The patient is sick and in dire need of a doctor.
It’s
autopsy time for the elections, and Americans would be wise to seize
the moment and take stock of what just happened in the much-ballyhooed midterms.
It wasn’t merely another disappointment for the Republicans because a
big, beautiful Red Wave didn’t materialize. A much more critical issue
surfaced that must be addressed: The two-party system has mutated into
two separate, but not equal, elections.
This is not an off-the-wall theory, and
many Republicans have begun to recognize the problem: Democrats gather
ballots for months while Republicans take time on Election Day to go to
the polls and vote. One can easily determine the more successful system
by reflecting on the last two elections, in 2020 and 2022.
Gathering ballots wins hands down. And it will win every
time if Republicans don’t stop whining, get off their collective
conservative behinds, and take action to level the playing field.
Since the first step to effectuate change is the ability to recognize the problem, let’s begin there.
Pamela
Geller asserts in her widely read blog, “A *vote* cannot be cast by a
person who is no longer alive, or no longer lives in the area. However, a
*ballot* can be printed, distributed, completed, and returned
regardless of the status of the initially attributed and/or registered
individual. ‘Votes’ and ‘Ballots’ are two distinctly different things.”
The Conservative Treehouse
reviewed the successful candidacies of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and observed, “Whitmer and
Fetterman were not campaigning for votes, that is old school. Instead,
the machinery behind both candidates focused on the modern path. The
Democrat machines in both states focused on ballot collection and
ignored the irrelevant votes as cast.”
Fox News Host Jesse Waters
picked up this theme and intoned, “The longer some of these races drag
out … the better it is for Democrats because they’ve created a system
centered around ballots, not votes. It’s not about winning your vote
anymore. It’s not about persuading you. It’s about flooding the state
with as many ballots as possible and getting them filled out Democrat.”
Perhaps
it’s something in the nature of conservatism that keeps Republicans
playing by Marquess of Queensberry rules while the opposition has
invented a system that takes much less effort but boasts a higher degree
of success: Spend months gathering ballots and drop them off in boxes
before Election Day.
The success of this strategy lies in its simplicity.
US Elections: Voting Has Become Outdated
It
doesn’t take much to fill out a ballot and stuff it into a box. The
voter has plenty of time to do it and is less likely to pay attention to
the worthiness of individual candidates than simple ideology. This is
how people like President Joe Biden and Fetterman – both of whom have
trouble spitting out a coherent sentence — get elected.
Alternatively,
it takes more motivation and dedication to go to a particular place on a
specific day between selected hours and cast your vote. People who do
such things often are the ones with skin in the game; they know the
candidate they have chosen and why. However, this voting structure has
become passé in the last two election cycles.
For some bizarre
reason, Republicans seemed to believe balloting as a means of voting
ended with the pandemic. Still, all they had to do was look at the
voting rules in states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona and see it
wasn’t so. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Election 2022
turned into a ghastly case of déjà vu. Here’s how the nightmare goes: A
Republican takes the lead on Election Day, the counting slows to a
crawl, and then the GOP sits and watches that lead dwindle to zero until
the Democrat gets out in front. Then – boom – it’s all over: another
checkmark in the D column.
One has to wonder why party
apparatchiks didn’t grab governors like Arizona’s Doug Ducey by the
lapels and get them to change the election system in their states back
to voting instead of balloting.
Possible Solutions
Republicans have several ways to handle this separate but unequal election system. They can:
- Start playing the balloting game and forget the business of electioneering to get out the vote.
- Make
certain Republican state legislatures (especially ones with GOP
governors) establish a statewide election system that does not include
endless balloting.
- Limit voting to just a few days – perhaps a
long weekend – which sets parameters on balloting and at the same time
extends the in-person voting over that same period to balance out the
system.
The Conservative Treehouse observed: “It’s
time for voters to start seeing the difference between elections decided
by ballots and elections decided by votes. Perhaps the 2022 midterm
election will awaken people to the two completely different
electioneering systems.” Point taken.
Anyone who has listened
closely to former President Donald Trump knows he’s been railing against
more than just a personal loss in 2020. He found out the hard way that
endless ballot gathering
makes Election Day essentially moot. Republicans will need to do
something to change the way Americans vote or prepare to suffer a
similar fate in 2024.
Star Parker Dec 14, 2022 
