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Doral, Florida - Miami-Dade County has its own Election Integrity Brigade, inspired by the freedom fighters of Brigade 2506 at Bay of Pigs. The Brigade reviews voter rolls and voting machines, seeks to limit mail-in voting and require proof of United States citizenship for registration, and recruits poll-workers and poll-watchers for early voting and on election day.
This month they launched their web site, https://www.electionbrigade.com/, to allow volunteers to register for its various activities. The sections of the web site include: (1) Volunteer Opportunities; (2) Our Team; (3) Our Meetings; (4) List of Task Forces; (5) Guide to Candidates; and (6) In the News.
Grassroots Conservative Groups
The Brigade partners with other grassroots conservative groups concerned about election integrity around the nation, such as the Election Integrity Network, True The Vote and the Potomac Tea Party, and around the state, such as Defend Florida, Florida Fair Elections, the Republican Liberty Caucus, Citizens Defending Freedom and Florida Republican Assembly. The spirit of the conservative cause does not reside in the Republican party, but in grassroots conservative groups like those listed above. Nevertheless, conservatives must not withdraw from the Republican party apparatus, but instead must engage with it in order to bring conservative reform to the party. In America there is a two-party system, and third parties are losers.
Accordingly, the Brigade supported the dismissal of Christian Ziegler as the Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, because: (1) he did not respond to grievances from party members, See: https://miamiindependent.com/tammany-hall-ignores-grievances/; and (2) he has been discredited by his participation (despite his first name) in a menage-a-trois, See: https://flcga.org/police-have-recovered-video-of-florida-gop-chair-and-alleged-victim-in-rape-investigation/. Governor DeSantis and Senators Rubio and Scott also supported Ziegler’s resignation.
Now, former Vice Chairman Evan Power has been elected the new Chairman, but he is a RINO party apparatchik, a DeSantis supporter whose wife works on that campaign, and an establishment Tallahassee lobbyist. See: https://miamiindependent.com/breaking-evan-power-election-chair-rpof/. Power’s lobbying firm represents the Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections—FSE, which is a public-sector cartel and an opponent of election integrity.
For example, the FSE’s legislative priorities include: (1) Fake woke narrative that poll workers need protection from harassment by poll watchers. In fact, after years of no citizen supervision, poll workers resent the attention they have been receiving from conservative poll watchers since the recent election irregularities. (2) Exempt poll workers from the e-verify system for checking United States citizenship, so that non-citizens can work the polls. And (3) Exempt all voter information from public record requests, so that Supervisors of Elections can shield such information from grassroots conservative groups seeking to clean up voter rolls and pursue other election integrity tasks.
Legislative Reform
This week members of the Brigade participated in a rally in front of Miami City Hall, in support of their local partners who traveled to Tallahassee in order to lobby for election integrity legislation that will promote the objectives listed above. Over 140 citizens from all over the state travelled to participate in that initiative for legislative reform. See: https://miamiindependent.com/champions-of-the-ballot/. Just because we cannot reform everything does not mean that we should reform nothing. Instead, we should reform what we can, and let everyone’s reform efforts add up into a reform movement.
The Republican super-majority in the Florida legislature labors under the delusion that this state is the “gold standard” for election integrity. However, voter rolls need cleaning up, voting machines are vulnerable to manipulation, and Vote-By-Mail should be reined in because it has no voter ID or chain-of-custody. In the current legislative session, Senator Blaise Ingoglia (R-Hernando County) has introduced a bill to reduce the eligibility for using Vote-By-Mail, but Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R-Collier County) supports Vote-By-Mail as it is.
Senator Ingoglia’s bill requires voters to request a VBM ballot before each election, and in order to receive a VBM ballot, they must also: (1) expect to be absent from their county on election day; (2) be unable to vote in person due to illness or disability, or serving as a primary care-giver; (3) be a resident or patient of a Veterans Administration medical facility; or (4) be confined in jail but eligible to vote. Early voting in person is available for a couple of weeks and already gives an opportunity to vote in person for those who cannot do so on election day. Any violation will constitute a third-degree felony.
Senate President Passidomo opposes this bill because she says that many elderly voters rely on Vote-By-Mail. Maybe an exception should be made for voters 65 or 70 years old and older? She added that: “I think most members {of the State Senate] feel that VBM is safe and secure” The empirical evidence set forth below says otherwise.
George Orwell in his novel “1984” warned against totalitarianism imposed by coercion, but Aldous Huxley in his novel “Brave New World” warned against totalitarianism imposed by consent, convenience and comfort.
Vote-By-Mail is Rife with Fraud
As the Jimmy Carter-James Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform warned in 2005: “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” We have previously reviewed these risks. See: https://miamiindependent.com/chase-the-vote-at-election-integrity-brigade/; and https://miamiindependent.com/mailin-it-in-vote-by-mail-is-rife-with-fraud/. Nevertheless, Vote-By-Mail continues to be popular, mostly because of its perceived convenience and comfort, without regard to the risks of fraud.
Now, polling by Rasmussen Reports reveals that: “More than 20% of voters who used mail-in ballots in 2020 admit that they participated in at least one form of election fraud.” (1) For example, voters admitted that “they filled out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member.” These actions defeat the requirements of voter ID and chain-of-custody. (2) Rasmussen also reports: “Furthermore, 17% of mail-in-voters say that in the 2020 election, they cast a ballot in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident.” The prohibition against non-resident voting is thus defeated. (3) In addition, signature verification is shown to be mostly meaningless: “Of those who cast mail-in ballots in 2020, 17% say that they signed a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without their permission.” See: https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/one_in_five_mail_in_voters_admit_they_cheated_in_2020_election.
Trusting the United States Postal Service is another mistake. Your columnist had to stop payment on three personal checks sent via USPS Certified Mail in the last six months. The Certified Mail never arrived and the USPS could not find them. Theft and misplacement are rampant in the USPS.
Sometimes convenience and comfort are the enemies of liberty.
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Poll Workers and Poll Watchers
Miami-Dade County has almost 1,500,000 registered voters and almost 1,000 precincts, but its Republican Executive Committee has authorized only a total of 160 committeemen and women. This number is woefully inadequate to provide poll workers and poll watchers during early voting and especially on election day. See: https://miamiindependent.com/tammany-hall-in-the-tropics/. More precinct committeemen and women are needed.
The Election Integrity Brigade’s web site provides a place where grassroots conservatives may volunteer for poll working, poll waching and other election integrity tasks: https://www.electionbrigade.com/. The Brigade meets in person for lunch on the third Saturday of each month near the office of the Supervisor of Elections.
Partisanship
Election integrity should be a bipartisan issue, because it is not a matter of left and right, but of right and wrong. Nevertheless, the Democrat party considers sharp election practices to be part of its standard operation tactics. Your columnist learned this while campaigning and poll watching in two elections in my hometown of Chicago during 1978. For example, Democrats have stolen at least two presidential elections, 1960 and 2020, both times for Irish-Catholic (or nominally Catholic) candidates.
In addition, they also stole the election for the United States Senate in Minnesota during 2008, from Norm Coleman (R] in favor of Al Franken (D). Under the direction of their attorney Mark Elias, they persuaded courts to let them keep counting votes even after election day, until they had found enough votes to win, which has now become a familiar tactic. Today every serious campaign has to account for election integrity issues.
In any event, most of the really important races in Florida take place in the Republican primaries, but even there election integrity must be actively upheld.
