PHOENIX, Ariz.—The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted to certify the November midterm general election results despite angry voters claiming the county mishandled the election—if not rigged it.
“It is what it is,” said District 5 board member Steve Gallardo, a Democrat, at the Nov. 28 public meeting in Phoenix.
“This election was safe, secure, and in my opinion, this election is over.”
More than 1.5 million county voters cast ballots, 290,000 on election day alone, a large percentage of them Republican.
However, an estimated 70 of the 223 county voting centers on election day reported printer malfunction that resulted in approximately 16,000 ballots that couldn’t go through the electronic tabulators.
The situation resulted in long lines of frustrated voters and election workers who instructed them to either spoil their ballots or vote in another location.
Or, they could place their ballots in a secure box for later tabulation.
County officials claimed an estimated 31 percent of the ballot printers didn’t work correctly on election day even though previous tests showed them functioning.
Resetting the printers resolved the problem, they said.
Several poll workers told The Epoch Times that the ballot rejection rate was as high as 52 percent in some locations and continued throughout the day and that some voters left without voting, amounting to “voter suppression.”
The five-member board’s vote on the canvass of the election included presentations by county Recorder Stephen Richer and Election Directors Scott Jarrett and Rey Valenzuela.
Their testimony hoped to put to rest any false claims and “misinformation” that the county mismanaged the election or that fraud was involved.
Voters who wished to speak were given 2 minutes at the podium, some arguing the board had no legal authority to limit their time to make comments.
Some more outspoken voters had to be escorted from the meeting.
Of the 35 speakers, many accused board members of preparing to certify what they considered a fraudulent election.
Others called for a delay in certification until the outcome of legal challenges from Republican candidates is known.
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Over the weekend, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office advised Maricopa County that it may have violated election law.
According to the attorney general’s office, their Elections Integrity Unit (EIU) received hundreds of substantive complaints concerning Maricopa County’s handling of the election. Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright asked the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to explain the faulty printer settings, issuance of unlawful information regarding voting “check-out” procedures, and the unlawful mixing of “Door 3” non-tabulated with tabulated ballots by next Monday. At least 17,000 voters across 60 voting locations were impacted by Election Day tabulation issues.
“Arizonans deserve a full report and accounting of the myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 General Election,” stated Wright.
According to sworn complaints received by the EIU, printer settings were fine during testing the day before Election Day. Wright asked the county to provide the attorney general’s office with a comprehensive report detailing the voting locations that experienced printer or tabulation issues, the specific issues experienced by each voting location, all issues related to the printers and tabulators that contributed to voting location problems, a log of all changes to the printer settings that includes the identification of the individuals who made the changes, the county’s standards for printer settings, the exact time when the county discovered printer settings were the cause of the widespread vote center failures, and the methods used to remedy the printer settings at each voting location.
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said that the long lines caused by the malfunctioning tabulators weren’t indicative of voter suppression. Rather, Gates said that the long lines were caused by voters’ resistance to dropping off their ballots in “Door 3” slots when the tabulators failed. Gates alluded that Republican Party leadership was to blame for voter aversion to casting a Door 3 ballot.
As the attorney general’s office noted in their letter to the county, Door 3 non-tabulated ballots were unlawfully mixed with tabulated ballots at some voting locations. According to the EIU, at least one election observer witnessed more than 1,700 Door 3 non-tabulated ballots placed in black duffle bags intended to hold tabulated ballots only.
The attorney general’s office added that the law requires the county to reconcile ballots cast against check-ins at voting locations — not at central count. Wright asked the county to provide a statement clarifying whether reconciliation occurred at the voting locations or at central count.
Confusion over whether the county reconciled ballots at voting locations prior to central count likely occurred due to statements by officials. The county made no mention of the reconciliation process when advising voters what happens to Door 3 ballots.
In a later apology to voters, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said that Door 3 ballots were retrieved by election workers at the end of the day and brought to central count. Again, Richer issued this statement without any mention of reconciliation.
Additionally, the attorney general’s office contradicted the county’s assertion that voters could cast a valid ballot after checking into another voting location.
The attorney general’s office asserted that poll workers weren’t trained on executing “check out” procedures — further contradicting county officials’ claims that this was a viable option for voters who desired to cast their ballot at another voting location after checking in to one. EIU reports reflected that voters were required to cast a provisional ballot at the secondary location since “check out” procedures weren’t possible.
The attorney general’s office contended that state law prohibits provisional ballots from being counted when a voter checks in at multiple pollbooks.
The attorney general’s office asked the county to issue a report detailing when and how poll workers were trained in “check out” procedures, the legal basis for “check out” procedures, why the county continued to encourage voters to leave voting locations despite EIU notification that “check out” procedure training wasn’t proper, and all voters provided a provisional ballot due to multiple pollbook check-ins.
The county announced on Sunday that its tabulation efforts are nearly complete. Following this, all 15 counties will complete a canvass of the votes.
***** This article was published by AZ Free News and is reproduced with permission.
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The Arizona Freedom Caucus (AFC) blasted Maricopa County Election Officials for allegedly breaking the law during this election cycle and demanded that the officials involved resign from their positions.
“After taking an absurd and unnecessary amount of time to count ballots, we are now finding Maricopa County election officials may not merely be incompetent but may also be criminals,” said AFC Chairman, State Rep. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek).
The AFC is comprised of five other State Representatives aside from Hoffman. The group said that election officials in charge of Maricopa County have “utterly, and embarrassingly, failed the people” of Arizona and that the only way forward is to “resign in shame.” Whether theissuesseen on Election Day were simple mistakes or done with ulterior motives, the AFC said that, like anyone who fails at their job, Maricopa County election officials should be fired.
The Arizona Sun Times reached out to the AFC and Maricopa County Elections Department for additional comments but did not hear back…..
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By any measure, Democrats exceeded expectations this midterm. Though listening to the triumphalism today, you’d think Joe Biden was Hannibal at Cannae. A fractured Republican Party has won the House, which means the agenda portion of Biden’s first term is effectively over (save the executive abuse).
As expected, though, the lazy Dobbs-sunk-the-GOP narrative quickly solidified on the Left. “It turns out women enjoy having human rights, and we vote,” Hillary Clinton tweeted. Dem cheerleader Joe Scarborough called it a “massive backlash.” “It will take a while to sort out exactly why Republicans did so much worse than expected,” writes Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. “But there seems little question that abortion was a big part of the story.”
Listen, if anyone had told conservatives 30 or 20 or even a year ago that the political price for overturning Roe v. Wade would mean taking back only one chamber of Congress in the subsequent midterm, they would never have believed you. So, even if the Left’s tenuous claim that Dobbs saved them in 2022 is to be believed, the price for ridding the nation of the legal and moral abomination of Roe would be well worth it.
But it is a tenuous contention.
It’s humorous that Goldberg begins her piece lamenting how she was hoodwinked into believing in a red wave by right-wing preelection wishcasting. A Politico/Morning Consult poll, she notes, had warned us “that 48 percent of respondents intended to vote for Democrats for Congress and only 43 percent for Republicans.” But the GOP ended up winning the (irrelevant) popular vote this week. Politico/Morning Consult was wrong.
It doesn’t seem like an army of enraged women and young people flooded the polls to exact revenge on the court. If CNN’s exit polls are to be believed, Democrats lost support among women in 2022 compared to the last midterm in 2018. The Associated Press/Fox News exit poll found that 52% of voters were women in 2018, and 52% of all voters in 2022 were women. It is a myth that young people came out in droves. Democrats lost support among younger voters, as well.
Beyond that, Goldberg’s column offers not a single piece of tangible, statistical evidence to back up the theory that Dobbs played a “big,” or even a minor, part in the GOP’s 2022 underperformance.
It’s true that pro-lifers lost abortion referendums, including, incomprehensibly, one in Montana that would have compelled medical care for “infants born alive.” It’s also true that numerous Republican candidates are either unable or frightened to articulate coherent pro-life views. These are problems for Republicans.
On the other hand, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Brian Kemp (in a state where the Senate race is in a runoff) all signed heartbeat bills and easily won reelection. John Fetterman might have beaten a dubious carpetbagging conservative in Dr. Mehmet Oz, but pro-life Republicans J.D. Vance and Mike Lee had no problem.
Notice that every Republican loss is chalked up to abortion by the media, the reverse is not. In Iowa, Cindy Axne, an incumbent who made abortion the issue of her candidacy—pledging to pass a national bill legalizing abortion from conception to birth—was beaten by a strongly pro-life Zach Nunn. In Virginia, incumbent Elaine Luria, who ran endless commercials on the abortion issue, fell to pro-life nurse practitioner Jen Kiggans.
None of this is to contend that there aren’t people moved on the abortion issue. It mattered in 2020 and 2018, as well. Unmarried women might now be Democrats’ most reliable demographic, but they were already headed in that direction. Nor is it to say Republicans are winning the issue nationally.
Conversely, we have no idea what the 2022 midterm environment would have looked like had the Supreme Court let Roe stand. It may well have depressed social conservative turnout. Elections are complicated and regionally unique. But there is little evidence that Dobbs produced a political earthquake or even that it changed very much at all.
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What happened on Tuesday was not, by any measure, terribly shocking. The ambitious red wave was a much more realistic red ripple; Republicans will win the House while the Senate will likely be split; the narrow races are yet to be decided (this is apparently now the norm in American politics, vindicating an election prediction from 2020); and once again, the first Tuesday in November marked a slight shift, rather than an about-face, from the condition of electoral politics the year prior.
But while the electoral results will apparently take days—weeks, even, in the case of Georgia—there was one question on the ballot that has already been clearly decided. Abortion, and all its sundry offshoots, will retain protected status in the United States.
Five key ballot proposals on abortion were decided Tuesday night. California, Vermont, Montana, Kentucky, and Michigan all weighed in favor of fewer limits on abortion, with even red Kentucky knocking down a proposal to specify that the state constitution does not protect a right to abortion. Montana narrowly declined to recognize the rights, including the right to medical care, of a child born from a partial or botched abortion. Vermont’s Prop. 5 made it the first state in the Union to enshrine a fundamental right to an abortion in its state constitution, beating California only by a few hours. The constitution of the state of California, too, will now read that “the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom…which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion.” But Michigan’s proposal may just be the most extreme.
Proposal 3, as previously reported, goes beyond enshrining a right to abortion in the state constitution, though it certainly does that. In addition to establishing rights to all manner of “reproductive freedom,” including sterilization, the bill also does away with parental consent for minors in any such reproductive decisions. That opens the door to some very bleak possibilities, like the underage rape victim being coerced to abort her baby to provide cover for her abuser; or the teenaged, gender-confused girl being given hormone therapy behind her parents’ backs, at the permanent cost of her fertility. The proposal was passed by a margin of 13 percentage points at the time of this writing, and would require three-fourths of both chambers of the Michigan state legislature, which just flipped blue, to vote to overturn it. Or, of course, another ballot proposal. Or a federal abortion ban.
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times published a piece describing the Michigan proposal and how it was shaping the gubernatorial contest between Gretchen Whitmer and Tudor Dixon. (I made a similar observation a few weeks back.) The Times’opening interviewee, a woman whose yard was pockmarked with campaign signs for Republican names all the way down the ballot, told the reporter she would vote in favor of Prop. 3, despite her Republican bona fides, because “I’m my own person.”
Clearly, she was not alone. More people, about 100,000 more, voted for the losing Republican candidate, Dixon, than against the proposal. Even more telling were the results in Kentucky, which spans both the Rust Belt and the Bible Belt, and where the measure to restrict abortionfailedby 6 percentage points. This is the same state that went for Trump by 62 percent to Biden’s 36 percent in 2020. In many ways, places like Kentucky are the heart of the new right and its voter base—they produced J.D. Vance, after all. But we should not misunderstand what this means.
As commentator Aaron Renn pointed out in his newsletter on Wednesday, the majority of the voting public seems to want abortion to be legal. This is especially true for working class Americans, who comprise a large swath of voters in both Michigan and Kentucky. I am not the first to point out, of course, how many of these blue collar Democrats now vote Republican—in part due to Trump, but also as a result of the leftward shift of the Democratic Party. The voters haven’t moved much, but the parties have.
That means Republicans who prioritize working class concerns are winning again (see: Vance), but it also means that the Evangelical vote, which has never been as significant as folks want to believe, is less relevant than ever. Many Evangelicals have gone left in recent decades, perceiving empathy in the progressive agenda. Those who have stuck with the right often tend to emphasize genuine, if secondary, political concerns (election fraud, Covid policies, critical race theory) over religious ones (the sanctity of life).
It used to be that you could not run in a red state without being loudly opposed to abortion, because they were so reliably pro-life. This is still true in some states, such as my home state of Tennessee. But for many of the winning Republicans on Tuesday, opposition to abortion was not the deciding factor. In some cases, it may even have been a hindrance. Meanwhile, the libertarian tendency of the working class voter led him to prefer fewer restrictions on abortion, purely for the sake of keeping the government out of as much of his personal life as possible—the state is for roads, healthcare, jobs, not morality.
Republicans have secured the working class vote, but it is not the culturally Christian one. The waning influence of the pro-life movement in the Republican party is evidence of this: success at the judicial level seems to have coincided rather ironically with the failure of the popular movement. This may be the fault of the movement’s organizers, or it may just be a reflection on much broader cultural changes in America, tectonic shifts that no organization could have reasonably stopped.
But the culture war without Christianity is a rudderless ship. The success of politicians like Ron DeSantis in Florida means little if in the same breath the American people have said they will abide infanticide, or would rather keep their options open than commit to protecting innocent lives. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade to send the decision on life back to the states, and the states chose death.
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Our California governor Gallivanting Gavin has his eyes on running for President, assuming the octogenarian in the White House bows out. Gavin will be telling America what a wonderful job he has done here in California to deserve being promoted to ruling over all fifty states. We should review the sparkling aspects these days of being a Californian.
California ranks first in many ways. For example, we have the highest gas prices in the country. We unfortunately have fallen behind Hawaii and come in at number two for having the highest energy prices in the country. Again, we are falling behind in another key area. We come in at #3 for the highest cost of living, falling behind Hawaii and New York. We are really slumping when it comes to overall tax rates ranking just #3. That is despite ranking first for individual tax rates. We are all confident that in his second term as governor, Gallivanting Gavin will strive to get us back to being number one in all these categories.
And then there is our poverty rate. Mississippi comes in at the top with the highest. That is before you adjust for the cost of living. California ranks 26th when you just look at the poverty figures. When adjusted for the cost of living, we then climb back to first place. Paying for all that expensive stuff really hurts the people at the lower end of the economic ladder.
These are all things we can be proud of as Californians. That is why our elected officials are so willing to pay for others with our tax dollars. Here Gallivanting Gavin is leading the way.
You never hear about California shipping illegal aliens to other states. We welcome all of them. We provide them with every benefit as if they were here legally and paying taxes. We give them driver’s licenses to keep us safe on the roads. But we are thoughtful by not requiring them to have insurance if they are driving like other Californians because that would be too much to ask of these people who are facing inordinate challenges.
But we are not without our challenges. They are kind of minor: water and power. We are tough Californians, and we are willing to sacrifice for the environment. And for others.
As you may know, we just asked residents to significantly cut back their personal water usage. After all, the residents use 10% of all the water in California – that is 38.5 million of us. 40% of the water is used for commercial and farming purposes. We would not want to cut back on that. That is what pays for all of what our government provides. The remaining 50% goes out to sea but protects the fish. It would be totally unreasonable to have a cut there because you know the snail darters need their water.
Gallivanting Gavin promised that he would build more reservoirs, but for the past forty years, we have done nothing while our population soared by 14 million (not counting all the illegals). Gavin even endorsed the building of desalination plants. Forget the fact that the California Coastal Commission voted 7-0 to kill one days later; Gavin is on the job.
How about that power stuff? Gavin is leading us. He is leading us by eliminating any devices that use that nasty natural gas. We are properly ignoring that natural gas replacing coal has cut our national output of CO2 by 30% even while the economy grew 28%. We in California only need windmills and solar power. And thankfully we have a deal with our neighboring states to buy power from them — if they do not need it themselves. He did have us avoid a blackout during a recent heatwave except for limited areas. That is because we all raised our thermostats to 78 degrees. Someone did ask why Arizona and Texas had similar heatwaves and were fine. Gavin answered them with billboards about abortion.
Our glorious Governor Gavin vetoed 169 bills sent to him by the California Legislature. What a brave leader he is. We are just left to figure out what laws we are breaking with the 997 bills he signed. What is a Californian to do?
Considering all this, we Californians are generous people. We welcome all illegal aliens. We also welcome all homeless people; or, as Gavin calls them – “unhoused.” We properly disregard that roughly 50% of them come to California from elsewhere not because of “the weather,” but because of the benefits, we provide them. Who else would build them living units costing $500,000 each to help them make their transition back to a normal life? We do not care if they came here from Nebraska; they are all Californians now.
Because of our generosity, our Governor has instituted two new things we will pay for to help people from other states or nations. Women (yes, women) who want to get an abortion will be paid to come to California and have the service provided by the residents of Californian. We approved unfettered abortion up to the day of birth for any woman wanting an abortion for any reason. Fifteen weeks is not good enough and forget those nasty pictures of those things in the womb. We have broad shoulders and can carry the load.
Gallivanting Gavin wants to add even more new humane services. That is the right of anyone of any age to receive transgender medical services. Ten-year-olds need to be protected from parents who have no clue what their child is going through with their sexual identity. When our doctors are not busy doing triage for gunshot wounds in emergency rooms, they can work on gender transformation surgery.
A recent report from the Hoover Institute cited that 352 companies moved their headquarters from California between 2018 and 2021. They cited the following challenges: burdensome overtime work rules, litigation risk, high costs for labor and worker’s compensation insurance, oppressive taxes, surging electricity rates, a permitting morass, diminishing quality of life, lousy public schools, and exorbitant housing costs.
And there are our elections. You get to vote for a month and find out a month later who won. Someone who relocated to another state was asked a real question – “Since you were paying premium prices for government in California did you get premium services.” I am not sure whether he answered with an emphatic no or just a belly laugh. Try calling a tax agency in another state and you will hear a friendly voice. In California, after waiting for hours after calling multiple times, you will get someone who speaks broken English.
Who would question Gallivanting Gavin telling Governors of other states how to do things? Of course, he should run for president if Biden does not. Why would he not when he can bring California values and policies to everyone? And remember we have really nice weather.
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‘This was a horrible thing to experience. Poll workers conveyed a shocking lack of competence — it actually looked like willful incompetence,’ a Maricopa poll observer said.
After it trained upwards of 50,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and other roles for ongoing citizen engagement in the election process over the year leading up to the 2022 midterms, the Election Integrity Network sent out a survey to its on-the-ground volunteers following Election Day to gauge how things went.
The responses from election workers in key battleground districts and states around the country showed a mostly calm election cycle compared to 2020, with one massive and overwhelming exception. In Maricopa County, Arizona, election workers were appalled and aghast at how things had been run there.
“As soon as we sent the survey out, we were flooded with responses showing that they had no confidence in how the election had been run there,” Executive Director of the Election Integrity Network Marshall Yates told The Federalist.
According to Yates, unlike the rest of the country, where survey respondents espoused general confidence in their respective elections, the responses from Arizona were overwhelming, with Maricopa poll watchers and poll workers saying they had “zero” confidence in the election.
Maricopa, which is home to almost 62 percent of Arizona’s 7.2 million people, was already in the news on Election Day for its hours-long lines and broken machines. After its close and contentious 2020 election, Maricopa County officials refused to cooperate with an audit of the election by state senators and dismissed concerns about how it conducts elections. This year, it took the county just under two full weeks to count ballots.
Election Day workers flooded the survey response team with stories of incompetence, chaos, and mismanagement that resulted in the disenfranchisement of voters.
“The printers were not properly calibrated so the tabulators did not read the ballots and were rejected. Many voters left because of the delays and either did not vote or had to go to other vote centers to vote,” one Maricopa poll observer reported. “Some voters did not want to place rejected ballot into misreads box. Some voting centers may have mixed tabulated ballots with misreads.”
“This was a horrible thing to experience. Poll workers conveyed a shocking lack of competence — it actually looked like willful incompetence,” another said.
Unfortunately, these accounts are among many reported incidents of failed election administration seen throughout Maricopa on Election Day and in the days following. From finicky ballot tabulator machines to probable violations of state law, the seemingly endless slew of problems witnessed by Maricopa residents was a clearcut example of how not to run an election.
A County Filled with Chaos
Unlike most states, where citizens vote at their local neighborhood-based precinct, Arizona allows for its counties to adopt a vote center model, where voters are permitted to cast their ballots at any center within their voting jurisdiction, regardless of their address. Upon arriving at one of these centers, Maricopa voters check in by providing their state-approved ID, at which point a ballot-on-demand printer produces a ballot that is filled out by the voter and run through a vote tabulation machine.
As county election officials have admitted, however, this is not the process experienced by thousands of Maricopa voters on Election Day, when printers with misconfigured settings in at least 70 of Maricopa’s 223 voting locations printed ballots that were rejected by many of the center’s vote tabulator machines.
“The vote center model failed most spectacularly because it relies on this ballot-on-demand printer model, and you can’t pre-order paper ballots and have them ready for voters ahead of time,” Gina Swoboda, executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation, told The Federalist. “It’s just a bad system. It does not function well in Maricopa County and leads us to be exposed to a complete failure of the system on Election Day.”
While Maricopa Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates told voters experiencing difficulties that they were permitted to leave and cast their ballot at a different voting center, the unfamiliarity among voters and election workers with the official “check out” procedures led to more pandemonium. According to the Arizona attorney general’s office, many of the voters who left their original vote center without properly checking out were told upon arriving at another location that the county’s e-Pollbook system had marked them as having already voted.
Maricopa voters were furthermore told by Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer that they had the option of placing their non-tabulated ballot in a bin called “Door 3,” which would be taken to the county’s central counting center after polls closed to be processed. Maricopa election officials, however, allegedly botched segregating, transporting, and tabulating the ballots, leading to a potential violation of state law and some of the estimated 17,000 “Door 3” ballots getting mixed with ballots already tabulated.
How Are Republicans Responding?
On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee (RNC), along with GOP attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh, whose close race is headed to a recount, filed a lawsuit in Maricopa’s Superior Court against his Democrat opponent Kris Mayes, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, and the county recorders and board of supervisors of Arizona’s 15 counties, alleging that “erroneous” vote counts and misconduct by Maricopa election officials resulted in the disenfranchisement of Arizona voters.
“The [2022] election … was afflicted with certain errors and inaccuracies in the management of some polling place operations, and in the processing and tabulation of some ballots. The cumulative effect of these mistakes is material to the race for Arizona Attorney General, where the candidates are separated by just 510 votes,” the suit reads. “Immediate judicial intervention is necessary to secure the accuracy of the results of the November 8, 2022 general election.”
In their filing, Hamadeh and the RNC asked the court to order Maricopa to “process and tabulate all provisional ballots and early ballots submitted by qualified electors who had ‘checked in’ at a voting center but did not cast a regular ballot” on Election Day. Moreover, the plaintiffs requested that an injunction be issued to prohibit or nullify any attempts to certify the results of the attorney general race.
While speaking with The Federalist, an RNC representative said the group is continuing to work with Hamadeh’s campaign in gathering affidavits and other facts required to hold Maricopa election officials accountable for their mismanagement of the 2022 general election.
The lawsuit comes days after Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright sent a letter to Maricopa election officials demanding they submit a full report answering for their incompetent election administration on or before Nov. 28, when counties must send their official canvass to the secretary of state for certification. The request has since prompted Cochise and Mohave Counties to delay their respective election certifications until the 28th.
Arizona Senate Republicans have requested similar information, with state Sen. Kelly Townsend issuing a subpoena to Maricopa’s board of supervisors on Tuesday, seeking records and explanations over the county’s handling of the 2022 general election.
Arizona’s Election Results Deserve Scrutiny
Coupled with the tendency among Republican voters to cast their ballots on Election Day, the incredible mismanagement by Maricopa election officials potentially disenfranchised enough voters to swing the results of some of Arizona’s most contested elections.
In addition to the attorney general’s race, the gubernatorial contest between Hobbs — who oversaw the conduction of her own election — and Republican Kari Lake was also relatively close, with Hobbs beating Lake by roughly 17,000 votes.
Try as they might to downplay their administrative failures, Gates and Richer can’t hide the effect Maricopa’s abysmal voting problems had on the state’s elections. Even 84 percent of surveyed Maricopa election observers and workers reported they are “not at all confident” that Arizona’s election results are “completely accurate and honest.”
“Printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour-long lines and even longer, and confusing instructions given by election officials made this Election Day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history,” said Lake in a video recently posted to Twitter. “The 2022 general election in Arizona was botched and broken beyond repair. … This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. This is about our sacred right to vote; a right that many voters were sadly deprived of on November 8th.”
“I will continue fighting until we restore confidence and faith in our elections,” she added.
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Election integrity is a movement that has grown out of evidence that our election system is at times dishonest and criminal, often rigged, and incompetent. As such, continued problems undermine public confidence in our electoral system.
It is most interesting that those that attack the election integrity movement do so right in the face of evidence that refutes their own arguments. In Arizona for example, many attacked Kari Lake as “an election denier”, only to see her apparently lose in a screwed-up and botched election that will taint the results and fill the courts for years.
Election denier has become a common but not easily defined term. No one is denying an election, they are questioning the results. It is applied selectively. Note the man purported to take the place of Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries has denied the validity of previous elections.
So he can become Minority Leader in the House, but Kari Lake should not be governor?
But one need not be “an election denier” to reasonably argue that for example, Arizona’s recent election cycle was so full of mistakes and problems, that the net result is to undermine public confidence in our election system. This appears self-evident. Our state has made an international spectacle of itself in both the 2020 and 2022 elections and we seem no closer to solving our issues than we did before.
What if election results are altered by just sheer incompetence?
Let’s take just a moment to define our terms more precisely. When one suggests elections are “stolen” it means illegality has taken place. To steal is to violate the law by taking property from its rightful owner. To steal an election is to use illegal means to take an election that rightfully belongs to someone else. Examples of illegal behavior are voting twice, voting in the place of someone else, voting using the name of a deceased person, paying money for a vote, voting unregistered or as an illegal alien, falsifying voter records, changing election laws by administrative fiat instead of through the legislature, miscounting ballots, counterfeiting ballots, and violations of the chain of custody of ballots. This is not an exhaustive list of all possible violations, but it covers the bulk of the problems.
To date, the evidence that elections are stolen has not been strong enough to sway decisively public opinion. Some of the evidence is circumstantial but still compelling, such as the use of cell phone data in the movie 2000 Mules. To be sure, there have been some low-level prosecutions for example in Yuma Country, but courts have been reluctant to inject themselves into the fray, either because of the lack of persuasive evidence or lack of courage.
In many cases, judges are elected themselves and thus beholden to the political power structure. Indeed, those holding elected legislative positions, those holding elected executive positions, and those holding judicial elective positions (that would include judges appointed by political authorities), all live in the political ecosystem. Therefore, it is hard to find any truly independent authority willing to investigate and prosecute violations of election law.
Election rigging means manipulating the rules of the game in such a manner as to create an outcome favorable to one side. This may include some violations of law, ethics, or just rules of fair play.
We think there is more evidence of rigging than stealing, but we remain open to the latter. In a way, that is not good. Stealing can be dealt with but rigging is often legal.
For example, if the press is overwhelmingly in favor of one party, it might be considered an “in kind” contribution and hence a legal violation. But that is hard to prove and our side does it too. Since most journalists come from university training, they mostly have the same worldview and opinions, withno conspiracy needed to coordinate their activities. They pretty much act like fish in a school, turning and weaving almost without the necessity of command. It is intellectually instinctual for them to behave this way. This certainly is a violation of journalistic ethics, but given the low level of journalistic ethics, and really no sanctions for ethical violations, the press can and does put its massive thumb on the scale to create a favorable outcome. It does so constantly and without any guilt or penalty.
Likewise, social media companies can influence elective outcomes, such as Search Engine Manipulation Effect. For example, if Google arranged news stories so that when one searches for information about say Kari Lake, the first 10 articles or so are negative, the neophyte researcher will conclude she is a fiend of some kind because that is what is sorted to be read. No law was violated here because Google is a private company that develops its own algorithms.
About the only remedy is an attempt to break up its monopoly status but conservatives, being free market types, are hesitant to do that. Thus, we are trapped by our own ideology, and attempts to violate beliefs in the free market may come back to haunt us in other areas if we press too hard on the issue.
One of the most vulnerable of the “rigging” techniques might be the violation of using tax-free foundations for partisan political efforts. And, direct corporate payments (Zuck bucks) to election officials have been outlawed in a number of states.
When Twitter or Instagram takes down conservative opinions and bans them outright or shadow bans opinions, of course, it is putting its thumbs, elbows, and kneecaps on the electoral scale. There is a decent argument that these companies should be treated as common carriers like phone companies. Would any of us tolerate having a phone conversation we might be having with a friend be terminated because the phone company listening in, found the conversation inappropriate by some standard?
In most areas of rigging, there is not much for us to do but found our own organizations and means of communication. In fact, The Prickly Pear was formed precisely for this reason. We would love to see more independent, citizen-driven journalism. This is not a job to be left to the young, often university-brainwashed, activists. Journalistic ethics have always been tenuous in American history, and competition is the only real answer.
Competition is a better way to handle the issue and that is what is so exciting about what Elon Musk is doing at Twitter. However, it is frightening in a sense, that our system became so closed and captured it required a renegade billionaire to set it straight. How many liberty-loving billionaires are there?
Perhaps the most egregious area where rigging takes place is the use of public, and taxpayer money, or forcibly extracted union dues, to be used in a partisan fashion. It is just not right or just to take money by force from someone, says the Supreme Court, and use those funds to hammer the exploited over the head with their own money.
Even worse, is the direct use of taxpayer money by government agencies seeking to influence election results. Recent examples abound, such as the use of money by the FBI to purchase dirt on a Presidential candidate, leak stories to the press, and spy on them and their campaign. This action likely crossed the line from “rigging” into “stealing”, because it may be illegal. If not, a statutory remedy is needed.
Or, recent events showing our government agencies colluded with social media, to promote one idea of “truth” and suppress any other view of “truth.” Even the State Department has become involved in this process as well as other Federal agencies that supposedly are assisting in voter turnout. Of course, all their efforts are to turn out one side.
Government should be neutral in the election process.
As to competence, just look at the mess in our own state. With all kinds of time to prepare, machines could not count, printers could not print, ballots could not be received, and people had to wait hours in line, almost exclusively in heavily Republican precincts. Whether intended or not, this is voter suppression. It is amazing that the incompetence was not evenly distributed, but concentrated in Republican precincts.
People have children to pick up, and jobs to report to and do not have unlimited time to run around town attempting to find a precinct where equipment is functioning properly. It really is voter suppression as many have sworn they could not vote.
And how about checking signatures? Against what standard are they checking? These are mostly volunteers anyway doing this, or poorly trained bureaucrats. They are not forensic experts in handwriting. And besides, have you noticed the rather marked difference in your signature today and how it appeared 20 or 30, or 50 years ago? Signatures change.
Far better to go back to what worked. End mail-in balloting except in the case of special cases such as service members on overseas assignments and those so disabled they cannot physically get to the polls. Give people the day off from work, and we all vote on the same day. Show up at the polls with a government-issued photo ID, just as anyone is required to do at the airport. A quick glance can determine who you are, just as if you are taking a flight, booking a room, or doing anything else normal people do.
Very early on in our history as a publication, we supported Stephen Richer, who vowed to “make the Country Recorder’s office boring again”. To our chagrin, and most Republicans, he not only has failed miserably at the technical execution of his job, but he has involved himself unnecessarily in partisan inter-party squabbles that are not part of his job description. What a disappointment he is. The same can be said for Bill Gates and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Their incompetence has made an international spectacle out of Arizona.
And as to Kati Hobbs, supervising a contested election to which she herself is a party, seems like a clear conflict of interest. When there is a clear conflict of interest, a declaration to remain fair is not sufficient. That would not work if you were a trustee or a judge. If you have a conflict, recuse yourself.
Arizona has two years to get its act together before 2024. Trying to fix our mail-in ballot system has not worked. We should go back to what works, voting in person at a local precinct.
It may be true that mail-in balloting is so entrenched in Arizona, that given narrow margins in the legislature, hopes to revamp the system are chimerical. If so, Republicans need to start training shops now for how we too can game the system like the Democrats.
As to the other problems, prosecution of voting crimes should no longer be in the backwater of our legal system, and violations of tax codes by tax-free advocacy foundations need to stop.
In addition, politically partisan efforts by government departments need to stop.
Republicans keep losing either because of the process or the message. We need to get much better at both if we expect to win.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-11-28 01:30:002022-11-28 01:30:00Arizona – A Stolen, Rigged, and Incompetent Electoral System
Arizona ballots that couldn’t be counted due to broken machines were mingled in some locations with already tabulated ballots, according to the Elections Integrity Unit of Arizona’s attorney general’s office. State officials listed numerous ways Maricopa County, Arizona, election officials failed to properly segregate, count, tabulate, tally, and transport ballots during the midterm 2022 elections, which likely resulted in significant disenfranchisement of Election Day voters.
In a letter sent to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office by Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright, the Elections Integrity Unit of Arizona’s attorney general’s office notified the county that they had “received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election” and as a result, are demanding Maricopa County election officials provide answers for the chaos, confusion, and mismanagement of the voting process in a report to be submitted on or before Nov. 28, when Maricopa must send its official canvass to the secretary of state for certification.
The complications raised in the letter include issues with the configuration settings of ballot-on-demand printers at 60-plus voting locations in the county, “which appeared to have resulted in ballots that were unable to be read by on-site ballot tabulator.” In sworn statements provided to the attorney general’s office, numerous Maricopa election workers claimed that the printers in question experienced no problems when tested the day before the election on Nov. 7.
As instructed by Maricopa election officials, voters whose ballot wouldn’t tabulate correctly were to place their ballots in a bin called “Door 3.” Despite claims from Maricopa Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer that the “Door 3” ballots would be tabulated at a central tabulation location after polls closed on Election Day, the county seemingly failed to adhere to state law when transporting and counting the ballots.
“Maricopa County appears to have failed to adhere to the statutory guidelines in segregating, counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting the ‘Door 3’ ballots,” Wright wrote. “In fact, Maricopa County has admitted that in some voting locations, ‘Door 3’ non-tabulated ballots were commingled with tabulated ballots at the voting location.”
“Further, we have received a sworn complaint from an election observer indicating that more than 1700 ‘Door 3’ non-tabulated ballots from one voting location were placed in black duffle bags that were intended to be used for tabulated ballots,” she added.
Also included in the letter are claims that election workers and voters had problems with “check out” procedures, wherein voters trying to “check out” of a voting location due to the ballot printer problems were “having difficulties” doing so. Many of the voters who left to cast their ballots at another voting center in the county reported having to cast a provisional ballot, as the “e-Pollbooks” system utilized by Maricopa “maintained the voter had [already] cast a ballot in the original voting location.”
The reported issues and sworn allegations raised in Wright’s letter are not the only documented concerns over Maricopa’s 2022 election misadministration. In a report released by the Election Integrity Network, election workers and poll observers alike reported experiencing widespread chaos on the day of and those following the election, with many pointing to faulty vote tabulator machines and a lack of an effective response from Maricopa election leaders.
“Tabulators would not scan ballots on the first try or many tries. Voters either spoiled their ballot and tried again or drop the unscanned ballot in box 3. … Or some people just gave up and left. 40 % of the ballots would not scan properly,” a poll observer report from Nov. 15 said.
“Tabulators aren’t working. There was literally chaos in the poll. Many voters left without voting,” another reported the same day.
According to a poll taken by the group, 84 percent of surveyed Maricopa poll watchers, election workers, and other volunteers said that they were “not at all confident” that Arizona’s election results are “completely accurate and honest.” In another survey question, 94 percent said that their biggest concern with Maricopa’s election administration was the “voting technology.”
In the weeks following the election — which was overseen by Arizona Secretary of State and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs — Gates has regularly attempted to normalize Maricopa’s delayed election results and downplay the apparent disenfranchisement of voters on Election Day. In a recent video posted to Maricopa County’s Twitter account, for instance, Gates dismissed claims that the locality’s tabulator issues constituted “voter suppression,” while ambiguously adding that “we know what voter suppression looks like in our country.”
“The inconvenience and the lines that people experienced were unfortunate,” he said. “But the fact is, every voter had the opportunity to cast a vote on Election Day.”
Maricopa infamously resisted the forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election overseen by Republicans in the Arizona State Senate that was released last year.
Despite his attempts to dump cold water on the justified anger of Maricopa voters, the impact of the county’s election administration failures throughout the 2022 elections cannot be overstated, especially given the close nature of the state’s 2022 races. While votes are still being tabulated in Maricopa as of this article’s publication, GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake currently trails Democrat Katie Hobbs by roughly 17,000 votes. The state’s contest for attorney general is even closer, with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abraham Hamadeh by less than 900 votes.
As the second-largest voting district in the country, Maricopa County is where over 60 percent of Arizona’s population currently resides. Withat least 20 percentof voting locations experiencing tabulator issues and Republican-leaning voters more likely to vote on Election Day, the misadministration of Maricopa’s elections could have disenfranchised enough voters to swing the results of either one of these elections.
***** This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-11-28 01:29:002022-11-28 01:29:00Arizona AG Demands Maricopa Officials Answer For Reportedly Mixing Counted And Uncounted Ballots
Conservatives blasted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday for comments he made supporting a path to citizenship for the nation’s illegal immigrant population.
The pro-abortion Democrat lamented the shortage of workers in the U.S. and pointed out the U.S. population is “not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to.”
He argued the “only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants, the DREAMers and all of them, because our ultimate goal is to help the DREAMers, but get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here.”
In addition to pointing out the 11 million number is severely outdated, conservatives reminded Schumer that the U.S. may not have this problem if Democrats didn’t push abortion so ardently.
But there’s another major problem with Schumer’s comments. He appears to confirm the Great Replacement Theory, or the idea that there’s a deliberate attempt to replace Americans with immigrants. The notion is denounced as a conspiracy, but only when conservatives talk about it.
“You were labeled a crazy person if you suggested that there were Democrats who in fact are seeking to change the demographic of the electorate to promote particular purposes,” Ben Shapiro noted. “Chuck Schumer…just said it out loud yesterday. It’s kind of amazing.”…..
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-11-28 01:28:002022-11-28 01:28:00It Sure Looks Like Schumer Just Confirmed a ‘Far Right Conspiracy Theory’
The Maricopa County Election was “materially afflicted with certain errors and inaccuracies in the management of some polling place operations and in the processing and tabulation of some ballots,” according to Abe Hamadeh’s lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Nov. 22. Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for Arizona Attorney General, lists many of the procedural and machine-related issuesdetailedin alettersent by Arizona’s Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright on Nov. 19. His allegations also parallel many of the same eyewitness accounts being reported by UncoverDC and the Kari Lake campaign in a lawsuit of her own. Lake says this is not her “main lawsuit,” but she wants answers from Maricopa County. Hamadeh and the RNC seek to “judicially remedy” the canvassed returns to more accurately reflect “the will of the electorate.”
Hamadeh clarifies he is not “by this lawsuit, alleging any fraud, manipulation other intentional wrongdoing that would impugn the outcomes of the Nov. 8, 2022, general election.” With the votes allegedly fully counted and tabulated, Hamadeh and his opponent Kris Mayes are currently separated by “just 510 votes out of more than 2.5 million ballots cast—a margin of two-one hundredths of one percent (0.02%).” Due to the slim margin, an automatic recount of the race has already been triggered.
By almost all accounts, the Maricopa County election was plagued with confusion about rules, errors by poll workers, abnormally long waits, printer and tabulator malfunctions, and improper chain of custody—especially concerning “Door #3” (Door 3) ballots. Allegedly over 62 percent of the voting centers experienced significant problems, according to a summary written by roving attorney Mark Sonnenklar. Contrary to public statements from Chairman Gates, who said the problem was more limited in scope, tabulators rejected ballots all day long at many vote centers. In some cases, ballots were rejected at rates of 100 percent at the “initial insertion of the ballot.” Sonnenklar observed “on average a failure rate of 25% to 40%…..
John Lott, Jr. has done an interesting study of how often armed citizens like ourselves intervene to stop mass shooters. Bottom line: The rate of successful intervention is a lot more than FBI reporting says it is, which brings up more uncomfortable questions about the agency’s political bias.
Dr. John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) has produced a report called Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021, and Lott’s heavily documented work indicates that the FBI massively undercounted cases of defensive firearm use in the United States by ordinary citizens. The FBI reported that armed citizens thwarted 4.4% of active shooter incidents, while the CPRC found 34.4%.
Why the disparity? Well, from my chair, I would be surprised if the FBI didn’t misreport these figures. Reason? It is in the agency’s political interest to downplay how often armed civilians stop shootings. FBI stats give cover to anti-gun media to diminish how concealed carriers function on-site as the real first responders. Take the case of 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, who shot a murderer who had already killed three people at a Greenwood, Indiana, mall on July 17. If you’ll recall, Dicken stopped the mall shooter in less than 15 seconds. Dicken’s proficiency inspired the development of the Dicken Drill, which is firing 10 rounds in 15 seconds at a USPSA target at 40 yards, and getting eight hits anywhere on the target. Try it, and see how hard it is.
But Dicken was not hailed by the coastal media as a bona fide hero for his actions that day. He was a “hero,” according to CNN, with skeptical quotes around the description. More broadly, much of the immediate news coverage used FBI-approved statistics to assert that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers: “Rare in the U.S. for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander” (Associated Press); “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting” (Washington Post); and “After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence” (New York Times).
So, Dr. Lott’s reporting that concealed-carrying civilians stop crimes at a rate eight times the FBI’s number is a problem because the bias presents a distorted view of the world and hides real, effective solutions.
Lott himself is charitable, saying that the FBI’s vastly underreported data are likely due to misclassified shootings and overlooked incidents. Lott also explains that many shootings in gun-free zones, such as schools, cannot be stopped by civilian protectors because the law prohibits civilians from carrying in schools. If the FBI data on civilian stoppages of mass shooters were more accurate, there might exist the political will to offer enhanced carry licenses to people who need to protect themselves and their loved ones every day.
*****
This article was published by Gun-Tests and is reproduced with permission granted by the author.
THE D.C. NARRATIVE AGAINST TRUMP ISN’T RESONATING IN THE COUNTRY
A new Rasmussen poll sponsored by The National Pulse has revealed that self-identifying conservatives and Republicans blame the party’s institutional leadership – Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, and Ronna McDaniel – far more than they blame presidential front runner President Donald J. Trump for the party’s underperformance in America’s recent mid term elections.
But ordinary, likely voters appear to be rejecting what the GOP and their bankrollers are selling. According to the latest data by Rasmussen, just 16 percent of conservative voters blamed individual candidates, and 20 percent blamed Donald Trump. More than double those who blamed Trump – 43 percent of conservative voters – blamed Republican leadership…..
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-11-27 01:28:002022-11-27 01:28:00Poll Reveals Conservatives Blame GOP ‘McLeadership’, Not Donald Trump, for Mid Term Disappointment.
Senator-elect John Fetterman (D., Pa.) disavowed “dirty money” from corporate interests in his Senate campaign. Crypto scam artist Sam Bankman-Fried was an apparent exception, according to campaign finance records.
Web3 Forward, a pro-crypto super PAC funded heavily by Bankman-Fried, spent more than $210,000 on ads portraying Fetterman as a blue-collar hero who would not “get schmoozed by lobbyists,” the New York Timesreported. Bankman-Fried, his crypto firm FTX, and one of his cofoundersgavenearly $4.1 million to GMI PAC, another tech-oriented group that is the sole funder of Web3 Forward.
Bankman-Fried’s support for Fetterman undercuts the Democrat’s campaign trail pledge to shun corporate campaign donations. “No dirty money. No corporate PACs,” Fettermantweetedon May 12, days after the Web3 ads ran supporting him.
According to the Times, Web3 Forward launched the pro-Fetterman ads two months after he expressed support for cryptocurrencies in response to Web3’s candidate questionnaire.
“Need nothing further from Team Fetterman. Thrilled he is pro crypto,” a consultant for Web3 Forward wrote to a Fetterman ally, according to the Times.
Fetterman was far from the only Democrat to benefit from Bankman-Fried’s support. In 2020, Bankman-Fried contributed $5 million to Future Forward, a committee that supported President Joe Biden. He gave around $40 million to Democratic committees and congressional candidates during this election cycle. The entrepreneur and his associates also gave more than $300,000 in support for nine members of the House Financial Services Committee, which is poised to investigate FTX’s collapse, the Washington Free Beaconreported. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department are reportedly investigating whether FTX mishandled customer funds…..
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-11-27 01:26:002022-11-27 01:26:00John Fetterman Disavowed ‘Dirty’ Corporate Money. Then Came Sam Bankman-Fried.
Bibi, of course, is Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving Premier in Israel’s history.
This almost 700-page volume (Bibi: My Story) covers his incredible career as well as many interesting historic takes on Israel, foreign policy, US relations, US political figures, and the history of his remarkable family. If you have an interest in history and current affairs, it is a must-read.
Born in 1949, Bibi grew up in both Israel and America.
His father was a noted historian and a specialist in the Spanish Inquisition. He was an early Zionist working on the founding of the state of Israel.
Zionism had a dominant socialist streak in it, but the Netanyahu family came from the more conservative minority Jabotinsky wing. This was reflected early in the divide among the armed revolutionaries with the socialists largely in the Haganah and the conservatives in the Irgun.
Despite the early leadership being mostly from the socialist wing, Bibi’s father was selected to go to the United States to help form public opinion. The senior Netanyahu felt America, not Britain, was the rising power, and hence public opinion in the US must be altered before politicians would pay attention.
Initially, he could not get much attention from the dominant Democrat Party in the US because both the WASP-dominated State Department and the Roosevelt Administration were opposed to an independent Israel. They feigned concern about Britain’s declining empire and influence in the mid-east while at the same time pressuring Britain to give up her empire elsewhere.
Here, the book cuts some new historic ground most will not be familiar with. The consensus view (especially among liberal American Jews), was that support for Israel was largely the creation of Democrats, especially Harry Truman. That is not quite what happened.
Zionists early on felt that to get US support, it had to be a bipartisan effort. After being rebuffed by Democrats, they approached Republicans and found an ally in the rising conservative leader of the party, Senator Robert Taft from Ohio. Thus, the first public declaration in support of an independent Israel is to be found in the 1944 Republican Party platform. The Democrats followed later. It is true Harry Truman, who read his Bible seriously, did support the founding of Israel against the advice of the State Department, but Republican support came earlier and was just as necessary.
Bibi spent a good deal of his youth and high school days around Philadelphia. He was both a jock and a nerd. While excelling at soccer, he also graduated in the top 1% of his class.
At age 18, he went back to Israel for military service while his father maintained his professorship in a few American colleges. Bibi had been accepted at Yale, but military duty came first.
He came back to the US to finish college after military service but switched from Yale to MIT.
In the military, he became a commander in “The Unit”, or Israeli Special Forces. His older brother Yoni, who he admires greatly, did so as well.
Bibi was wounded during a raid to rescue hostages taken on a Belgian airliner, and his older brother Yoni was killed during the dramatic raid to rescue hostages taken to Entebbe, in Uganda.
Therefore, it is clear that love of God, family, and country was not a slogan for Bibi, it was his life. He put that life at risk multiple times, conducting dozens of special operations against terrorists.
He knows terrorism, upfront and personally. For him, this is not a theory, but literally a question of life or death. Such encounters tend to focus the mind, and you get a sense early on, that this is a serious man. It would prepare him for things to come as he later would clash with both Israeli and American politicians.
The book covers a very interesting history of the War in 1956, the stunning victories in 1967, and the almost fatal Yom Kippur War in 1973. Much of this has to do not only with Israeli politics but the off and on again relations with the US through successive administrations. In the coverage of Israeli politics, one finds so many striking parallels with what has gone on in the US. One theme that dominates Bibi’s 40-year-plus career is the unstinting bias and animus against conservatives in the Israeli press. The other is the political theatre constantly pulled by the Left, which echoes similar movements in the US.
In 1973, it became clear that Arab forces were going to attack, but Golda Meir and the Labor Party felt that unlike in 1967, they would not make a pre-emptive strike. They felt that if Israel were to act that way again, they would lose support in the US and the UN. That bet to please world public opinion came within a hair of losing the nation and plunging the Jewish people into annihilation. Once again, he served, this time in the 1973 War.
After the war, the Likud Party was formed to avoid Labor’s romantic visions again destroying the country and Bibi began to rise within its ranks. He came back to the US to serve as Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, won a seat in the Knesset (parliament) in 1988, and later became Deputy Foreign Minister.
He became Prime Minister and served from 1996-1999.
The parallels are eerie to American politics in Netanyahu’s two terms as Premier, even down to the granular detail of having his personal residence invaded by police, the intelligence services being turned against him, success at building a large security fence, dealing with an invasion of migrants, endless investigations and harassment, all the way to the poor treatment of his wife by the Israeli press. Then there was the ugly smear that critics of the Olso Accords and Rabin (Bibi and Likud) were guilty of creating an “atmosphere of hate” that led to Rabin’s unfortunate assassination. It is almost as if the future attacks on Donald Trump were first modeled by the Israeli Left and subsequently adopted by Democrats.
That Netanyahu could prevail against these same forces that plague American conservatives is a story worth studying by conservative political leaders in the US. Reading this, you realize how brutal the politics are in Israel compared even to the US, especially since they have a parliamentary system, with multiple quarreling political parties that can bring down a government at any time.
But as you read the book one thing comes through: despite all the attacks, Netanyahu got big things done for his country.
A rival of Ariel Sharon, he was brought into the Likud government and served in what arguably would be his most important post, that of Finance Minister. With the help of Israeli and the US Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, he painfully started the conversion of Israel from a socialist, labor union-dominated, monopoly-prone welfare state to a free market economic powerhouse.
Later in his second term as Premier starting in 2009, he completed many other economic reforms. One, in particular, was making Israel a leader in cyber security.
A tiny, new, water-starved nation, besieged and threatened on all sides, plagued by terrorism, became a “start-up nation”, a high-tech mecca that now has per capita income higher than France and the UK.
His economic reforms have proven a great success. However, the struggle for security and with US liberals continues to this day.
Many US leaders always seem to look at the Middle East as a real estate deal gone bad. All problems are based on the centrality of the “Palestinian”-Israeli conflict that can only be solved by Israel making land concessions eventually creating a “Palestinian state”.
Netanyahu sees it rather as a conflict between Western values and radical Islam. He suggests there is no use negotiating with terrorists that don’t even recognize your right to exist. Moreover, it is hard to argue, that attempts by Iranians to assassinate Saudi leaders, civil war in Iraq, civil war in Syria, or Muslims killing Christians in Africa, have anything to do with the presence of a tiny Jewish country. Nor could it have much to do with the Pakistani and Indian conflict or the tragic history of Afghanistan.
The problems that lie within Islam are what plague peace in the Middle East, not Israel’s existence.
In and out of power, Bibi came back and served from 2009-2021, thus his combined terms make him the longest-serving Premier in Israel’s history. This long period of leadership allows the reader to see Bill Clinton, H.W. Bush, George Bush, Barak Obama, and Donald Trump conducting their respective foreign policies, and their individual temperaments.
Clinton and Obama directly involved themselves in the Israeli elections. This included funding the opposition and the dispatch of personal campaign staff to directly defeat Likud and Bibi. Understanding this, the constant bleating by some US politicians about “foreign interference” pales in comparison to what they actually did during the Israeli elections.
The most hostile, was Barak Obama, who fully engaged the theory that it was the mere presence of Israel and its real estate, that was causing the problem. He viewed Israelis as “colonizers”, pushing indigenous Arabs aside. He never understood the Jews were there first, thousands of years before Mohammad was born. He pushed hard to earn his Nobel Peace Prize by advocating “not one brick”, or no new construction of settlements. This was true, especially in Jerusalem.
Bibi would say this is not a “territory”, this is our capitol and holy city to Jews. What would the US think if some foreign power dictated what could, or not be built, in Washington, D.C?
Obama believed these building restrictions would bring Hamas, Fatah, and other terrorists to the peace table? But as in the past, more concessions on land brought more terror and more demands. Obama’s arrogance and ignorance were astounding. At one meeting, Obama dresses down Bibi and suggests that Israel should not cross him. Why? Because Obama had dealt with tough street gangs in Chicago in his function as a “community organizer”. Imagine talking that way to the longest-serving elected official in Israel, a war hero, who personally has had to kill terrorists. Reading some of this, just makes your blood boil.
American officials, always eager for good press, forget about the cost because they did not feel it. For example, in the second Intifada, Israel lost over 1,000 civilians to terror. Another 8,000 or so were injured. Buses were blown up, pizza parlors shot up, and weddings gunned down. If the US had lost equivalent numbers adjusted for population, in that one period we would have lost about 37,000 people, compared to the 3,000 or so on 9/11, which set our nation up for a 20-year war. Yet, Israel was often criticized for striking back after taking large losses to terrorism.
However, holding bipartisan support for Israel had to come first, and Bibi had to bite his tongue. But Obama’s plans to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons went beyond what could be tolerated. Bibi felt Israel could survive the terror, but not a nuclear Iran. Invited by the Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, Netanyahu gave one of the most stirring speeches ever delivered by a foreign dignitary to Congress. He said it was better to have no deal with Iran, rather than the bad deal being pushed by Obama. It moved public opinion and Obama never could submit his proposal as a treaty.
Fifty Democrats refused to attend the speech, Nancy Pelosi turned her back, and Joe Biden arranged an absence. But as you can see, it struck a chord with most in Congress. If you don’t remember this speech, it is presented below and is worth your time. It gives you a measure of the man.
Of course, Iran and its nuclear development is once again a matter of top priority.
Bibi had much better relations with Donald Trump. Both felt that Israel was not “causing” middle eastern strife, but rather strife among nations in the middle east was causing the Arab/Israeli problem. Hence the substantially different approach of the Abraham Accords, and new treaties of cooperation between Arab countries and Israel, with or without the Palestinian radicals.
Many now feel Iran is a greater threat to them and seek an alliance with Israel against the Iranian threat.
There is so much in the book about the history of the region, the truly nasty nature of Israeli politics, and the relationship between America and Israel, that it is hard to summarize. What does come out quite clearly is that Benjamin Natanhayu is one remarkable man and a tremendous leader. Now in another crisis with the US and Iran, he may be just about to come back again in a time of turmoil, to lead his nation once again.
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Election day tabulator or printer issues affected more Maricopa County, Arizona, voting centers than authorities had previously claimed, according to a memo by an attorney who observed the voting process.
On Nov. 8, the day of the midterm elections, 11 of the roving attorneys tasked with observing election processes in the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) Election Integrity program in Arizona collectively visited nearly 52% of the county’s voting centers, according to a memo sent to party officials and candidates by roving attorney Mark Sonnenklar and obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The memo alleged that 72 of those 115 visited centers, or roughly 60%, saw “material problems with the tabulators not being able to tabulate ballots,” resulting in “substantial voter suppression.”
The findings of the memo would indicate that tabulation and printer problems at Maricopa County voting centers were more widespread than elections officials had previously claimed. Though the memo does not address whether tabulation and printer problems may have occurred at the Maricopa County voting centers that the attorneys did not visit, a significant number of those locations may have seen similar issues, given the large sample size of voting centers visited by the roving attorneys.
Sonnenklar wrote that the findings in the memo “directly contradict the statements of County election officials that (1) printer/tabulator issues were limited to only 70 of the 223 vote centers, (2) the printer/tabulator problems were resolved as of 3:00 p.m., and (3) the printer/tabulator issues were insignificant in the entire scheme of the election.”
For instance, Maricopa County’s main Twitter account said Nov. 9 that an issue with printers had affected an estimated 17,000 ballots across 70 (about 31%) of the county’s 223 voting centers, with tabulators unable to read some ballots lacking dark enough timing marks.
“In many cases, the printer/tabulator issues persisted from the beginning of election day until the end of election day,” Sonnenklar wrote. “It seems very clear that the printer/tabulator failures on election day at 62.61% of the vote centers observed by 11 roving attorneys, and the resulting long lines at a majority of all vote centers, led to substantial voter suppression.”
Tabulators rejected ballots’ first insertion almost every time at many voting centers, and many ballots could not be machine-tabulated no matter how many attempts a voter made, Sonnenklar stated.
“The strong consensus regarding why the tabulators would not read certain ballots was that those ballots, in particular the barcodes on the side of the paper, were not printing dark enough for the tabulators to read them,” he wrote, claiming to have personally visited ten voting centers.
Material problems caused voters to either deposit their ballots into a box for later counting, spoil their ballots and re-vote, or “get frustrated” and leave without voting, the memo said. Many voters had to wait an hour or two to receive a ballot for voting, with the roving attorneys reporting “significant lines at 59 of the 115 vote centers” they collectively visited, it claimed.
The DCNF has not verified the claims in this memo, and the Maricopa County Elections Department did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
“It is certainly safe to assume that many voters refused to wait in such lines, left the vote center, and did not return to vote later,” Sonnenklar added. “A survey of the electorate could easily confirm such an assumption.”
Sonnenklar quoted the ten other roving attorneys in the memo, and five of them confirmed to the DCNF that they provided information to Sonnenklar that was included in the memo.
“Some of the issues I reported (in real time and later to Mark Sonnenklar) were based on the reports that I received from the Republican observers at the respective sites, except those which I specifically indicated that I witnessed myself,” Roie Bar, one of the roving attorneys and a Scottsdale-based lawyer, told the DCNF. “Each site only allows one observer from each party and all the locations I covered had Republican observers present all day (2 in each location, covering 2 shifts – morning and afternoon). I was in communication with the observers throughout the day and was receiving reports from them in real time.”
The memo quoted one roving attorney as reporting long lines at three of 15 voting sites they visited. Another reported that five of the nine centers they visited had long lines.
“To sum it up, it was a complete mess!” a third roving attorney said of observations they made, according to the memo. “There is no other way to put it.”
Sonnenklar was not the only legal professional to raise concerns over the voting process; Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright sent a Saturday letter describing reports of similar tabulation and printer issues.
“Due to the widespread problems in non-uniform printer configuration settings, many voters were unable to tabulate their ballots on Election Day using on-site tabulators. Instead, voters were instructed to deposit their ballot in ‘Door 3,’” Wright stated. “Maricopa County appears to have failed to adhere to the statutory guidelines in segregating, counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting the ‘Door 3’ ballots.”
Despite the findings in the memo, Maricopa County election officials have attempted to characterize the voting issues as relatively minor and insubstantial.
Nearly a million County residents voted early in the November General Election,” the county’s main Twitter account stated Friday. “On E-Day, most Vote Centers experienced no printer issues, most had wait times under 30 min. and @maricopavote gave voters the freedom to cast their ballot at any one of 223 locations.”
The DCNF obtained the memo from former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen.
“I worked at a polling location,” Pullen told the DCNF. “The tabulators were not working.”
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake refused to concede Thursday after Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs was projected the winner in their race. Lake claimed “nearly half of all polling locations had problems with tabulating machines and printers,” forcing voters “to wait in line for hours.”
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Editors’ Note – Unfortunately, the news about the Arizona 2022 midterm election, especially in Maricopa County, is too voluminous to publish article by article. As a service to our Arizona readers, the following is a listing of this voluminous news and informs the reader of the incompetent and highly questionable behavior of the individuals involved with the election system in Maricopa County. These individuals include Katie Hobbs (yes, the gubernatorial candidate quickly claiming victory in the Governor’s race who is the current Secretary of State and responsible for the state election system!), Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer who is involved with a Democrat PAC working to be ensure Trump-endorsed candidates don’t get elected (and friend of Bill Kristol, a rabid Trump-hating neocon) and Bill Gates, Chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and in the same camp as Stephen Richer.
As the evidence builds up and numerous counties in Arizona declare their intent not to certify the 2022 election until thorough investigations are finished under the current Attorney General, Arizona is seen as the laughing stock of the nation. Incompetence is clearly at play here but many believe it is far beyond simple incompetence. We do not know how this crisis ends or is resolved but The Prickly Pear implores the citizens of Arizona and Maricopa County to demand a critical investigation and repair of our current election system and to hold the above named individuals and others to account for this election cycle fiasco. If the 2022 election flaws, incompetence and irregularities are not addressed and fixed, the 2024 election will likely be compromised to a such a degree that citizens will lose all trust in the electoral system, a fatal blow to our Republic.
ALL EYES ARE ON ARIZONA
Marshall: Alabama Withdraws From Democrat Operative-Controlled Voter Registration Database (FYI: Arizona uses ERIC. Hmmm, another method for election fraud?) Marshall: Alabama Withdraws From Democrat Operative-Controlled Voter Registration Database Alabama’s Secretary of State-elect Wes Allen has announced that he will withdraw the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a voter-roll management system with politically compromised ties. “I made a promise that I would withdraw Alabama from ERIC and I am keeping that promise,” Allen said in a statement. “I have informed them, via certified letter, that upon my inauguration on January 16, 2023, Alabama will immediately and permanently cease to transmit any information regarding any citizen in the State of Alabama to their organization and that we will no longer participate in any aspect of the ERIC program.” […] Additionally, per government watchdog Verity Vote, ERIC doesn’t actually clean states’ voter rolls, but rather inflates them. Though member states are allegedly required to clean their voter rolls, nothing happens. A March 2022 audit by Michigan’s auditor general found the state’s Bureau of Elections failed to sufficiently clean its voter rolls, though Michigan had joined ERIC in 2019. Likewise, the District of Columbia (another ERIC member) has also been sued for its failure to clean its rolls. [Note: AZ SOS Katie Hobbs a Democrat did not withdraw from ERIC. Hmmmm. Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/21/alabama-withdraws-from-democrat-operative-controlled-voter-registration-database/
Hoft: Is the Arizona Election the Hill to Die On? Without Free and Fair Elections We Have Nothing The election that took place in Arizona on November 8, 2022 is not certifiable. It was not incompetence. It was blatant corruption to sustain political tyranny by the Globalist Uniparty, an unholy alliance of the Democrat Party, the Republican establishment and the globalists who finance both of them. […] A new Arizona election must be scheduled before the end of the year, one in which only paper ballots and verified voters, voting in person, are allowed. Not doing so will represent a “green light” to permanently embed fraud into the electoral system and perpetuate the tyranny imposed on the American people by the Globalist Uniparty now controlling the U.S. government. […] The attitudes and plans of the Globalist Uniparty are indistinguishable from those of the World Economic Forum and the Chinese Communist Party. […] As Arizona goes, so goes the nation. Read more: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/arizona-election-hill-die/
(11/21/22) Donovan: BREAKING: Kari Lake Delivers Message To Arizona And All Americans On “Botched And Broken” November 8 Election Patriot groups in Arizona are rallying to push for a new election on December 6, 2022, and so far 4 counties have said they will hold off on certifying the election results they have been given. Kari Lake recently made a lengthy statement about the status of the election results. […] Kari Lake previously spoke out less than a week after the rigged midterm election, saying, “Arizonans know BS when they see it.” She came out again over the weekend, saying, “I will become Governor.” Then Lake released the following statement: . . . Read more/ Watch the 2”19 minute Lake video: https://republicbrief.com/breaking-kari-lake-delivers-message-to-arizona-and-all-americans-on-botched-and-broken-november-8-election/
(H/T PC) Alex Jones Show Emergency Report! Arizona Election Certification Could Be Nullified With This Major Breaking Information Michael Schafer joins host Owen Shroyer on The Alex Jones Show to break down how the Arizona election could be nullified. Watch the 23 minute interview: https://theinfowar.tv/watch?id=637d62d016261756419b3fd6
War Room: Jake Hoffman: The AZ’s AG Letter Signals That Arizona’s Election “Shouldn’t Be Certified” Under Any Circumstance Jake Hoffman is a member of the AZ State Legislature. Watch the 7:30 minute interview: https://rumble.com/v1wjpv4-jake-hoffman.html
Solomon: Arizona GOP nominee sues election officials alleging incompetence impacted outcome of midterms Arizona’s Republican Attorney General nominee Abe Hamadeh on Tuesday evening sued election officials across the state, alleging that “incompetence and mismanagement” had caused “pervasive errors” in the midterm elections. In a statement, Hamadeh said the Republican National Committee had joined him in filing the 25-page complaint in Maricopa County Superior Court. The suit comes as final unofficial vote tallies showed he lost to Democrat Kris Mayes by about 500 votes. An automatic recount is being launched. Read more: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/arizona-gop-nominee-sues-state-election-official-alleging-incompetence
Phillips: Kari Lake Gives Update, Says ‘Whistleblowers Are Coming Forward’ “Attorneys are working diligently to gather information,” said Lake, a former local news anchor who was backed by former President Donald Trump. “Whistleblowers are coming forward and the curtain is being lifted. Whether done accidentally or intentionally. It is clear that this election was a debacle that destroyed any trust in our elections.” Authorities Maricopa County are, according to Lake, “still counting ballots” after “printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour-long lines and even longer and confusing instructions given by election officials made this election day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.” For the past several days, Lake has been posting videos of voters complaining about their experiences during Election Day to her Twitter page. She’s said that Republican voters were disenfranchised when they tried to cast ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county. […] Last week, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state and chief election official, declared victory. Lake has not conceded yet and it appears that she will not do so anytime soon, according to her video. Read more at The Epoch Times.
Alexander: Analyzing the Strange Coincidences in Maricopa County During the 2022 Midterm Election No one really believes deep down that Arizona rejected four top Republican candidates — three who were leading inalmost every poll, including MSM polls — considering the breakdown of voter registration in the state. Republicans have a four-point voter registration advantage over Democrats in the state as well as within Maricopa County. Republican candidates swept the rest of the races around the state, leading many to believe only those four top races, which featured all Trump-endorsed candidates, were deliberately targeted. Other than those four key races, Arizona Republicans performed exceedingly well . . . {…] Voters are wondering how incumbent Repubiican State Treasurer Kimberly Yee received more votes than any of the other statewide candidates — about 100,000 more than Kari Lake — even though she had low name recognition, was not endorsed by Trump, didn’t get the base excited, and conducted a relatively quiet, uneventful first term. It’s not because Yee didn’t have a significant opponent; State Sen. Martin Quezada is one of the most well-known and popular Democrats in the state. On the other hand, Lake brought out thousands to huge rallies and was considered a Trumplike sensation across the state, with huge name recognition due to being a longtime popular news anchor in the Phoenix market. One of the main theories going around in Arizona is . . . […] Election fraud experts tell me it’s part of a plan by Democrats to take over states one by one. […] What can we do? Read more: https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2022/11/21/analyzing-the-strange-coincidences-in-maricopa-county-during-the-2022-midterm-election-n2616183
Mittlestadt: Bombshell Arizona report: Election Day problems in Maricopa far wider than county admitting According to an affidavit report by Mark Sonnenklar, a roving attorney with the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity program in Arizona, he and 10 other RNC roving attorneys reported their observations and those of Republican observers at vote centers on Election Day. File Aggregated Roving Attorney General Election Report.pdf The 11 attorneys visited 115 out of the 223 vote centers in Maricopa County on Election Day and found that 72 of them (or 62.61%) “had material problems with the tabulators not being able to tabulate ballots,” Sonnenklar reported, “causing voters to either deposit their ballots into box 3, spoil their ballots and re-vote, or get frustrated and leave the vote center without voting.” Read more: https://justthenews.com/maricopa-county-follies-affidavits-detail-ballot-shenanigans-arizonas-largest-county
ADI News Services: Counting Of Arizona Votes Complete, Three Automatic Recounts Required Maricopa County wrapped up its vote counting on Monday, leaving no more votes left to count in the state. Now counties have until Nov. 28 to canvas their elections and send the results to the Secretary of State’s Office. There will be automatic recounts in the Attorney General’s race, Superintendent of Public Instruction race, and the Legislative District 13 (LD13) House race. Read more: https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2022/11/21/counting-of-arizona-votes-complete-three-automatic-recounts-required/
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-11-25 01:30:002022-11-25 01:30:00The 2022 Arizona Midterm Election – A Disaster and Glaring Example of a Broken and Rigged Electoral System
If Arizona is genuinely interested in enacting much-needed state election reforms — and it should be, especially after this month’s voting debacle in Maricopa County, the state’s largest county — it’s now or never. Or at least for the next four or eight years.
Term-limited outgoing Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey should call a lame-duck special session of the Legislature for the sole purpose of enacting voting reforms before the presumptive governor-elect, Democrat Katie Hobbs, can take office on Jan. 2 — after which it definitely won’t get done.
(Ms. Hobbs leads her Republican opponent, Kari Lake, by 0.6 of 1%, or 17,150 votes, out of more than 2.55 million counted. The race has been called by the news media in the Democrat’s favor, but Ms. Lake has yet to concede.)
“The way they run elections in Maricopa County is worse than in banana republics around this world,” Ms. Lake was quoted as saying by London’s Daily Mail newspaper, adding: “I believe at the end of the day that this will be turned around.”
The Daily Mail reported that Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright on Nov. 19 wrote to one of Maricopa County’s top election officials that “detailing reports of a string of irregularities from printer problems that stopped ballots being tabulated, to confusion about procedures for transferring voters to alternate sites if they were unable to vote at the first location.”
The following is adapted from remarks delivered on November 3, 2022, at a Hillsdale College reception in Santa Clara, California.
If you want to see the problem with American education, look at a chart illustrating the comparative growth in the number of students, teachers, and district administrators in our public schools in the period between 2000 and 2019. (See the chart below.) The number of district administrators grew by a whopping 87.6 percent during these years, far outstripping the growth in the number of students (7.6 percent) and teachers (8.7 percent).
In illustrating the difference in these rates of growth, the chart also illustrates a fundamental change that has come over our nation as a whole during this period—a change in how we govern ourselves and how we live. To say a change is fundamental means that it concerns the foundation of things. If the foundation changes, then the things built on it are changed. Education is fundamental, and it has changed radically. This has changed everything else.
One way of describing the change in education today is that it provides a different answer than we have ever known to the question: who owns American children? Of course, no one actually owns the children. They are human beings, and insofar as they are owned, they own themselves. But by nature, they require a long time to grow up—much longer than most creatures—and someone must act on their behalf until they mature. Who is to do that?
Not many people raise this question explicitly, but implicitly it is everywhere. For example, it is contained in the question: who gets to decide what children learn? It is contained more catastrophically in the question: who decides what we tell children about sex?
Are these decisions the province of professional educators, who claim to be experts? Or are they the province of parents, who rely on common sense and love to guide them? In other words, is the title to govern children established by expertise or by nature as exhibited in parenthood? The first is available to a professionally educated few. The second is available to any human being who will take the trouble.
The natural answer to this question is contained in the way human beings come to be. Prior to recent scientific “advances,” every child has been the result of a natural process to which people have a natural attraction. “Natural” here does not mean what every single person wants or does—it means the way things work unless we humans intervene.
In its essence, “nature” means the process of begetting and growth by which a mature, living thing comes to be. Not quite every human being is attracted to the natural process of human reproduction, but nearly all are—and when the process works to produce a baby, it works that way and no other way.
This process of human reproduction and growth works for two reasons. The first is that human beings, when mature, are capable of so much more than other creatures. Almost from birth we learn to talk, a rational function that indicates decisive differences from other creatures. Because of reason and speech we are moral beings, capable of distinguishing among kinds of things and therefore of knowing and doing right and wrong. Also because of them we are social beings, able to understand and explain things to one another that other creatures do not understand and cannot discuss. This draws us closer together than even herd or swarm animals.
We are unique in possessing these capacities, and it is in this specific respect that our nation’s founders declared that “all men are created equal.” This equality has nothing to do with the color of anyone. Its source is the unique, immaterial, rational soul of the human being. One of my teachers used to respond to the claims of animal rights advocates that one must not be cruel to any creature, but that only those who can talk are entitled to vote.
The second reason in nature that makes human reproduction unique is our especially long period of maturation. For months, human babies are simply helpless; without constant attention they will starve. For years afterwards they must develop the skills and knowledge that are uniquely available to the human being. Both the skills and the knowledge are natural, meaning all human beings can obtain them, but both take time. Each child does the work of obtaining them, but each child needs help. Modern educators often mistake the work of helping them to learn for actually doing the learning for them. The second is impossible.
The skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic are direct exercises of the rational faculty. They are in principle the same thing as talking, and in principle every child will learn much of them unassisted. Just watch a child grow up to the age of two. He or she begins very early to respond to things with comprehension. Words soon follow. Children copy adults for the use of words, but they are doing all the work of learning. Little wonder that human beings take a long time to mature: they have so much to learn.
Raising a child has always been difficult and expensive. With rare exceptions, it has always been true that the parents who conceive the child raise him the best. And throughout American history, it has been thought that the family is the cradle of good citizenship and therefore of free and just politics.Public education is as old as our nation—but only lately has it adopted the purpose of supplanting the family and controlling parents.
***
The political successes of Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, and many other politicians in other states have largely been won on this battleground of education. One can look in history or in literature to see the danger of where the idea of supplanting the family might lead. Study the education practices that existed in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and that exist today in Communist China. Or read the terrifying account in Orwell’s 1984. They tell us that children, by distorting their natural desire to grow up and end their dependence, can be recruited to the purposes of despotic regimes, even to the extent of denouncing their parents to the state.
We do not yet have this in America. But we do have children being turned against their country by being indoctrinated to look on its past—of which all parents, of course, are in some way a part—as a shameful time of irredeemable injustice. We also increasingly have children being encouraged to speak of their sexual proclivities at an age when they can hardly think of them.
To cite just one example, Christopher Rufo has discovered, on the website of the Michigan Department of Education, detailed instructions for how teachers should open the question with students of their sexual orientation—or maybe I should say sexual direction, since “orientation” implies something constant, whereas children are now being taught that sexuality is “fluid” and can take them anywhere.
Also on the website are detailed instructions on how to keep this activity from the parents. And as we learned last year, when parents get angry and complain of things like this, the FBI is likely to become interested.
Who “owns” the child, then? The choice is between the parents, who have taken the trouble to have and raise the child—and who, in almost all cases, will give their lives to support the child for as long as it takes and longer—or the educational bureaucracy, which is more likely than a parent to look upon the child as an asset in a social engineering project to rearrange government and society.
***
The revolutionary force behind this social engineering project is a set of ideas installed in just about every university today. Its smiting arm is the administrative state, an element of America’s ruling class. The administrative state has something over 20 million employees, many of them at the federal but most at the state level. Directly and indirectly, they make rules about half the economy, which means they affect all of it.
Most of the bureaucrats who staff the administrative state have permanent jobs. The idea behind this was that if they do not fear dismissal and have excellent pay and benefits that can’t be reduced, then they will be politically neutral. Today, of course, the public employee unions that represent this administrative state are the largest contributors in politics and give overwhelmingly to one side. They are the very definition of partisanship.
The fiction is that these bureaucrats are highly trained, dispassionate, nonpartisan, and professional, and that therefore they can do a better job, of almost anything, than somebody outside the system can do. They proceed by rules that over time have become ever more hopelessly complex. Only they can read these rules—and, for the most part, they read them as they please.
Judges have up to now, for the most part, given deference to the bureaucrats’ reading of their own rules. It is a rare happy fact that this judicial practice is under challenge in the courts. If it should ever become settled doctrine that the bureaucracy is constrained by the strict letter of the laws made by elected legislators and enforced by elected executives, that will exercise some restraint upon the administrative state. That explains why, after decades of defending judicial supremacy, progressives are beginning to question the authority of the courts and speak openly about packing the Supreme Court.
***
Public education is an important component of the prevailing administrative system. The roots of the system are in Washington, D.C., and the tendrils reach into every town and hamlet that has a public school. These tendrils retain some measure of freedom, especially in red states where legislatures do not go along automatically. In some red states, the growth of administrators has been somewhat slower than average. But this growth has been rapid and large everywhere. In every state, the result has been to remove authority and money away from the schools where the students learn. In every state, the authority and money drained from the schools have flowed toward the bureaucracy.
The political battle over this issue is fraught with dishonesty. Any criticism of public education is immediately styled as a criticism of teachers. But as the numbers show, the public education system works to the detriment of teachers and for the benefit of bureaucrats. The teachers unions themselves, some of the largest of the public employee unions, claim to be defending teachers and children. That cannot be more than half true, given that they are defending an administrative system that has grown by leaps and bounds while the number of teachers has grown very little.
Worse even than this is the tendency the system sets in all of us. Bureaucracy is a set of processes, a series of prescribed steps not unlike instructions for assembling a toy. First this happens, then that happens, and then the next thing. The processes proceed according to rules. It is a profession unto itself to gain competence in navigating these rules, but nobody is really competent. Today we tend too much to think that this kind of process is the only thing that can give legitimacy to something. A history curriculum is adopted, not because it gives a true account of the unchangeable things that have already happened, but because it has survived a process. The process is dominated by “stakeholders”—mostly people who have a financial or political interest in what is taught. They are mostly not teachers or scholars but advocates. And so we adopt our textbooks, our lesson plans, and our state standardized tests with a view to future political outcomes once the kids grow up.
I have said and written many times that the political contest between parents and people who make an independent living, on the one hand, and the administrative state and all its mighty forces on the other, is the key political contest of our time. Today that seems truer than ever. The lines are clearly formed.
***
As long as our representative institutions work in response to the public will, there is thankfully no need for violence. As the Declaration of Independence says, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”
The Declaration guides us in our peaceful pursuits, too. In naming the causes of the American Revolution, it gives a guide to maintaining free and responsible government. The long middle section of the Declaration accuses the King of interfering with representative government, violating the separation of powers, undermining the independence of the judiciary, and failing to suppress violence.
And in an apposite phrase, it says of the King: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
So it is today. And so it is our duty to defend our American way of life.
*****
Larry P. Arnn is the twelfth president of Hillsdale College. He received his B.A. from Arkansas State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. From 1977 to 1980, he also studied at the London School of Economics and at Worcester College, Oxford University, where he served as director of research for Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill. From 1985 until his appointment as president of Hillsdale College in 2000, he was president of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. From October 2020 to January 2021, he served as co-chair of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. He is the author of several books, including The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government.
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The cost to host a Thanksgiving dinner for your closest friends and family members is 20 percent more expensive this year, and President Joe Biden’s administration is to blame.
According to a report from the American Farm Bureau Federation, the average cost to serve 10 of your guests a classic Thanksgiving dinner including turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, coffee, and milk is $64.05.
That’s $10.74 more expensive than last year’s average of $53.31 and up more than $17 from just before Biden assumed office.
If it wasn’t evident last year that Biden’s policies, such as bloating the American economy with trillions in federal dollars, are to blame for inflation including hikes in Thanksgiving food prices, then it certainly is now.
After another year of excessive spending, including sending $66 billion in taxpayer dollars overseas and funneling billions toward legislation that will definitively do more economic damage, Americans will have to pay significantly more to feed their families during the holiday season.
Thanksgiving gatherers who want to do more than the bare minimum by adding ham, russet potatoes, and frozen green beans to their menus are expected to pay $81.30, up 18 percent from 2021.
The feast centerpiece, a 16 lb. bird, is up 21 percent from last year for an average cost of $28.96. That price, AFBF noted, might fall thanks to store discounts the week of Thanksgiving. Shoppers interested in bags of cubed stuffing mix, which increased in price by a whopping 69 percent, frozen pie crusts (26 percent), whipping cream (26 percent), frozen peas (23 percent), and dinner rolls (22 percent), however, are still paying much higher due to months of record-high inflation.
In October alone, consumers paid 7.7 percent more for goods. The largest price increases recorded were found in household necessities such as shelter, food, and energy, which saw much higher increases.
“General inflation slashing the purchasing power of consumers is a significant factor contributing to the increase in average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner,” AFBF Chief Economist Roger Cryan confirmed in a press release.
In addition to paying more for food, Americans who travel to see loved ones and give thanks over the next week will be paying more at the pump, where gasoline is currently averaging $3.66 per gallon.
***** This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.
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