Voting

I know that the world is focused on Iran but here’s what President Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday about the so-called “SAVE Act” (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility): "It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY – ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL."The original bill, introduced by Senator Mike Lee way back in January 2025, has undergone a few enhancements at the hands of Senator Lee's colleagues, but the core desideratum is simple: that American elections must be secure, i.e., only those entitled to vote should be allowed to vote.

The headwinds facing Democrats in Congress have been blowing powerfully for some time now. On culture, the economy, law enforcement and immigration the party is on the defensive as it casts about not only for a winning message, but leaders able to persuade the public the party remains relevant in the age of Trump. Add to that list of hurdles the Supreme Court. The court’s conservative majority has delivered one blow after another to treasured progressive causes including transgender rights, maintaining the federal workforce and presidential authority. Now the court is contemplating changes to the Voting Rights Act that could, if carried out, cause Democrats to lose a dozen or more seats in the House, all of them held by minorities.

President Donald J. Trump, burned in 2020 at the height of Covid by some states’ shenanigans ranging from rule changes regarding absentee voting to registration requirements, is now on a quest to reform mail-in voting and traditional ballot tabulation machines. On August 18, the President posted the following missive on Truth Social: “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.” Some of the voting practices the President has critiqued are unusual, to say the least.

It’s nicknamed “the Keystone State” because, if my memory of junior-year Pennsylvania history class serves me, in America’s early founding it was the arch stone holding together the handful of other young states. Fast-forward forty-eight states and nearly 250 years, and Pennsylvania remains a powerhouse, particularly when it comes to politics. And this year’s elections could very well have it deciding whether the keystone continues to uphold the nation. US News and World Report has ranked Pennsylvania as “potentially the most important swing state in this year’s race for the White House.” The Commonwealth ties for fifth place with Illinois for the highest number of electoral votes — nineteen.

The midterm bloodbath conservatives were salivating for devolved into, at best, a red tide. The Democrats held the Senate and have only a seven-seat deficit in the House. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is now hoping to grant citizenship to every warm body in the country and perhaps even others on their way here, while Senator Elizabeth Warren is more determined than ever to cancel the student debts of millions of bankrupt liberal arts majors. And an emboldened President Biden is threatening to run for re-election, whether anyone wants him to or not. But amidst all the liberal revelry lies an uncomfortable, little-reported fact: Democrats lost the House popular vote by three points. Remember the popular vote? The popular vote!

What a civil rights legend is Joseph R. Biden. You can almost picture it if you daydream hard enough: the discordant chants of "we shall overcome, man! I mean, c'mon!"; the sermons that sound just a bit too identical to the previous speaker; the Millions Against Malarkey March of '67. Naturally no one spends more time daydreaming about this than Biden himself. So it was that last week, the president falsely asserted again that he'd once been arrested as a young man during a civil rights march. It was a claim he’d made previously and been forced to retract, and it was such an obvious fib that even the Washington Post took a break from fact-checking Tucker Carlson’s facial expressions to award the president four Pinocchios.

The media is ablaze with worry. Thanks to COVID, Americans, especially Democrats, are voting early and absentee in record numbers. The press is convinced that states will be swamped by this flood of votes. As a result, the theory goes, Donald Trump will be ahead on the night of November 3, only to see his lead erode over the coming days and even weeks, fueling skepticism of the electoral process. The uncertainty will motivate street violence and a constitutional crisis. While there are some reasons for concern, these worries are overblown. States will do a better job tabulating votes than the received wisdom holds and, if past elections set the precedent, Americans will behave themselves.

A majority of voters believe that November's election can be conducted safely in person, according to a new poll provided exclusively to The Spectator. A Redfield and Wilton Strategies survey of 2,500 registered voters found that 66 percent either agree or strongly agree that social distancing measures can be enforced at polling stations and therefore the election can be held in person without creating a public health risk. Of those who may vote in the upcoming election, 56 percent said they would feel more comfortable than uncomfortable voting in person. Dr Anthony Fauci said in mid-August that 'there's no reason' voting in-person should not be safe, so long as people wore masks and socially distanced. Both President Trump and Joe Biden have agreed with this message.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece titled ‘The battle cry of the politically homeless’ in which I lamented the toxic tribalism that’s infecting our politics and pitting neighbor against neighbor, sister against brother, parent against child. ‘Democracy doesn’t die in the darkness; it dies when politics become team sports, in full view of a bloodthirsty, cheering electorate.’ At the end I wondered, ‘We will return to the Dark Ages or we will evolve. Is that likely? I dunno. Have we evolved that much from the Roman Colosseum? Barreling into 2020 — it doesn’t seem like it.’ In the last year, the globe has been ravaged by a pandemic that put the ineptitude of American institutions and leaders on display for the world.

Los Angeles County has too many voters. An estimated 1.6 million, according to the latest calculations – which is roughly the population of Philadelphia. That’s the difference between the number of people on the county’s voter rolls and the actual number of voting age residents. This means that LA is in violation of federal law, which seeks to limit fraud by requiring basic voter list maintenance to make sure that people who have died, moved, or are otherwise ineligible to vote aren’t still on the rolls. Los Angeles County has made only minimal efforts to clean up its voter rolls for decades. It began sending notices to those 1.6 million people last month to settle a lawsuit brought by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.