“Your Right to Swing Your Fist Ends Where the Other Man’s Nose Begins”

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. Supreme Court 1902 – 1932

 

California is violating the rights of the citizens of the other states in the union with its approach to Federal elections and it is not alone. It is the responsibility of the Federal Government to correct the problem. Those who are old enough to have attended elementary school when Civics was still a part of the curriculum learned that our rights end where another’s begin. This is a fundamental principle of our civil liberties.

 

The United States operates in a system of Cooperative Federalism in which the Federal Government establishes national goals and minimum baselines in areas that matter to everyone, and states determine the specific manner of implementation. There are many examples of Cooperative Federalism that we live with every day such as environmental protection with national air quality standards, public education standards, and labor standards that define a national minimum wage and overtime rules.

 

There is rarely, if ever, universal agreement about the right balance between Federal and State Governments in these matters. On the contrary, spirited debates about the role of the Federal Government and the autonomy of the States are at the heart of our free society.

 

The Constitution of the United States sets out broad principles for electing a national Government and leaves the details to the States. State lawmakers and election officials determine how ballots are cast, how they are counted and kept secure. All of these decisions determine how confident voters are that the results produced reflect the will of the people. We currently have a crisis of confidence for good reasons.

 

The California Way

 

The California system for conducting elections has been on full display since June 2, which was primary election “day” for elected offices, most notably Governor and Mayor of Los Angeles (LA). California uses a “jungle primary” which lists all candidates for a position together, regardless of party, and the top two vote getters face off in the general election. It took California nearly a week to make an initial declaration of who the presumed general election candidates will be in November for Governor and Mayor of LA, though hundreds of thousands of ballots remained uncounted. Many would agree California has latitude to do what it wants in its local elections, but the potential to delay results reporting is just one of the ways California is violating the rights of the rest of us when it comes to Federal elections.

 

California requires voters to be residents of California. Voters must be a U.S. citizen, but proof of citizenship is not required. Individuals must simply declare they are a citizen when registering to vote under penalty of perjury.

 

In September 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law providing universal automatic mail in voting, which means mail in ballots are automatically delivered to everyone on the Registered Voters List. The ballots can be returned by mail or in person. If they are returned in person they must be in by 8:00 p.m. on election day. If they are mailed in, they must be postmarked by election day but can be received and counted up to 7 days after the election.

 

A case currently being decided by the United States Supreme Court is expected to impact the practice of accepting ballots after election day. The case involves a Mississippi law that allows ballots to arrive up to 5 days after election day as long as they are postmarked by election day. Federal law sets “election day” and the Supreme Court will decide whether ballots must be received on election day or merely postmarked by that date. The ruling is expected to come in late June.

 

California requires the use of drop boxes throughout the state. The number required is based on the district population. California does not require voters to present an ID before casting a ballot. In fact, on September 29, 2024, Governor Newsom signed a law prohibiting any jurisdiction in the state from adopting a local law that requires ID before voting.

 

Secure, Verifiable Elections; Not Relitigating

 

The presidency of Joe Biden came and went. He was the President of the United States for four years, an indisputable fact. His election was shocking. Americans witnessed a feeble, old man with little to say, who campaigned almost exclusively from his basement. When he did venture out, he was taken to pathetic “car rallies” that consisted of a handful of cars honking their horns. We were asked to believe that Joe Biden received 15.4 million more votes than Barack Obama, the most wildly popular President among liberals in memory. It was the unbelievability of Biden’s election that led people to question how this could possibly have happened and it blew the lid right off of a deeply flawed election system. Was Joe Biden legitimately elected? We do not know. Our election results cannot be verified.

 

2020 was a turning point for American voters who previously just assumed elections worked as they should. As the realization that we cannot verify our elections by tying every vote cast to an eligible voter spread, so did the expectation among American voters the barriers to verifiability would become immediate priorities for correction. It was an unexpected jolt to learn that the media has no interest in investigating and exposing the flaws in our system and pushing for reforms, and most elected officials on both sides of the aisle seem content with the system just the way it is.

 

With an estimated 25 million noncitizens residing in the United States, we cannot verify any elections without proof of citizenship. We cannot verify elections without photo ID to confirm who is voting. We cannot maintain chain of custody when millions of unsolicited ballots are flooded into a state. We cannot maintain chain of custody with “ballot harvesting” (collecting batches of completed ballots and delivering them in a bunch to the designated location).

 

With an estimated one million attempted cyberattacks throughout the world every day, Wisconsin cannot verify its elections as long as the Registered Voter List includes the names of more than four million ineligible voters, a rich potential source of fraudulent ballots. In Wisconsin, with 258,000 driver’s licenses identical to those of citizens, issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to noncitizens living in the state legally between 2019 and 2024, we cannot verify that every person who used a driver’s license to register or to cast a vote was eligible. These examples just scratch the surface of the barriers to verifiable elections.

 

Why would members of the media shun their obligation to pursue the truth about something as critical as the integrity of our elections? Thinking people can only conclude that political bias and corruption have snuffed out commitment to professional integrity.

 

Why wouldn’t political leaders on both sides of the aisle make the verifiability of our elections their highest priority? Thinking people must draw their own conclusions. Democrats are increasingly unable to win elections without cheating. A significant majority of the American people will never accept the radical liberal ideology and people who are rapidly becoming the face of the Party. Republicans prefer the Democratic boogeymen to raise money against over the accountability to govern that would accompany legislative and executive dominance. These are the conclusions my own good judgment leads me to. Whatever the truth, one thing is certain. We are going to have to sweep a lot of new people into office before election integrity will receive the proper attention from those who should be safeguarding it.

 

There is One Exception

 

The Administration of President Donald Trump is doggedly in pursuit of verifiable

elections, and they are in for the fight of their lives. Members of the media and other enemies of Trump would like us to believe that Trump is trying to relitigate the 2020 election because he is a sore loser in pursuit of vengeance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is putting election integrity at the top of its priority list. Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has requested voter lists from every state to assess compliance with Federal voter list maintenance requirements. Describing their findings thus far, Dhillon said, “We found hundreds of thousands of duplicate registrations. Hundreds of thousands of dead people on the voter rolls. Tens of thousands of noncitizens on the voter rolls” in red and blue states. Wisconsin is among the 23 states that have refused to cooperate. The four million ineligible voters on the Wisconsin’s Registered Voter List would never survive the scrutiny of the Justice Department. Many members of the media have become spokespeople for those who oppose the Trump Administration’s efforts by promoting the narrative that the Government is trying to access the private data of citizens for devious purposes.

 

President Trump signed an executive order this spring that lays out the conditions that must be met to send ballots through the mail including providing the lists of voters to receive mail ballots and barcodes on the ballots to allow the chain of custody to be tracked. Expect intense opposition from those who are invested in the status quo. Molly Beck, who exemplifies failed journalism in Wisconsin with her politically biased and inaccurate reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has never seriously investigated and reported on the flaws in Wisconsin’s election system. She wasted no time enlisting two members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (the body responsible for the insecure election system) in last Friday’s reporting to claim the new rules will delay ballot delivery and to continue to create voter concern over the Federal Government accessing their personal information – information they already have access to and, in some cases, issue.

 

The FBI is reviewing specific allegations of misconduct in multiple states related to the 2020 election. Though the statute of limitations has passed for prosecutions of many of these allegations if true, the FBI is most certainly interested in learning what kind of fraudulent activities are possible given how elections are being run. The media resists understanding and reporting the flaws in the system. Last week, in a typical approach, Alexander Shur and Dion Nissenbaum, reporting for Votebeat and Wisconsin Watch, characterized the FBI interest in Wisconsin this way: FBI agents were in Milwaukee as part of an expanding national effort by the Trump Administration “to investigate long-debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election”. Shur and Nissenbaum continued, “Some experts believe the Trump Administration’s wide-ranging probe is actually designed to create more doubt among Americans about future elections…”

 

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is an essential response to the extreme laxity of some states in the execution of Federal elections. It will restore election verifiability and the proper cooperative balance between the Federal Government and the States by setting the national minimum baseline as proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast ballots in Federal elections. Many Americans believe we should also require rigorous voter roll maintenance, ban universal mail in ballots, and require election day results reporting, but it’s a start. Opposition is universal from the Democrats in the Senate and John Thune, Republican Leader of the Senate, does not have the vote of every Senate Republican. The narrative from the Democrats and the media is the Trump Administration is trying to gain Federal control over elections. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

The American people must stand strong with Trump on demanding verifiable elections. Our free society is built on the peaceful transfer of power when it is the will of the people. This requires us to accept election results we do not like, perhaps even detest. This will only happen if we can verify that the election results do, in fact, reflect the will of the people.

 

Many states have cast aside essential election safeguards under the guise of protecting the right to vote. American voters will no longer passively accept being told that everything is OK unless we can prove it isn’t. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes artfully described the limits to our freedom to do whatever we want with “Your right to swing your fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”  When it comes to Federal elections, California, and other states like it, have been landing their fists on our noses for a long time. It’s time to put a stop to it.