Saturday, June 27, 2020

THE CONSPIRACY BEHIND MAIL-IN VOTING


New Jersey Democrats Charged with Mail-In Voter Fraud

NJ officials
NJAG
3:33

Two Paterson, New Jersey councilmen and two men linked to a councilmen’s campaign have been charged with election fraud, mail-in voting fraud, and illegal possession of mail-in ballots.
Late last week, New Jersey’s Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced election fraud charges against Paterson City Councilman Michael Jackson (D), Councilman-elect Alex Mendez (D), Shelim Khalique, and Abu Razyen.
Shelim Khalique is the brother of Paterson City Councilman Shahin Khalique — the elected official behind the city allowing an Islamic call to prayer — and Abu Razyen is linked to Khalique’s re-election campaign, according to Grewal.
The charges allege that Jackson violated state election laws when he collected mail-in ballots from voters in recent city council elections and delivered them to the Passaic County Board of Elections. Jackson, according to the charges, did not identify who he was when he dropped off the ballots and in one case took an unsealed ballot that had not been filled out and delivered it sealed to the Board of Elections.
Jackson, 48-years-0ld, has been charged with third-degree fraud in casting a mail-in vote, third-degree unauthorized possession of ballots, third-degree tampering with public records, and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.
Mendez, the charges allege, violated state election laws when he too collected ballots from voters and delivered them to election officials without ever identifying who he was. The charges claim Mendez delivered mail-in ballots that he knew were fraudulent, in that they were filled out by an ineligible voter.
Mendez, 45-years-old, has been charged with second-degree election fraud, third-degree fraud in casting mail-in votes, third-degree unauthorized possession of ballots, third-degree false registration or transfer, third-degree tampering with public records, and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.
Khalique, likewise, has been charged with third-degree fraud in casting mail-in votes, third-degree unauthorized possession of ballots, third-degree tampering with public records, and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.
According to prosecutors, Khalique did not identify himself when delivering mail-in ballots to election officials.
Razyen has been charged with third-degree fraud in casting mail-in votes and third-degree unauthorized possession of ballots for allegedly procuring and possessing more than three official mail-in ballots that were not his and for which he was not authorized to deliver.
Each of the men faces three to five years in prison for third-degree crimes, up to 18 months in prison for fourth-degree crimes, and five to 10 years in prison for second-degree crimes. Altogether, the men could be asked to pay more than $250,000 in fines.
The charges come as Paterson’s all mail-in ballot election was allegedly rife with fraud. Grewal confirmed that almost 20 percent of the mail-in votes cast were thrown out by the Board of Elections.
Recent data has not shown a compelling public health justification for mail-in voting. In Wisconsin’s April election, only 52 of more than 400,000 voters and poll workers were confirmed to have contracted the Chinese coronavirus. None of those cases were fatal. This equals an infection rate below two-hundredths of one percent.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder


Mailing It In

Standardized absentee voting degrades democracy and encourages political illiteracy.
June 25, 2020
Politics and law

Voting by mail represents progress, we’ve been told; no one should have to leave his home to exercise the franchise. Thus goes the reasoning behind a new law that requires every registered Californian to receive a ballot for the fall election through the U.S. Postal Service. But will convenience voting yield better outcomes? More likely it will make them worse.
Assembly Bill 860, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on June 18, is premised on ensuring safety in the era of the coronavirus. Yet Wisconsinites voted in person in April, and the predicted spike in coronavirus cases from that public assembly never materialized. The state’s caseload did climb, but no steep increase occurred in the days and weeks after the primary, just a steady rise that has continued, partly driven by expanded testing. Apparently the same can be said for the locations where George Floyd marches, encouraged by the media and many public officials, were held. The pandemic, it appears, was a useful crisis—voting by mail has long been a priority among progressives, and the coronavirus outbreak provided sufficient cover to institute it.
Proponents promise that vote-by-mail elections will be corruption-free. Yet we know that in the 2016 elections, as many as 319,000 mailed ballots were tossed out for various reasons, including signatures that didn’t match; that, according to a Los Angeles Times examination, “the preferred way to cheat is with mail-in ballots”; and that absentee ballots, typically submitted by mail, provide the “easiest” path “to commit election fraud.”
Mark Hemingway persuasively argued recently in RealClearPolitics that “a significant increase in mail-in voting this fall could greatly incentivize ‘ballot harvesting’ where third parties collect mail-in ballots on behalf of voters and deliver them to election officials.” Ballot harvesting is a “recipe for mischief and wrongdoing,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky. It’s risky, he argues, to let “individuals other than the voter or his immediate family to handle absentee ballots,” because “neither voters nor election officials can verify that the secrecy of the ballot was not compromised or that the ballot submitted in the voter’s name by a third party accurately reflects the voter’s choices and was not fraudulently changed by the vote harvester.”
Even if election integrity were never in question, vote-by-mail is still troubling, because it makes voting too easy. Participating in democracy shouldn’t be an afterthought. A voter who studies the candidates and issues, goes to the poll site on the designated day, and endures a certain amount of inconvenience demonstrates more commitment to the process than the voter who fills out a ballot that came in the mail and who may not bother to vote if more were required of him. A survey taken in 2017 found that an alarming portion of Americans don’t know much about our system of government: 37 percent could not name any of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment; only 26 percent could name all three branches of government, while a third could not name any. Another poll, taken three years earlier, revealed that only 41 percent of registered voters could name the majority party in both congressional chambers, while 19 percent were unsure. These Americans have the same right to vote as those who stay informed, of course, but why make it any easier than it already is?
Another weak link in the argument for mail-in balloting is voter remorse. Sometimes early or absentee voters regret their first choice. Many get a mulligan—they can vote again on Election Day in person, invalidating their original ballot (though not in California)—but doing so makes a mockery of the principle that an election is a reflection of public opinion at the end of a grinding campaign, as opposed to a rolling beauty contest. It also drags out and adds complexity to a vote-counting process already begging to be simplified. Our elections need to be better than this.