As the United States goes to the ballot boxes this week for the 2022 mid-term elections where one third of the Senate is up for election, all of the House of Representatives is up for election, as well as many many state Governors and positions in state legislatures, we can not escape the miserable spectre hanging over these elections or the elephant in the room which says that the 2020 'election' was stolen.
In any sensible world, a court of justice would look at the events of January 6th 2021 and conclude that former President Donald Trump making remarks that he was going to walk up to the Capitol building constitutes an incitement to violence and that his remarks both before and after the event (which includes "I love you" to the people who marched on the the Capitol building) constitutes aid and comfort to those who caused insurrection and violence at the heart of government. However, we do not live in a a sensible world; quite the opposite. Instead we have someone who should have been disqualified for running for office, being aided and abetted by right-wing nutter media, who is very likely to announce that he will be running for President in 2024 and that he will be making that announcement on November the 14th.
But it we set all of that aside; if we lay down all shreds of morality; if we dare to deny reality and claim that the United States holds an 'election' as opposed to the fact that it actually holds 50 elections for the President, and if we arrive at the conclusion that the 2020 'election' was stolen, then shouldn't we think that it is reasonable to do something about it?
As someone who follows politics like someone who follows sport, I get to hear a lot of analysis from pundits and former players of the game who should know better than I. Also as someone who has been watching this game for many years and who has a pretty good grasp of the rules, I think that I have at least some understanding of the nuances of the game. If we accept at face value that the 2020 'election' was stolen, then why have I heard nobody talking about actual electoral reform? If we accept that the 'election' was stolen then you should expect that the players of the game would want to improve either the rules or the refereeing but nobody has suggested this at all.
At every point from the election of Representatives to Senators, to the appointment of Judges, to the selection of the President via the Electoral College which by definition isn't direct democracy, to the absolutely undemocratic appointment of the cabinet by the President, the United States has managed to invent a bad system of government with a bad constitution; which is then populated by bad candidates and a bad method of selecting them.
The first problem is that there is no express right to the franchise within the United States Constitution. The United States has a hyper-politicised way of reading its Constitution but for the most part it wants to return to what the intent of what a bunch of long since dead men who argued in sweaty rooms and who were openly racist, thought. I have read a lot of opinion on this and so I think that the general conclusion as applied is that as the franchise shall not be denied on account of this and that, highly factional and hyper-partisan and self-interested parties are still free to deny the franchise on account of the other. Remember, a 'right' is an ability to do an action or own a thing at law. Both Amendment XIX and XIX hint spell out upon what grounds that the franchise can not be denied but that is different in principle to expressly granting the right in the first place. You can not take an orginalist and constructionist approach to reading the United States Constitution and say that the right to the franchise expressly exists when in the first instance it was denied to people on many and several grounds. The corollary of not having an expressly existing franchise, is that it is a non-sequitur that the election can be stolen by people who didn't expressly have the right in the first place.
The second problem is that if we accept that the 2020 'election' was stolen, then we should expect to see safeguards put in place to prevent future theft of elections. That should mean setting up a proper independent and non-partisan electoral commission and removing the administration of the election from the 50 states or at very least running all 50 elections to a set of identical rules and having a proper independent and non-partisan electoral commission running proper independent and non-partisan electoral oversight.
Not once have I heard anyone say that they want elections removed from the responsibility of the states. Not once have I seen any plan put forward for that proper independent and non-partisan electoral commission. Not once have I seen any detail put forward for the independent counting, collation, and reporting of results. At very least if you have hyper-politicised and partisan politics then you should have representatives from the interested parties and candidates in the room when the votes are counted; not once have I heard anyone say that they want this.
The third problem is the physical marking and counting of ballots. If we assume that the hyper-politicised and partisan parties hate each other to the degree that the media likes to report this hatred, then that level of distrust and hatred should be the basis for physical counting and checking if necessary. If you can not trust the other party and you do not trust the system (which is evidenced by the accusation that the 2020 election was stolen) then you absolutely should not trust any kind of process that does not involve a physical marker that can be checked and rechecked. You absolutely should not trust any voting machine. In fact, you should not trust any voting machine to the point where you would even use them. Every single kind of voting machine involves some level of obfuscation; which you must assume is being used for nefarious purposes.
The only possible method of ensuring trust and confidence in the voting system is with the physical marking of ballot papers, which are firstly placed in sealed containers which themselves are not trusted and are being watched, and which are then counted in full view of every hyper-politicised and partisan self-interested party. This is quite apart from the method used to count the votes; which given that the United States tends to use the First Past The Post system (aka most votes wins( is already nonsensical.
Anything less than expressly guaranteeing the right to vote, running free, fair and independent elections, and running elections where the process can be looked upon from the outside and examined and checked and rechecked if necessary, means that any calls to suggest that the election was stolen must be taken in bad faith. For if someone wants to accuse an election process of being stolen and then suggests nothing at all to reform the process and demand that proper safeguards are put in place, which by the way might actually hinder your own chances of being elected, then we can take it as fact that they don't actually care about the process and are making said accusation that the election was stolen as a shot in a propaganda war.
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