Bob Ehrlich: There's 1 Simple Way to Secure Our Vote, But the Left Will Never Allow It
If you think that much of the rhetoric surrounding voting rights and process is insultingly dumb, you are not alone.
Think about it. Even in the present nanny state era, American adults are expected to execute all types of transactions — cashing a check, renting a car or apartment, securing a driver’s license, picking up a prescription and, most certainly, paying one’s taxes. None of these mundane acts are especially complicated, regardless of educational attainment or wealth or intellect.
The act of showing up at the polls and casting a vote would normally be included on this list, but no more.
Many of today’s progressives would have you believe American citizens somehow lack the ability to figure out where they are supposed to vote, let alone take on the allegedly herculean task of possessing a form of photo identification.
Some even maintain the mere requirement of producing photo identification at the polls is racist (until a few weeks ago anyway) or that copies of drivers’ licenses required for mail-in voting simply cannot be obtained because those voters in the hinterlands lack access to “Kinkos” or “Office Max” — per our very own Vice President Harris.
Note: Kinkos left the commercial world over a decade ago.
If possible, the left’s rhetoric was even weaker in a recent challenge to Arizona’s new voting law.
Plaintiffs in that case alleged that requiring citizens to vote in their assigned precincts and allowing only the voter, a family member or caregiver to collect and deliver a completed ballot is — you guessed it — racist, and part of the GOP’s grand plan to disenfranchise minority voters. Fortunately, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority said nonsense.
Of course, the not-so-secret momentum behind the recent resistance to commonsense voting laws is the success Democrats enjoyed at bypassing state and local election statutes during 2020’s COVID pandemic.
Here, the left finally found the holy grail: mail-in voting, often accompanied by weak security measures. And you better believe they are not going to let go of their newfound toy without a monumental fight. Witness last week’s hyperaggressive “voting rights” speech by President Biden.
But what does the commonsense majority think of all this?
We can only hope that this more sane portion of the electorate believes that only legal citizens should be able to vote, that purging voter rolls of dead and ineligible voters is what local election boards are supposed to do, that in-person voting should take place at one’s local (assigned) voting precinct, that ballot harvesting (if allowed at all) should be subject to a very narrow group of ballot gatherers, that the signature on the inside of a mail-in ballot should comport with the signature on the outside, that early voting should not commence until the last candidate debate has taken place, that one form or another of photo identification must be produced before casting a ballot, and that full transparency must be guaranteed to all eligible observers during the vote-counting process.
One more thing. We are now daily exposed to news of cyberattacks on our electricity grid and other vital infrastructure from bad actors in hostile countries such as Russia, China and Iran.
Indeed, sometimes the state itself is the bad actor. Seems our modern election voting systems are popular targets for those who wish to create confusion and discord in our country.
These miscreants just love to sow the seeds of unrest in the good ol’ U.S. of A. So why not a paper ballot as a backup against these malignant actors who threaten our very democracy?
I realize that I sound like my parents on this one. What could be more anti-tech than a paper ballot? But what could be more reliable?
That such mundane (and familiar) measures are today ludicrously demonized as “Jim Crow” speaks to true political desperation as the 2022 midterms loom.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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