Electoral fraud is a venerable tradition in these United States, with a history going all the way back to the founding of the Republic.
With control of the public purse, representative government provided lucrative opportunities for both elected officials and the corporations that did business with them. Baroque levels of corruption became the norm, and public policy was devised to maximize profits for all involved while concealing the dirty deals behind a scrim of public rectitude.
Controlling the outcome of elections was essential for the smooth operation of the political machinery, in order to make sure that lucrative enterprises continued to generate lucre for everyone involved. The political cartoon below by Thomas Nast features William M. “Boss” Tweed, the head of Tammany Hall and the most powerful man in New York City in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Boss Tweed was able to guarantee results through an elaborate patronage network, lavish bribery, and his control of the ballot-counting process.
So how has the ballot-counting process evolved in the century and a half since the heyday of Boss Tweed?
There is widespread concern among elite opinion-makers that the current electoral process poses a threat to Our Democracy™. One of the most recent public figures to sound the alarm is Rob “Meathead” Reiner, according to Variety:
“It’s time to stop f***ing around,” Reiner wrote. “If the Convicted Felon wins, we lose our Democracy. Joe Biden has effectively served US with honor, decency, and dignity. It’s time for Joe Biden to step down.”
Whether Joe Biden steps down or not, it’s obviously important to elect the Democrat, whoever that might be. Our Democracy™ is in danger if voters are allowed to vote for the wrong candidate (in this case, Donald Trump). With so much at stake, we must do whatever it takes to ensure the election of the approved candidate.
In my previous posts I highlighted the role that propaganda and the suppression of dissent play in this process. But these alone are not sufficient to guarantee the desired outcome — hence the imperative to control the voting process itself.
This requires a multi-pronged approach. The traditional emptying of the cemeteries to produce votes on election day is still part of the effort. But the implementation of the widespread use of absentee ballots and “mail-in voting” — for which we can thank the Wuhan Coronavirus — created an opportunity for ballot fraud at an unprecedented level. The vote-counting process in major cities is controlled by Democrats, with vestigial or non-existent Republican supervision. The Democrat precinct workers — in most cases part of the African-American political machine — are able to ensure that a reliable supply of ballots marked for the correct candidate can be delivered as needed.
The methodology used to produce the necessary results is complex. To gain a better understanding, I highly recommend Conservative Tree House, where Sundance has done extensive research on the intricacies of the ballot-counting process. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:
The Biden administration (DHS) is not “importing democrat voters.” Instead, DHS is importing people, names, that allows the state fraud process to generate ballots. This is an important distinction.
The migrants will not use the ballots. The DNC harvesters will collect them, fill them out (Team Obama), then the Precinct workers will scan them and count them (Team Clyburn). Illegals don’t need to vote. They only need to exist to create a ballot.
That’s how business is conducted in Philadelphia, Chicago, and other major American cities. But what are European countries doing to fortify elections in their corner of Our Democracy™?
Below is a video recorded by a progressive French voter in which she describes a method that can be used to disqualify boxes of ballots in areas where Rassemblement National is expected to receive the most votes. Many thanks to HeHa for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:
Mark Steyn provides extensive context on the elections in France, and also those of other European countries:
M [Jordan] Bardella points out that his party [Rassemblement National] has made “historic gains”, which is correct. But the problem, in France as in the Netherlands and elsewhere, is that the gains, while impressive historically, are insufficient to the moment.
Just shy of two decades ago, I spoke at a New Criterion symposium in New York. Roger Scruton was there and set the cat among the pigeons when, after reference to our increasing corpulence, he said the real problem was the west’s “moral obesity”. When it came to my turn, I laid out what would become the demographic thesis of America Alone. My fellow panelist Douglas Murray demurred slightly, and said the Muslim numbers in Britain and Europe were still very small and the trend-line need not prove dispositive. It was all a long time ago. The ruddy glow of late middle-age has since faded from my cheeks, and the twinkling vigour of gilded youth has fled even Douglas’s.
And nobody has arrested that trend-line. As I pointed out on Friday, the new bloc of “independent Muslim” MPs at Westminster is one less than Farage’s Reform Party. And, another five years down the line with a couple million more “migrants”, whose side does Britain’s demographics favour?
It is the same conundrum for Mme Le Pen and Geert Wilders: as unwinnable as French and Dutch cities are now, they will be even more unwinnable half-a-decade hence — when there will be even more “university students” like Mlle Bennani, and the establishment will still be urging us to unite even more unitedly against the scourge of hijab-grabbing.
So the “far right” will continue to make “historic gains” that are never quite historic enough. Because as I wrote on Friday our rulers have decided that no changes to anything that matters can be permitted. [emphasis added]
This is the key: No changes to anything that matters can be permitted.
The guardians of Our Democracy™ have set in place elaborate safeguards to ensure that no significant changes to the system may be introduced. And, depressingly enough, it won’t change anything if the electorate somehow manages to vote some of the forbidden candidates into office. No matter who wins the election, a vast horde of unelected bureaucrats remains in place within the bloated Byzantine structures of the permanent administrative state.
The best example of the futility of voting for the forbidden candidate is not Donald Trump, but Ronald Reagan. During his eight years in office, Mr. Reagan failed to downsize the federal government in any significant way. He only managed to prune it a little at the margins, and when he left office in 1989, it was larger than when he was inaugurated in 1981.
The sad truth is that it doesn’t really matter who we vote for in Our Democracy™. The permanent government remains in place, and continues to expand. There’s nothing we can do about it at the ballot box.
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | Tutorial for how to have an entire ballot box invalidated, | |
| 00:04 | at the legislative elections and in any kind of election, in general. | |
| 00:07 | I will explain to you all. I have just voted and I voted for the New Popular Front, of course. | |
| 00:14 | I don’t care, I don’t need to put on a sort of masquerade, something like: | |
| 00:18 | “I am taking several ballots, I don’t know who I am going to vote for yet”. | |
| 00:21 | No, I don’t care at all, I took a New Popular Front ballot, | |
| 00:24 | I folded my ballot, I put it in the envelope. And then a lady comes in front of me, telling me: | |
| 00:30 | “Miss, excuse me, you don’t have the right to do that. You know, | |
| 00:33 | this is my work, and if you do that, and you put that into the ballot box, | |
| 00:36 | well, we can invalidate it; we can ask to have the entire ballot box invalidated, | |
| 00:40 | because it’s a secret ballot, and you don’t have the right to show who you are voting for.” | |
| 00:43 | And I thought, “It can’t be my fault, everyone knows that, it’s no secret who I’m voting for!” | |
| 00:47 | “All right, but you don’t have the right to do that. And basically, | |
| 00:50 | if you do put the ballot in, it invalidates the entire ballot box.” | |
| 00:53 | And so I said to myself: “F**k, it’s not bad at all! | |
| 00:56 | We are in Dunkirk, everyone’s voting for Rassemblement National, anyway.” | |
| 00:59 | And they laughed, because I had spoken out loud. But actually, | |
| 01:02 | I said to myself: “F**k, that’s good to know.” | |
| 01:05 | If you are in a city or in a constituency that mostly votes for RN, | |
| 01:08 | or in an office, because there are some offices where you know they are going to vote for RN, | |
| 01:14 | you just need to go there at the end of the day, you do the little masquerade thing, | |
| 01:19 | you put it into the box, there you go: it invalidates the entire poll box. And “Oh s**t!” | |
| 01:23 | “S**t! All RN ballots have been invalidated!” | |
| 01:28 | There you go, a little technique. |
Plato, The Republic, Book VIII:
“And then democracy comes into being after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of government in which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot.
Yes, he said, that is the nature of democracy, whether the revolution has been effected by arms, or whether fear has caused the opposite party to withdraw.
And now what is their manner of life, and what sort of a government have they? for as the government is, such will be the man.
Clearly, he said.
In the first place, are they not free; and is not the city full of freedom and frankness—a man may say and do what he likes?
‘Tis said so, he replied.
And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order for himself his own life as he pleases?
Clearly.
Then in this kind of State there will be the greatest variety of human natures?
There will.
This, then, seems likely to be the fairest of States, being like an embroidered robe which is spangled with every sort of flower. And just as women and children think a variety of colours to be of all things most charming, so there are many men to whom this State, which is spangled with the manners and characters of mankind, will appear to be the fairest of States.
Yes.
Yes, my good Sir, and there will be no better in which to look for a government.
Why?
Because of the liberty which reigns there—they have a complete assortment of constitutions; and he who has a mind to establish a State, as we have been doing, must go to a democracy as he would to a bazaar at which they sell them, and pick out the one that suits him; then, when he has made his choice, he may found his State.
He will be sure to have patterns enough.
And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this State, even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at peace, unless you are so disposed—there being no necessity also, because some law forbids you to hold office or be a dicast, that you should not hold office or be a dicast, if you have a fancy—is not this a way of life which for the moment is supremely delightful?
For the moment, yes.
And is not their humanity to the condemned in some cases quite charming? Have you not observed how, in a democracy, many persons, although they have been sentenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and walk about the world—the gentleman parades like a hero, and nobody sees or cares?
Yes, he replied, many and many a one.
See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the ‘don’t care’ about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city—as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature…
* * *
Say then, my friend, In what manner does tyranny arise?—that it has a democratic origin is evident.
Clearly.
And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy—I mean, after a sort?
How?
The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth—am I not right?
Yes.
And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin of oligarchy?
True.
And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?
What good?
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the State—and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
Yes; the saying is in every body’s mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.
* * *
By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them.
How do you mean?
I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom, and the metic is equal with the citizen and the citizen with the metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either.
Yes, he said, that is the way.
And these are not the only evils, I said—there are several lesser ones: In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young.
Quite true, he said.
The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave bought with money, whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser; nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other.
Why not, as Aeschylus says, utter the word which rises to our lips?
That is what I am doing, I replied; and I must add that no one who does not know would believe, how much greater is the liberty which the animals who are under the dominion of man have in a democracy than in any other State: for truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says, are as good as their she-mistresses, and the horses and asses have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen; and they will run at any body who comes in their way if he does not leave the road clear for them: and all things are just ready to burst with liberty.
When I take a country walk, he said, I often experience what you describe. You and I have dreamed the same thing.
And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and at length, as you know, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them.
Yes, he said, I know it too well.
Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny.
Both sides could play that game. It’s almost as the impending chaos is wanted. Ya think?
I am just throwing out a few anecdotal stories I have seen that ended up raising a question. ALL my life, news, television shows, everybody has said if your parents are US citizens then you are a US citizen by default. I have recently seen 2-3 stories of people who were born in another country (Canada) to US citizens and they moved back here, lived all their lives here, have social security numbers, served in the US military and have been told by different government agencies they are not US citizens. In one case it was the Social Security Administration and the other it was the Tennessee BMV. The later revoked his drivers license. I think the later got flagged by something in the Real ID system. The Real ID system is more stringent in the verification. So the question this raised is, are these asylum seekers getting a Real ID when they throw their Identification Documents away? Is it bypassing something and will the possession of it exempt them from more stringent verification to qualify them for citizenship or allow them to appear to be able to vote. The short time frame in which I have seen these stories raised a red flag. I am just speculating at a reason.