When President Trump warned against the potential for fraud caused by left-wing governors ordering all-mail elections, he was laughed at by the know-it-all media.
Fraud could never happen with mail ballots, we were told. But the evidence says otherwise. Even Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Trump impeachment manager, was on tape saying “Paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud.” JustTheNews.com ran a story outlining some of the many instances of mail ballot fraud just since 2016.
Today, I saw just how easy it could be to tamper with mail-in ballots. I had accompanied a friend to the Election Office of Flathead County in Montana to register late to vote in Tuesday’s primary election.
We were surprised to see ballots being collected by law enforcement in the lobby of the county building. It turned out that a power outage that had hit the Flathead Valley the day before had left the building without power, but we needed to drop off a registration form so we continued upstairs to the Election Office.
We were directed to a conference room where two workers were on hand to talk to voters. We were the only people there, and one of the workers left for lunch just as we arrived. Then the second worker left with my friend’s voter registration form to see if she was eligible to receive a ballot.
So that left the two of us alone in an unlit room with no supervision. It was then that I realized that postal bins surrounded me on two walls of the large room and that the bins contained the sealed mail ballots of thousands of Flathead Valley residents!
It occurred to me that a less scrupulous person could grab ballots and walk off with them. Of course usually there would probably be surveillance cameras, but with the power outage that would not be a concern. Ultimately I was alone with the ballots for three or four minutes. Not enough time to actually rifle the ballots with any kind of intentional purpose certainly.
But then, inspired by the anarchy in our cities, I thought about what Antifa would do with those ballots while left alone with them. A little lighter fluid and a match, and the security of our all-mail election would go up in smoke.
Probably, someone who tried it would be arrested, but that didn’t make me feel any better when I saw just how easy it was to mess with our democracy. As usual, President Trump was right.
(NOTE: The picture accompanying this post shows postal bins similar to the ones I saw, but it is for illustrative purposes only.)
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If I didn’t have a mail in ballot I would not vote. Same with my wife.
Why is that? You can’t access a polling place? No one wants to stop absentee voting, but all-mail elections don’t have the security of same-day in-person voting.
At age 80, I can’t even imagine shunning the opportunity to express my considered opinion on candidates, fill in my ballot & getting it to wherever; even that terrible year when Ralph Nader was the only guy who rang true! At
polling places of the past, you DID feel fairly certain that your vote was going to be tabulated safely under the watchful eyes of a formidable looking, bipartisan crew. These days, every opportunity is given to accommodate the infirm elderly, working folks and the military. That’s a good thing. The down side is that with whole hog mail in ballots, our votes become very vulnerable to theft or tampering due to the possible, irresponsible stewardship of brain dead, government employees as Frank perfectly illustrated.