Column By John Young
Well, Republicans: Now you can tell the bleeding hearts at the Brennan Center for Justice how wrong they are.
Named for the late Justice William Brennan, fiercely dedicated to voting rights, the center calls the modern-day wave of Republican “ballot security” and “voter ID” measures a “solution in search of a problem.” Meaning the “problem” of widespread voter fraud is a GOP-constructed fraud itself.
Red state attorneys general have scoured gullies and alleys, reeds and rocks, to reveal the rampant voter fraud they say justifies it all – namely making it harder for non-Republicans to vote.
Well, GOP, we can report the largest case of election fraud in the nation’s history – one so fulsome, so foul, that it could have changed the course of history. Indeed, it could have extinguished democracy’s lamp.
We aren’t talking about one misbegotten voter. We are talking of an elephant-mounted army.
In it, astride the herd: the former president of the United States. Tally the crimes alleged to his scheming lieutenants and toadies and we have found the motherlode of election fraud. Don’t forget to include the indictments of fake electors in Michigan.
The size and sweep of this matter – 41 charges in one Georgia county alone – takes us many degrees past “egads” and bumps up against “holy crapola.”
Let’s attach a number: If charges in these myriad cases bear out in trial, the frequency of confirmed election fraud in our fair land – near zero mere weeks ago – will have gone up roughly 1 sextillion percent.
One would think that Republicans, baying sentinels of secure elections, would be the ones most alarmed. Actually, they are alarmed mostly that prosecutors caught on.
I’ve got to say, among the most indignant Republicans should be those fake electors now facing indictment.
What a delightful lark — to barter one’s signature in a game of pretend power. Just like a just-defeated president.
Much has been said of the phone call in which Donald Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find, uh, 11,780 votes.”
That was Jan. 2, 2021. Having yet to be helicoptered out of office, Trump assumed he could wield power to tell Raffensperger that to do otherwise would be a crime. That’s how things work in Pyongyang, at least.
Ten months later, on Sept. 17, Trump was way past being our ruler, yet he wasn’t through messing with democracy down in Georgia. He wrote Raffensperger requesting that he start the process of “decertifying the election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis identifies that bit of extracurricular intimidation as Count 38 of 41 in her list of indictments.
Back to those fake electors:
In his otherwise easy-(and fun)-to-read narrative of corruption explaining the indictment of Trump for his bid to overthrow the election, Special Counsel Jack Smith has a short paragraph that’s a little hard to follow.
That’s because it features the term “fraudulent elector” or its plural five times.
The gist: Spooked fraudulent electors in Pennsylvania and Nevada, afraid they were breaking the law, were told their fraudulent role would only come into play if Trump’s fraudulent election challenges prevailed in court.
As the indictment points out, however, the fraudulent electors in Michigan, the fraudulent ones in Georgia, the fraudulent ones in Arizona, the fraudulent ones in New Mexico, and the fraudulent ones in Wisconsin did not get this message. Why? Smith observes that it was kept from them so they wouldn’t chicken out from their fraudulent duties.
In other words: Trump’s was such a fraudulent operation that his people defrauded their own fraudulent electors.
Enough election fraud for you, GOP? I expect you to sound alarms. Let sirens ring.
Jack Smith is succinct in describing the “manner and means” of this whole thing – or what the Fulton County DA calls “in furtherance of this conspiracy”:
The former president engaged in acts to “impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function through dishonesty, fraud, and deceit.”
Sorry to have thrown “fraud” in there one more time. It is unavoidable.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
