Margot Cleveland Has An Answer For Election Fraud

It’s simple. Criminalize it.

In a fine article that I urge everyone to read

What To Do When Election Officials Keep Ignoring Voting Laws

What more can the legislative branch do if election officials ignore the laws the lawmakers establish and courts do nothing about it? They do have options.

Cleveland addresses the nationwide problem of local election officials simply ignoring the elections laws. It’s happening right now in some parts of Virginia (Fairfax County is the example she cites) and elsewhere. These actions provide the likely Dem template for 2022. The problem is that the courts are loath to get involved. Cleveland has egregious examples of that, too.

In fairness to Cleveland, she knows this wouldn’t be simple to put into practice. But  she also knows that the courts aren’t about to act. That puts the ball back in the court of the State legislatures—the entities that, within our constitutional framework, are tasked with overseeing elections.

What, then, can legislatures do when local officials ignore the laws?

The answer: punish them.

Make it a crime for an election official to mail a ballot to a resident if the application submitted fails to satisfy the requirements set by the legislative branch. Make it a crime for an election official to provide a ballot to a resident if he or she lacks the mandated identification. Make it a crime for an election official to count a ballot if it is returned beyond the legislatively established deadline.

Line-by-line review the election code and for every mandate make clear that ignoring it means a fine or imprisonment. Then authorize the state legislature to appoint a special counsel to prosecute the offense if a local prosecutor refuses.

State legislatures should further provide individual voters a civil “right of action,” or a right to sue the election officials for damages at a statutorily set amount. After all, voters who follow the law are the ones disenfranchised when their legal vote is canceled out by an illegal vote.

There’s another problem, which Cleveland recognizes—politicized judges:

Of course, election officials ignoring or changing the rules is but half of the problem: As 2020 also revealed, judges are likewise substituting their will for the will of the legislative branch, but by the time the case reaches a higher court, it is too late.

Cleveland, after reviewing everything that went wrong in the courts in 2020, recommends a drastic solution:

State legislators have few options available to confront this scenario, making the Supreme Court’s refusal last term to address the problem in the Pennsylvania case all the more disappointing. One possible option, though, would be to remove jurisdiction, i.e., take away their power to hear cases, from state courts on challenges to “the time, place and manner” for the election of senators, representatives, or electors, established by the state legislature.

Of course, such challenges could still be brought in the federal court system, but this approach would limit the mischief being done by state court judges.

These are drastic solutions, especially coming from Cleveland—whom I never regarded as a bomb thrower. But it’s clear that Cleveland sees our entire constitutional order at a precipice:

But the status quo is clearly not working — unless you’re a Democrat and don’t care about election integrity.

And let’s not forget—it was the reckless hatred of the anti-Trump Republicans who opened this Pandora’s Box of election fraud. Bluto Barr will go down in history as the author of two almost universally disbelieved statements:

Epstein killed himself, and

Election fraud is all bullsh*t.