By Robert Knight, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
It looks like Hillary Clinton will finish with slightly more popular votes than President-elect Donald Trump, who won a clear majority of Electoral votes last Tuesday.
Predictably, Democrats are clamoring to abolish the Electoral College, which the Founders created as part of the separation of powers and a hedge against mob rule.
Big states with large cities dominated by Democrats are disadvantaged by the winner-take-all rules, the Dems argue. California, New York and Illinois went big for Mrs. Clinton, but were countered by Trump victories in dozens of smaller states and some big ones, too, such as Ohio, Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania.
The main argument for abolishing the Electoral College is that people who voted for the loser in any of these states had no say and figuratively “wasted” their votes. Giving each vote equal weight regardless of where you vote would level the playing field, they say.Well, maybe not. Consider an obvious implication:
If the election were decided strictly by popular vote, Democrats could ignore all the smaller states and run up the totals in the big, traditionally “progressive” states, plus any Democrat-dominated urban areas. Chicago alone could dig up enough votes in its cemeteries to counter not only the pesky Republican downstate Illinois voters but could also help swing the national total into the D column.
In New York, Project Veritas Action undercover cameras caught Alan Schulkin, the commissioner of the city Board of Elections, at a teachers union party in October admitting that New York City has widespread voter fraud.
“Yeah, they should ask for your ID. I think there is a lot of voter fraud,” Mr. Schulkin said.
There are plenty of good reasons for keeping the Electoral College intact as the Founders intended, and one of the more obvious is that it is a hedge against massive ballot fraud.
Billionaire leftist George Soros has given tens of millions of dollars to radical organizations to conduct get-out-the-vote drives in areas with large populations of illegal immigrants, such as in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. One Texas Democratic candidate actually posted this on his Facebook page: “Vote Early and Often.”
In Virginia, an investigation revealed that thousands of non-citizens and felons were on the voter rolls prior to Nov. 8. In April, Clinton pal Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe tried to give the right to vote to more than 200,000 convicted felons before being smacked down in July by the state Supreme Court. Undeterred, he did a mass “pardoning” of 60,000 felons before the voter registration deadline, sending each ex-con a letter. As Heritage Foundation scholar Hans von Spakovsky noted, “Those who received McAuliffe’s letter also got voter registration forms with prepaid return postage. No others in Virginia received such a service.”
There is no way to know how many of the felons actually voted in the Old Dominion, which went for Hillary by 188,000 votes out of nearly four million cast.
In Pennsylvania’s Lebanon, Perry, Cumberland and Butler counties, some people reported that voting machines had turned their votes for Donald Trump into votes for Mrs. Clinton or their votes for a straight Republican ticket into a straight Democratic ticket. Authorities told news media that some machines had problems and that they fixed them after the complaints and that it was no big deal. Well, maybe.
In Philadelphia and two other suburban counties, an American Civil Rights Union review of the voting records turned up more than 170 people aged 110 or over who had voted in the last few elections. Another recent study revealed that thousands of non-citizens and felons were registered to vote in the City of Brotherly Love.
In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain recorded not a single vote in 57 Philadelphia districts. In 2012, Mitt Romney got zero votes in 59 Philadelphia districts. That year, President Obama received 85 percent of the total Philadelphia vote to Mr. Romney’s 14 percent. Last Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton got 82 percent to Mr. Trump’s 15 percent. No word yet on how many districts recorded zero votes this year for the Republican candidate.
Given these and other odd happenings, is it any wonder that Democrats want the Electoral College gone and the Republican mantra has become: Win by enough to offset vote fraud in the big cities?
One of the very first things the Trump administration should do is to clear out the radical activists now dominating Obama’s Justice Department. Instead of enforcing the law, they’ve been spearheading the left’s war on immigration enforcement and laws requiring photo IDs and proof of citizenship to register and vote.
It’s time to staff Justice with people who want to prevent vote fraud, not engineer it.
• Robert Knight is a senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union.
@Edgar G.
No problem. And, please note that in the subsequent post, I corrected my own confusion regarding the — irrelevant in any case — 1858 quote by somebody else. The book, published in 1867, says it is a common phrase among dems in the 1860’s and attributes it to Van Buren at a Dem meeting 20 years earlier. I included the quote as well as the citation so you can look it up yourself.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Sorry if I did. It was because if the 1858 quote was by someone else, how then can it have been attributed to Van Buren unless they have an earlier direct quote…..It’s just that when Martin Van Buren was mentioned, he being President or Candidate, would have been on a very high level-in those days- and would not be personally implicated in the frauds. But obviously, from his Tammany Hall days, he’d have known about it, probably a former organiser, and being a natural process for every election. AND IT WAS NO JOKE….
Tammany Hall, about which I’ve written before several times, was the cesspool of all the Dem corruption which spread over the country…by the Dems naturally. They made it into a proper, organised business….which it was.
Never heard before of “run like the cholera” but have often heard, have even used it “runs like the plague”….. but not meaning voting, but catching a spreading illness,..
@ Edgar G.:
You misread my comment. I said all that. And I personally heard it as a joke within recent memory. That’s why I looked it up.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I think Sebastien that you are wrong here. Rarely, but it does happen now and then. The Democrats invented the Fraudulent Voting System, especially pervasive from the time Of Tammany Hall Democrat Boss Tweed. It was used on all immigrants and when the Jews arrived in masses they were a godsend for the Dems, because the men all had beards. They would be taken by ward heelers to places to stay, given a little money and fake voting I.D. Then they’d be taken to vote. Then, persuaded to shave or trim their peyot and beards, vote again in a different precinct with other I.D. then wearing moustaches etc.etc you get the idea. Thsi actually was the modus operandi of the Dems.
For the Irish and other immigrants, already settled in, would go instructions not to shave. at least 3-4 months before an election, and the same procedure would be worked again.
Voting “early and often” was NOT a joke, although later, perhaps taken to be. Have you never read of votes cast by people dead already 20 years or more… or not living in the country (before overseas voting arrived), people found with sealed ballot boxes stuffed with fake voters being tasken to be substituted for the real boxes… Very common….with the Democrats, the masters of the art..
As you know for this election 0ver 90 voter forms all of different names were found to be addressed to the same house. It must have been a tight squeeze in the 4 roomed house, occupied by a very elderly widow, who would never even question it. And the 3 mill (known for sure) registered in more than one state.. and the 1.8 mill voters already long dead…..
Haaaah…. an expression of relief to have got that all written before the muse departed… When McCain was standing, he got not s single solitary vote in 57 counties…… how strange….?? And much much more aa they say in the sales blurbs
A generation has NOT been taught cursive handwriting – no signature, which is the only ‘requirement’ at the NYC polls.
Voter fraud will get worse, but so will voter intimidation.
The really big question is when will anyone insure that voters with two residences in different states ONLY vote where they have a primary residence.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
p.163
I misread. The speech in 1858 was by somebody else. It mentions that it was a Dem rallying cry in the 1860s. And i heard it a lot as a joke just a few years ago. Ha.
@ vivarto:
It would seem the system works. I say, “If it ain’t broken don’t fix it.”
The Federalist Papers : No. 68
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp
We have the oldest unbroken Democratic — Actually, Hamilton refers to it as a “Republican” — Constitution in the world. Think it’s ’cause we’re better people?
I googled “Vote Early and Often” and Found:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_early_and_vote_often
So I looked up Van Buren
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Van_Buren
His father was President Martin Van Buren 1839-41 (who he persuaded to run.) He was a NY lawyer and Tammany Hall (Famously corrupt Democratic Party Machine) leader. He served as NY State attorney general and was a famous wit. He and his father were prominent anti-slavery advocates, albeit for odd reasons, but unusual for Dems. Hilariously, he and his father were members of the “Free Soil” movement which opposed slavery — get this — because they thought it promoted laziness! Wikipedia article doesn’t explain that further, I can think of a couple of possible arguments from the time. Just goes to show you that we are all living in our own bubbles and amazingly reach out to the rest of society through certain windows of commonality. He lived from 1810-1866.
And found the quote, which, according to this, must have been about 1847, though the Wikipedia article only dates it back to a speech he gave in 1858, in this book on Google Books. And then got the book.
“One of the phrases which Van Buren once used in regard to some popular candidate, who, he said, “would run like the cholera,” is in common use to this day. To Mr. Van Buren belongs the paternity of another phrase as frequently used as the above. “Vote early and vote often” was the witty advice which he gave a Democratic meeting twenty odd years ago.”
Bigelow, L.J. “Bench and Bar: A complete Digest of the Wit, Humor, Asperities, and Amenities of the Law”. Harper’s and Brothers. New York. 1867. [Downloadable for free on Google Play Books, Amazon has it but it costs a lot.]
Ballot fraud must be prevented in either case, whether it is electoral college, or popular vote.
There must be HUGE penalties for engaging in such fraud so that people will be really scared to do it.