I used to have so much faith in America, and then I wrote an article yesterday suggesting that people get more involved in elections.
A reader writes:
“Hand counting paper ballots with live referees (two at a time called out by the third at the ballot of the moment, another two watching the tic sheet guy accumulating the data) worked fine through the 1960's and can also work today if you have 6 people who want to do tedious demanding work until about 4 am, which is when my mother used to get home from the polling place. A camera above streaming away can work if the field of vision is never covered up. But the foregoing doesn't let Joe Citizen watch the process…”
-A Reader
Listen, if a neighborhood can’t get a half dozen people together to work the polls, then we have worse problems then stolen elections. Our elites do not want you to participate and plenty of people don’t want to participate, which is fine.
I encourage the people (who disagree with me politically and) who do not care enough to participate to please not participate. The people who care will get more say.
Yes, I am someone who is foolish enough to believe that elections work. Do you know why? Because I have participated in hundreds of election contests across most states, and a number of countries. I realize there are stolen elections. And there are also not stolen elections. Every election is ultimately decided by whoever can get fewer of their LARDO fair weather supporters to not stay home and stuff their faces with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Zero Calorie Soda.
It’s really an amazing thing.
Name the fringe issue, any issue, let’s call it — no vaccine mandates for children — if the people who believe in that issue could do these two things 1.) find a candidate to run and 2.) get everyone who believes in the issue to just vote, then the issue would win elections.
But you know what, the people who sit on the computer and pretend that is activism, are as bad as LARDO fair weather supporters who stay home and stuff their faces with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Zero Calorie Soda. They don’t vote. Lots of people don’t vote. That’s great. I’m not a universal suffrage person. That idea is retarded. I’m a “get everyone who agrees with me to go vote” kind of person.
The reader writes about Joe Citizen. The truth is that Joe Citizen doesn’t want to watch the process, but Joe Citizen can watch the process. No one is stopping him. I can watch the process in Kansas, New York, or Paris, France if I want. Being able to watch the process is not the problem. And there is nothing wrong with people watching the process.
Paper ballots in a community that cares does the job. That’s all you need. No amount of clever technologies will change that. The system was not broken. Paper ballots have always been good. What is broken is when a community doesn’t care enough to be involved. Then you end up with all kinds of screwy ideas about how elections have to be administered.
This is what happens in a community that cares: the Republicans send election judges, the Democrats send election judges, a few of the local candidates send observers, a person or two just watches, the media might even have an observer. When the polling place opens there are zero ballots in the ballot box. People who want to vote show up that day, no matter the excuse. When the polling place closes there are an agreed upon ballots. When the election workers go home for the night, there is an agreed upon result from that polling place.
Anything else is what a community that doesn’t care permits, because anything else welcomes in shenanigans. No matter how great your brilliant idea sounds, dear reader, it does not beat the above system administered by a community of people who care.
Sometimes it takes until 4am, but my guess is that was what regularly happened to his or her mom, because this reader’s mother was either a pain in the butt who knew how to cause problems where none existed, or else she had a pal in her precinct that behaved that way.
Now let’s demonstrate what happens in a community where no one cares: VERY expensive election systems are devised to funnel money away from taxpayers who aren’t paying attention, and within a few elections, the complicated systems are used to make sure the elections are not theirs to control anymore either. First they neglect the budget and get robbed, then they get robbed of their government too. Decay brings more decay.
Americans started to lose control of the accountability of the election day process in the late 1990s and by 2020, they were totally gone. The writing was on the wall that the Presidential Elections would be stolen. That doesn’t make the theft okay. The problem is that society is rotten and you are probably part of the problem. Now is not a time for more entertainment. Now is a time for more work, more church, more civics, and more volunteering.
And I’m not saying to ignore your kids and leave them at home to be babysat by the latest rendition of Mark Zuckerberg. I’m saying that they need to learn to come with, cuz you are the parent and you know what’s good for them.
How do kids learn to drive (which is why some immigrants can’t drive) by being in the car with mom and dad for years before driving, and then being with mom and dad while the kids learn driving, and then being with mom and dad when the kids drive. The same is true with having a free country. Kids need to be with you in meetings they don’t really want to be at. They need to be with you working at the polling place. They need to be with you when you do freedom and civics. They learn. They are apprentices. You get to get them to apprentice under you. It’s okay. It’s okay for them to be bored sometimes. Boredom makes the important moments more interesting and impactful.
We are building ourselves a society where things suck. That’s the trajectory. A lot of hard work is going to be needed for it to not suck. “Freedom isn’t free,” doesn’t mean that we should go fight a bunch of foreign wars. “Freedom isn’t free,” means that you need to work on it in order to live in a community that
People who come up with excuses not to do that (yes, even voting) are sort of disappointing. And you make life a little crappier for the rest of us.
-Allan Stevo
Correction needed: incomplete thought in second to last paragraph.
I agree with you for the most part. Counting paper ballots by hand may or may not be feasible today. There are just too many voters. It would take an army of counters, and some would be corrupt, so there is no guarantee. HAVING paper ballots is critically important.
People who say they agree with us who stay home are making life a LOT crappier for the rest of us, and also for themselves. They are ACQUIESCING to the status quo. We have a rare opportunity to have a say in who rules over us. While lots of people don't like Trump, he is a good example of how we can challenge the Establishment if we just get out there and vote. Too many outliers are being defeated because of good people who don't vote. No, Trump is far from perfect. He totally messed up his fourth year. But he is a saint compared to what we have now. And it was people who say they agree with liberty who stayed home who made the fraud possible. Given a wide enough margin of victory, no amount of fraud will steal an election.
And I'm OK with taking your kids with you when you do civic duties. But first you need to make sure your kids know how to behave. This is another common failing, fueled by the many parents who send their kids to Government Indoctrination Centers (aka "public schools") where they learn to behave like animals and comply with tyranny. Including not voting. Democrats don't want you to vote. They are in charge of the "schools."
It has been stated that 60 - 70% of Americans are too comfortable/don't care.