Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedung, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Saddam Hussein have many things in common. They are all infamous dictators of nations. But, they have something else that's profoundly common. They each won elections to gain office as national heads of state. Joe Stalin's Bolshevik party won 99.5% of the 1937 Soviet Union legislative vote, and that resulting legislature unanimously elected Stalin into office. Mao Zedung was elected Chairman of the Central People's Government of China in October of 1949. Adolph Hitler wasn't merely appointed German Chancellor by Paul von Hindenburg, he was also elected to be both Chancellor and President by a legislative plebiscite vote on 19 August 1933. He won 90% of the vote. Benito Mussolini was initially appointed Italian Prime Minister by royal decree in 1922, but later won election in 1924, with his Fascist party (officially named the National Alliance) winning 64% of the vote. Saddam Hussein seized power via a bloody coup in 1979. But, he won a Presidential referendum in 1995.
The point is that elections can put bloody despots into office. They can also elect men of morality such as George Washington. Elections, when they take place, are not automatically moral and righteous. Even when they legitimately reflect the will of the people, such as was the case for Mussolini and Hitler, they can usher in great evil. Other elections are immediately recognized as fraudulent, such as 99.5% of the 1937 vote in the Soviet Union going Stalin's favor.
Sadly, throughout American history, the examples of illegal voting has nearly entirely been identified with the Democrat party. The party that instituted the poll tax, the literacy test, the Tammany Hall machine, the current efforts to deny photo ID to vote, the effort to prevent checks to ensure citizenship to register, the effort to hand non-citizens the right to vote, and this latest scheme to flood the election with millions of unverifiable mail-in ballots -- that's all the work of the Democrat Party.
Let's make one point clear. Our national election will take place on time, and Donald Trump was wrong to allude to delaying it. Had he kept his social media post just to addressing the fairness of the upcoming vote, then he would have enjoyed much more support for his remarks. Whether the infamous Tammany Hall or the possibility of universal mail-in ballots, America has sadly experienced election rigging, and the results have put people in power contrary to the will of the people.
But, America is not a democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic, and there is a difference. In America, Constitutional liberties are not subject to overthrow by simple majority vote. It requires a super majority two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, along with two thirds of the state legislatures ratifying the Constitutional amendment. As Benjamin Franklin well said, "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. Liberty is the lamb contesting the vote."
Without the basic constraints of liberty, and more critically the supremacy of Constitutional law, democracy is as sure a path to tyranny as any military coup. But, even in a Constitutional Republic, if a sufficiently large majority of people adopt the ravenous appetite for power akin to a pack of hungry wolves, it is possible to destroy liberty. This is why our Declaration of Independence makes it clear that certain human rights are unalienable. In short, even if a vote of a million people to sanction the murder of an innocent person is carried by 999,999 to 1, it remains evil for the one person to be so murdered.
This is also why despite winning 99.5% of the 1937 vote, Joe Stalin is still rightly considered an evil and bloody dictator. The same for Hitler, Mao, Saddam Hussein, and even Benito Mussolini. Winning elections does not turn an evil man into a moral one.
If the national vote held in America on 3 November 2020 is deemed to have facilitated the illegal participation of a significant number of people, it won't merely be unfair. It will be illegal and amoral. Elections in New York City from 1790 to 1959 were principally influenced, if not controlled, by the Tammany Hall machine. Democrats were the principle beneficiaries of this machine. Culminating in the corruption of William M. "Boss" Tweed, Tammany Hall robbed the people of New York City of millions of dollars, and used those funds to control political power in that city for the better part of two centuries.
Absolute power in all cases leads to evil. Checks and balances on power is the foundation of moral governments. Fair and legal elections are the cornerstone of that foundation. Rigging elections is something that fair people reject regardless of whether it might benefit their own quest for power. Let someone rise to power, who is willing to use such barbaric tactics, and the pathway to tyranny is well established.
American states register eligible voters ahead of an election to ensure that voters meet the requirements to vote. Those requirements are to be citizens of the United States, age at least 18, without felony convictions. And even a convicted felon can have voting rights restored if said person shows he's living a redeemed life. Each citizen can vote just once, and only in the precinct registered in. That's it! Those are all the legal requirements to vote in American elections.
Anyone seeking to circumvent those legal limits should first be required to explain why such limits are amoral. Regardless, scheming to weaken voter registration, by disallowing basic checks to ensure legal eligibility, makes voting a mockery. Calling racist simple checks to determine citizenship, and that the voter actually resides in the precinct being registered for, is among the more corrupt efforts of desperate people, willing to place their blind quest for power above all moral considerations. Likewise, trying to subvert the voter registration rolls is nothing more than someone saying the requirements of citizenship and one person, one vote, are somehow unreasonable burdens to their pursuit of power.
But, mailing out millions of ballots, with paltry checks to ensure the integrity of the one person, one vote system, destroys the sanctity of any election. The ballots being mailed out are extremely easy to counterfeit, and would allow any number of individuals, or perhaps foreign governments, to stuff election boxes with several million entirely fraudulent ballots. The ability to sift through these ballots to determine their legality would be an impossible task. Should power in America be based upon which group is more devious in crafting methods to cheat!
Having people go through a legitimate registration process, and apply in person for an absentee ballot, or vote in person at the precinct station, is as sure a way to promote fair elections as there can be. Any group in America seeking to abridge that reality is a group who should be denied power, as they are showing their desire for power at any cost.
Sadly, throughout American history, the examples of illegal voting has nearly entirely been identified with the Democrat party. The party that instituted the poll tax, the literacy test, the Tammany Hall machine, the current efforts to deny photo ID to vote, the effort to prevent checks to ensure citizenship to register, the effort to hand non-citizens the right to vote, and this latest scheme to flood the election with millions of unverifiable mail-in ballots -- that's all the work of the Democrat Party.
The challenge of the 2000 election in Florida, going all the way to the US Supreme Court for final reconciliation to the law, was again the work of the Democrat Party. Whether it's trying to deny voting rights, rig elections, alienate the vote away from American citizens, and challenge elections in courts, the hallmark of all these efforts is nearly all the work of the Democrat Party.
The next time a Democrat tries to lecture America on the morality of our elections, consider the historic reality of the Democrat Party. Of all the people in America to proclaim moral judgments on elections, the Democrats are the least worthy. If one cannot win office in America via a free and fair election result, then they are unworthy to hold office. Until someone can rationally claim our voting requirements are amoral, then any effort to subvert those laws are instruments of tyranny, devoid of any moral pretense.
-- Ken Stallings
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