The Patriot Post® · Nadler's Flip-Flop for Mail-In Voting
A 2004 video recently surfaced of Democrat New York Representative Jerry Nadler explaining all the problems he had with certain methods of voting. The occasion was a House Judiciary Committee hearing in which a recent Ohio election was discussed. At the time, Nadler came out in clear opposition to paper ballots.
In the video, a private citizen cited an MIT study explaining how paper ballots were safer and more reliable, in part, because miscounts could be identified more easily than with voting machines. Nadler was having none of it. “Paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud,” Nadler said. “And at least with the old clunky voting machines that we have in New York, the deliberate fraud is way down compared to paper. When the machines break down, they vote on paper [and] they’ve had real problems.”
This is far different from the Jerry Nadler we know today, who is among the vocal proponents (virtually all Democrats) calling for an all-paper mail-in election this fall. Why the change of heart? Perhaps it’s nothing more complex than the fact that President Donald Trump is against paper ballots. And in the true spirit of Trump Derangement Syndrome, if the president is against it, then his political opponents are for it, even if they were once against it.
Nadler recently accused Trump of being against mail-in voting because “you’re just worried that they won’t vote for you.” This makes Nadler’s flip-flop even more telling. Suddenly, Nadler has no concern about mail-in voting? In the last 16 years, we have completely wiped corruption out of our voting system? Don’t count on it.
A 2005 bipartisan report chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker determined without a doubt that absentee mail-in ballots have the greatest potential for voter fraud. That has not changed. A 1997 Miami mayoral race was overturned by “widespread absentee ballot fraud.” Other smaller mayoral races in Alabama, Indiana, and elsewhere have been overturned for the same reason, as was a 2018 congressional election in North Carolina.
Voter fraud is real and it happens during every election cycle. The Democrat Party insists voter fraud doesn’t exist while seeking to broaden the voter base as much as possible, even by including illegal immigrants. Anyone with even a small amount of common sense must question when a national political party takes so resolute a stance against the existence of voter fraud while opposing measures like voter ID that mitigate fraud and trying to open up voting to what is the easiest way to cheat an election — mail-in paper ballots.
People who file paper ballots are subject to coercion in their voting by others, and paper ballots sometimes never even arrive at the right address or find their proper way to polling locations. Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, notes, “In 2016, more mail ballots — 6.5 million — were misdirected or unaccounted for than the margin of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.” Additionally, so-called ballot harvesting, which allows partisan political figures to collect mail-in ballots, creates another major problem in reliably counting these votes.
Regardless of the argument over mail-in ballots, it looks as if a large portion of the 2020 election will be conducted by mail. There are 29 states that already have no-excuse absentee voting in place, and if the China Virus is still an issue in November, you can expect a lot of people to take advantage of the mail-in option.
Mail-in voting doesn’t automatically mean that Republicans will take a shellacking, but it does mean that the potential for fraud will be greatly increased. And it should raise questions among anyone when a career politician like Nadler makes a 180-degree change of opinion on the issue — a change that was clearly motivated by political expediency. Nadler and his party don’t care if the 2020 election is conducted above board; they just want to make sure they win by any means necessary.