In 2020, the left used the pandemic as an excuse to massively change the way the country’s presidential election was conducted. Previously, secret ballots and same-day voting were the norm, with people needing an excuse to get an absentee ballot, but the left suddenly announced that, for whatever reason, mail-in voting would have to be switched to in a matter of weeks.
Hordes of Democratic canvassers knocked on the doors of thousands of people who had not yet voted “by mail” and offered to “help” them “make their votes count.” Voters fill out their ballots at home. Maybe work with lobbyists or family members to “watch” how everyone votes. The lobbyists then “offer” sending the “collected ballots” to a “drop box,” thus saving voters the trouble of turning in their own ballots. The net result is that Donald Trump received more votes in Pennsylvania in 2020 than Barack Obama received in 2008 or 2012, but he still trailed 80,555 The vote tally was behind Joe Biden because of the popularity of “mail-in” voting without a secret ballot and the way canvassers deliver ballots to polling stations or drop boxes.
In 2008, Barack Obama won 3,276,363 Vote for Pennsylvania President. In 2012, Barack Obama won 2,990,274 Vote for Pennsylvania President. In 2020, Donald Trump won the vote, surpassing Obama in both 2008 and 2012. 3,377,674 Vote for Pennsylvania President. Donald Trump’s vote total in Pennsylvania surpassed Barack Obama’s 101,311 votes in 2008. Trump “lost” the “vote count” in Pennsylvania in 2020 80,555 Because Joe Biden got ‘amazing,’ 3,458,229 2020 Pennsylvania Voting.
I myself do not believe there was fraud in the vote counting or malfunctioning voting machines. However, I do believe that weeks of unprecedented use of mail voting, coupled with the loss of secret ballots and drop boxes, led to Biden’s fundamentally illegitimate victory in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in 2020. I simply don’t believe Joe Biden would win in an honestly held traditional presidential election 181,866 Pennsylvania received more votes in the 2020 presidential election than Barack Obama received in 2008.
As a result, many Republicans, myself included, believe the 2020 presidential election may have been stolen, even though this fact cannot be proven in court. President Trump himself did not claim immediately after the election that the failure of mail-in and secret ballot voting changed the vote count in the 2020 election. He waited two weeks and then called for a recount, with no hope. A recount in Pennsylvania will never erase Biden’s 80,555-vote lead in the poll count. Trump’s losses in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona have become irreversible after endless recounts. As a result, some Republicans, myself included, acquiesced to Joe Biden taking office because we believed we had to do so to preserve the semblance of democracy in the absence of concrete evidence of voting fraud. But deep down in our hearts, we think Joe Biden’s campaign may have won through dirty tricks, even though that can’t be proven in court.
On January 6, 2021, we did not side with President Trump because we did not want the Republican-controlled legislatures of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona to declare Trump re-elected based on the polls. The question is what outcome is worse for our democracy? To count votes in a way that could be fraudulent on Election Day, or to have state legislators elect a president, has never happened in American history. We reluctantly agreed to make Joe Biden the winner based on a vote count that was rampant with fraud on Election Day, but we felt then, and will always feel, that Biden was most likely an illegitimate president.
We disapprove of Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, not because his claims of election fraud were false, but because as president he did not articulate this claim in any convincing way or call for His supporters renounced electoral violence. The electoral fraud that led to Trump’s victory in 2020 was caused by mail-in voting, drop-off boxes and missing secret ballots. President Trump’s mistake was that he did not complain loudly before the votes were counted that the rules of the game were rigged, leading to an undemocratic outcome.
Biden campaigned in 2020 as a moderate liberal, but he continues to govern like a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, just two brave Democrats, Joe Manchin and K. Sten Sinema refuses to go along with this nonsense. As a result, Manchin and Sinema will be kicked out of the Senate on January 3, 2025. Biden said as a candidate he would depoliticize the criminal justice process. Instead, his Justice Department used an unconstitutionally appointed special prosecutor to prosecute former President Donald Trump — the first time in history that a former president has been indicted. Hillary Clinton got a pass on the misuse of classified documents, but Donald Trump did not. Biden’s Democrats even went so far as to unconstitutionally convict Trump in a New York state trial for tampering with business records to conceal the Trump Organization’s involvement in First Amendment-protected speech, which is truly a guessing game.
Now, we’re about to once again choose between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in a presidential election year — 2024 — a year without any worries about COVID-19 infections in public places. We should insist on the following three things: 1) Bring back real secret ballots, conducted at polling stations with the curtain closed behind voters; 2) No use of drop boxes, 3) Everyone votes on the same day, considering the same title, Instead of voting within a month.
Eliminating secret ballots, using drop boxes, and same-day voting are seismic changes to our democracy that should be abandoned now that COVID-19 is gone. In most cases, you can’t fill out your ballot at home if your family doesn’t know how you voted, which means the sudden failure of the secret ballot. Partisan lobbyists may also observe how people vote, intimidating them and undermining their independence.
Secret ballots are crucial in elections, especially when a candidate generates the kind of intense hatred that Donald Trump and Joe Biden have. It’s the kind of hatred that pits family members and even old friends against each other, sometimes destroying long-cherished relationships. If ever there was a presidential election that required a secret ballot, it was this year’s rematch between President Trump and Joe Biden.
It is also important that all Americans vote on the same day, after the same news cycle, and with the same message in front of them. After Election Day, ballots arriving by mail day after day undermined confidence in the fairness of the election. If you are in the military or have another good reason to need an absentee ballot, you should be allowed to have one. But if we want the election results to give people confidence, we can simply go back to a traditional secret ballot system without drop boxes and same-day voting. Otherwise, our democracy is doomed.
