Can’t Count on them to Count.

by Jordan Rock

This is old news, but the President doesn’t like mail-in votes. Is this a type of voter suppression?
His “reasoning” is this; “Mail-In Ballot fraud found in many elections. People are just now seeing how bad, dishonest and slow it is. Election results could be delayed for months. No more big election night answers? 1% not even counted in 2016. Ridiculous! Just a formula for RIGGING an Election,” Trump tweeted. “Absentee Ballots are fine because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege. Not so with Mail-Ins. Rigged Election!!! 20% fraudulent ballots?”

Stop laughing. He’s serious. But besides that, he’s seriously wrong. There is no difference between mail-in voting and absentee ballots because they are literally the same thing.

The real reason Trump doesn’t want you to vote by mail is as simple as it gets; he knows that most people who can’t get to the polls are Democrats. Likewise, for those who simply prefer not to go the polls during a pandemic and crowd into a polling place. They tend to be Democrats.

And he knows that as well.  Considering his plummeting approval ratings, he doesn’t want your vote counted. It’s easier to sabotage your say in the election from the voting booth than it is through the mail, but that’s not for lack of trying.

Right now, the GOP is doing everything it can to challenge your right to a vote, especially by mail. Here are a few methods they’ve used just recently;

1. North Carolina Election Fraud (February 2018)

Mark Harris, a prominent Republican pastor, lost a bid for the Republican primary over North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District. In 2018, he went up against Democrat Dan McCready for the same Ninth District seat. He won by some nine-hundred and five votes, thanking God for Bladen County in his last words on the result of the election.
What was suspect was how he won.
That December, the North Carolina State Board of Elections
refused to certify the very stack of votes that had won Harris the election in Bladen County, citing irregularities with the mail-in ballots. And after interviewing the people of Bladen County, they filed a lawsuit the following February over the election results. The evidence discovered by the NCSBE and testimony from Harris’ own son revealed a scandal. Harris hired a republican operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless (now a felon) to forge thousands of mail-in ballots and collect legitimate ballots from the citizens of Bladen County via a troop of “friends, family members, and other associates to pose as election officials and collect them”. Democrat votes were predictably thrown out.


2. Republican Lawsuit against late mail-in votes in Minnesota (October 2020)

The GOP has been trying to axe Minnesota’s rule that mail-in ballots are acceptable up to a week after Election Day.
The reasoning of the two presidential electors that filed the suit is that the potential for voter fraud is rampant and is “human nature to commit voter fraud if given the opportunity”.  The evidence against this claim is simple.
The rate of voter fraud in Minnesota has been 0.000004% since 1979. This case has since been dropped, as Minnesota lawmakers refuse to sustain a claim that voter fraud might happen if they allow people to mail-in a bit late without any substantial evidence.



3. Trump Supporters Harass Early Voters in Fairfax Virginia (September 2020)

Because no talks about Republican disregard for the law would be complete without Donald Trumps’ ravenous cult-base. On September 19^th, a crowd of flag-waving Trump fanatics decided to show their support for the President by trying to stop people from casting their votes. At first, they blocked the entrance to an early polling site in Fairfax Virginia before being pushed back by local law enforcement. Then they settled on screeching slogans at the folks waiting in line to vote until those people were moved inside, out of earshot. Because nothing says confidence in your candidate like trying to bully people out of voting at all.



4. Fake Republican Ballot Boxes in SoCal (October 2020)

This is probably the most cartoonish addition to the list.
Over the last couple of weeks, a host of drop boxes with a flyer taped to the front designating them as “official ballot boxes” had been popping up on street corners in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange counties respectively. If you’ve seen the pictures of these things, they look sketchy at first glance. But after a brief investigation by state officials, it turns out that these ballot boxes were deployed by the California Republican party.

 According to their spokesperson, Hector Barajas, these “unofficial drop boxes” were an opportunity for “friends, family, and patrons to drop off their ballot with someone they know and trust.” You can imagine where this is going, and so could the California state authorities. State law does not allow any kind of ballot drop box to exist without oversight from a county election official. A cease and desist order has since been put out after Republican party officials refused to remove these boxes from the streets.



Here’s the bottom line; the Republican Party don’t want your votes to count because they can see the writing on the wall. The whole of America has seen how President Donald Trump leads America. We’re all paying for it, and so are the President’s lungs after he caught the virus he’s been downplaying all year.
Don’t let them cheat their way through another election.
Vote, and don’t let anyone stop you.