence of fraud” have been shown to be false, and many cases have been documented. Long before November 2020, many on both left and right were warning of the dangers and inherent weaknesses of electronic voting machines (the March 2020 documentary Kill Chain exemplifies this). The question remains whether the fraud and other irregularities were systemic and widespread enough to overturn the 2020 election results.
There is an abundance of documented and disturbing evidence available, which perhaps explains why over one-third of Americans paying attention still believe the election was stolen. While not easy to find on social media platforms that are censoring and removing election integrity-related content, there are detailed compilations, reports, full-length documentaries, and shorter, more user-friendly videos. The allegations fall into six categories: significant anomalies in data tabulation, voting machine irregularities, outright voter fraud, ballot manipulation, Equal Protection violations, and process fouls.
The courts, which should have been the appropriate venues for discovery, refused to take up the challenge, dismissing on procedural grounds those cases brought before them. The Supreme Court refused to hear the substantive cases brought before it about whether states such as Pennsylvania violated the U.S. Constitution and federal law. While giving no explicit reason for the refusal, it appears that the cases were deemed moot by the inauguration and handover of power. This is akin to refusing to hear a murder case on the grounds that the victim is already dead.
As dissenting Justice Thomas wrote at the time, “We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence.”
The Biden administration and its allies want to bury November 3. Sorry, but this matter is not going away, no matter how many times Americans are told by the media gatekeepers to shut up and move on. In fact, the harder they work to kill the story by censoring, boycotting, or canceling those who challenge the “nothing to see here” narrative, the more suspicions are raised in the minds of Americans. Do these powers not understand this? The question of election fraud will continue to taint the legitimacy of the Biden administration.
Michael Wilkerson is executive vice chairman of Helios Fairfax Partners, an African-focused investment firm and author of Stormwall: Observations on America in Peril.
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