In Focus – Flawed Election Systems
Days after the 2020 election, the bureaucrat in charge of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) boasted: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” In essence he was saying, “I did a great job.” No surprise there! Shortly thereafter, Attorney General William Barr claimed that he had found no proof of fraud in the 2020 election “that could have affected a different outcome….” It was only later that we learned that Barr had told his subordinates not to investigate voter fraud. No wonder he had not found any proof! Since then, every “trusted voice” in the society has lectured us that our elections are fair, and honest, and above reproach. Fortunately, the American People have been able to see through the fraud that tries to convince us there is no voter fraud.
Vote By Mail
Just take one clear illustration. In 2005, President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker co-chaired the Commission on Federal Election Reform which warned: “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” (Emphasis added.) So what do our election officials do — expand what were a small number of absentee ballots to a massive vote by mail system. Does that sound like a plan designed to minimize “voter fraud?”
Societal Decay
Can we expect elected officials to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? When the President of the United States can have sex with a White House intern in the Oval Office, and then lie under oath while looking directly into the camera and still escape punishment, the tone for the modern era has been set. Each person should evaluate for himself where our nation is on the continuum of sin set out in Romans 1:29-32.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things…. [Emphasis added.]
If our institutions (schools, colleges, media, the military, medicine, law, etc.) are resistant to truth, is there any reason to believe that the systems by which our elections are conducted are doing any better? Every effort to alter election laws to make election fraud easier is heralded as “promoting democracy.” Every effort to make fraud more difficult is an “attack on democracy itself.” In such a setting, there are many excellent reasons to doubt that the results reported by state election officials and the media will accurately reflect the actual votes cast by Americans.
The Motivations of Election Officials
Elections are conducted by governments, and governments are run by elected officials, or officials appointed by those elected officials. Those elected officials were elected under the current system — making it likely they would not be motivated to improve that system. Based on self-interest alone, can we assume that government election officials will be faithful to do their job in a nonpartisan manner, even to their own disadvantage? The judiciary often would prefer not to get involved, believing these problems are for the political branches — the legislature and the executive branches. However, leaving the matter to the political branches can result in the fox guarding the hen house.
The Willingness to Cheat to Win
Veteran pollster Scott Rasmussen last year asked Americans:
QUESTION: Suppose that your favorite candidate loses a close election. However, people on the campaign know that they can win by cheating without being caught. Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair? [Emphasis added.]
The result showed that while most “normal” Americans would not cheat, an overwhelming percentage of our political elites would cheat.
Just 7 percent of all Americans said they would want their candidate to win by cheating.
That number rose to 35 percent among the elite 1 percent of Americans who make over $150,000 a year, live in densely populated areas, and have postgraduate degrees.
Of that elite 1 percent, those who were part of the politically obsessed 1 percent, who talk about politics every day, 69 percent admitted to being willing to cheat.
Pollster Rasmussen was horrified: “I’ve been polling for a very long time and the last finding is the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.”
But it gets worse. Consider what Americans have admitted they have done. A December 2023, Rasmussen poll: “found that more than 20 percent of voters who used mail-in ballots in 2020 admit they participated in at least one form of election fraud.”
Those in office who want to protect the current corrupt system will scold us, saying that to criticize our elections is to attack “Democracy itself,” but what they mean is it is an attack on them. If election officials were honest, they would welcome criticism to make the system better. However, they want to silence the critics, lest the People find out how corrupt the system truly is.
People Do Not Trust Elections
Neither Republicans nor Democrats believe that our electoral system is reliable. Compare two polls taken by Washington Post-University of Maryland:
In December 2023, 36 percent believed Joe Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate; and
In October 2017, 42 percent believed that Trump’s 2016 win was illegitimate.
The public’s level of suspicion cannot be lessened by deriding those who question election results as election deniers, but can only be addressed in a meaningful way when voters see that election challenges are taken seriously and election laws are followed.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
The points above can be demonstrated by what is happening now — in the days before the 2024 election — in Georgia state courts. On August 30, 2024, the DeKalb County Republican Party, Inc. filed an Application for a Writ of Mandamus against Secretary of State Bradford Raffensperger in Georgia Superior Court. The Secretary of State is the Chief Election Official of the state. The Application demonstrated that Raffensperger had long been on actual notice of security breaches in the Georgia election computer systems provided by Dominion Voting Systems (“Dominion”), but had refused to do anything about it.
The Superior Court scheduled an all-day hearing on September 30, 2024, at which two seasoned and highly credible election security witnesses testified for the DeKalb County GOP. The testimony, which was scarcely challenged on cross-examination, demonstrated serious security violations in the Dominion systems used throughout Georgia. Specifically, the encryption keys and passwords for the system were not being protected. In fact, they were accessible to any person with minimal computer skills, and once obtained, could be used to alter election results. Cyber expert witness Benjamin Cotton explained:
If I put this into analogy with banks, if you’ve got a bank vault and that’s the latest and greatest lock on that bank vault, and you tout that security on that bank vault, what they’ve done here is the equivalent of writing in big bold letters the combination on the wall next to the lock, okay, so there really is no security. [Emphasis added.]
How did the Secretary of State, a Republican, respond to this suit? His defense was that under Georgia law his only responsibility was to select a system previously approved by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which he did, and that ended his statutory duties. Therefore, anything beyond that initial decision was not his responsibility. He may be the Chief Election Official of the state, but he contended in court that even if he knew the passwords and encryption keys were readily available to manipulate election results, that was not his responsibility.
How did the Superior Court respond? In a Final Order issued on October 4, Judge Scott McAfee granted a motion to dismiss on the theory that the Secretary of State of Georgia has no continuing duty to ensure the system is working to record votes accurately. The people of Georgia should be much surprised to learn this is his view. Is there any wonder that the American people distrust the result of elections?
Lessons from Georgia
It is worth repeating that the people serving in public office today were elected to their positions under the current system or appointed by those elected officials. They have no burning desire to change a process that favored them. If the elections are being rigged, it is current incumbents who may have benefitted from the rigging. The government officials least willing to make improvements in the voting system are the Secretaries of State and other Chief Election Officials who have been in office while unreliable systems were selected and implemented. Can we really expect these office holders to admit when they have been either corrupt or incompetent?
Editor’s Note: To read the articles in this series, please click here.
(For more from the author of “In Focus – Flawed Election Systems” please click HERE)
