Mar 24, 2019 6 min read

”Great civilizations are not murdered, they commit suicide.” – Arnold J. Toynbee

The greatest theft in the history of free men is underway. The theft of the American ballot.

One of the most precious rights of our great democracy is the right to vote; to allow our citizens to choose who their leaders shall be and how laws shall govern our relationships with one another. This is intrinsic to the doctrinal concept that the government is subordinate to “We, the people.”

Unfortunately, there have always been those who seek to distort the election system to gain advantage. In recent years, the distortion of our election system has been occurring on an institutional scale. The distortion is malevolent and intended to destroy democracy. It will be successful unless our citizens wake up to this threat and fight back.

The left, in the most audacious power grab in history, is seeking to steal the electoral system and make it an instrument of dictatorial control.

The attack underway is a “package” of initiatives that should scare the daylights out of every American citizen. That package and its potential damage may not be clear unless one looks at it in its totality.

The two most egregious and blatant vote-stealing and power-grabbing plans are H.R.1 to legalize ballot harvesting and other corrupt measures and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Other pieces of the package include same-day absentee ballots for everyone, lowering the voting age below 18, allowing non-citizens to vote, eliminating voter ID requirements and direct election of the president.

Such a list is breathtaking in scope and audacity. It is nothing short of defining the planned march of government from democracy to socialism to totalitarianism. The insidious part of it is that it is all promoted as making voting more fair and accessible or making democracy more democratic.

Let’s look at what some of the proposals really do.

H.R.1 should be known as the “Ballot Harvesting Protection Law.” It is legislated theft. Among other things, this bill allows people to register and vote online, allows people to register and vote the same day, allows people to be registered automatically, prohibits voter roll purging, creates paper ballots and establishes appointed commissions to redraw congressional districts. Sound like a wonderful thing? Consider what these provisions actually are intended to do.

Allowing people to register and vote online would allow today’s technology to design bots that could “create” millions of fictitious registered voters. With no proof of existence, and online voting, the potential for fraud is staggering.

Registering and voting the same day eliminates many safeguards and promotes uniformed voters.

Automatic registration whether you know about it or not is motor-voter on steroids. Virtually every state with motor-voter laws has found significant registration fraud.

Creating paper ballots sounds like a good idea but what is meant is distributing mail-in ballots to people even if they don’t request them. People to whom ballots are mailed may or may not be alive, may have moved, may not be legally registered or simply may not even be aware they have been mailed a ballot. Imagine thousands of “free” ballots floating around. This would allow ballot harvesters to “collect” these ballots, fill them out if necessary, and return them in bulk, no questions asked.

Not purging voter rolls leaves us with voter rolls full of nonexistent people to whom corrupt political operatives will mail ballots to be filled out and harvested.

Absentee ballots are abused in a similar manner, and this bill seeks to make absentee ballots a no-questions-asked, no-reason-necessary adjunct to ballot harvesting.

Independent redistricting commissions are laughable. Has anyone ever seen a truly independent commission appointed by politicians? The current system of redistricting may be imperfect but it is run by people who have to stand for re-election, not an unaccountable group that can easily be stacked.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is another frightening initiative aimed at destroying democracy while sounding like it protects it. For a presidential election, this plan envisions a group of states entering into an agreement to award their electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote. This is a way of eliminating the Electoral College and establishing something approximating direct popular election without the required constitutional amendment. What happens when your state votes for a person who is not the popular vote winner? It is a terrible idea on many levels.

The United States is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic for very good reasons. The founders feared the tyranny of the majority or mob rule as much as they feared the tyranny of a dictator.

Fifty percent of the U.S. voter age population and half the registered voters live in only eight states. The smallest 25 states, half the states in the nation, contain only 20 percent of the voter age population and 20 percent of the voters. California alone equals the voter age population and voters of the smallest 23 states. Under NPVIC, California, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York would own the electoral process. Do these states begin to reflect the opinions of most of the U.S.?

Using the argument that the Democrats are using for the popular vote: Every vote should count, and the winner should reflect the will of the people, a better case can be made that the present indirect system accomplishes that more convincingly than the popular vote.

All else aside, the NPVIC is very probably unconstitutional. The framers of the Constitution specifically rejected the idea of direct, popular election of the president. The intent of the framers is a major consideration in determining if something is or isn’t constitutional.

Secondly, not one state since the ratification of the Constitution has ever considered appointing its electors on the basis of the vote cast outside its state.

If anyone wants to abolish the Electoral College, the only constitutional way to accomplish that is a federal constitutional amendment and not a cooperative agreement between a handful of states.

If we, as a nation, lose the vote, we lose our democracy and our freedom. This is how nations commit suicide.

Dave Ball is vice chairman of the Washington County Republican Party and a Peters Township councilman.