While the world’s attention remains on the coronavirus global pandemic, Democrats are exploiting the crisis to change America’s election system in a fundamental way. It should concern everyone.
My home state of Nevada, where I served as attorney general from 2015 until 2019, began voting in its first all-mail primary election after the secretary of state’s unilateral decision to make the switch. This move exposes Nevada’s June 9 primary election to voter fraud.
Here, a coalition of Democratic Party-aligned groups seeks to implement further changes to the all-mail primary in an effort to alter our primary elections permanently to include mailing ballots to inactive voters and ballot harvesting.
As a result of some shenanigans, 200,000 ballots were mailed to inactive voters in Nevada. To put that in perspective, the last presidential election was decided by 27,000 votes in the state.
In Clark County, home to more than 70% of the state’s population and the greater Las Vegas area, reports are already coming in of the result of ballots being sent to inactive voters. Videos have emerged of stacks of ballots strewn all over apartments and in trash cans.
That image should make clear how ballot harvesting, which allows anybody to collect voters’ ballots to turn into a polling location, is susceptible to fraud and sets a dangerous precedent. It allows anyone, including political operatives and staff, the opportunity to show up and take possession of a voters’ completed ballot.
Democratic Party operatives and activists are using the coronavirus global pandemic as a power grab, playing on people’s fears to take more control of their lives. America’s election system isn’t safe from this agenda.
In current litigation, Democrats in Nevada are seeking to expand ballot harvesting and the elimination of signature requirements that verify completed ballots. Their push to alter the voting process will make our elections less safe and will undoubtedly not stop at the primary.
The heavily funded, roving Democratic litigation arm will seek to alter the November general election by filing another lawsuit after the primary, arguing that an all-mail ballot system must be used with full-scale ballot harvesting.
The Democrats’ all-mail ballots proposal is part of their larger effort to use the pandemic as a power grab, and they’re openly admitting it. The global pandemic is “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” Democratic Rep. James Clyburn recently said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and likely Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden have thrown their support behind an all-mail election which would expose our election process to new forms of voter fraud and weaken public confidence in our democracy.
The idea that eliminating oversight of the voting process actually opens up access to disenfranchised voters is a baldfaced lie. The truth is that eliminating oversight of the voting process opens up possibilities of cheating. It almost guarantees more attempts at voter fraud.
All-mail ballot elections, ballot harvesting, and litigation to drop signature requirements is a dangerous combination — a sure-fire way to invite voter fraud. If Democrats get their way, it could forever damage the integrity of our election system.
Adam Laxalt, an Iraq War veteran, served as the 33rd attorney general of Nevada from 2015 to 2019.
