DV Journal

In a recent White House proclamation, President Joe Biden called for Congress to pass the “Freedom to Vote Act,” which imposes national Election Day voter registration requirements, automatic voter registration, and mail-in voting requirements on states.

While researching my book, “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections,” I found a startling metamorphosis for Biden.

As president, Biden has joined his party in attacking common sense state election integrity laws such as voter ID, more accurate voter registration lists, and restrictions on ballot harvesting as “Jim Crow 2.0,” or as Biden put it, “Jim Eagle.”

Yet, as a senator, he was concerned about honest elections.

In 1977, Sen. Biden opposed a proposal backed by President Jimmy Carter to have same-day voter registration — a key part of the Senate Democrats’ “Freedom to Vote Act.”

“A reservation I have and one that is apparently shared by some of the top officials within the Department of Justice is that the president’s proposal could lead to a serious increase in vote fraud,” the Delaware senator said.

In 1989, Biden teamed with then-freshman Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to co-sponsor the bipartisan Anti-Corruption Act.

“Current law does not permit prosecution of election fraud,” Biden said. “…This bill makes it a federal offense to corrupt any state or local election process.”

It’s not clear where Biden changed his mind. It seemed to happen when he was vice president and the Obama administration’s Department of Justice began suing states over voter ID laws.

“Why, without any proof of voter fraud, have 81 bills been introduced in state legislative bodies … to make it harder for people to vote?” the vice president said in a 2014 speech at Allen University in South Carolina.

No proof of voter fraud? Where’s the proof of voter suppression?

While there have assuredly been exaggerations and outright lies by sore losers over the years, there have been more than 1,300 proven and adjudicated voter fraud cases, numerous elections overturned, and politicians and operatives convicted of the crime. One of the biggest scams was a North Carolina congressional race outcome in 2018 voided after a Republican candidate won because of a voter fraud scam.

The same presidential proclamation last week claims “nearly 20 states passed laws to make it harder to vote — not only to suppress the vote but to subvert it.”

If that was the goal, states did a horrible job. Of states that passed election reform laws, Biden’s Department of Justice has sued Georgia, Texas, and Arizona. Georgia’s 2022 primary had a 168 percent increase in voter turnout from the comparable non-presidential Georgia primary of 2018. In Texas, turnout was 17.7 percent in 2022 compared to 17.2 percent in the 2018 primary. The 2022 Arizona primary had a record primary turnout of 35.12 percent, compared to the 33.3 percent turnout in 2018.

Humans are allowed to evolve in their views — particularly spanning 1977 to 2022. More recently, though, Biden has had some fairly compressed evolution.

In January, after House-passed federal election bills died of Senate filibusters, Biden sounded like he would be a preemptive election denier.

“I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” Biden said when asked about the 2022 midterms. “The increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”

By September, when delivering his anti-MAGA speech in Philadelphia, Biden said, “Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated.”

It seems simple enough in this case. Biden supports federal voting legislation that would seemingly help Democrats and opposes state legislation that could help Republicans.

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Montgomery County officials have taken issue with a video that the county Republican Party obtained through a right-to-know request and released to the news media.

The video shows a woman feeding several ballots into an Upper Dublin ballot box used in last November’s election. Ballot boxes and no excuse mail-in ballots permitted under Act 77 have been an issue in the last three elections, with many voters questioning the integrity of the new system.

Even though individuals are required to put their own ballots into ballot boxes, the county said in a letter to GOP Chair Liz Preate Havey that the woman shown was permitted to submit those ballots because she had “a completed Designated Agent Form in accordance with Pennsylvania law.”

“Each form properly identified the individual voter and designated the individual in the video as the person permitted to act as an agent on the voter’s behalf,” the letter said. “The county maintains each of these Designated Agent forms in its possession. This individual did nothing wrong. In fact, the video shows this voter taking the proper steps to enfranchise residents of a local rehabilitation and long-term care facility so that their votes were legally cast.

“It is irresponsible that MCRC, rather than make a reasonable attempt to get the facts, released this video to a third party and on MCRC social media falsely accusing the individual involved with ‘illegal ballot harvesting,’ when in fact, the individual correctly followed the rules for returning ballots. Mail-in ballots may be returned to the Board of Elections by a designated agent acting on behalf of a voter who, due to a disability, is not able to do so on their own.

“Returning ballots to a secure ballot drop box is one of several ways to return ballots to the Board of Elections. Many voters of both parties choose to deliver their ballot to a secure drop box for the peace of mind they provide. Each drop box has the rules clearly posted, is under 24-hour video surveillance, and has every ballot collected daily by a sheriff’s deputy and delivered directly to Voter Services,” according to the letter, which a county spokesperson released to Delaware Valley Journal.

Not surprisingly, the Republicans disagreed with the county officials’ explanation.

In a press release, GOP officials said, “The Pennsylvania Department of State designated agent form clearly states, ‘the person you designate as your agent is only allowed to serve as a designated agent for one voter, unless the additional voter(s) live in the same household as you (the voter named in this form).’”

They called the county’s response “deeply troubling.”

“The county is interpreting a large senior living facility as one household,” the Republicans said. “The Pennsylvania Department of State Voting Fact Sheet for Long Term Care Facilities specifically states a  ‘household’ for the purpose of designating an agent does not include a long-term care facility.”

Also, “the county fails to note whether or not the woman who did the ballot harvesting lives in the ‘same household as all the people for whom she dropped the ballots as required by Pennsylvania law. That is because she does not live in a senior living facility according to her voter registration. She has been identified by many as a long-time leader in the Democrat Party.”

And the Republicans said, “The county never addressed designated agents using drop boxes for any reason in its published instructions or in any communication with the Republican Party or its candidates.”

“The Democrat-controlled county has chosen to protect one of its own party leaders in direct violation of Pennsylvania law,” the Republicans added. “This kind of blatant disregard for even the simplest election security rules is unacceptable and contributes to the deep distrust many have in our system.”

In addition, the “MCRC is requesting the Montgomery County Election Board provide all the evidence that the county reviewed regarding the woman who dropped the multiple ballots. And we ask that it also provide the information to the district attorney and, if appropriate, the attorney general.

“We would also like to know the county’s conclusions and actions to be taken about each of the other 106 people who dropped more than one ballot at the Upper Dublin drop box. If the county does not provide this information, MCRC is prepared to submit a Right to Know Request for this information.”

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