Can Election Results Ever Be Trusted Again?

February 28, 2021

The American people’s confidence in the integrity of our election process and the legitimacy of our election results has been shaken.

And if specific steps are not taken to restore faith and trust in our election process, then we may never be able to trust election results in this country again.

Whether you are a Democrat or Republican (or member of another political party), whether you were a supporter of Donald Trump or Joe Biden (or another presidential candidate) in the last election, and whichever political party and candidate you decide to vote for in the future, all of us who are legally able to vote should be able to feel confident that when we cast our vote it is counted, that all illegal votes are rejected, and that we have fair and honest elections in which we can legitimately trust the outcome.

Unfortunately, there has been growing distrust in the minds of many Americans over the years that our election results are not legitimate.  Those of us who are old enough remember the “hanging chads” in Florida during the Bush-Gore 2000 presidential election and the uproar that resulted, which ultimately ended up in litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court.  But the last two presidential elections in particular have escalated the level of distrust among the American electorate and have sharply divided the country.

Following the 2016 presidential election, the Democrats claimed that the election results were fraudulent, and that the presidency of Donald Trump was illegitimate.  They spent the following four years alleging that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. After years of hearings, a Special Counsel investigation conducted by Robert Mueller, and spending millions and millions of taxpayer dollars, no evidence of collusion on the part of President Trump with the Russians was discovered.  

In fact, it turned out that the Trump-Russia collusion allegations were actually based upon a fabricated dossier created by British former intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who once previously ran the Russia desk at British MI6 in London and who was hired by Fusion GPS, a private political research firm hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. That dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, was disseminated with the assistance of former U.S. Senator John McCain, then-FBI Director James Comey and other top members of the U.S. State Department and intelligence community, and it was used as a basis for obtaining surveillance warrants to investigate the Trump campaign.

Then following the 2020 presidential election, President Trump and his supporters claimed the presidential election results were fraudulent and were manipulated in a number of different ways…from allegations of vote count manipulation using Dominion voting machines and software, to Republican election observers being removed from ballot counting locations in some battleground states and not permitted to observe the counting of votes, to hidden suitcases of ballots being pulled out from underneath tables and used to alter the election results in Georgia, and many other alleged incidents of voter fraud and vote count manipulation.  There is video footage and witness testimonies under signed affidavits (which would be subject to penalty of perjury if they contained knowingly false statements) that appear to support many of these allegations raised by the Trump team, and numerous lawsuits have been filed. 

However, despite this apparent supporting evidence, many of these allegations of voter fraud and vote count manipulation were not fully investigated.  In addition, no court has agreed to hear any of the lawsuits filed on the merits. Instead, the courts have all effectively ducked these lawsuits and dismissed them on legal technicalities and procedural grounds, such as for “laches” (which basically means that the party filing suit waited too long to bring their claim and should have filed it sooner) or due to lack of “standing” (note: the term “standing” will be referenced again later in this article, but let’s define it here: “standing” basically means the party bringing the lawsuit has a legally protectable and tangible interest at stake to justify the lawsuit…or to put it another way, the party bringing the lawsuit has been harmed or injured in some manner or “has a dog in this fight”).  As a side note, dismissing these lawsuits on the grounds of “laches” is particularly perplexing…because if the lawsuits were in fact filed sooner before the election results were in, the courts would have likely dismissed those lawsuits due to a lack of “standing.”  In other words, it becomes a procedural circular no-win situation.

As a result, given the lack of full investigations into these incidents, or the courts to hear any of these lawsuits on the actual merits, it is not clear the extent to which any of these alleged incidents of voter fraud and vote count manipulation would have changed the final outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  

Here is one thing that is clear and that we do know, however…there were clear violations of the U.S. Constitution by four battleground states in connection with the 2020 election which directly impacted and undermined the legitimacy of the election results.  And because these were direct constitutional violations, it is not even necessary to show the existence or amount of any alleged incidents of voter fraud and vote count manipulation that may have resulted in these four states.  While these unconstitutional violations could have certainly helped to facilitate voter fraud and vote count manipulation in these states, it is simply enough that there is clear evidence that these four battleground states took actions to change their election rules ahead of the 2020 election in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Specifically, the four battleground states at issue are Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The State of Texas filed a lawsuit (specifically, a motion for leave to file a bill of complaint) with the U.S. Supreme Court against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the States of Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin over the 2020 presidential election.  Because the lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and subsequently supported by state attorneys general of 17 other states, involved a dispute between two or more States, it had to be filed directly with the U.S. Supreme Court.  Under Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, and codified under federal law at 28 U.S.C. § 1251(a), the U.S. Supreme Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction over all controversies between two or more States.  Consequently, this lawsuit filed by the State of Texas could be heard only by the U.S. Supreme Court and not by any other court.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fought to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the integrity of our presidential election process

According to the Texas lawsuit, the four Defendant States violated the U.S. Constitution in two primary ways.

First of all, each of the four Defendant States violated the terms of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution (which is known as the “Electors Clause”) when the governing executives and/or courts in these States changed the election rules of their respective States without obtaining the approval of their state legislatures.  The language of the Electors Clause is very clear…that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” its presidential electors.  And “Legislature thereof” specifically means the state legislature.  So in other words, it is the state legislatures that have the sole authority to establish the election rules for presidential elections in their respective States.

In Georgia, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, unilaterally and without the approval of the Georgia state legislature, entered into a consent decree (i.e., a compromise settlement) in response to a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party of Georgia, led by former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, to change the signature verification process for absentee ballots and Georgia election law and voting rules. Also, Georgia law prohibits the opening of absentee ballots until after polls open on Election Day. However, Secretary of State Raffensperger issued a rule that was adopted by the State Election Board, but was not approved by the state legislature, which authorized county election officials to begin processing ballots up to three weeks prior to Election Day.

In Michigan, while the Michigan state constitution provides for “no excuse” mail-in voting, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, unilaterally and without the approval of the Michigan state legislature, mailed unsolicited absentee-voter applications to all 7.7 million registered voters in Michigan (including those on the registration rolls who may have moved out of the state or who were no longer living), in violation of Michigan Election Law, which does not give the Secretary of State the power to distribute absentee ballot applications. In addition, Michigan law requires that applicants sign an absentee ballot application form, which was violated when Secretary of State Benson launched a program, again without legislative approval, that allowed absentee ballots to be requested online, without any signature verification. The actions by Secretary of State Benson were upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court; the problem with that, however, is that they are not the Michigan state legislature, which is the body given the authority under the Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution to set the election rules for presidential elections in the state.

In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (“WEC”), an executive branch agency, not a legislative body, unconstitutionally modified Wisconsin election laws in ways that weakened, or removed entirely, established security procedures put in place by the Wisconsin state legislature to ensure absentee ballot integrity. One of these ways involved establishing hundreds of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots, including some that were unmanned. The use of these drop boxes violates Wisconsin state law. In addition, the WEC issued guidance permitting county election clerks to add missing addresses for witness certifications on absentee ballots, once again in violation of Wisconsin state law. The WEC also encouraged voters to unlawfully declare themselves “indefinitely confined” so that they could avoid security measures under Wisconsin law like photo ID requirements and signature verification when applying to vote absentee.

And in Pennsylvania, the state that probably had the most blatant and egregious violations, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, together with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, made a number of changes to the Pennsylvania election rules, bypassing the Pennsylvania legislature. These unconstitutional changes included, among others, changes that (i) discarded Pennsylvania’s statutory signature verification requirements for absentee and mail-in ballots, (ii) extended the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots to three days after Election Day, (iii) approved unprecedented drop boxes and satellite “election offices” for ballot collection, and (iv) limited the number of election observers. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court even went further and ruled that postmarks could not be used to verify when ballots had been mailed. All of these changes and rulings were made without the approval of the Pennsylvania legislature in violation of the Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and actually were changes to Pennsylvania’s existing election rules which were also made in violation of the procedural requirements of the Pennsylvania constitution as well. 

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar and Governor Tom Wolf, together with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, made several changes to Pennsylvania’s election rules in violation of the Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The second manner in which these four Defendant States violated the U.S. Constitution is with respect to the Equal Protection Clause under Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment (specifically, “…nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”). In each of these four States, voters and ballots in certain parts of these States were treated differently.  For example, in Pennsylvania, election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny (i.e., Pittsburgh) Counties, at the urging of Boockvar, set up a “cure process” to contact voters whose absentee and mail-in ballots were defective and did not comply with state legal requirements.  This “cure process” was not set up in other Pennsylvania counties however. In Georgia, some poll watchers in Fulton County, Georgia (i.e., Atlanta) signed affidavits stating that they were told to leave State Farm Arena, where ballot counting was taking place. In Michigan, poll watchers in Wayne County (i.e., Detroit) were denied access to the vote counting. And in Wisconsin, the Administrator of the City of Milwaukee Elections Commission directed election clerks to cure defective mail-in ballots by filling in missing addresses for witnesses, while ballots without witness addresses were deemed invalid in other counties in the State.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its landmark case of Bush v. Gore that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was violated when one Florida county treated ballots one way, and another Florida county treated ballots a different way. The Court ruled that voters had the Constitutional right to have their ballots treated equally throughout the State.

So what did the U.S. Supreme Court do this time around with regard to the apparent clear-cut violations of the Electors Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by the four Defendant States in the Texas lawsuit?

The U.S. Supreme Court punted…and by doing so, the Court let down the American people and weakened the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Texas lawsuit on the merits

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the case, saying that Texas had a “lack of standing”…that Texas had not “demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

Seriously?  You’ve got to be kidding!!  It’s a national presidential election! If it was a change of election rules by a State that only affected that State’s elections, that would be one thing. But this was for a national presidential election…the blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution by these four Defendant States changing their election rules without the approval of their respective state legislatures had a direct impact on every other State which followed the U.S. Constitution as it pertained to their respective election rules. The outcome of the presidential election, and the resulting impact on the American people, was almost certainly changed because of the election rule changes made by these four Defendant States in violation of the U.S. Constitution.  Texas and all other States which followed the U.S. Constitution have to live with the consequences of these four Defendant States violating the U.S. Constitution.  To say that Texas and the remaining States do not have standing in connection with a national presidential election is incomprehensible.  In the very brief two paragraph ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, at least Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately and correctly stated that the U.S. Supreme Court should have at least taken up and heard the Texas case. Instead, the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court took the cowardly way out and completely ducked the issue.

Ok, so if the U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear a case because one State (in this instance, Texas) doesn’t have standing to sue based upon the manner in which another State conducts its elections, then surely the U.S. Supreme Court would be willing to hear a case brought by those within a State that would have standing to sue based upon violations by that State of the Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Well, unfortunately the answer again is no.  For example, last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit brought by the Pennsylvania Republican Party¹ challenging Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar’s unconstitutional changes to Pennsylvania’s election laws and rules in violation of the Electors Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  Because this particular lawsuit was not a dispute between two or more states, but was a dispute within Pennsylvania itself, the U.S. Supreme Court did not have “original jurisdiction”, like mentioned above with the Texas lawsuit (i.e., where the case could only be heard by that Court).  Instead, in this instance, the U.S. Supreme Court had “appellate jurisdiction”, where the Court has the ability to choose whether or not to hear a particular case. This time, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch would have decided to hear the case…but unfortunately, once again a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court chose to duck the issue.  And similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear all of the numerous other legal challenges having anything to do with the 2020 presidential election.

And now with the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House, and the Democratic Party being run by the “progressive” (i.e., socialist and Marxist) wing of their party, they are moving quickly to attempt to entrench their power and control the election process going forward.  For them, the message they received from the U.S. Supreme Court’s unwillingness to get involved is essentially a “full speed ahead!!” signal.

And so, here comes the new House of Representatives bill H.R. 1 “For The People Act” (which, of course, tells you right off the bat that it’s not really “for the people”…since the name for most bills created by the government are intentionally deceptive misnomers).  This bill is an attempt by the Democrats to federalize the election process and would be a massive shift of power to the federal government.²

Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats are attempting a massive power grab to federalize the election rules which are granted to the state legislatures under the U.S. Constitution

H.R. 1 would essentially sanction voter fraud.  Among many dangerous items included in this bill, H.R. 1 would:

• require every State to “automatically” register voters based on names in the state and federal databases – so if a person’s name is listed in, for example, the DMV, food stamps, Medicare or health care systems databases, that person would be automatically registered to vote, without even asking the person if they wanted to be registered (hmmm…wonder if that automatic voter registration will also include illegal immigrants processed in the federal system);
• eliminate any and all State voter ID requirements;
• require States to allow same-day voter registration on Election Day (which, when combined with the no voter ID requirement, could allow a person to walk into a polling location, register to vote under a fake name, cast their vote, and then go do the same thing at a different polling location);
• significantly expand both mail-in voting and the early voting period;
• do away with signature verification requirements as a condition of obtaining or casting an absentee or mail-in ballot;
• provide for D.C. statehood;
• give Congress the “ultimate supervisory power over federal elections”, which would be in conflict with the Electors Clause and with Article I of the Constitution that gives this power to the States; and
• encourage both mass mail-in voting as well as “ballot harvesting” (i.e., the practice of paid political operatives collecting voters’ ballots and bringing them in bulk to polling stations…without any process to confirm ballot integrity and to ensure the ballots haven’t been tampered with before dropping them off at the polling stations).

H.R. 1 is dangerous and must be stopped.  But that is not enough. In addition to that, if the constitutional violations made by the four Defendant States in the Texas lawsuit are not corrected, they will be repeated in future elections not only in these four States, but will likely be expanded to other States as well and will become the new norm…and the fundamental authority of the U.S. Constitution will be further weakened.

There are a number of steps that need to be taken to re-establish the integrity and trust of the American people in our election process and results, including the following:

1. The state legislatures need to reassert their sole control over their respective state’s election rules, as granted to them under the U.S. Constitution.
2. H.R. 1 must be defeated in the U.S. Senate – based on the action (or, rather, inaction) of the U.S. Supreme Court on these election issues, they cannot be trusted to rule this unconstitutional if this bill becomes law, and Biden has indicated his support for this bill, so the U.S. Senate is likely the only body that can stop this from becoming law.
3. Provide all properly registered voters with a national Voter Photo ID Card.  Much of the voter fraud and vote count manipulation could be addressed by implementing a voter photo ID requirement.  A photo ID is already required in order to do almost anything…from driving, to getting on an airplane, to applying for and receiving government assistance (e.g., unemployment and welfare, food stamps, Medicare and other health care, etc.). For something as significant and fundamental as voting, there is no reasonable excuse for not having to show photo ID in order to vote. And no one would be disenfranchised if this national Voter Photo ID Card were provided at no cost to every properly registered voter. 
4. Get rid of the mail-in ballot process.  The Democrats took advantage of the widespread COVID-19 shutdowns across the nation and used it as a pretext to vastly expand mail-in voting in many States. There should be only two methods of voting, in-person voting and voting by absentee ballot. The difference between absentee voting and mail-in voting is that with absentee voting, the voter must first request the ballot and in some States provide the reason why the voter will not be able to vote in-person on Election Day (e.g., traveling, disability, etc.). With mail-in voting, ballots are sent out proactively to all voters who are on a State’s voter registration records (as opposed to a voter requesting a ballot). Most State voter registration rolls are infamously known for not being up to date (i.e., so they may include people who are no longer living, people who have moved out and no longer reside in the State, etc.).  That makes the mail-in ballot method naturally ripe for voter fraud, forgery, ballot harvesting and manipulation of the vote count. 
5. Get rid of ballet harvesting.  Canvasing for, and mass collection of, ballots by paid political operatives is a recipe for fraud.
6. Go back to the paper ballot system…or at least have paper ballot backups for all computer votes in the event of a recount or challenge to the results.  The hand marked paper ballot system is the most reliable system, and inspires the most confidence.  It is too easy for technology to be manipulated and programmed to aid and abet fraud. 
7. Have cameras installed over every ballot counting table (like they do over casino tables) where election ballots are being counted, to have a video record of the vote count tabulation process.
8. Get back to having Election Day (as opposed to election weeks or months). For the vast majority of our country’s history, we have had no trouble with people casting their votes on Election Day (or submitting their absentee ballot by Election Day) and determining a winner by nighttime on Election Day…early voting periods and mail-in voting have muddied the election process, and we have certainly seen the negative results of that.  

It is absolutely critical that we reestablish the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution and to take the specific steps listed above in order to restore the American people’s faith, trust and confidence in the integrity of our election process…otherwise, we can say goodbye to the legitimacy of our election results going forward and to America as we know it.   

¹  “Supreme Court rejects Pennsylvania GOP mail-in ballot challenge”, by Alex Swoyer, posted on The Washington Times website on February 22, 2021.

²  “Every House Democrat signs on to sweeping HR 1 bill, GOP argues it would ‘undermine’ election integrity”, by Brooke Singman, posted on Fox News website on February 22, 2021.