Beware Legalized Rigged Elections
Free and fair elections are the embodiment of the values that our great nation was founded on. Our new leaders in Albany are promising revolutionary changes to our electoral system. What they really desire is absolute power and to do so they are using the disguise of reform as a method to legalize rigged elections in their favor for years to come.
Starting today, we will see a hurry-up drill in Albany so that Andrew Cuomo and the New York City Democrat Party dominated state legislature can declare victory on so-called election reform. A package so rushed cannot be well thought out public policy. There have been no public hearings. New York taxpayers deserve some honest hard work, debate and discussion from their legislators on an issue as critical as the future of our elections, not a package thrown on their desk by the Governor with a demand for an affirmative vote.
One grave concern for many looking to preserve honest elections are efforts to legalize “ballot harvesting”. The door opens to this with the institution of no-fault absentee voting, which is virtually certain to pass into law. This is a practice in which paid election workers or volunteers collect massive amounts of absentee ballots for delivery at the board of elections or a polling location. It is nothing more than an opportunity for special interests to commit voter fraud. It is the practice that is the central focus of the controversial 9th Congressional District of North Carolina that has led to the voiding of the 2018 election and will lead to a new election being called. This nefarious practice was also legalized by phony reformers in California and led to wild irregularities in 2018. Those that believe in honest elections must work to prevent “ballot harvesting” from coming to New York State.
There are provisions in Albany’s so-called reform bills for same day voter registration as well as automatic voter registration. These sound great as a talking point, but they leave our system wide open to voter fraud. Without a comprehensive voter ID requirement there is no proof or protection in place that the “new voter” isn’t voting more than once in different places, perhaps even in the same election. This isn’t Tammany Hall; we don’t “vote early and often”.
The bills offer zero protections against undocumented immigrants voting, even though, as non-citizens, they have no right to vote in our elections. Leaving these back doors open for fraud and theft of elections might be good for business for the Democrat Party machine, but it is terrible public policy for the rest of us.
Erie County Democrats require a photo identification to enter their election meeting for Chairman of their Party, and I applaud my friend Chairman Jeremy Zellner for taking voter fraud so seriously. The voters of this state deserve to have that same honesty and faith in their elections.
Nicholas A. Langworthy is Chair of the Erie County Republican party.
