Joseph Kerr: ALL VOTES MATTER!

VOTING BY THE NUMBERS (a short history)

Nearly 30 MILLION…. the number of absentee ballots from 2012-2018 that mysteriously went missing (and have never been found)
223,000…. NV Primary ballots (from ONE county!) sent to a non-existent, wrong, or out-of-date address
64,000… total 2020 Primary ballot requests Iowa judges invalidated claiming they were “improperly filled out”
224,000…. voter registration and ballot errors in 2018 CA elections
6 MILLION…. the number of mail-in ballots in the 2016 Presidential Election that went missing or were never counted (largely responsible for Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win)
30 DAYS…. how long it took for NJ to release a complete list of winners in the 2020 congressional and state legislature races
400%…. the increase in rejected NJ ballots in 2020 vs. 2012 when superstorm Hurricane Sandy forced people to vote by provisional, fax, or email ballot
40,845…. the number of 2020 NJ Presidential Primary ballots rejected (without explanation) vs. only 5,176 in 2016 primary
2…MILLIMETERS – the size of a hanging chad. Remember those? The infants of that contentious year are now voting age. One could argue, given ongoing riots in OR, CA, IL, MN, WA, NY, TX, and elsewhere, that those 18-year-olds are considerably less patient than the retirees who comprised much of Florida’s voter base.
500,000…. the number of absentee ballots in VA, sent to voters that included wrong information (remember, wrong information causes a ballot to be rejected). The problem was blamed on a “printing error.” Jonathan Shapiro, president and CEO of Smith-Edwards-Dunlap Company, the printing vendors for the Center for Voter Information, said the printing mistake “occurred because we incorrectly aligned a spreadsheet that matched the voter with their local election office.” So… a hanging spreadsheet?
2,000…. the number of voters currently on record in CA who would be over 105 years old if the records are accurate (highly unlikely)
38,000…. CA voters who appear to have more than one voter registration on file according to CA Voting Commission records
537…. the final vote margin of victory – out of six million votes – in the 2020 FL Presidential Primary
35…. the number of Days before the Supreme Court ended the FL recounts and lawsuits and declared George W. Bush had defeated Al Gore in 2002
ONE… the average number of HOURS after polls close before the winner of a Presidential election is clearly confirmed by exit polls or conceded by the opposing candidate. That calculation is minus the abnormal years when the constitutional amendments were invoked for undecided elections. In the Gore v. Bush election, six news networks erroneously declared Gore had won FL before the FL polls even closed!

NOTES and CONCLUSIONS

The above examples are a mere fraction of the many state and federal voting and ballot examples we could have cited. They reflect errors and irregularities that affect all voters, Democrat, Republican, Independent, and others. This is not a partisan issue, but the country is more divided along party lines now than in many years prior, hence it is a weightier issue this time.

It is not fraudulent or illegal for a state to errantly send someone an incorrect ballot, even to someone who is deceased. Many people move and fail to update their voter registration. I still get calls from FL vote solicitors. We haven’t lived there in over a year, and we’ve already updated our registration twice due to moves within the state where we now reside.

It is illegal – a federal felony – to submit a ballot that is not yours or is knowingly fraudulent. It’s beyond plausible, it’s guaranteed that incorrect ballots will go out. We pray people will not attempt to intentionally vote illegally or with the intent to swing the election either direction. Unfortunately, to definitively preclude that is simply impossible, and the above facts prove why.

Speaker Pelosi has already publicly and repeatedly advised nominee Biden not to concede the election if he loses. Confusingly, she also condemned President Trump, suggesting he would reject the election outcome if it were not in his favor, even though he never made any such statement. The argument about who won has begun before the election!

So, how long would it take to count, recount, rebut, sue, and finally elect a President in 2020 (or 2021)? Who knows. It could be weeks, or (regrettably) months.

In a Presidential election year, and arguably one of the most pivotal elections in decades, the question of accuracy is warranted and crucial to a free and fair election. The differences between the two candidates and their policies and platforms have never been more stark or severe than in 2020. There is very little chance anyone could cast a vote and accidentally choose the other party, which makes accurate tabulation all the more critical.

Considering the votes that have never been counted, lost (or worse – later ‘found’ in basements or car trunks), it begs the question: How long do you think it would take before the election was officially closed and a President-elect declared in 2020 if mail-in votes are required across the entire country?

THE 2020 ELECTION QUANDRY

So what happens if the election results are contested or inconclusive? The President’s term in office officially expires at noon on January 20, 2021. If the Electoral College is unable to declare a winner by then, several processes commence based on Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the 12th Amendment, and the 20th Amendment.

What? Yeah, it’s a little complicated and there are several caveats, considerations, tie-break votes, and no-doubt considerable sputtering and protesting while it is decided. [See, What Happens If the Presidential Election is a Tie?]

In simplest terms, after January 20, the Speaker of the House would become acting President until a final outcome is determined, but once again, 2020 being 2020, that is not so simple. Several House seats are tight contests this year, meaning that if the Republicans gain control of the House, the majority would likely vote in favor of a Republican Speaker, and current Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, would be ousted and thus not acting President while the process plays out. That’s where the next level of amendments kick in. Your one vote carries more weight than ever – regardless of which candidate or party it may represent.

The Electoral College makes the final decision, and most often, their tally also reflects the popular vote. However, five times in 45 presidential elections, the Electoral College did not reflect the popular vote. That is actually a good thing. Why? Simple, the Founding Fathers realized that concentrating power in one part of the country could result in other states having little or no say in their own destiny. States with smaller populations, like South or North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, or Vermont, would always lose out to states like New York, Illinois, Florida, and California with significant populations centered in major cities.

New York City has more citizens than 37 US States – the entire state! Los Angeles has more citizens than 20 states. Chicago has more residents than 11 individual states. You can see how a handful of cities could control national policy if not for the Electoral College. Score one for the Founding Fathers for seeing that possibility. We have a Constitutional Republic, NOT a Democracy for that very reason – so that the majority cannot be bought, coerced, threatened, starved, or rioted into power.

It’s worth noting that in a Socialist society, the final outcome of a contested process is often determined by military coup or in the case of Argentina, Venezuela, and other places – by exile, or assassination. It’s also noteworthy that the idea of Socialism is a popular notion in several of those large liberal cities.

The Electoral College is determined by the individual states, and that’s where the process gets messy. Given the above facts about various state elections, it’s easy to see why both President Trump and former Vice President Biden are legitimately concerned that the election results could be muddied at the local level.

Each state chooses its electors and those electors’ votes are validated and transmitted by the state elections boss – usually a secretary of state – to the US Senate. On Jan. 6 of the following year, a joint session of the next Congress meets to ratify those findings and declare the candidate that has won a majority of the Electoral College vote – 270 votes or more – the new president.

So what happens if the Electoral College cannot determine a winner because the states cannot verify results like FL in 2002, or disputes arise over the outcome, or there is a 269-269 Electoral tie (possible, but never happened)? Good questions all, and hopefully we don’t have to worry about that, but in the event we did, there is a process in place for that too.

When you think about it, it’s comforting to know that in our 200-plus years as a country, some of this has happened before, which is why there is a constitutional process in place to determine the outcome. It’s not left up to angry mobs to determine our future. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, all minorities, and all Americans remember, ALL VOTES MATTER!

This is not an article to convince you to vote for a particular candidate. It is not intended to cajole you into believing a campaign promise or supporting an agenda. It is a call to action. Romans 13 commands Christians to pray for and support those in government and authority. James 5 assures us our fervent prayers have great impact in heaven and move things on earth.

Don’t let the process confuse you into inaction or condemn you into fear. Be bold. Be an American. Be involved.