Saturday, November 10, 2018

Stolen Votes and Elections?

I remember back in 2008 watching the Minnesota election up north where Al Franken (D) was running against incumbent Norm Coleman (R) for a senate seat.  Coleman was ahead election night by about 212 votes.  But then challenged votes and 'wrongly' rejected absentee ballots were counted, and all of a sudden Al Franken was ahead by 312 votes.  If I remember correctly, all of the new votes came from blue (D) districts.  Minnesota was a blue state, and Coleman's legal challenges were rejected.

Now, I have no evidence to suggest that illegal or unfair action took place that year.  But it seems to have started a trend where in close elections where the Democrat candidate is behind, we suddenly find 'lost' boxes of votes or ballot errors in the Democrat's favor in strongly Democrat cities or districts.  And this happens only after election day.

In my opinion, dead people voting is so 'old hat.'   It was a fine approach (and I'm being sarcastic), when you were handling a city, town or county election.  A few tens or hundreds of dead votes could matter.

Over time, the masters of election cheating had to come up with something better.  Consider the fact (and I'm fudging as I am guesstimating from hearing previous numbers) that in most elections, no more than 50% of the registered voters actually vote.  And I hear repeatedly, that it is worse for Democrats than Republicans.  That's a LOT of votes that some one committed to stealing an election can use.  Especially if the 'lost' votes show up AFTER election day.

Now this is hypothetical, but it tends to fit the facts.  For example, the current vote changes in the Florida senate and governor's races.

Most of the voting now is electronic.  I received two texts after I voted early, purportedly from a gubernatorial candidate, stating that I had not voted yet and that there was still time to vote during early voting in my state.  I don't know if the texts were legitimate.  If they were, my vote apparently got lost.  But the point I want to make is that there are electronic or written lists of who votes and who do not, at least on election day.  I cannot say for those who submit absentee ballots, I suspect in some states they are tallied early.  So, the district or county election manager, who in a strongly blue region will be Democrat, has lists of who did and did not vote on election day.

Those lists have to be available to the election manager, who is responsible for assuring that people did not vote twice.  Voting twice would be something that a recount would find, as well as a lawsuit alleging cheating.

But you've got 50% of your party's voters that did not vote.  If you can create new ballots with those non-voters' names, you can submit them as 'lost' ballots a day or two after election day.  If you are using voting machines with no paper ballots, those new votes could be submitted as 'new' absentee ballots.

Electronic voting machines present other challenges and 'opportunities'.  First, you could change the code to 'switch' a small percentage of votes either during voting or on voter confirmation.  Someone has done that coding, and they are one party or the other.  Some of those coders could be unscrupulous or bought.  You would assume the purchasers of the machines would test them.  But it would be easy enough to include a code switch that only makes changes on election day or during early voting.  I doubt many purchasers actually review the code, or are competent to do so.  Most code is proprietary anyway, and usually won't be released to purchasers except in compiled form.

There were a number of Texans complaining the machine changed their vote.  The 'official' cause reported in the news was that the voters hit a button before a screen change.  I'm kind of curious if my vote even was registered (given the two text messages I received).  It would be just as easy to 'drop' an opponent's vote as to change it.  Though that would likely create a discrepancy between the signed-in voter list and the number of votes that could be found in an audit.  But what could they do?  They would live with it, and justify it as voter error.

So, any process that allows 'new' or 'lost' votes to be counted after election day must be considered fraudulent.

If 'lost' votes are found, there is practically no way to identify fraud.  The only way would be to go back to voters and ask each one if they voted.  That will not happen.

So watch your elections.  If the final vote and result doesn't happen on election day or night, look at the continuing results.  My assumption in any multi-day result that turns around the initial count is that an election has been stolen. 


Thursday, November 1, 2018

Birthright Citizenship

Recently, President Trump made the statement that he was going to change birthright citizenship by executive order, and more recently said it would be more appropriate for Congress to make the change.  I've read lots of pro and con editorials saying why he should or cannot do this.  Perhaps the best was a New York Post opinion piece by John Eastman entitled "Revoking Birthright Citizenship Would Enforce the Constitution."  I highly recommend reading the whole article.

President Trump's intent was to stop granting citizenship to the children borne to visitors to our country and to illegal immigrants.  Apparently there is also a big industry called 'Birth Tourism' where people pay to come here and give birth, granting their children citizenship with all the rights and benefits that entails.

Most of the critical writers claim that this is a constitutional right and you cannot change that by executive order.  If it were a constitutional right, they would be correct.  However, I, and a significant number of legal minds, believe the constitution is currently being interpreted incorrectly.  Theoretically, that would allow President Trump to change enforcement to a correct/different interpretation.  However, since every executive order appears to be struck down by some liberal federal district judge, I would expect the same thing to happen in this case.  Hence, execution of any executive order would likely have to wait for Supreme Court review.

The 1868 14th Amendment to the Constitution states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”   Apparently, there is a 1952 immigration and naturalization law that uses the exact same words.  But also covers other aspects of immigration and naturalization.

John Eastman argues that the 14th Amendment authors stated their intention was to assure citizenship to former slaves and their descendants, but not to grant citizenship to visitors who had allegiances to other nations.  That would eliminate the birth tourism, and granting of citizenship to children of visitors and illegal immigrants.  He shows that the understanding of "jurisdiction" has changed in the intervening years, so most people now think it means anyone subject to US laws.

Apparently, most nations do not grant citizenship to everyone, just because they were in their country at the time of their birth.

I don't want to rehash all of those arguments.  What I do want to point out is that if the authors of the constitutional amendment wanted anyone birthed on US soil to have citizenship, they could simply have left out "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."  For some reason, I have not seen this point anywhere else.  One could argue authors were worried about a few hundred people with diplomatic immunity, but comparing that to tens of thousands (and today a lot more) visitors and illegal immigrants, I don't think that is a valid concern.

Thus, it is obvious to me the intention of the Amendment was NOT to grant citizenship by birth to children of visitors from other countries or illegal immigrants.  Accordingly, President Trump would be within his rights and powers to enforce the laws of the US and the Constitution to change enforcement and execution of the Amendment.