MEMO FROM MIDDLE AMERICA:  As I’ve Been Saying, U.S. Election System Worse Than Mexico’s
12/11/2020
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Earlier, by Ann Coulter: Voter Fraud Never Happens! (Except in These 10,000 Cases)

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Texas’ lawsuit that documented malpractice in the 2020 presidential election [Supreme Court denies Texas, Trump appeal over election results in four other states, by Tyler Olson, Bill Mears, Michael Ruiz, Shannon Bream, Fox News, December 11, 2020]. And the Leftist Mainstream Media want you to know President Trump’s claim that vote fraud delivered victory to Sleepy Joe Biden are “false” and baseless,” as The Associated Press put it [AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s claims of vote rigging are all wrong, by Hope Ye, Ali Swenson, Amanda Seitz, December 3, 2020]. Trump is wrong, we are told, to say “this was like from a Third World nation,” as he has declared more than once [Remarks by President Trump at the Presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Dan Gable, White House.gov, Dec. 7, 2020]. Biden is “president-elect.” But Trump is right. The relatively low trustworthiness of U.S. elections was known even before 2020 and can be demonstrated by comparison with (another?) Third World country: Mexico.

In The Electoral Integrity Project’s report, based on a study of international elections from 2012 to 2018, the U.S. came in near the bottom of the second highest group for honest elections…tied with Mexico [Electoral Integrity Worldwide  by Pippa Norris and Max Gromping, May 2019].

Countries fell into five categories, Very High to Very Low, on a 100-point scale. Scores were based on 11 factors: laws, procedures, district boundaries, voter registration, party and candidate registration, media coverage, campaign finance, voting process, vote counts, results and electoral authorities.

Some countries, among them China, home of Eric Swalwell’s former Main Squeeze and Hunter Biden’s benefactors, were not included. But Americans would be shocked to know their elections don’t rate the top grade. We only make the second highest group.

Here’s the breakdown:

  • Very High (70 and above): Australia, Canada, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, and an array of European countries from France to the Baltics, Poland and Scandinavia;
  • High (60-69): Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Britain scored 66, Argentina 65, and Brazil 64. Embarrassingly, the United States scored 61, tied with Mexico, Panama and Grenada.
  • Moderate (50-59): India, Bolivia, Botswana, India, and Ukraine.
  • Low (40-49): Russia and Venezuela; and,
  • Very Low (Below 40): Iraq, Mozambique, Nicaragua

What our score will be next time is anyone’s guess. We can only hope our election scores higher than Botswana’s!

Living in Mexico at the time, I was embarrassed about the Bush-Gore fiasco in 2000, particularly because that year’s Mexican election went smoothly.

The 2005 Carter-Baker Commission was set up in response to that 2000 election.

Named for former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, the commission offered many suggestions to improve our electoral system that could have helped avoid what unfolded in the last month:

They called on states to increase voter ID requirements; to be leery of mail-in voting; to halt ballot harvesting; to maintain voter lists, in part to ensure dead people are promptly removed from them; to allow election observers to monitor ballot counting; and to make sure voting machines are working properly. They also wanted the media to refrain from calling elections too early and from touting exit polls. All of this may sound eerily similar to the issues in the prolonged presidential election battle of 2020. But these were among the 87 recommendations from the 2005 report of the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, known informally as the Carter-Baker Commission.

[7 Ways the 2005 Carter-Baker Report Could Have Averted Problems With 2020 Election  by Fred Lucas, Daily Signal, November 20, 2020]

Now let’s look at those seven ways in detail [Building Confidence in U.S. Elections: Report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, September 2005].

  1. VOTER IDS

That’s something I’ve been writing about for years, contrasting our slipshod system with Mexico’s, where all voters get an official voter ID card. To obtain one, a Mexican must demonstrate, with documentation, his nationality and residence.

The card displays a photo of the voter along with other security features.

On election day, every polling station has a book with the photograph of every voter in the precinct. This book is available to the poll workers and observers from various parties to match the card against the voter.

North of the border, only 36 states require or request ID on election, and only six states require photo ID.

What a joke!

  1. MAIL-IN AND ABSENTEE VOTING RISKS

For years, living in Mexico, I voted in the U.S. by absentee ballot. But I had to request the ballot from afar, and I had to keep up with it. They sent me the ballot with three envelopes in which to put it.  

Nowadays, we have too much early voting and too many absentee ballots. For too many voters, it’s a convenience. It must be strictly limited and controlled.

Then there’s “ballot harvesting,” whereby operatives gather ballots en masse and turn them in. Incredibly, that practice is legal in the majority of U.S. states [‘Dangerous and Foolish’: How Legal Vote Harvesting Prompts Illegal Conduct by Political Operatives, by Fred Lucas, The Daily Signal, October 24, 2019].

The  Carter-Baker Commission recommended ending that practice.

  1. AVOIDING DUPLICATE REGISTRATION ACROSS STATE LINES

I have voted in three U.S. States in my life. I never cheated by voting in two states, but I easily could have.

That’s because, as the Carter-Baker Commission said, “invalid voter files, which contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, or deceased voters,” the Commission reported, “are an invitation to fraud.”

You don’t say!

The solution, according to the Commission:

[T]o assure that lists take account of citizens moving from one state to another, voter databases should be made interoperable between states. This would serve to eliminate duplicate registrations, which are a source of potential fraud. 

  1. ELECTION OBSERVERS FOR INTEGRITY

In the 2020 election, accusations have surfaced that Democrats blocked GOP election observers from watching the vote count. Imagine what we’d say if that happened in a Third World country!

  1. RELIABLE VOTING MACHINES

The Carter-Baker commission also suggested that voting machines produce a paper record so the voter can verify that the machine correctly records his vote.

It’s funny, but before 2020, Democrats complained about that.

One America News Network dug up a 2017 CNN report that discussed the danger of hacking voting machines, even including a prediction from an expert that the 2020 election would be hacked [Exclusive CNN Report From 2017 Exposes Dangerous Vulnerabilities In U.S. Voting Machines, OANN, December 10, 2020].

  1. MEDIA CALLING ELECTIONS

The Main Stream Media must stop calling tight races. The MSM should exercise restraint, but we can’t expect that, especially when an ally of the MSM is on the ballot.

  1. PROSECUTING VOTER FRAUD

The Carter-Baker commission recommended vigorously prosecuting voter fraud, something that is not done often enough. Of course, it doesn’t help that Leftists deny that fraud even occurs.

After all that, consider this from the same Jimmy Carter, or at least the people who run the Carter Center: The center applauded “a successful audit process” [The Carter Center Congratulates the State of Georgia on a Successful Audit Process] despite what was obvious, massive fraud.

Yet Georgia Republican Chairman David Shafer and President Trump have filed a criminal complaint in Fulton County, Georgia, alleging tens of thousands of illegal votes. Frighteningly, that total includes more than 60,000 underage voters [Trump Lawsuit: Thousands of Fraudulent Votes in Georgia Cast by Felons, Dead, Underage Voters, by Jordan Davidson, The Federalist, December 7, 2020]. Somehow, the Carter Center missed those.

That is what Trump was up against, and yet SCOTUS tossed Texas’ lawsuit that was at least as serious a challenge to Biden’s victory as Gore’s was to Bush’s 20 years ago.

But Trump can try again, as Fox reported, and must fight to the end.

Most Republicans would have long since surrendered and commenced licking Democrat boots. And some actually have, like those in Georgia. Not Trump.

If any other Republican were in the White House, Americans might never have known how bad the fraud was. Thanks to Trump, now they do.

And they need to know. Honest elections and the smooth transition of power are points of pride with Americans, but if Biden takes the oath on January 20, they might be a thing of the past.

Of course, the MSM will fight fanatically for Biden, as will his crazed supporters inside Social Media:

[W]e will start removing any piece of content…that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

[Supporting the 2020 US Election, The YouTube Team, December 9, 2020]

As we descend into Third World status, we can expect Third World politics. As we import Third World voters, a key plank of Biden’s immigration plan, we can expect more Third World elections.

It’s a grim outlook for the Historic American Nation.

American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.

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