The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the 2020 presidential election. Democrats are pushing to institutionalize mail-in balloting. Republicans are totally against the idea because they believe that it will encourage more voter fraud. Both sides have reasonable concerns, but some are more reasonable than others.
Democrats claim that the pandemic makes it
unsafe for people to go to the polls to vote; therefore, it is critical to have
mail-in voting to ensure that every American can vote. This situation elicited
a tweet from Donald Trump about delaying the election. The Democrat reaction
was his reward. He proved that leftists are not concerned about voter safety
from the coronavirus. The leftist claim would have more creditability if
leftists were not rioting in the streets for the past two months. It would also
have more creditability if Democrats and liberals had not met by the thousands
for funerals for George Floyd and Representative John Lewis (D-GA). It is right
to say that voting in person can be done safely if people can safely riot in
the streets, attend funerals, shop at grocery stores, etc.
Republicans have good reason to believe
that vote by mail would encourage voter fraud or at least cause other election
problems. Even though The Heritage Foundation has compiled thousands of cases
of voter fraud, there is not much evidence that it comes from mail-in voting.
However, there is evidence of other problems with voting by mail. This site reported that more than 28 million mail-in ballots cannot be found.
Between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million
mail-in ballots remain unaccounted for, according to data from the federal
Election Assistance Commission. The missing ballots amount to nearly one in
five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states
that do elections exclusively by mail.
States and local authorities simply have
no idea what happened to these ballots since they were mailed – and the figure
of 28 million missing ballots is likely even higher because some areas in the
country, notably Chicago, did not respond to the federal agency’s survey questions.
This figure does not include ballots that were spoiled, undeliverable, or came
back for any reason.
Although there is no evidence that the
millions of missing ballots were used fraudulently, the Public Interest Legal
Foundation, which compiled the public data provided from the Election
Assistance Commission, says that the sheer volume of them raises serious doubts
about election security.
One should admit that 28 million
missing ballots is cause for concern. This is particularly true because there
have been numerous reports of bins of ballots being found in back rooms long
after the election is over. This article says that absentee voter fraud in districts in four states – Florida, Missouri,
New York and North Carolina – caused election results to be overturned. The
legislation being pushed by Democrats would allow for a practice known as
ballot harvesting, a practice involved in “the largest voter fraud scandal of
recent decades.”
Instead of pushing mail-in voting,
states “should be encouraging wide use of absentee voting in the primary season”
and making serious plans for what they will do for the general election.
Absentee ballots must be postmarked before election day, while mail-in
balloting have until polls close on election day. The article gave “15
instances in which courts threw out an election result based in whole or in
part on absentee voting fraud.”
This article discusses Trump’s question about delaying the general election. It says that
Trump achieved his goal if his purpose was “to get people talking.” However, he
missed his goal if he was sending up “a serious political trial balloon.” In
fact, it says that “Congress would have to pass, and the president would have
to sign, any act that would delay an election for federal office.”
The Constitution doesn’t give the
executive branch any unilateral authority to delay, reschedule, or change the
federal election in November. Congress and the states have authority to make
changes if there is a deemed emergency….
States have considerable leeway in
changing the dates of presidential primaries, as happened this year with the
spread of the COVID-19 pandemic….[G]overnors can change the date of a primary
election without approval from the legislature in the event of an emergency….
States can also determine how elections
are administered, such as with mail-in balloting….
Even though Trump was not serious with
his question, it did show the hypocrisy of the Democrat Party and its concern
over the safely of voting in person. However, the experts at The Heritage
Foundation could not remember a time when a general election was delayed. With
more that 240 years of experience behind us, I believe that it is safe to
assume that the election will not be delayed in 2020. However, I am sure that
Democrats will find other things to cause an uproar. Maybe Trump will troll
them again!
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