YES IT’S RIGGED

[Note by Jack Wheeler:  My perspective is different from my dear friend Jack Kelly.  It is that Trump has already performed a public service worthy of a Congressional Medal of Freedom:  he has shined a glaring spotlight on Dem Voter Fraud.  It is Democrat Voter Fraud that is the threat to free and fair electoral democracy, not the exposure of it.  Trump should be praised, not condemned, for wanting an honest election – which Hillary doesn’t.]

The election’s been rigged, he may not accept the result, Donald Trump said. He expects to lose, is making excuses for defeat in advance.

Not for the first time, a self-serving overstatement by The Donald has tainted an important issue.

Mr. Trump should accept the results of the election, said 68 percent of respondents to a Morning Consult poll Oct. 21. But 46 percent said it is at least “somewhat likely” vote fraud will be widespread.

The viability of democracy depends on the confidence people have in the integrity of the electoral process. If nearly half the electorate fears fraud will determine the outcome of this election, we totter on the brink of chaos.

Richard Nixon believed vote fraud in Illinois and Texas determined the outcome of the 1960 election. But he refused to contest the results, because he didn’t want to undermine public confidence in the electoral process.

Trump undermines confidence in it to soothe his ego. But The Donald’s demagoguery wouldn’t resonate with so many if vote fraud weren’t a large, and growing, problem.

•  Richard Allen Claybrook died in 2014…and registered to vote in Harrisonburg, Va. last month. Sara Sosa died in El Paso County, Colorado in 2009, cast votes in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Ten Colorado counties have more registered voters than residents who were old enough to vote. Across the U.S., 141 counties in 21 states have more registered voters than living residents, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
•  In its examination of just eight of 133 voting jurisdictions in Virginia, PILF found more than 1,000 non-citizens were registered to vote. Hundreds in Frederick County, Maryland, who said on jury duty forms they were not citizens cast ballots in 2014. About 40,000 people are registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland. About 2.75 million were registered to vote in more than one state, 68,000 in more than two, the Pew Center on the States estimated in 2012.Nationwide, about 6.4 percent of non-citizens (620,000) voted illegally in 2008, estimated professors at Old Dominion and George Mason Universities in a 2014 study. In the National Hispanic Survey in 2013, 13 percent of foreign born respondents who were registered voters admitted they were not U.S. citizens.
• Indiana state police are investigating thousands of voter registrations for possible fraud. Indiana’s secretary of state ordered the probe after discovering a heavier than usual number of changes to voter registration records.
• Campaign officials load up buses with illegal voters and “go from poll site to poll site,” Alan Schulkin, Democratic commissioner on the New York City Board of Elections told undercover journalist James O’Keefe.

Reasonable people disagree about who ought to be eligible to vote. All the honest agree only those who are eligible should vote. That so many Democrats think cheating is permissible so long as it is Democrats who cheat is more grave a threat to democracy than anything Donald Trump has said.

Every electoral “reform” proposed by Democrats has made cheating easier. Little makes more clear that cheating is exactly what Democrat pols have in mind than their furious opposition to laws to require voters to show a photo ID, a modest safeguard supported by 80 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of Democrats, according to Gallup.

Same day registration is an invitation to fraud of the sort described by Commissioner Schulkin. Election officials must have time to make sure registrations are genuine.

Organized efforts to register the ineligible and take them to the polls should be punished by serious jail time. Non-citizens who vote in our elections should be deported immediately.

This election may hinge on whether Democrats, or Russian hackers, are better cheats. To keep this nightmare from ever happening, we should go back to paper ballots. That won’t prevent fraud, but it’s much easier to conduct on a massive scale by rigging voting machines.

Democracy is a better form of government than any other, but if we don’t protect the sanctity of the ballot box, we won’t have it for much longer.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.