Here Is the Real Voter Fraud

In recent years Republicans have been screaming about voter fraud, but the real fraud is what Republicans have been doing.

The first fraud is the way they've gerrymandered the states. In 2016 they received a minority of the popular vote in Congress, but because of the way they gerrymandered districts around the country after the 2010 election, they still wound up with a majority of seats in the House.

The second fraud is the disenfranchisement of millions of voters, placing onerous restrictions on voting, most particularly voter ID requirements, but also restrictions on former felons, closing of polling places, intentionally misallocating resources to cause long lines in minority areas, etc.

The voter ID requirements have always been bogus because in-person fraud, where you show up at the polling place and pretend to be someone else, almost never happens.

No, as I have long said, the real action is in the third Republican fraud: absentee ballots. Usually it's small potatoes: people voting twice by filling out their senile parents' or spouses' ballots, or wealthy people voting in both Florida and New York -- because if they own property in two places, they deserve two votes!

But Republicans have now been caught red-handed committing absentee ballot fraud on a massive scale in North Carolina.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections, which has twice refused to certify the results in the Ninth District, now plans to hear evidence from an investigation into allegations of widespread electoral fraud committed by an operative for the Republican campaign [of Mark Harris]. Testimony submitted in a set of affidavits outlined a type of scheme known as ballot harvesting, in which people are hired to pose as state employees to collect absentee mail-in ballots from voters and then either alter the ballots to support preferred candidates or destroy those that support an opponent. According to previously unreported court documents, operatives in Bladen County, which has become the epicenter of the current scandal, have been accused of tampering with absentee ballots for at least the past three election cycles. The documents also allege that the conspiracy involved some of the most powerful individuals in the region, including the county sheriff and the head of the local Republican Party, both of whom were connected to a local Republican political consultant named Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr.

Republicans should be the first in line to stamp out this kind of fraud, because it's being used against them by other Republicans:

Harris ultimately ousted the incumbent Pittinger in the 2018 primary by eight hundred twenty-eight votes, claiming ninety-six per cent of the absentee ballots in Bladen County. On Thursday, Pittenger told Spectrum News, “We were fully aware of [the accusations of fraud]. There are some pretty unsavory people, particularly out in Bladen County, and I didn’t have anything to do with them.”

The question is, if this Republican knew he lost the primary due to absentee ballot fraud, why didn't he raise holy hell? Has the Republican Party become so inured to corruption and fraud that they just roll over when another Republican uses it? Do they think, "Oh, well. He just played the game better than me. He had the sheriff in his pocket, I'll just have to take my lumps."

Is the entire Republican Party corrupt, from Trump at the top all the way down to the grass roots county level? And is it just the Republican Party? Mark Harris is a pastor and a leader in the Baptist Church in North Carolina. Is the entire Baptist hierarchy corrupt as well?

Republicans and evangelicals didn't invent this kind of fraud. But Trump's endless corruption at the very pinnacle of American democracy and their tacit endorsement of his fraud and lies, the Republican Party and the religious right have given up any pretense of honesty and integrity.

The election in NC-9 must be overturned. And not just the general election, but the primary as well: Harris's Republican primary opponent Pittenger was royally screwed. Mark Harris should not be the Republican candidate for Congress: he should be in prison.

This is the problem with amorality and corruption. It spreads like a disease, infecting everything it touches. Once you convince yourself that committing fraud against Democrats is justifiable, it's just a tiny step to committing fraud against fellow Republicans.

And when you see Donald Trump using and discarding associates like Michael Cohen, having them lie for him in congressional testimony and to the Mueller investigation, and then bitching when they turn state's evidence, how long will it take every Republican to emulate him?

Welcome to Trump's hell, where liars, frauds, sexual predators, election hackers, neo-Nazis, foreign agitators, polluters, mail bombers, synagogue shooters, poisoners and murderers like Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman have totally free reign.