By Stella Morabito
Restoration of trust in due process is the central goal of the statement issued by Sen. Ted Cruz on election integrity. He and the 11 other senators who signed it understand something that few officials and pundits—particularly many self-described conservatives—are willing to admit: to certify electors without a comprehensive investigation into thousands of allegations of fraud in the 2020 election would be a betrayal of Americans’ trust as well as an egregious violation of their oath to protect the Constitution.
Whether or not you agree there was massive electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election does not really matter at this point. Every American should be deeply concerned if nearly half of all voters are convinced that large-scale fraud handed the election to the Biden-Harris ticket. Some may hope the conviction will fade with time, but more likely the distrust will deepen, especially since it comes despite non-stop denials and censorship about fraud by both Big Tech and Big Media.
Rasmussen’s poll indicates that 47 percent of voters believe fraud swayed the election (and 75 percent of Republicans). Some dismiss Rasmussen as leaning to the right. But even standard left-leaning pollsters such as Quinnipiac and Reuters consistently claim that half of Republicans believe there was massive fraud.
Reuters even noted that 16 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of independents agreed. And Quinnipiac has a sizable percentage of all registered voters—34 percent—not believing the Biden-Harris ticket won legitimately. Some expect these millions of Americans to “come around.” But it’s more likely their uneasiness will fester as more facts about fraud ooze through the cracks in the media machinery in the months to come.
Any way you slice it, the numbers are disturbing. And we all feel in our gut that November’s election was the weirdest in America’s history. You needn’t be a Trump voter to be disturbed by obvious peculiarities. Then there’s the lack of ability to publicly audit voting machines, the lack of transparency during counting processes, and more.
While Trump’s legal team may not have had the time to investigate, bring, or win many non-procedural arguments, these concerns still matter to the public and deserve investigation. For a thorough run-down of the many glaring anomalies generating public concern, see the 36-page report by Peter Navarro, director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Or Willis Krumholz’s well-researched piece at The Federalist or this tongue-in-cheek Twitter thread.
The more invested Big Media and Big Tech are in driving their preferred narratives into our brains, the more reason we have to distrust them. Their immediate labeling as “disputed” of any fraud reporting feels like they doth protest too much.
Their constant claim that election fraud is “extremely rare” is as laughable as claiming that human beings would never in a million years cheat when the prize is power. Spare us. The crisis of trust in America feels deeper than ever before.
Obvious Contempt for Conservative Americans
The essence of conservatism is to conserve principles of due process and the rule of law. Those values are essential for avoiding chaos and tyranny. So why would anyone identifying as conservative ignore the innumerable oddities revealed since November 3?
Even the editorial board of the supposedly conservative New York Post in telling President Trump to “give it up” would not squarely address the central concern: auditability of votes and transparency. Its ad hominem argumentation included the Pravda-esque line “Sidney Powell is a crazy person.”
We already know that Big Tech and the propaganda media are invested in fraud denial and in shutting up anybody who asks about abnormalities by comparing them to Holocaust deniers. Sadly, that’s no puzzle. Nor need we question why Democrats don’t care if their win is perceived as grand theft by scores of millions of Americans. They just don’t care how they’re perceived as long as they can control every aspect of what they view as your sad and unworthy little life.
So the more vexing question—and the rude awakening—is this: Why do so many self-identified conservatives play along with a media machine that is already 95 percent in the Democrats’ corner? The list is long, and includes many big-name Republican officials who have taken a particularly hostile stance against any real investigation into voter fraud, including Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and scores of other supposedly conservative members of Congress.
As Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway recently pointed out, there is “a big disconnect between most of ‘conservative’ blue checkmark Twitter and the bulk of average Americans on the right” regarding the existence of election fraud. No question about that.
In addition to GOP officials, lots of self-identified conservative pundits have rejected concerns about voter fraud in this most bizarre of elections. Popular American Conservative writer Rod Dreher, among others, has mocked those who challenge the election results.
Why is it so important to these conservatives that every single American aligns with a propaganda machine that is now almost completely anti-thought? At the very least, they should understand the stakes of allowing massive electoral oddities to go unexamined. They should be especially unsettled about the loss of trust in our electoral process rather than joining with the left in dismissing so many concerned citizens as kooks.
In short, why are they so willing to accept abnormalities as normal?
Five Possibilities for Reluctance on the Right
One cannot get directly into the heads and hearts of any self-identified conservative who dismisses the possibility of any significant election fraud in 2020. But we should at least try to figure out this riddle because the future of election integrity—and therefore, freedom—depends on it. Why not investigate? Here are just five possibilities.
Possibility 1: They really believe the election was fair and that any questions about fraud should go unaddressed now and in the future. I think we can dismiss this one. They probably aren’t that detached from reality. If they were sincere, they would at least want an investigation to alleviate the massive amounts of distrust poisoning society.
They also exhibit a huge double standard by rejecting an immediate follow-up investigation while accepting four solid years of Democrats’ non-stop obstruction of Congress with the “Russian collusion” hoax after the 2016 election.
Possibility 2: They feel that there were indeed abnormalities and insecure voting, but since they don’t see clear proof, they think the election should go unchallenged. I understand concerns about perceptions, about conservatives looking like sore losers going forward. But the stakes are too high. And it’s odd that conservatives must ask no questions after just a few weeks of the craziest election in American history, while Democrats could proceed for four solid years of fake claims of “Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
But this self-inflicted double standard goes far deeper. If we don’t allow the wild abnormalities of 2020 to go without scrutiny, how in the world can we ever have any free and fair elections going forward? The answer is: we cannot because we will have institutionalized the abnormalities by letting them go.
If nothing else, conservatives must all be on board with addressing the disastrous crisis of trust this election has produced. The only way to do that is by conducting a thorough and transparent investigation into every aspect of this election. Why not give this election even 10 percent of the focus and time the Democrats gave the 2016 election?
Even though I personally believe there was enough fraud to turn the election from Trump to Biden, I never thought the election would be overturned. Nobody seems to have the guts to address it, just as few have had the guts to address Obama’s unprecedented weaponization of the IC, DOJ and FBI and spying on political campaigns, among others. Everyone seems afraid of the “unintended consequences” and where such investigations (and prosecutions) might lead to.
But, what I am confident will happen is that, like the Russian collusion scam, Obama’s spying, Hillary’s emails and the Benghazi debacle, investigations will reveal the truth. Like all those other scandals, the trick will be to get someone to care.
The Media, Ed, and Entertainment mock the fraud…because they support it.
It’s as simple as that.
@Nathan Blue: Because the fraud favors them. When they lost, they PRETENDED there was fraud. I can’t wait to see the look on their stupid faces when they realize their ruling elite doesn’t need their votes any more and stop pandering to them.
“Ignoring And Ridiculing Election Fraud Concerns Will Not Make Them Go Away”
…because ridiculing gullibility does not eliminate gullibility.
March 31, 2021 – Arizona Senate hires a Trump ninja to do its election audit. No … really:
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2021/03/31/arizona-senate-hired-cyber-ninjas-conduct-its-election-audit/4828177001/
Arizona elected republicans have handed over $150,000 of their taxpayers’ money to these guys—along with all of the original 2020 election ballots cast in Maricopa County—for ANOTHER “audit”. Forget that two post-election audits have been done already, both of which confirmed that Joe Biden won Maricopa County by a significant margin.
Maybe they should take a poll of Arizona voters about the stupidity of spending another $150,000 to get a third audit from somebody no one in their right mind should trust make an objective evaluation to begin with—but then they’d likely assert that the poll results were also somehow rigged.
Here’s a link to the very impressive Cyber Ninja website. EEEE-YA!
https://cyberninjas.com/
Seems the previous audits were done by unqualified partisans in both AZ and GA.
Afull audit should be done in Brown County WI where facebook money and influence was verified.
It looks more like elected republican officials in Arizona are laying out 150,000 taxpayer dollars to buy an “audit” result they hope will keep their “massive election fraud” lie alive. Douglas Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninja, has been a strong supporter of various election fraud conspiracy theories.
What’s more, the $150K isn’t the ONLY money behind the effort. From 12News, Phoenix, April 22, 2021:
—
Who is paying for the recount?
We know the Arizona Senate is on the hook for $150,000, but beyond that, it is unclear.
Logan admitted that his company would lose money if they conducted the audit at that price. Instead he admitted he is receiving private funding.
When asked who those private funding sources were, Logan said, ‘I don’t know.’
A lead fundraiser for the effort has been Christina Bobb, who works for One America News Network.
Bobb fronted a report on the “Arizona Heist,” and is a former Trump Administration employee. She tweeted last week that she was on to a second round of fund-raising after the first round yielded $150,000.
—
So, the audit process is being organized by a stolen election conspiracy theorist, who will be paid an unknown amount of money raised from unknown sources by a former Trump Administration employee who works for One America News Network, a rising disinformation and right-wing propaganda outlet.
I forgot the link to the 12News story. Here it is:
https://www.12news.com/article/news/politics/ballots-delivered-for-another-audit-now-what/75-899a284c-1275-4b49-9565-77039cb947d0
It’s hard to believe that republican public officials actually handed over all of the ballots to these people. There are obvious problems related to placing them in directly in the hands of people who have a strong bias concerning the credibility of the election result, and are connected with a media outlet that shares that same bias. There are also privacy issues.
April 25, 2021 – The latest on the Arizona republicans’ Cyber Ninja election recount scam, paid for with Arizona taxpayer dollars and dark money from undisclosed sources:
They’ve turned over all the ballots to a PRIVATE company owned by a Stop the Steal conspiracy theorist, who won’t disclose a damn thing about their “audit” process.
Nothing like having a lawyer who supported Biden complain about transparency.
And exactly how is anyone’s identity revealed on a ballot, Comrade Greggie?
I had watched some of this recount.
Ultraviolent light is being used of so-called Mail-in ballots.
The light can “see” if a piece of paper has been folded or not.
No mail-in ballots could be mailed in unless they were folded into their envelopes.
So, all the “mail-in” ballots with no fold marks are forgeries.
Every non-folded ballot could represent an original ballot that that been replaced with a duplicate while under the unsupervised custody of Cyber Ninja. They wouldn’t even need to alter the vote that was on it, having set up a process whereby it will simply be eliminated from the total count.
“And exactly how is anyone’s identity revealed on a ballot, Comrade Greggie?”
It isn’t—which means there will be ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to know what may have been altered or replaced after they’ve passed through the “black box” of the private company that has now been given unsupervised custody of them.
Even the Arizona Secretary of State can’t get her questions answered about Cyber Ninja’s internal procedures.
So far as any credible audit results are concerned, Arizona taxpayers might as well have just seen $150,000 thrown down a rat hole. Worse still, they don’t know where the bulk of the money paying for this third “recount” even comes from. It’s a fair bet that every additional nickel is coming from sources supporting Trump’s “Stop the Steal” lie.
“there will be ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to know what may have been altered or replaced after they’ve passed through the “black box” of the private company that has now been given unsupervised custody of them.”
Ballots, that are legitimate, are verifiable. It is clear you are, once again, blowing smoke out of your ass because you have never worked, or been in charge of, an election.
“Even the Arizona Secretary of State can’t get her questions answered about Cyber Ninja’s internal procedures.”
Perhaps the new judge will help her.
“So far as any credible audit results are concerned, Arizona taxpayers might as well have just seen $150,000 thrown down a rat hole. Worse still, they don’t know where the bulk of the money paying for this third “recount” even comes from. It’s a fair bet that every additional nickel is coming from sources supporting Trump’s “Stop the Steal” lie.”
How many Zuckerbucks did Democrats take in Arizona? Why are you so afraid of the truth? Accusing your opposition of what your party is guilty of again, Comrade?
“Ballots, that are legitimate, are verifiable.”
Really? How can they be verifiable, since you previously noted that privacy is no issue because they’re anonymous? You can’t have it both ways.
You don’t know WHAT might happen to them, once they’ve been placed into the unsupervised hands of Cyber Ninja, a private company owned and controlled by a guy who is ANYTHING BUT and unbiased party. Some could be altered or replaced by altered duplicates before they ever hit the floor of the audit facility. No legitimate public officials will be overseeing every step of the process. It’s not even being disclosed to them what each step of that process is.
“How many Zuckerbucks did Democrats take in Arizona?”
What does it matter, since they were legitimate dollars going into legitimate campaign processes? Mark Zuckerberg didn’t pay for anything that might well involve manipulation of the ballot counting process, did he?
Stop trying to conflate your bullshit with reality.
“How can they be verifiable, since you previously noted that privacy is no issue because they’re anonymous? You can’t have it both ways.”
Damn, you’re stupid.
Ballots are made of paper and printed with ink, both of which has a forensic DNA.
You would not know reality if it was written on your forearm. All you have is your left wing bullshit lies.
“Ballots are made of paper and printed with ink, both of which has a forensic DNA.”
And you’re calling ME stupid?