The 2020 election was a “hot mess” by any standard. It was an “anything goes” affair where many Americans could vote at almost any time, anyhow, and anywhere … completely eliminating meaningful transparency and effective oversight of the voting process.
Democracy demands transparency, not trust. Yet America’s voting system has become completely nontransparent, a “de facto” fraud, as critical parts of the process are completely unobservable, particularly voting machines, early voting, and mail-in voting.
One would think that our nontransparent voting process would be easily recognized as fraudulent and therefore “unconstitutional” by our government authorities, particularly since all of our political parties have complained about it over the years—Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens, and the non-affiliated. But such is not the case.
For decades, the Supreme Court, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Congress, and most state legislatures have taken a pass on non-transparency in our voting process or made it worse. Consequently, we are experiencing a well-earned catastrophic collapse in public support of our election process, the legal system, and law enforcement agencies, by a significant percentage of the American electorate.
For what good is the right to vote if we can’t prove who won or lost, if the voters don’t even have to show up to prove that they are alive let alone residents or citizens if the votes can be easily miscounted either by accident or design, and our government won’t do anything about it?
As a nation, we should be focused on this fundamental failure in our voting process in relation to the mass demonstration and the storming of the Capitol building on January 6, and not just the day itself. For we cannot call our nation a democracy when the voting process is unobservable and the results unverifiable.
Our political leaders cannot prove their own legitimacy under these circumstances.
What is the protocol for a transparent and honest election? Up-to-date registration rolls, qualified voters with a state photo ID, voting on paper ballots with hand counts at the local polls on Election Day under the observant eyes of poll watchers. Anything less and we have a voting process based on faith, not fact.
For those who cannot make it to the polls on Election Day, designated teams of poll workers together with poll watchers can visit places such as nursing homes on Election Day in order to conduct onsite voting and deliver the ballots to the local polling station to be counted on that same day, thereby maintaining transparency and chain-of-custody requirements. Similarly, polls could be set up at embassies, consulates, and military bases for citizens living overseas. And for those who don’t believe we can get enough people to count ballots, election officials have every right to draft citizens into service, as is done with jury duty.
Hand counting isn’t rocket science. Many, if not most, nations “hand count” paper ballots for their elections. Its integrity is in its simplicity.
Election Day should be treated as a sacred day, not a trip to the convenience store. Our Founders Fathers in their wisdom selected one day when all the drama of casting and counting the ballots would play out, and we would collectively select our political leaders. They designated the first Tuesday of November to choose our President and enshrined it in Article Two, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution.
In honor of our Founding Fathers, and for our own sake, we must end the chaos and confusion of ill-conceived conveniences, and return transparency to our voting process … and legitimacy to our elected leaders. Democracy demands it.
Lynn Landes
Pennsylvania
