Ballot Harvesting 2.0? Monkeypox Emergency Declared in 3 States as Midterms Near
With about 6,000 monkeypox confirmed infections nationwide, California, Illinois and New York state have declared states of emergency due to outbreaks of the disease localized in their major cities.
With the approaching 2022 midterms mere months away, would it be too far-fetched to wonder if the Democrat-dominated states are seeking to impose the same kind of public restrictions and voting procedures that they implemented in 2020 under the guise of COVID-19?
President Donald Trump alluded to this very possibility during a call-in appearance with OAN’s Dan Ball back in May.
President Trump on Monkeypox: “Here we go again. Here we go again. Back to mail-in ballots. The fake mail-in ballots, all the things that took place. What a disgrace.” pic.twitter.com/PECTmYSAOD
— MissMaizeygirl ? (@MMaizeygirl) May 24, 2022
“Are we gonna see a lockdown before an election?” host Dan Ball asked. “And then, uh-oh, we have to go back to mail-ins and here we go again with election integrity. That’s what I’m worried about.”
Trump replied, “Yeah, here we go again, here we go again. Back to mail-in ballots, the fake mail-in ballots, all the things that took place. What a disgrace. What this country has lived through, and what’s happened to this country in a year-and-a-half is hard to believe. So now they have a new one, let’s see what happens. They say it’s not nearly as contagious. Let’s see what happens, let’s see where they’re coming from.”
In the three states, which are home to the country’s three most-populated cities — New York City, Los Angles and Chicago — monkeypox public health messages have abounded, with many comparing these information campaigns with the wall-to-wall coverage we saw in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
As of Tuesday, there were just over 6,300 monkeypox cases reported in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control.
As reported by Business Insider, the governors of the Democratic strongholds are certainly applying similarly grim language to the far less transmissible illness.
The publication quoted a statement released Monday by California Gov. Gavin Newsom: “California is working urgently across all levels of government to slow the spread of monkeypox, leveraging our robust testing, contact tracing, and community partnerships strengthened during the pandemic to ensure that those most at risk are our focus for vaccines, treatment, and outreach,” he said in a statement.
California had about 800 cases of the disease on Monday, according to CBS News.
Newsom added: “We’ll continue to work with the federal government to secure more vaccines, raise awareness about reducing risk, and stand with the LGBTQ community-fighting stigmatization.”
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker also announced a public health emergency over the illness on Monday, describing it as “a rare, but potentially serious disease that requires the full mobilization of all available public health resources to prevent the spread.”
As of Tuesday, the Land of Lincoln had only 500 cases of monkeypox, according to the CDC.
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) August 1, 2022
“I am declaring a state of emergency to expand the resources and coordination efforts of state agencies in responding to, treating, and preventing the spread of MPV,” Pritzker said in a statement.
New York state’s Gov. Kathy Hochul, saddled with the legacy of infamous mismanagement of COVID-19 by her predecessor, the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, had ordered her own state of emergency mere days before on July 29, with a similarly dramatic message, instructing her state to “strengthen our aggressive ongoing efforts to confront this outbreak.”
“More than one in four monkeypox cases in this country are in New York State, and we need to utilize every tool in our arsenal as we respond,” Hochul said in her own reactionary statement. “It’s especially important to recognize the ways in which this outbreak is currently having a disproportionate impact on certain at-risk groups.”
At the time New York State accounted for about 1,200 cases of monkeypox, according to WNBC-TV.
All of these moves, coming so close to midterm elections that are expected to be favorable for Republicans, should have conservatives on the lookout.
The record of the 2020 presidential election is part of the national history, when mail-in voting rules adopted to deal with the coronavirus opened the door for ballot harvesting and other election irregularities.
Considering that election was decided by a relative handful of votes out of the more than 150 million votes cast, it’s not hard to conclude that lax mail-in ballot rules and ballot harvesting could well have determined the outcome — and President Joe Biden’s disastrous administration is the result.
It’s also not hard to imagine Democratic strongholds like California, Illinois and New York considering a similar strategy for the 2022 midterms, adapting a much-hyped health crisis to suit their political needs. In this case, it’s the monkeypox outbreak, a disease that has so far been overwhelmingly limited to the population of gay and bisexual men. (At least 95 percent of monkeypox patients are men who have had sex with other men, according to a July 27 CNBC report.)
It’s true that all three states are run by Democrats, but they do have Republican areas that could elect the U.S. representatives who could help change the balance of power in the U.S. House. And are other Democratic states going to follow suit?
When three of the largest states in the country, all dominated by Democrats, declare states of emergency on the virtual eve of elections that will determine the rest of the Biden administration, conservatives and Republicans have good reason to be watching closely.
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