How Safe are Mail-in Ballots

We're in the middle of a pandemic.  COVID-19 cases and death are still on the rise.  And some experts expect us to have a more powerful second wave in the fall.  The fall just so happens to be when the United States will be holding its federal elections, including the presidential election.  How can we have an election when we may need to limit personal contact to avoid spreading the coronavirus known as SRS-CoV2.  The answer appears to be expanding the use of mail-in ballots.

Wisconsin showed us all what the problems could be if we try to hold an election in the period of widespread isolation.  The Democratic governor pleaded with the Republican-led legislature to postpone the election.  They refused.  He tried to expand voting by mail.  The Republicans resisted.  The legislature didn't provide the additional resources necessary to process the explosion of requests for mail-in ballots.

Meanwhile, most of the poll workers were senior citizens, a high risk group for catching COVID-19 and experiencing the worst of the symptoms.  They warned election officials that they weren't going to show up to run the polling places.  There were no where near enough poll workers to open all of the polling locations.  This was a huge problem in big cities, such as Milwaukee.  Wisconsin saw huge lines, with waiting times in excess of three hours to vote, when people really needed to stay home.

If Wisconsin had been prepared, and ready to process the higher demand for mail-in ballots, it could have avoided its election disaster.

But the Republican Party, led by President Donald Trump, oppose mil-in ballots.  Well, except for themselves.  We all are very familiar now with the press conference where Trump was confronted with the fact that he voted as an absentee by a mail-in ballot in the latest Florida election.  When asked why that was ok, his response was simply, "Because I'm allowed to."  Meanwhile, Republicans don't want the choice to vote by mail to be available for more of the general public.

Five states have switched to elections run entirely through mail-in ballots.  In fact, the expected battle ground states for the 2020 presidential election all permit voting by mail, without requiring an excuse for why the voter cannot physically make it to the polls on Election Day.  They are Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.  In some ways, the availability of voting by mail is a moot issue.  So why do Republicans oppose mail-in ballots?

The proffered reason is fraud.  According to Republicans, mail-in ballots are fraught with the potential for fraud.  We need to require identification to fight against fraud at the polls.  How can we be sure that the actual voter is the one who submits the mail-in ballot?

Keep in mind, the President has voted by mail in Florida.

Trump has said something at a press conference, albeit incoherent, when asked about his voting in Florida by mail about the required certifications.  Whether he was saying the certification requirements were too onerous, or that they were to easy to fake, I just couldn't tell.

But, let's talk about these certification safe-guards.  First, mail-in ballots are bar-coded and tracked.  Election officials can tell if someone has tried to submit a mail-in ballot and vote in person in the same election. They can tell if someone has chosen not to submit the mail-in ballot.  They can tell the voter if their mail-in ballot was accepted or rejected, and if rejected, why.

Ballots have signature, notary and witness requirements to protect against fraudulent voting.

Now, there is a case in California challenging the rejection of about 4,500 mail-in ballots because election officials found the signature on the ballot did not match the signature for the voter on file.

It's hard to understand why Republicans cite this lawsuit in support of their argument against mail-in ballots.  It's not proof of fraud.  It's proof of the system flagging potential fraud.  You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Of course, Trump did made a vague allegation of thousands of mail-in ballots being collected, and dumped.  Perhaps this is what he was referring to.  But what happened in California was no where near as nefarious as he would like you to believe.  The actions of the elections officials was all done out in the open, and subject to legal challenge, which is exactly what is happening right now.

Among the arguments in this case, which is being pursued by the ACLU, is that the ballots were wrongly rejected because the election officials weren't handwriting experts.  Keep in mind, some states require three election officials to examine the signature on the ballots.  At any rate, the California case shows the need to provide more funding to hone and strengthen security measures.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House tried to provide that funding.  Republicans complained that it was through an emergency bill to address issues raise by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the shortage of surgical masks and other personal protective equipment.  They cried that it had no business being there.  But the whole purpose of this bill was to address the issues raised by the pandemic.  How we will vote, and keeping the process safe for voters, has become a vital issue because of how contagious SARS-CoV2 is.  Republicans didn't seem to mind when Mitch McConnel put some extra protection in the bill for the sunscreen industry, which just so happens to be located in his state.  Arguments concerning unnecessary pork are just hypocritical.

Republicans, and the White House in particular, like to point to a database allegedly showing cases of election fraud collated by the Heritge Foundation in support of their arguments against mail-in ballots.

The Heritage Foundation.  This is a conservative think tank.  It exists solely for the purpose of promoting and supporting Republican policies.  This is not an unbiased, disinterested source.

When you look at the cases cited in its database, this becomes clear.  There's no methodology behind the cases they've collected.  When there are convictions, there is no attempt to put those cases in context to determine if there was really voter fraud.  Plus, the database addresses alleged fraud in general, not solely voting by mail fraud.

This database was clearly made to give low-information voters something to point to, without the need to engage in critical thinking.

Even then,its so-called evidence dates back to the 1940s.  With respect to the billions of votes case since the 1940s, the Heritage Foundation has found evidence of fraud in a fraction or a fraction of a percent.

Keep in mind, the Heritage Foundation created this database in response to President Trump's claim that three million fraudulent votes were cast in 2016, which is the only reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.  Remember, he put a Commission together to try to prove rampant fraud, even though, by virtue of the electoral college, he won the presidency.  That Commission found nothing and was quietly disbanded.  Likewise, even by stretching the definition of fraud, the Heritage Foundation found no where near the level of fraud that President Trump alleged.

A closer look of the Heritage Foundation's database is illuminating.  The cases listed include cases from the 1980s and 1990s.  So, its proof of supposed rampant fraud needs to reach back thirty, forty years for evidence.  In fact the database includes cases from 1972 (Nixon-McGovern) and 1948 (Truman-Dewey).

The headline of the Heritage Foundation's database is that they found a little over 1,100 convictions for voter fraud.  That's it.  In over seventy years of elections, they could only find 1,100 convictions for voter fraud.  And of that number, less than eighty -- 80 -- involve mail-in ballot fraud.

But this point needs to be emphasized.  These cases represent people who were caught.  The laws worked.  People who tried to vote for others, who intimidated voters, who tried to vote for a dead relative, were convicted and either served time in jail, paid a fine, or lost their job.

But more importantly, these were cases that could have been prevented with the types of security measures discussed above.  Bar-coding could help make sure a person isn't out there collecting a dozen ballots and turning them in all at once.  Notary publics are required to ensure that the person signing a document is the person they say they are.  Notaries are required to keep logs, note the date, note what kind of document it is, and note what kind of identification was used.  Notaries' ethical rules require them to refuse to notarize a document if there are signs of duress, coercion, or incapacity.  It's really hard for a dead person to sign a document in front of a notary public.

Can a notary be part of a scheme to commit fraud?  Well, of course.  But so can an election official who is present at the polls.  Any notary or election official who does take part in such a scheme risks losing their job, and being convicted of a crime.  In a few cases cited by the Heritage Foundation, that is exactly what happened.  Election officials were caught, lost their jobs and were convicted.

Most of the opportunity to engage in such schemes, however, is reduced with redundancy.  It's hard for an election official to engage in a fraudulent scheme when there are others looking over his or her shoulder.  It's hard for a notary to approve of a fraudulent signature when state law requires a notary public and a witness or two to verify the signature.

This emphasizes the point that it is vital to ensure that states put these types of procedures in place, and that they have the money to invest in the people needed to do the security checks and the technology that makes the security checks possible.

Most disturbingly, however, is this President's penchant for exaggeration.  He wants us to believe that fraud is going on with respect to thousands and thousands, if not millions, of votes.  Yet even an organization friendly to his cause could find no such evidence of numbers that large.

Some cases of voter fraud exist.  But of the billions of votes cast since 1948, the Heritage Foundation could only find conviction of about 1,100, a tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent.  And of that number, less then eighty involved mail-in ballot fraud.  And even those cases were easily caught with proper security measures.  Voting by mail is not the pyrrhia that Republicans and President Trump would like you to believe.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

You can find a video of this essay on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/tLqeal6xvkA

References

The Heritage Foundation’s database of supposed voting fraud cases.


A response to the Heritage Foundation’s database compiled by the Brennen Center.

Further criticism of the so-called proof of voter fraud, and Trump’s commission organized to find fraud in the 2016 election.

Be Careful, Dr. Fauci. You Might Be the Next Trump Advisor to Be Fired.

At a time when the United States needs to rely on its medical experts more than ever, President Donald Trump may be on the verge of firing Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  Dr. Fauci has essentially become the nation's resource for accurate information on the coronavirus, and efforts needed to combat its spread.  He has been prominently displayed at White House press conferences updating the country on the Government's response to the pandemic.  He has appeared on news shows to be interviewed about the virus and how best to stop its spread.  Many in the United States, desperate for leadership and information has come to rely on Dr. Fauci's updates and commentary.

But that is exactly why he may in danger of losing his position.

There are two things Donald Trump craves over everything else.  Trump needs to be in the limelight, and he needs to feel as though he is the expert on whatever topic he addresses.  Advisors whom Trump perceives as stealing the spotlight from him quickly find that this is a ticket first to isolation within the White House, and then removal.  Just ask the likes of Steve Bannon, Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly . . . .  Indeed, it has been postulated that the reason Stephen Miller has survived as long as he has because he is adept at working in the shadows, and ensuring that Trump gets the credit for all of the Administration's immigration initiatives.

Concerning Trump's need to be the smartest person in the room, he has ignored advice of career civil servants, made bold statements on issues, particular scientific issues, of which he obviously knows very little, and fired, or threatened to fire, aides who publicly contradict him.  During his presidency, we have seen Trump dismiss advice from the national intelligence community, claiming that nobody knows more about the terrorist state, ISIS, than he does.  We have seen him boldly profess that California would have less wild fires if only they raked the forests more often.  We have seen Trump's Commerce Secretary threaten to fire officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who dared contradict the President when he erroneously warned Alabamans that they were in Hurricane Dorian's path.

Now we come to the world's coronavirus crisis.  This is a virus that has shown to be highly contagious.  On its own, the virus would cause new cases of COVID-19 at an exponential rate.  An infected person is contagious for days before even showing symptoms.  The disease has been proven to kill patients at a far greater rate than the flu.  Thus, the CDC has recommended that the U.S. population continue to practice social distancing not just for weeks, but for a few months.  Otherwise, the rate of new infections will outpace the availability of medical resources to treat the serious cases.  Even those with mild symptoms can spread the disease to vulnerable members of the community.

Meanwhile, Trump, who resisted taking action beyond flight restrictions early in the crisis, finally relented to declaring a national emergency and recommending that people avoid widespread contact with each other just two weeks ago.  But, the fact that widespread social distancing will cause an economic slowdown has become increasingly harder for Trump to ignore.  The stock market, which Trump often uses to taut what he believes to be the success of his presidency, has tanked so badly that whatever gains made during Trump's Administration have been erased.  His favorite television network, Fox News, has opined that the cure should not be worse than the disease.  Trump slavishly agreed, repeating the thought in an all-caps tweet.  He has publicly proclaimed that he wants to pack the pews in churches across the nation on Easter Sunday.  He has repeatedly told reporters that he hopes to restart the nation's economy by Easter.

Dr. Fauci, however, has not been shy in correcting the numerous misstatements Trump has made concerning the coronavirus.  He noted that the drug Trump touted had not been proven scientifically to be effective against COIVD-19.  When Trump infamously claimed that cases in the United States were going down, not up, Dr. Fauci has corrected him saying the he expects things to get worse before they get better.  Dr. Fauci has even appeared on television saying that he can't just jump in front of Trump's microphone to correct the President in the middle of press conference.

As Trump  publicly states his desire to ease restrictions on large gatherings and business closures, advisors leaked to the press that he is losing patience with the very expert whom Americans have come to rely upon to calm their fears.  If Trump remains true to his pattern, that could very well mean that Dr. Fauci's position is on jeopardy.  Just when the nation craves clear leadership and a unified strategy to combat a public health crisis, the lack of leadership within the White House has never been more apparent.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Angry Over Pelosi’s Political Stunt? Please, Get Over Yourself

Under Sharia law, mutilating the Koran or any piece of paper with a verse from the Koran is blasphemy. This is a very serious charge. In Pakistan, blasphemy is punishable by death.

At the State of the Union address this week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi engaged in a political stunt that has Trump supporters up in arms. Prominently seated behind the President, once Trump finished his speech, Pelosi, in a manner visible to television audiences, ripped a written copy of the State of the Union Address Trump had handed her before he started speaking, into pieces.

Let me be clear, I was annoyed by Pelosi’s stunt and the lack of civility it showed. Of course, I was equally annoyed at the lack of civility Trump showed when he refused to take Pelosi’s outstretched hand when he arrived at the podium of the House chamber.  Indeed, with the behavior of some Democrats during the speech, and the awarding of Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, there were enough embarrassing political stunts to go around.

But Trump supporters are going overboard in their criticism of Pelosi. By ripping her copy of the speech, Trump supporters have claimed that she ripped apart the Tuskegee Airman who was a guest of the President, mourning families, a family reunited with their service member’s father, and others who were mentioned in the speech.  Indeed, the outrage expressed by Trump supporters is tantamount to the way Muslims treat someone who has ripped the Koran.  Get over yourselves. A copy of the State of the Union Address is not a religious text.  It is not some revered artifact that deserves praise in and of itself.  It’s a set of papers with words written on them that were read out loud by the President. Let’s not start treating the President as some kind of infalible demigod whose every word must be heeded and venerated.  That’s not how democracy works.  Indeed, our democracy is protected by our Constitution, which includes a First Amendment that protects freedom of speech, particularly political speech. And that is what Pelosi engaged in, even if it were crude and crass.

Likewise, Trump supporters are now citing 18 U.S.C. § 2071, which criminalizes the mutilation or destruction of an official record of the United States.  The problem with this argument is that the copy of the State of the Union Address handed to Pelosi was not an official public record. Pursuant to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, all documents from the White House are filed with the National Archives. The document filed with the National Archives is the official record.  Thus, the copy of the speech Trump handed to Pelosi, while it is given to her out of tradition, is really nothing more than a courtesy copy. The law, 18 U.S.C. § 2071, is meant to protect records filed with U.S. courts and the National Archives from destruction, not every copy of a presidential speech printed out, even if signed by the President.

Quite frankly, the belly-aching over Pelosi’s political stunt is nothing more than political showmanship itself.  It represents some of what is wrong with U.S. politics today.  U.S. politics has become more about the dog and pony show, instead about the substance of policy. Given the fact that Trump routinely insults, bullies and ridicules his political opponents, it’s not like either he or his supporters have room to complain.

Instead of trying to score mere symbolic points, politicians ought to be deliberating substantively what policy is best for the American people.  Wasting this much time and effort over silly political stunts does nobody any good and merely perpetuates the deep division we already have among Americans.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Trump’s Narcissistic Need to be the Expert is Troubling for the Country as a Whole

Admittedly, I am no psychologist. I can’t diagnose psychological disorders, and I would not try. As I discuss narcissism in this writing, I do not do so as an official psychological term. I am merely discussing a personality characteristic that appears to plague our current President. 

With that being said, let’s talk about narcissism. Narcissism is essentially an extreme form of self-love. It’s more than just a case of healthy self-esteem.  It’s a case of thinking so highly of one’s self that it interferes with other personal relationships. 

One aspect of narcissism that is particularly troubling is the need to feel like the expert on all subjects. It interferes in a person’s ability to analyze a problem properly, to take advice from someone who actually is an expert in the field, and to decide on a proper course of action. In this sense, narcissism can also cause a person to assign blame for a problem inappropriately. 

This is one of the problems narcissism has caused for President Trump. Often, when addressing a serious problem, Trump must feel like the expert. In doing so, he interjects criticism that is unwarranted, and suggests courses of action that can be downright inane. 

Retired Admiral William H. McRaven, who was the commander in charge of the Navy SEAL raid that executed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has been critical of Trump, particularly over Trump’s willingness to use security clearances as a weapon against those who oppose him. When Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director William Brennan, McRaven accused Trump of engaging in a McCarthy-like witch hunt. 

McRaven continued his criticism of Trump over the weekend, this time focusing on Trump’s abusive relationship with the press. A prime example of that being when the White House revoked the press pass of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, without giving Acosta warning or an opportunity to defend himself. It was a move that caused US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, to issue injunctive relief to CNN and Acosta by ordering the reinstatement of the press pass. McRaven warned that Trump’s treatment of the press threatened the Constitution. 

Because a narcissist can not tolerate criticism, Trump lashed out against McRaven. Aside from accusing McRaven of being a supporter of Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama, Trump tweeted that the United States should have gotten bin Laden long before the Navy SEAL raid. Trump even noted that in one of his books, he criticized President Bill Clinton for not addressing Osama bin Laden during Clinton’s term, when Sudan allegedly offered custody of bin Laden to the United States. 

But Trump is no expert in military tactics or anti-terrorism. Trump never served in the US military. He has never been involved in planning a military operation. When he attended a private military academy, he was criticized for the self-centered way in which he treated the cadets under his leadership. Indeed, Trump has yet even to visit American troops since becoming Commander-in-Chief. He has no knowledge or experience to formulate intelligent criticism of the timing or implementation of the military raid that led to bin Laden’s death. 

About one week earlier, Trump similarly felt the need to weigh in on an important subject of which he had no knowledge. In now infamous tweets occurring on November 10th and 11th, Trump blamed the destructive fires in California on gross forestry mismanagement. It was a move that drew criticism from firefighters and California’s leaders alike. Specifically, the heads of firefighting unions and associations chastised the President for being insensitive to the feelings of the firefighters on the ground and the people who had lost their homes.

Yet, Trump continued with his theme of forestry mismanagement when he visited California over the weekend. Trump claimed that he had spoken with Finland’s President, Sauli Niinisto, about Finland’s national forest. Specifically, Trump recalled speaking to Niinisto about how the Fins regularly rake the forest floor as an effective means of fire prevention. Niinisto, however, replied by publicly stating that he had no recollection of ever talking to Trump about raking. 

Once again, due to his narcissistic leanings, Trump felt the need to be perceived as an expert.  He needed to show that he knew better than the people on the ground handling the situation. 

This narcissistic need to be the expert creates practical problems for Trump, his Administration and the country as a whole. First, it makes Trump less willing to seek and follow the advice of people who have more knowledge than he does on a specific subject. Why listen to climate change experts, for example, when raking can just solve the problem. Second, it demoralizes the very people the country needs to address complex problems. The Navy SEALS who raised bin Laden’s headquarters have a reason to be proud that their work as they very likely saved lives by preventing future terrorist attacks. They do not need to hear the current Commander-in-Chief chiming in on his displeasure of the timing of the action years after bin Laden has been dead. Likewise, firefighters do not need to hear their President’s criticism of the cause and extent of the fires, when Trump has no training or experience in firefighting or forest management. Finally, by pretending to be an expert, and assigning blame without a true understanding of the situation, Trump could make inadvisable personnel decisions, firing those who are true experts in favor of those who accept Trump’s personal assessment without question. This can only lead to poor policy choices. 

A true leader understands that he or she is not an expert in everything.  He or she understands the importance of getting advice from people with the appropriate training, knowledge and experience. Decisions based on a narcissistic need to feel like the expert do not serve the country well. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Trump’s Bullying of the Press has become Intolerable

Back in 2016, it was not unusual to log in to Facebook, and see that a friend had shared something that looked like a news story, detailing how someone who had a beef with Hillary Clinton had gone missing or committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. If you did a little detective work, like trying to Google the story, you often found that not only was the story false, but that the website that hosted it was somewhere in Bulgaria. 

Fake news. 

But in the last two decades or so, something strange had happened. New cable news channels and news sites on the web proliferated, and tended to pander to one political leaning or the other. Thus it became possible for people to chose a source of news that further supported their pre-existing world view by printing stories and editorials consistent with that view. 

If a story floating around Facebook or Twitter fit into a person’s world view, that person was more likely to believe it without checking the source, and share the story in the hope of convincing others of his or her world view. 

Secretary Clinton was a prime target for this fake news, as conspiracy theories of the so-called Arkansas mafia threatening women who claimed sexual abuse by her husband, Bill Clinton, had proliferated for years. Likewise, the suicide of Secretary Clinton’s colleague, Vince Foster, fueled belief that there was a conspiracy to cover up wrongdoing in the White Water affair. So of course to Clinton detractors news of mysterious disappearances and suicides of Clinton associates made sense.

It was in this way that fake news influenced voters in the 2016 presidential election. 

But as the term “fake news” became more popular, the definition became twisted by those who found themselves the target of unflattering news stories or critical editorial pieces. 

After the election, for example, but before Trump’s inauguration, a news story broke that a former British spy had compiled a dossier that allegedly showed that the Russian Government had compromising information on the President-Elect; the so-called Steele Dossier. Many of the allegations were salacious, and at the time there was no corroboration of many of the allegations. At a press conference after the story broke, Trump refused to take questions from CNN, calling the network “fake news” for publishing accounts of the Steele Dossier. 

Trump then expanded the term to include stories with anonymous sources that were allegedly leaks from the White House staff. Eventually, Trump applied to term to any news story that he disliked, that portrayed him in a negative manner, or that failed to discuss news Trump believed reflected well on him, such as the economy. To Trump, fake news was not just false stories created out of whole cloth. It was any story that he believed reflected poorly on him. 

It became a common term in his war against the press. Fake news became the enemy of the people.  Reporters who did not buy the official White House line, and who insisted on following up with tough questions at press conferences were deemed rude. Women reporters with tough questions were ridiculed. 

As Trump became more belligerent with the press, his sycophantic fans attending his political rallies followed. Members of the press were shouted down at Trump rallies. If a person confronted a Trump fan with news sources showing that their memes and outlandish claims were wrong, the inevitable response was, “Well, you must have got that from CNN.  That’s fake news.” Thus the moniker fake news permitted Trump fans to ignore facts, avoid the cognitive dissonance of seeing that their beliefs were wrong, and attack the purveyors of news stories critical of their President. 

But Trump’s war against the press has taken a startling new twist. In a post mid-term election press conference, White House pool reporter Jim Acosta, as is his routine, asked tough questions of the President and had tough follow-up questions. Trump’s response was to order that the microphone be taken from Acosta. An intern grabbed for the microphone, and Acosta resisted, continuing with his tough line of questions. When Acosta eventually relinquished the microphone, Trump called him rude and said CNN should be ashamed for hiring him. 

For supporters of the free press, this exchange was bad enough. Here was the President avoiding the tough questions could reflect badly on him. He picked a fight with a reporter who had refused to kowtow to his bullying. 

But what happened the next day was utterly shocking. The White House had revoked Acosta’s press credentials. Worse, to justify this action, the White House released video of the press conference claiming it showed that Acosta had assaulted the intern who tried to take away him microphone. Almost immediately, news sources demonstrated how the video had been doctored to speed up the exchange and make it appear as though Acosta had reacted to the intern with a Karate-chop. 

Warring against the free press with harsh rhetoric is one thing. But to exclude a reporter, who has been critical of the President and willing to follow up with tough questions countering the official White House line, based on doctored evidence is intolerable. It is the action of a bully, a man whose autocratic tendencies prohibit him from receiving criticism, a man who believes he is entitled to positive press coverage. 

The American people should not let this stand. They cannot permit Trump to expand the definition of fake news to such an extend that the guarantee of a free press in the First Amendment of the Constitution becomes meaningless. They cannot allow a President to single out for punishment a reporter trying to hold that President accountable. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.