In the lead-up to the 2020 American presidential election, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden proudly announced that his party had put together what he considered to be “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
At the time, most Americans dismissed Biden’s reference to an extensive “voter fraud organization” as just another one of the Big Guy’s senior moments.
“Once again, we’re seeing record turnout all over the country,” said the president. “That means, in some cases, we won’t know the winner of the election for a few days.” He went on to assert that: “It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. It’s always been important for citizens in a democracy to be informed and engaged. Now it’s important for a citizen to be patient as well. That’s how this is supposed to work.”
No Trust, No Democracy
In flourishing democratic republics, sensible rules for elections are universally agreed upon and respected. There’s no such thing as the “will of the people” without a trustworthy means to measure it.Over centuries of Anglo-American political development, the idea of a secret ballot, cast in the privacy of a public election booth on a designated election day, became the gold standard for election integrity.
In extenuating circumstances, such as military service abroad or disability, most democracies permitted some voters to acquire an absentee ballot and cast it through the mail. For sound reasons, voting in this manner was seldom a general practice, because only the secret ballot affirmed the citizen’s right to cast a vote independent of undue interference by other parties.
Well before recent decisions were taken to alter the democratic voting process, one could imagine multiple ways in which citizens receiving mail-in ballots could be pressured to vote or even give up their ballots to be harvested by partisan activists.
Erratic ballot distribution and lack of oversight to verify the identity of voters or the accuracy of the count became an open invitation for fraud, corruption, and distrust of the results.
In the United States, regular elections have been in place since the ratification of the constitution. The voluntary retirement of America’s first president, George Washington, set a historical precedent for the peaceful transfer of power. Nevertheless, voting by secret ballot wasn’t a common practice in colonial America. Voting wasn’t always a secure, private act.
In the early years of the republic, voters were sometimes required to use ballots they scrawled for themselves, cut out of newspapers, or were given by party members.
Open voting and the loose distribution of ballots obviously left a lot of room for corruption. Voters could be intimidated by powerful people, family members, or employers. Votes could be easily purchased. Well into the mid-19th century, election days were often marked by bullying, buying drinks, and other forms of partisan pressure.
To end the disorder associated with elections, reformers put forward a voting model known as the “Australian ballot,” which proposed secure, government-issued ballots, to be cast in secret.
In 1888, Massachusetts became the first state in the union to adopt the secret ballot, and by the presidential election of 1896, most other states followed suit.
The secret ballot had its critics, but reasonable people understood that, because all persons do not possess equal social and economic status, the electoral choice of the common man required the protection of voter privacy.
Today, the secret ballot refers to the well-established democratic tradition of voting in which, on a designated election day, at a predetermined polling station, in the privacy of a voting booth, each qualified citizen casts a single independent vote.
Without revealing his or her choice to anyone, the voter folds the ballot and places it in a sealed box. This box is later emptied for counting in the presence of scrutineers from competing parties in the election.
The opportunity to cast an anonymous vote in this manner is an affirmation of the citizen’s right to make an independent decision free from undue interference by powerful, self-interested parties. The method seeks to curtail attempts to control the vote through intimidation, blackmail, or bribery.
The Real Threat to Democracy
Recent moves to make election participation easier through mass postal voting or permitting the harvesting of ballots by partisan activists have raised troubling doubts about the integrity of the vote in America.Biden and the Democratic Party now contend that a vote in favor of a Republican candidate is not just a policy choice, it’s an existential “threat to democracy.” If that’s what they truly believe, it should be no surprise that they’re willing to suppress opposition votes by any means necessary.
As it was in the former Soviet Union, and still is in Communist China, such ludicrous and self-serving contentions constitute a real threat to the survival of American democracy.
If enough U.S. citizens fail to see through Biden’s wild and baseless claims about threats posed by Republican opponents, there are likely to be much darker days ahead for America and the rest of the West.
