George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 5 August 2020.]
There has been a lot of confusion about voting by mail in the media lately; mostly purposeful with the aim of promoting a political narrative. I would bet a good hunk of the ranch that many KVMR listeners are unaware of some very important details on what has now come to be the latest national election dust-up.
To start, let’s distinguish between two very different kinds of voting by mail – the first is absentee voting and the second is called mail-in voting. Absentee voting has been successfully practiced for decades, and there have been relatively few problems of voter fraud or ballot mishandling with this kind of voting by mail. In absentee voting the voter requests a ballot from the local election officials by providing appropriate information about him- or herself in the application for an absentee ballot. The election workers vet the applicant by checking the active voter roll for the applicant’s jurisdiction to confirm that such and such a person is registered, and in which party for primaries, with a matching signature, and does indeed live at the applicant’s address. It’s all very simple and easy to obtain a ballot, mark it, and return it in an envelope that requires the US Postal Service to cancel and date it. Efficient processes for doing all this have been in place for generations.
However, in the newly proposed mail-in process, each state automatically sends out an unsolicited ballot to everyone who is on the so-called active voter rolls, and many states even send out unrequested ballots to people listed on the inactive voter rolls. In almost all states these voter rolls are abysmally out-of-date, incomplete, and contain thousands of duplicates and those having moved or deceased. In mail-in voting there is no process to vet the voter for accuracy and currency of information. Depending on local voting policies, ballots are mailed all over the state to be received by whoever currently lives at the address. By law the USPS is not supposed to forward a mail-in ballot if the addressee no longer lives there. But the USPS often ignores this and forwards it anyway. Then the ballot goes to only God knows who.
But these are only the beginning of the problems with mail-in voting. Because of the sheer number of outgoing ballots, our postal system has not shown itself prepared to handle the volume, nor to properly receive the voted ballots. Where mail-in voting has already taken place – such as in New York and New Jersey – numerous issues have cropped up, with lawsuits to follow, which now threatens the integrity of the completed elections. For openers there is no way to verify when the ballot was returned, since the postal service does not cancel and datestamp prepaid addressed envelopes. So, there’s no way to confirm which of the blizzard of ballots were posted in a timely manner as they come dribbling in for weeks before and after the election day. And attempting to match ballots with out-of-date active voter rolls, without the ability to confirm signatures and still-living voters, forget about it.
Given this, it is guaranteed that the upcoming nationwide mail-in vote in November will be a zoo that will make the catastrophic first year of online Obamacare applications look like a precision drill team in action. There is only one state, Florida, that has a working mail-in system. The rest of the states, territories, and districts will generate history’s largest full employment act and gravy train for litigation lawyers, all paid for by the taxpayers. And getting election results in any conceivable timely manner is simply hope beyond hope. The chances are almost certain that the Supreme Court will have to step in and take weeks or months attempting to sort things out, a process that finally ends with a politically explosive, fiat ruling. Why? Simply because there will be no practical alternative to deciding such an election.
So why is this confusing bamboozle being foisted on the American electorate, especially since the problems with mail-in voting have almost exclusively occurred in Democrat-run jurisdictions and elections? To find out, I recommend paying attention to the ongoing partisan debate on this issue as you figure out which political factions are promoting what kind of voting processes, and why you are not told about their differences and problems.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] According to the NYT, “A federal judge in Manhattan ruled late Monday that at least 1,000 disputed ballots in a closely watched Democratic congressional primary should be counted, upending a race that remains undecided six weeks after the election and that has drawn the attention of President Trump and embarrassed the New York City Board of Elections.”
And here are some related points to consider when evaluating the proposed policy to make mail-in voting the national standard.
- Democrats’ denial that there are problems is false on its face as reports have come in from numerous states citing a spread of problems, most from Democrat run jurisdictions
- USPS delays caused by budget cuts and workflow inefficiencies;
- Computer network problems;
- New Jersey – “genuine absentee ballot fraud scandal” following the 21may20 New Jersey city council election: signatures not matching, received but uncounted ballots, mishandling & misplacement of ballots, voters bringing in handfuls of ballots, voters on registration lists who never received ballots that records show were mailed, almost one in five ballots were “disqualified by the board of elections.”…
- Stanford research admits to mail-in fraud but concludes that “Claims that vote-by-mail fundamentally advantages one party over the other appear overblown”.
- California – AP reported that more than 100K or about 1.5% of mail-in ballots were rejected by election officials for various reasons. Non-partisan Cal Voter Foundation warns that critical elections are decided by smaller margins than that which “can make a difference in a close contest.”
- New York – many voters were forced to show up at polling places all over the state because they didn’t receive requested ballots.
- Mail-in ballots are variously sent by states to all voters on ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ voter rolls.
- USPS illegally delivers and forwards ballots to people who no longer live at address indicated on ballot.
- Pre-paid ballot envelopes are not cancelled with datestamp.
- "Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud," readthe conclusion of a bipartisan 2005 report authored by the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which was chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker. And this was years before unvetted mail-in voting was launched which now Democrats want to make a nationwide election mandate.
- Fox News has reported that Twitter's "Head of Site Integrity" Yoel Roth is in charge of fact-checking efforts – and that he has previously referred to Trump and his team as "ACTUAL NAZIS," mocked Trump supporters by saying that "we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason," and called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a "personality-free bag of farts."
- Instead of suppressing minority voting, requiring more rigorous vetting has increased black and Hispanic voter turnouts.
If admitted mail-in and absentee ballot voter fraud exists but is claimed to have a non-partisan effect, then why is it that only Democrats promote voting by mail and Republicans want to minimize its practice?
Some more relevant links –
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-report-reveals-perils-of-mail-in-voting-go-beyond-fraud
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nevadas-vote-by-mail-primary-fraud-concerns
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mail-in-voting-faces-slew-of-issues-nationwide
[8aug20 update] The evidence is overwhelming that points to the problems, both ongoing and coming, that mail-in voting promises this November. Only the diehard pro-fraud leftwingers continue to parrot the party line that voting by mail is the safe and socially just way to vote during the pandemic, and all other times too. For them mail-in voting provides opportunities too good to pass up. Here are two pieces which underline the points of my above commentary. The first – ‘America Is Going To Vote by Mail. We're Not Ready’ – describes how unprepared both the USPS and local election boards are for the onslaught of ballot applications, timely voter vetting, and ballot counting. The second – ‘An Autopsy of New York’s Mail-Vote Mess’ – provides a post-mortem on New York’s vote by mail election disaster. And here is a report from The Hill on how the USPS management is being thrashed on the eve of the election in a desperate attempt to look like they are correcting decades-long problems to prepare for November.
[28aug20 update] A reader pointed out that my stating, “For openers there is no way to verify when the ballot was returned, since the postal service does not cancel and datestamp prepaid addressed envelopes.” was not exactly accurate, since there is no uniform USPS regulation to not datestamp postage-paid bulk mail. However, the situation is more complex than that, and still does not favor the USPS handling of the deluge of millions of mail-in ballots this fall. Another reader did more research on the issue and forwarded these annotated links which I post below as received.
Read down toward the mid-point https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/17/what-the-msm-wont-tell-you-about-democrats-voter-suppression-in-the-wisconsin-election/
NY mail-in vote mess https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-autopsy-of-new-yorks-mail-vote-mess-
A state by state analysis and regulations https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-vote-by-mail-in-every-state-
NPR says many postal workers don’t know that ballots must have a postmark https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903490612/another-post-office-election-challenge-makings-sure-ballots-are-postmarked
NY judge says count ballots w/out postmark https://dailycaller.com/2020/08/05/federal-judge-orders-ballots-postmarked-late-counted-new-york-primary/
Here’s another https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/11/politics/postmarks-mail-in-ballots/index.html
Calif election FAQs and code links https://www.eip-ca.com/election_q_and_a.htm
rebanesruminations.com 
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