The Democrats’ Attempts to Subvert the 2024 Presidential Election
Preaching voters’ rights – while infringing on those rights themselves.
By Joseph Klein
President Biden and his allies are falsely accusing the Republicans of trying to subvert the electoral process in their favor when that is precisely what President Biden and his progressive allies are trying to do to benefit themselves.
By recklessly vilifying election integrity laws enacted in some red states after the 2020 presidential election, Democrats have deliberately tried to incite the public into believing that Republicans are mortal threats to democracy. At the same time, they are trying to clear away protections against election cheating as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
For example, the president took aim at Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, passed in 2021 to deter voter fraud, which he charged was “the undemocratic way.” He characterized Georgia’s law and others like it as “Jim Crow 2.0,” which he said was “about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion.”
This claim was exposed as sheer demagoguery by the fact that voter turnout for Georgia’s 2022 midterm election reached record levels – compelling evidence rebutting the charge of voter suppression.
Adding insult to injury, the Biden administration and private advocacy group plaintiffs brought an action in federal court that sought a preliminary injunction to prevent key provisions of Georgia’s Election Integrity Act from being enforced for the 2024 election. They failed in their attempt to remove sensible guardrails that were enacted to enable eligible voters to readily cast their ballots while making it harder to cheat.
The challenged provisions include the regulation of absentee ballot drop boxes and the voter identification requirement for absentee ballot applications. A federal district judge issued a ruling on October 11th rejecting these meritless challenges. With respect to the voter identification issue, for example, the Court concluded that the plaintiffs failed to provide sufficient evidence for the Court to “find at this time that the Identification Provision has a disparate impact on black voters.” The Court cited a survey conducted by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs concerning the November 2022 election in which “99.5% of black voters reported no problem when voting, and no black voters reported poor experiences when voting.”
Democrats are not only challenging key safeguards against voter fraud so that they can run up their vote totals illegitimately next year. Some of these anti-democracy Democrats are taking aggressive actions to keep third-party and independent presidential candidates off the ballot in as many states as possible.
The Biden team and his supporters are in a lather over the prospect of potentially losing votes to independent and third-party candidates who are throwing their hats into the ring for the 2024 presidential race. In addition to smearing the prospective candidates, some Bidenites are throwing roadblocks in their way to stop them from even getting on the ballot.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornel West, the former Harvard professor who is likely to attract left-wing progressive voters disaffected with President Biden, are planning to run for president in 2024 as independent candidates. Jill Stein has announced that she will seek to be the Green Party’s nominee, potentially siphoning off votes from President Biden in battleground states such as Wisconsin, as she had done to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Finally, the No Labels organization may field its own presidential candidate. West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who announced that he will not seek another Senate term, is keeping the option open to run for president, which could cost President Biden even more votes in crucial contests.
“As attempts to mount outside campaigns multiply, a broad coalition has accelerated a multipronged assault to starve such efforts of financial and political support and warn fellow Democrats that supporting outsider candidacies, including the centrist organization No Labels, could throw the election to former President Donald J. Trump,” the New York Times reported last month. “The endeavor is far-reaching…Across the country, lawyers have begun researching moves to limit ballot access — or at least make it more costly to qualify.”
The usual argument we hear against independent and third-party candidates is that they are spoilers with no chance to win. The Bidenites are raising the alarm that these candidates will take away enough votes from President Biden to elect Mr. Trump, the Democrats’ worst bogeyman, or another “MAGA” Republican should Mr. Trump not be the Republican nominee.
Some eligible voters are disenchanted in general with the two major parties and what these voters consider to be an ossified political system. Other voters are so concerned with one specific issue that they will only cast their votes for the candidate whose position on that issue aligns the most with their own. Preventing voters from having the opportunity to choose for themselves from a broader set of candidates, even as a message to express their frustration with the current two-party duopoly, is inherently undemocratic. The elitists trying to suppress voter choice think they know better what is good for us than we do ourselves.
History demonstrates that presidential candidates who have challenged the two-party duopoly in the past have proven how such outsiders can become significant change agents by leading the way with cutting-edge ideas that a major party subsequently adopts.
Aside from seeking to block third-party and independent candidates from running for president, the Biden administration and progressive local Democrat officials are weaponizing law enforcement and the judiciary against Donald Trump’s candidacy. More than 74,000,000 voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 but Mr. Trump’s legions of supporters will be deprived of the opportunity to vote for him in 2024 if the Bidenites get their way.
“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime” was the chilling boast attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief. In keeping with this model of malicious prosecution, leftwing prosecutors have brought politically motivated indictments against Mr. Trump in New York, Washington D.C., Florida, and Georgia in a brazen attempt to knock Trump out of next year’s election.
New York’s Attorney General Letitia James has made good on her campaign promise to go after Mr. Trump’s businesses and finances. She has brought a wide-ranging civil fraud action against Mr. Trump and members of his family, charging them with fraudulently inflating the value of their business assets to obtain more favorable financial terms. Ms. James relied on a constitutionally dubious statute that does not require proof of either intent or harm to a victim.
The Democrat judge, Arthur F. Engoron, who is not only the judge in the case but a jury of one as well, has already decided that the Trumps are liable for fraud. Judge Engoron has also meted out an outrageously harsh punishment by taking away the Trumps’ control over their New York properties. All this, before the Trump team even had an opportunity to present any evidence in his defense at the trial.
The Democrat attorney general and judge have already trashed the Trumps’ due process rights. But Attorney General James is thirsting for even harsher punishments, which the biased judge will probably grant. This case is a travesty of justice, meant to destroy Mr. Trump financially in the runup to next year’s presidential election.
Trump haters have gone to such extraordinary lengths to deny voters the opportunity to vote for Mr. Trump that they have sought to keep his name off the ballot in several states. They claim that his role in the Capitol riot that took place on January 6, 2021 disqualifies him from holding office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. This constitutional amendment, passed in the wake of the Civil War, bars any person from occupying a future federal office “who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
This preposterous challenge is a direct assault on the American people’s voting rights. The voters should have the final say as to whether Mr. Trump’s past conduct warrants their rejection of his candidacy in a fair election, not the courts or state election officials.
Mr. Trump has not been convicted of insurrection either by the judiciary or in an impeachment trial. Moreover, as a Colorado judge ruled on November 17th, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Mr. Trump as president or as a person seeking reelection as president. The judge reached this conclusion based on “the absence of the President from the list of positions to which the Amendment applies.”
Lumping the president of the United States within the general category of “an officer of the United States” referenced in Section 3 would allow an interpretation of this highly ambiguous provision to justify kicking Trump off the ballot. In the judge’s words, “the law ought err on the side of democratic norms except where a contrary indication is clear,” which is certainly not the case here.
Judges in Michigan and Minnesota have also rejected efforts to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot in those states.
The Bidenites and other Trump haters are shamelessly trying to subvert the 2024 presidential election through devious maneuvers that are meant to tilt the election in the Democrats’ favor by peremptorily limiting voters’ choice of candidates. These violators of the rule of law are infringing on Americans’ ability to fully exercise the fundamental right to vote in a free, fair, honest, and truly open election.