In February President Trump created a presidential commission on voter integrity, charged with assessing our nation’s electoral health, including most specifically whether voter fraud exists and the extent to which it does. The reaction on the Left and in the media was revealing. It ranged from sanguine denial that voter fraud exists, to unhinged protestations that our very democracy is imperiled simply by examining these issues.
The commission has asked each state’s secretary of state for all information on voters that is publicly available. That’s it. When consistent with that state’s law, the commission asked for more detailed information. That last part got liberals barking mad, which surprised me, because by this time I’d thought they’d gone hoarse from shouting about the non-existent Trump/Russia collusion delusion narrative.
Minnesota, of course, was not to be outdone in demagoguery and posturing. Our far left Senators, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, both weighed in, playing to the bedwetters and the apparently not yet exhausted perpetually outraged in the state.
“This presidential Commission on Election Integrity is a commission in search of a problem,” said Amy Klobuchar, the senator who has never met an issue too small or inconsequential on which to grandstand. After Mississippi’s secretary of state said the committee could go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, the Star Tribune columnist’s daughter went on to suggest that it “should jump in Lake Superior. It’s a lot colder,” thereby proving she’s even less funny than washed up, angry liberal Al Franken. Local media cooed, of course, as it always does over liberal politicians in this state.
Al Franken was actually ahead of the curve. As Alpha News reported: “Last month, in a series of tweets, Franken lashed out at Trump’s “absurd request” for an investigation into potential voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. Despite his own political history having questions of voter fraud, Franken believes the commission is a distraction, calling voter fraud a ‘baseless conspiracy theory.’”
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon preened, “I will not hand over Minnesota voters’ sensitive personal information to the commission.” He added “I have serious doubts about the commission’s credibility and trustworthiness. Its two co-chairs have publicly backed President Trump’s false and irresponsible claim that millions of ineligible votes were cast in the last election.”
Think this through for a minute: if your partisan rigidity dictates as a certain, revealed truth that voter fraud does not exist, wouldn’t you want to provide everything that is publicly available so that the commission falls flat on its face? Yes you would but that isn’t what is happening. Instead, my tweet captured the general reaction on the left:
The left’s reaction to investigating voter fraud is to claim voter suppression. It was all over social media after the commission’s request, hence my tweet. Such a response hardly acquits opponents of the commission but, rather, does precisely the opposite: it indicts them. Reviewing facts already in the public record impedes no legitimate voter from casting their vote. It does, interestingly, appear to have an effect on illegitimate voters.
Colorado reports that more than 3,400 people have suddenly asked for their voter registrations to be withdrawn once it became known the state would supply the public data. This provides more causal evidence about voter fraud than anything the climate change warmers have been able to produce in decades of hoax promoting.
Minnesota’s same day registration is ripe for abuse and anyone who challenges it is automatically accused of wanting to disenfranchise voters. This is nonsense on stilts but, unfortunately, it apparently is enough to keep Republicans from acting to improve the system even when they have the chance.
In the last legislative session, a Republican election bill contained a requirement that instituted provisional ballots, whereby those whose bona fides could not be determined that day would cast a provisional ballot. If the registration could later not be verified, that ballot would not be counted. Even this slight improvement (many states have provisional ballots and no one seriously thinks they are disenfranchising their voters) proved to be too much for the weak willed Republicans in the House and Senate. The requirement was stripped from the bill before final passage. No wonder Common Cause Minnesota applauded the bill. The usual Republican suspects basked in the praise of the opposition for caving. Please clap.
Earlier this year three felons in the Willmar area were convicted for voting while ineligible. They were only caught because of a sharp eyed clerk. This catch-as-catch-can type of safeguarding the franchise is all that Democrats in Minnesota will allow, while Minnesota Republicans back down at the slightest challenge to improving matters. In many real ways, I don’t think Minnesota Republicans believe in anything.
But their voters do. Republican legislators should be ashamed at failing to live up to their promises made when asking for votes, assuming they’re capable of feeling such.
President Trump’s commission continues unaffected by the meritless claims of voter suppression as well as by the lawsuits brought against it. The examination of voter fraud in America is long overdue. Minnesota, meanwhile, will have to await the election of Republicans with actual fortitude and principle. We know for a fact that Minnesota Democrats oppose voter integrity and the necessary transparency that goes with it. As Kris Kobach, vice chair of the commission, rightly asked of states who refuse to cooperate, “What are they hiding?”
Image credit: NY Daily News
John Gilmore
John Gilmore is an author, freelance writer & former opinion columnist for Alpha News. He blogs at minnesotaconservatives.org & is @Shabbosgoy on Twitter
