Nationally syndicated editorial cartoonists such as Steve Kelley can often use their gifts to capture the essence of a major news story faster and more convincingly than any skewspaper writers or eye nitwit electronic skews reporter ever hoped to.
On Tuesday, December 1, 2020, United States Attorney General William Barr publicly stated, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the [November 3, 2020, presidential] election.”
Barr’s aversion to enforcing election laws to ensure election integrity is unfortunately far too typical among prosecuting attorneys at all levels of government, especially the lazy ones in counties where they are elected. They’re not exactly slam-dunk cases to make, and the prosecutor (not to mention an elected trial court judge) knows that he’s going to upset some people enough to cost him votes.
Still, the national election-related crimes that are being revealed by this year’s presidential election are worth studying. From what they learn, our elected national and state legislators should jump at the opportunity to evaluate applicable laws and procedures, repeal inapplicable ones, and update ones that have become outdated. (I believe in Santa Claus, too.)
But we as citizens need to pay closer attention as well. As we in Kootenai County and Coeur d’Alene have learned from an election contest lawsuit and from recall elections, we cannot count on our law enforcement officers, prosecutors, county clerks, and district court judges to be particularly well-informed or even mildly interested in having honest elections.
To help educate voters, the website everylegalvote.com has published two brief, easy-to-read online tutorials.
The first tutorial is entitled Fraud Primer. It clearly and succinctly explains the various types of election and voter frauds we can expect to see in elections.
The second tutorial is entitled Fraud PhD. As its title suggests, this tutorial goes into some depth to explain the warning signs of the various election frauds we might see.
The information from these two tutorials will not only make us better informed voters, but it will help prepare citizens to serve capably as election monitors and polling officials.
Because election fraud in any amount should be enough to matter.