…read this article by Jule Carr Smyth – which is a non-stop attack on “conservatives” for daring to try and insure that elections are run legitimately.
Here is how it starts – in rust, with my thoughts in blue.
Conservative groups are systematically attempting to challenge the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations across the country before the presidential election.
The strategy is part of a wider effort raising questions about the integrity of this year’s election as former President Donald Trump repeatedly claims without evidence that his opponents are trying to cheat. OK, so now we know that “conservative groups” are challenging the legitimacy of some voter registrations…and that there is no reason for them to do so.
The voter roll tactics include mass door-knocking campaigns, using special software designed to identify voters whose eligibility could be challenged and a crush of lawsuits. Some of those have been brought by the Republican National Committee, which hosts the GOP’s national convention this coming week.
Several Republican secretaries of state are combing through voter lists on their own, including in Ohio and Tennessee, or to comply with aggressive new state voting laws.
Those behind the reviews cast them as good government endeavors intended to help local election offices clean up the rolls. Voting rights groups and Democrats believe the effort aims to shake faith in the results of the 2024 election and lay the legal groundwork to challenge the results.
The one-side presentation continues. These activities are being presented very negatively.
But what, exactly is wrong with them? What is wrong with aggressively attempting to make sure that only legitimate voters cast their ballots?
The entire remainder of this article lists efforts being made to make sure voter rolls are accurate, and puts up argument after argument that there is no reason to do so…with reminders, over and over again, that the “culprits/bad guys/pains in the ass” engaged in such efforts are conservatives/Republicans/Trump supporters.
Are you kidding me?
My favorite (i.e. most telling) part, toward the end of the article, is:
Trump ally Ken Blackwell, who leads election efforts at the America First Policy Institute, has said legitimate voters “run the risk of having their hard-won right to vote diluted by unlawfully cast ballots” if voter roll glitches aren’t addressed.
However, election law experts say the problem that such efforts aim to fix — ineligible voters casting ballots — remains exceptionally rare.
“Why? Because it’s common sense that one person voting when they’re not eligible is not going to swing an election, and is going to expose himself to criminal penalties,” said Alice Clapman, senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice’s democracy program. “So, even if someone were inclined to do this, it’s very high risk and very low reward.”
I have a question: if this is the case, why have any voter integrity protections at all? I mean, who needs ID? Or signing a sheet indicating that you’ve voted? Or anything else? Why not just have people come in, say “hi, I’m legal voter”, and lead them to the voting machine?
A news organization that turns efforts to keep voting honest and accurate into a frontal attack on the political party trying to accomplish this – with the “last word”, i.e. the “win”, always given to side fighting against those efforts – is not a news organization at all. It is a proponent for the side fighting against those efforts. And that, folks, is today’s Associated Press.
How sad to see how low this once-significant news organization has sunk.
