A Different Kraken

J. Christian Adams shines the light on a Kraken that may account for a legitimate* Trump loss.

Two things happened in 2020. First, COVID led to a dismantling of state election integrity laws by everyone except the one body with the constitutional prerogative to change the rules of electing the president – the state legislatures.

Second, the Center for Technology and Civic Life happened.

According to Adams, the CTCL is a "non-partisan" nonprofit that focuses on get-out-the-vote efforts in urban areas. Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg gave them hundreds of millions, and they in turn spent that to reach urban voters and get them to the polls last month.

They are non-partisan to the extent that they didn't focus on Democrats or Republicans, just generic "Go Vote" type efforts, but they focused their efforts on urban areas that typically vote Democrat. Little was done to get people to vote in areas that typically vote Republican.

Adams's article is worth a read. The CTCL may account for some things that look like anomalies in this election. And it's something Republicans may very well need to duplicate if they are to be competitive in future elections.

Adams based his article on research by the Capital Research Center, if you want to take a deeper dive.

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* Grim rightly points out in the comments that the "dismantling of state election integrity laws by everyone except the one body with the constitutional prerogative to change the rules" would not be part of a legitimate loss by Trump. I was too focused on the CTCL when I wrote. My apologies.

Watch Those Polls

Watch Those Polls

A month ago I linked here to a Houston Chronicle story about a fire that burned up pretty much all of Harris County's voting machines in the middle of the night. No one has nailed down exactly how that happened and whether it was bad luck or malfeasance, though no accelerants have been found. The timing was more suspicious than I immediately realized, though.

A local watchdog group called "True the Vote" had formed after their experience as poll-watchers during the 2008 elections curdled their blood. They decided early to focus their attention on homes containing more than six registered voters. Most voting districts had a couple of thousand of these. One had 24,000. That's where the group found that a group called "Houston Votes," headed by an employee of SEIU, had submitted 25,000 voter registrations, fewer than 1,800 of which appeared to be valid. Houston Votes issued the usual "mistakes were made" press release and fired some workers.

Harris County's voter registrar announced in late August 2010 that "the integrity of the voting rolls in Harris County, Texas, appears to be under an organized and systematic attack by the group operating under the name Houston Votes." The next day, the county's voting-machine warehouse burned to the ground.

It's always a good idea to serve as an election judge or election clerk if you can possibly spare the time. Even better might be to volunteer as a poll watcher. A good voter registrar can catch a lot of registration fraud, but if there's rot at the precinct level, nothing short of eyes on the scene on election day can stop some of the abuses. Without poll watchers, "True the Vote" never would have gotten started.

The Houston Chronicle, in the meantime, seems to have a complete blackout on any coverage of this fraud. The only place you can find it mentioned is in the reader comment sections. Such a pitiful newspaper for the second largest county in the U.S.

Greedy Geezers.

These sorts of shenanigans are what I'm talking about:

On the eve of a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Indiana Voter ID law has become a story with a twist: One of the individuals used by opponents to the law as an example of how the law hurts older Hoosiers is registered to vote in two states.

Faye Buis-Ewing, 72, who has been telling the media she is a 50-year
resident of Indiana, at one point in the past few years also claimed two states as her primary residence and received a homestead exemption on her property taxes in both states.

Like Lo-Pan said: "This just pisses me off." Not only is the old bag misrepresenting her situation, she and her hubby are collecting tax rebates in two states. This sort of behavior just cannot be tolerated. Because its only going to get worse.

(via Instapundit)