As Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts notes in his poignant introduction, the primary question addressed by Lucas’s book, The Myth of Voter Suppression, is this: “[W]hy does the Democratic Party oppose free, fair, and credible elections?” The short answer the author provides is that Democrats are much better at cheating and rigging elections than Republicans are. Tammany Hall, the Chicago Daley machine, and Missouri’s Pendergast organization provide three historical examples. That’s not to say Republicans never engage in electoral shenanigans, of which cases Lucas provides several examples. But it is Democrats who consistently oppose measures designed to increase election integrity--measures that even a former Democratic President, Jimmy Carter, advocated in 2005 when serving on a bi-partisan commission co-chaired by former GOP Secretary of State James Baker.
Two
major recommendations of that commission were voter IDs and restrictions on
mail-in voting, the latter being a process riddled with invitations to fraud,
especially when corrupt voter rolls include dead persons, duplications, and
folks who’ve moved elsewhere. Opportunities for fraud are multiplied when,
as in California, ballot harvesting is permitted. Under this execrable
practice (also known as vote trafficking) almost anyone can take custody of and
deliver mail-in ballots to a mail box or voting receptacle--a “chain of
custody” nightmare that would have made Mayor Daley’s day in 1960.
By
contrast, the top Democrat priority in 2021, HR-1 (mendaciously labeled a
“voting rights” bill) would have eliminated most state voter ID laws, expanded
ballot harvesting, mandated Election Day voter registration, and required
no-excuse absentee voting in all states. Ironically, in 1977, first-term
Delaware Senator Joe Biden opposed Election Day voter registration because it
“could lead to a serious increase in voter fraud.” Fortunately, this “For
the People” bill didn’t survive a Senate filibuster but, as Lucas explains,
Democrats continue to press for legislation that would essentially federalize
elections and thus make their legitimacy as questionable as the
Covid-rationalized measures that plagued the 2020 election.
Lucas
also notes that the whole idea of “voter suppression” is a myth designed to
smear legal measures like voter IDs. No law actually mentions the term
“voter suppression,” and the author cites numerous examples that debunk the
Democratic narrative that ID laws diminish election participation.
Indeed, most electoral evidence suggests ID laws actually increase
participation and buttress voter confidence in election integrity. It is,
of course, true that laws designed to increase election integrity do “suppress”
fraud, which is doubtless a major reason Democrats oppose such laws that are
common in Europe. Case in point: “Today, Democrats routinely call seeking
an accurate accounting of eligible voters ‘suppression.’“ Such an
accounting would obviously “suppress” the votes of 25,975 dead people who were
discovered on Michigan’s voter rolls, stiffs who would obviously prefer to vote
by mail.
A
trip down memory lane reveals that political bosses have typically made
arguments akin to those now proffered by the “voter suppression” crowd.
Tammany Hall opposed cleaning up voting roles in New York City (where more
votes were cast than there were available voters). That same corrupt Big
Apple machine also “worked to get prisoners released to ensure they voted and
even established a ‘naturalization mill’ to instantly turn immigrants coming
off boats into voters.” Other strong-arm organizations campaigned against
the secret ballot, which lessened their power to intimidate voters. Then
there was 1864, when “Democrats tried to use mail-in voting to defeat
Republican President Abraham Lincoln.” Today, the Brennan Center for
Justice, along with the queen of the “voter suppression hysteria industrial
complex,” Stacey Abrams, serve as the foremost Democratic voices for corrupt
elections.
Lucas
provides scores of examples of fraud that actually affected the outcome of
elections, thus disproving the Democrat-Media mantra that fraud in American
elections, and especially the 2020 election, is almost non-existent.
While Lucas doesn’t assert the 2020 POTUS election was stolen from President
Trump, the examples he provides (including an eye-opening analysis by Professor
John Lott of mail-in voting in adjacent, typically homogenous precincts) make
it clear that that election was far from “the most secure” in American
history. I should note that Lucas’ book is not and does not claim to be a
thorough analysis of possible fraud in that election, but in my view the
information he does provide indicates that its outcome could easily have been
affected by the widespread use of mail-in ballots whose signatures weren’t
carefully scrutinized and whose contents were frequently submitted for
tabulation via vote harvesting.
Given
this evidence plus a whole chapter listing organizations that provide an
endless supply of money and energy for the Democrat HR-1 election fraud agenda,
I question the brief assertion made in Lucas’s first chapter that neither voter
fraud or voter suppression currently pose an existential threat to the republic.
The $400,000,000 supposedly non-partisan “Zuckerbucks” that went overwhelmingly
to Democrat precincts is only one of many 2020 illegalities that makes this
“existential” observation less than reassuring. Indeed, the conclusion I
drew from reading Lucas’s scrupulously researched analysis of election laws and
practices is that voter fraud (not voter suppression) is an existential threat
to the republic right now.
The
original “Godfather” movie is famous for the line, “Leave the gun; take the
cannoli.” In this case I’d say, “Read the book but leave out the
not-currently-an- existential-threat assessment.”
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?" is also available on Kindle
