Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Primary Cheating Claims Mean Republicans Cheat Each Other
Tuesday's primary election to decide who is going to be the Republican nominee for the US Senate from Pennsylvania has yet to be decided. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Trump-endorsed TV guy from out-of-state, is ahead by about 1,200 votes out of 1.34 million cast. Close behind is hedge-funder Dave McCormick. The first claims of electoral cheating have already been made, including one by Mr. Trump. This undermines the Republican claims that the Democrats cheated them out of victory in the 2020 presidential election (which the Democrats did not do). After all, if these allegations are to be believed, it is Republican candidates now doing the cheating.
Whenever there is a close election (which the 2020 presidential election was not), there are legal challenges. While it is ugly and unfortunate, getting some of the ballots rejected can benefit a candidate, and therefore, they try to get the other candidates' ballots tossed out when they can. There is a line between preventing cheating, however, and disenfranchising fellow citizens. Denying someone a voice in their own democratic government is to reject the idea of democracy itself.
The McCormick campaign hired Michael Roman and Associates back on April 21, paying the firm $7,000 for consulting services. Those familiar with the field of election law know that the firm worked for the Trump campaign in 2020 trying to get the Pennsylvania election results overturned. The claims the firm made did not hold up in court.
The New York Times says, "In February, Roman was issued a subpoena by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee said it had obtained communications that showed his 'involvement in a coordinated strategy to contact Republican members of state legislatures in certain states that former President Trump had lost and urge them to "reclaim" their authority by sending an alternate slate of electors'."
The paper adds, "Roman's hiring suggests that McCormick’s campaign was gearing up for a potentially protracted fight even before Tuesday, the day of the primary. It also means that an operative who helped lead Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results will now be pitted against a candidate endorsed by the former president."
Mr. Trump has advised Dr. Oz to declare victory. The former president's reasoned, "It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they just happened to find." That demonstrates just how foul the man's view of the world is. The presumption is not that there are 15,000 absentee ballots that are valid and need to be counted. The presumption is that anything that changes the outcome is cheating. He believes that "they" are going to create ballots out of thin air to steal the election.
It might be just within the realm of possibility that Acting Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman, a Democrat, wants Dr. Oz to lose and that she is using her office to thwart him. There are just two problems with that. First and foremost, all evidence is to the contrary. There is no proof of any sort that the election has been anything but fair. Even if Ms. Chapman did have her finger on the scale, the idea that she would work to defeat a candidate so easy for the Democrats to beat is laughable. Dr. Oz has changes his positions radically on virtually everything, and he has only recently moved to Pennsylvania. Indeed, he is still on the voter rolls in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Any campaign manager who gets to run against a flip-flopping carpetbagger will earn his or her money easily.
So, if there is cheating, it must be the campaigns of those challenging Dr. Oz. In other words, the cheating is coming from inside the GOP. In the gubernatorial race, Doug Mastriano won easily. Was there cheating there? It is hard to believe because all of the names are on the same ballot paper. If the ballot is invalid, it must be invalid for all the races, not just one.
A little logic shows just how silly the claims of cheating are.
© Copyright 2022 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
|
|
|
