Proactive

One of the primary defenses that Democrats use to justify widespread mail-in voting (aside from their nonsensical catastrophist view that people will die from COVID-19 infections if they go to a voting booth in November) is that mail-in or absentee ballots have been used for years with little fraud and abuse (unproven and highly questionable,* but let's take their claim at face value). Of course, the number of absentee ballots is a very small percentage of the total vote and is intended to be used for those who are disabled or away from their voting locale. Each person who desires to use a mail-in ballot must apply for one, fill out a form of some kind, and then return the ballot once received.

Donald Trump along with most conservatives are suspicious of widespread use of the mail-in voting mechanism, particularly when a voter is completely passive prior to getting a ballot. But let's set that aside for a moment.

Historically, voting in almost every state requires the voter to be proactive. To exercise their right to vote, voters must leave their homes, travel to a polling place, state who they are (valid ID should be required everywhere, but in many locales it is not), and then cast their vote. As I noted earlier, for a mail in ballot, voters must be proactive in requesting that form of voting. The Democrats tell us that being proactive is a bad thing. That every potential voter can be passive and simply receive a ballot in the mailbox. 

What the Dems choose not to recognize is that proactive voting is the foundation of a democracy, and it's the foundation of the vote. If a voter cares so little that he or she will do nothing active to exercise the right to vote, it's reasonable to believe that voter cares little about the candidates or the issues on the ballot. If voters do care, they are more than happy to be proactive to exercise their right to vote.

Maybe what we should do is modify our terminology. Let's call all voting "pro-active voting." You can vote in person or you can voted via the mail, but in either case, you MUST be proactive. In order to "vote-by-mail" a citizen would be required to fill out a form requesting identifying themselves and their residence, asserting under penalty of perjury that they, and they alone, will fill out the voting form, place in in a postage-free envelope, seal it, and then take it to a mail drop so it can be returned it voting authorities. That's what we do right now. The voter must be proactive, regardless of the manner in which he or she votes.

I wonder if the Democrats would be okay with that. And if they aren't, it would be interesting to listen to them defend passive voting. Is it because it's too hard to request a vote-by-mail form?That's condescending and potentially racist. Is it because some voters don't have the money to send in the ballot? But it's postage free. Is it because it's too expensive for government to implement? But their approach is equally expensive. Is it because it's disenfranchises some voters? Only if those voter choose to be disenfranchised.

So yeah, let all vote, but let's be proactive when we exercise that right.

FOOTNOTE:

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*  The Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media tell us that there is no voter fraud associated with mail-in ballots. Twitter fact-checked Donald Trump and told us the same thing. 

But common sense, not to mention plenty of actual prosecutions, indicate that the 'no fraud'  claim is fake news.  Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, reports on a few anecdotal instances:

​In 2007, during a spirited debate over photo ID legislation while I was in the Texas Legislature, a Democratic lawmaker from Dallas objected to the bill on the grounds that it allowed voting by mail to proceed without photo identification.

The legislator said: “Vote by mail, that we know, is the greatest source of voter fraud in this state. In fact, all of the prosecutions by the attorney general – I shouldn’t say all, but a great majority of the prosecutions by the attorney general occur with respect to vote by mail.”

As the official now charged with prosecuting election fraud in Texas, I can say unequivocally that the legislator was right: going back more than a decade and continuing through the present day, around two-thirds of election fraud offenses prosecuted by my office have involved some form of mail-ballot fraud.

These prosecutions include instances of forgery and falsification of ballots.

One man pleaded guilty after forging 1,200 mail-in ballot applications, resulting in 700 suspected fraudulent votes in a 2017 Dallas election. He was identified after a voter, whose ballot he harvested, snapped a photo of him on her cellphone.

“Authentic” signatures are also collected from voters, either under false pretenses or by experienced harvesters who confidently gain compliance from voters, as illustrated in a video that surfaced during the 2018 primary in the Houston area.

The anonymous video appears to show how easily a ballot application and signature were collected from a voter by a campaign worker in less than 20 seconds. After providing her signature, the voter asked the worker: “Is this legal, what you’re doing?” The worker replied: “Yes, ma’am, we’ve done 400 already.”

In South Texas, a former U.S. Postal Service employee was convicted of bribery in a federal prosecution in 2017 for selling a list of absentee voters to vote harvesters for $1,200.

Once mail ballots go out, harvesters show up at a voter’s door and engage the voter to provide “voting assistance.” The variations are endless, but a common practice involves giving the voter the impression that the harvester is an election official.

Whatever the case, successful vote harvesters leave with a voter’s signature and a ballot that is either blank, voted in the way the harvester wants, or that can be modified (or disposed of) later ...

These instances are just the tip of the iceberg. Mail ballot fraud has been documented across the country. In fact, the Heritage Foundation has helpfully assembled a searchable database of over 1,000 instances of election fraud resulting in some form of plea, penalty or judicial finding.

But of course, the Democrat's trained hamsters look the other way. After all, the guiding principle form the Left is -- "By any means necessary." Why else would the Dems be so adamant about a passive voting approach that has significant potential for fraud and abuse.