Show Me the Evidence
To the editor:
Democrat, Independent, Republican? If you’re eligible to vote, you’ve got a dog in this hunt. The issue is election security, and it’s one of the dominant issues in the fall mid-term elections.
President Trump claims that our elections are corrupt (even though he was elected twice in the three most recent presidential election cycles), but if so, what would “corrupt elections” look like, exactly?
The League of Women Voters every August celebrates the anniversary of passage of the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. I was among a dozen women who attended an event Wednesday, August 5, sponsored by the LWV of South Central Texas, at Fayette County’s Elections Office in La Grange. At the gathering, Fayette County Elections Administrator Donna Macik described our county’s election processes and the security associated with assuring their legitimacy. Following her most informative presentation and more hours spent myself, reading and pondering some history on this matter, I came away well-convinced that President Trump is wasting his time worrying about corruption in our elections. Here’s why: If there was wide-spread election corruption, we would certainly see some, if not all, of these things happening: a) Many more election outcomes would be challenged by the losers. There are vanishingly few of these instances I can recall in over five decades of my years of voting. b) Many more prosecutions of illegal voters would be a matter of public record. After all, every local prosecutor, state attorney general, or U.S. President would be thrilled to have such cases to brag about when he or she ran for re-election, and we just don’t hear much about these. c) There would be nationwide, well-publicized, systematic interference with the computers that are used to record votes and to count ballots.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is happening, and there’s a very good reason for it: there are 254 separate county voting administrators in Texas alone, all of whom work with their local county officials to establish voting locations and procedures, and select the software programs they will use. (Across the nation, there are over 10,000 separate, independent offices of responsibility for elections, and all are governed by different state guidelines and state/local budgets.) There are nine different independent companies registered by the Unites States Election Assistance Commission who provide voting systems and/or software for use by these local elections administrators (only two are approved in Texas, which prohibits any voting or counting machines linked to the internet). All of them would need to be simultaneously “hacked” by anyone trying to interfere in the counting/reporting of election results. d) Poll-watchers who monitor elections (chosen by political parties or candidates and trained beforehand) would be blasting our ears with their screeches to warn us of election irregularities and violations. I cannot recall learning much about irregularities at the polls in Fayette County, nor in any of the surrounding counties, in a lifetime of voting. e) Long-standing independent elections integrity groups like the Brennan Center, the Carter Center, the League of Women Voters, and many research centers at major universities all monitor the security of elections all across the United States (and some around the world), issuing reports and recommendations to address election irregularities. I don’t hear their alarm bells ringing about election fraud in our elections either.
If you choose not to vote this fall, that’s your right, but I won’t understand it, for I was taught early on that this is my very small (but critical) service to this country. My vote helps to assure the future of our democracy, and I owe it to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, in the wars fought to keep our country safe and secure, to do my part faithfully. But if you choose NOT to vote, you’d better find a different excuse than election integrity, because the evidence just isn’t there for you to claim our elections are corrupt.
Annette Citzler La Grange