Category: Elections

America’s Fourth World Vote System Is a Global Embarrassment.

The whole world is laughing.

“US election results: When will we know who won?” the BBC wondered.

AZCentral.com columnist Jon Gabriel wrote: “Friends in Hungary and Brazil asked how their entire nations can count votes in a few hours, while it takes Arizona a week or longer.”

As of early Friday afternoon, America’s voting system has devolved from a global beacon of democracy to an international punchline. A bright neon sign warns: “Don’t try this at home.”

Mechanical breakdowns, baffling “ballot dumps,” and inexplicable pauses in tabulation have buried the Arizona and Nevada senatorial and gubernatorial results in sand.

Alaska has soiled itself with a new, needless, and odious rank-choice-voting process. Rather than Tuesday’s top vote-getter winning the Senate seat, Republicans Lisa Murkowski, Kelly Tshibaka, Buzz Kelley, and Democrat Patricia Chesboro are mired in a glacial redistribution of each losing candidate’s votes to those ranked higher. This ballot buffoonery could continue for weeks.

In the U.S. House, 32 seats remain uncalled. Republicans have yet to secure their expected slim majority, thanks to dilatory vote counts and mail-in ballots that land more slowly than falling autumn leaves.

Who will be the next mayor of Los Angeles? At this writing, 64 hours after polls closed, nobody knows. Some 900,000 ballots await tabulation! In 10 California congressional contests, fewer than half of the ballots have been counted, per Politico. In the Sixth District, only 35 percent of ballots have been tabulated!

What America needs is a major cleanup of our self-humiliating voting system.

This should start by excising the cancer of early voting.

According to 2 U.S. Code § 7: “The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress.”

What part of that federal statute is unclear?

Pennsylvanians began voting on Sept. 16—39 days (!) before Democrat John Fetterman’s and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz’s sole debate on Oct. 25. For seven weeks and two days, people voted before they saw Fetterman’s performance and either were appalled at his diminished, post-stroke mental capacity, or admired him simply for showing up and standing there. No ballots should have been cast—for Fetterman or Oz—absent that information.

Alas, some 600,000 Pennsylvanians already had voted before they saw Fetterman barely able to express himself, which was exactly what devious Democrats had in mind. Surely, some of them wanted their ballots back — perhaps enough to have elected Oz on Tuesday.

Early voting began in Arizona on Oct. 12. That was 20 days before Libertarian Party nominee Marc Victor dropped out of the Senate race and endorsed Republican Blake Masters. Victor now has 43,542 votes. The early ones among them might have gone to Masters, which would propel him that much closer to victory.

In 2016, North Carolina sent voters absentee ballots on Sept. 9, a full 17 days before the first Hillary Clinton vs. Donald J. Trump debate that Sept. 26. Voting before even the first of three debates for President of the United States and leader of the free world is SICK.

Americans should coalesce around an election system worthy of this nation:

•Make Election Day a national holiday.

• Polls operate for 24 hours—midnight to midnight Eastern time—and open and shut simultaneously nationwide. Voters should not be swayed by results in states with earlier precinct closures.

•Voters must show photo ID.

•Voter rolls must be cleaned frequently and by the registration deadline: two weeks before Election Day.

• No more mass mail-in ballots

• Limit absentee ballots to the sick, infirm, and those who will be— Imagine!—absent on Election Day.

• Only adult U.S. citizens can vote. Zero ballots for foreign citizens.

These reforms would start to fix America’s unintentionally hilarious vote system.

Post-election landscape in Uvalde paints a picture of common sense

Emerging details from Uvalde are generally disturbing, heartbreaking, and angering all at once. First it was Matthew McConaughey’s vapid self-promotion using the massacre as clickbait, and now the very recent revelation that responding officers, equipped with body armor, whined about the possibility they might get “clapped” with one even saying, “I also don’t like standing right by the windows where we can get shot, bro.”

But in the midst of truly indescribable sadness, there is a rising phoenix. The people of Uvalde rebelled against the political class that births and fosters environments which only lead to tragedy and death, and overwhelmingly voted for Republicanism this past Tuesday. According to a report from Just the News, Uvalde constituents produced large margins for Republicans from the top-down:

According to official results, 60.18% of Uvalde County residents voted for Abbott compared to 32.18 who voted for O’Rourke.

They also voted for Republicans primarily across the board, also with similar margins of roughly 60% to 40%. They reelected Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick by 59.41%, Attorney General Ken Paxtom by 59.2%, Comptroller Glenn Hegar by 60.17%, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller by 60.24%, and Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian by 59.46%.

For context, last year’s census found that 72.5% of the county are Hispanic, a demographic which has historically voted with the Democrat party. (Establishment media is now recognizing the utter failure of the left to serve even their most loyal voters.)

Yet, what I find most telling is this:

They also overwhelmingly voted for Republican state Senate candidate Robert Garza, by a vote of 58.9%, 17 points more than incumbent Democrat Roland Gutierrez – even after Gutierrez introduced legislation for the state to give Robb Elementary victims’ family members $300 million in damages.

I find this highly encouraging for two reasons:

The first being that it appears as though the Machiavellian maneuver to abuse and exploit the American people in order to buy Democrat votes is no longer working, and that’s an advantage the left continuously uses against us and our best interests. The two most prominent and recent examples that come to mind are the student loan transfer scheme which seemingly bought a large portion of the Gen Z voters that “carried” the midterms, as well as the draining of our strategic oil reserves to keep pump prices affordable enough without widespread outrage.

Secondly, the people of Uvalde did the best thing they could do for themselves and their heritage — they involved themselves in the civic process and elected representatives that espouse principles of self-protection and personal responsibility. There are officers of the law that actually uphold their oaths to defend the Constitution and the people, but given the fact that some cops will actually stand down as school children take bullets, it’s a zero-sum game, and we do not have the luxury to assume the responding officers will fulfill their duty.

What was meant for evil can be used for good, and the Uvalde citizenry is a beacon of hope to an America drowning under leftist ploys and tyranny.

27 Counties in Illinois Have Passed Referendums to Explore Seceding From State. Here’s Where

On Election Day in Illinois, ballots contained statewide questions ranging from whether or not to amend the state’s constitution, to who should be the next Governor of Illinois, to who should sit on the Illinois State Supreme Court.

But some local ballots contained questions about whether to leave the state altogether.

Tuesday, two Illinois counties and a portion of another passed non-binding referendums that would encourage their elected officials to engage in discussions about potentially severing ties with the state government.

The votes were hardly a new phenomenon. Instead, they join a growing list of Illinois counties seeking to express their displeasure with lawmakers.

Previously, at least 24 counties had passed so-called “separation referendums,” according to reporting by Illinois Public Media. The three new additions to that list, Brown, Hardin, and the northeastern portion of Madison County, would bring that number to 27, representing more than 25% of the state’s 102 counties.

According to IPM, 23 counties had previously passed separation referendums after the 2020 elections, including Clark, Clay, Crawford, Cumberland, Edwards, Effingham, Fayette, Jasper, Hancock, Jefferson, Johnson, Lawrence, Marion, Massac, Moultrie, Pope, Richland, Shelby, Wabash, Wayne and Whiteside.

Edgar County also passed a similar referendum in 2021, according to the group Red State Secession.

Most of those counties passed the non-binding referendums with large majorities, including 72% of voters in Bond County and 60.7% of voters in Christian County.

In this year’s election, the ballot questions, all of which had similar wording, appeared in Brown and Hardin counties, as well as a portion of Madison County.

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It’s long, but read the whole thing at your convenience

These Counties Experiencing Election Issues Have One Thing In Common

It suffices to say that Election Day didn’t go as planned for some polling places that experienced and are still experiencing ballot-counting issues. Despite the varying election-related difficulties, multiple jurisdictions share one foreseen commonality. There’s a common thread connecting five counties spread across several states that were in disarray on Election Day: federal “monitors.”

On the eve of the elections, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice announced Monday it would be dispatching such monitors to as many as 64 jurisdictions in almost half of U.S. states on Election Day to oversee federal election law “compliance.”

According to the DOJ’s watch list, Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, Texas’s Harris County, Arizona’s Maricopa County, and Pima County, and Nevada’s Washoe County all had the feds there “monitoring” polls. The nationwide deployment is a notable expansion. Nevada wasn’t on the DOJ’s roster two years ago during the presidential election cycle in 2020. Still, it was on the DOJ’s radar this time, and Pima County—Arizona’s second-most populous, which holds Tucscon—is among the new additions.

These five jurisdictions supposedly under in-person DOJ supervision throughout Tuesday suffered major muck-ups.

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And even if does pass, the FPC have already made clear they’re ready to file suit against it in Federal Court…so there.

Oregon’s Measure 114 not a done deal

Earlier this week, I wrote about how Measure 114’s passage did manage to have a silver lining. I still think there are some potential upsides available, but the best-case scenario would always be the measure not passing at all.

And, it seemed it had.

Only, it really hasn’t.

The people of Oregon may be awaiting the official outcome of their state’s race for governor, but they are also anticipating the results of a potentially drastic change in the state’s gun laws.

In addition to races like the one between gubernatorial candidates Tina Kotek and Christine Drazan, a bill known as the Reduction of Gun Violence Act is also on the ballot. As of Thursday morning, data on a state website showed that the Beaver State was nearly evenly split on the issue, with 50.86% in favor of the bill and 49.14% against it, a difference of 26,827 votes.

According to The Oregonian, those numbers have not been updated since Wednesday evening, when less than 80% of the votes had been counted. Additionally, Oregon’s vote-by-mail system allows ballots to continue to be received until November 15, so long as they were postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. So far, The Associated Press has yet to make a call on the outcome of the vote.

As of this writing, only 88 percent of the vote is in with 50.7 in favor of passage and 49.3 against, with just under 24,000 votes separating the two positions.

Now, The Oregonian still projects Measure 114 will pass, and I tend to think it will as well. I doubt we’re going to see an 11th-hour landslide of votes shifting things in the other direction and defeating the bill.

Still, I jumped the gun writing about any silver lining when there’s still hope this bill may go down in defeat. I’m writing this to own that mistake because, well, I really do try to do just that.

If so, none of that matters. There will be no legal challenge and Oregonians can go right on with their lives without a care in the world.

That’s not particularly likely, unfortunately. Measure 114 will probably become law.

Then those legal challenges start.

All we’re seeing right now is a delay in counting these votes that is about on par with Arizona. The only reason they’re not getting more attention is that Oregon is such a heavily blue state that winners can be declared with a far lower percentage of the vote. The results in Oregon are pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Which brings us back to Measure 114, which is a scarily close vote. It may well end up going in the other direction. If so, I’ll be shocked, but happily so.

If it doesn’t, though, the days of Measure 114’s impact may well be minimal as I’m sure a legal challenge will be filed almost immediately. Whether it’s even allowed to go into effect is in doubt, as a matter of fact, yet even if it does, it’s only a matter of time before the courts issue an injunction, soon to be followed with an overturning ruling.

But that’s if it passes, and there’s still hope.

Two Days After Midterms, Slow Arizona Vote Count Exasperates Twitter: ‘School Children Can Count Faster’

Conservative Twitter users slammed Arizona election officials for not having finished the state’s vote count.

Nearly two days after polls closed in Arizona’s midterm elections, there are still many votes left uncounted. As such, the state’s two major races – the gubernatorial contest between Republican Kari Lake and her Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs; and the Senate race between GOP nominee Blake Masters and Democrat Mark Kelly – have yet to be decided.

A local Fox affiliate attributed much of the delay to the “sheer size” of Maricopa County, Arizona, the county where most of the outstanding votes exist. In addition, the station reported how late-arriving mail-in ballots as well as verification of those ballots have contributed to the slow vote counting process.

The race between GOP candidate Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs is still undecided.

However, critics on Twitter insisted that Arizona election officials had no excuse for continuing to count this late, especially when massive states like Florida declared its election results only hours after the last polls closed.

Conservative columnist Tim Young tweeted, “Florida has the third largest population in America and had its votes counted in hours. Arizona is 14th… and still has only 70% counted… why?”

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Rob Romano

For all the talk from anti-gun groups about how they’ll face electoral consequences, all nine governors who previously signed constitutional carry bills and were up for reelection on Tuesday (AL, GA, IA, SD, NH, OH, OK, TN, TX) easily won their races.

Everytown said it “will hold [Gov DeWine], and the Ohio legislature, accountable for this blatant step backwards at the ballot box,” but he beat their 2021 Local Gun Sense Lawmaker of the Year 62-37 and the GOP seems to have gained seats in the legislature everytown.org/press/governor…

Everytown said they “will continue fighting to stop Iowa lawmakers from further weakening our gun laws and work to elect people who will actually protect our communities,” but the Gov was reelected and voters added a right to bear arms to the constitution. everytown.org/press/iowa-mom…

Everytown said they “will be holding our [Georgia] leaders accountable for the violence they’re enabling, we will make sure of it,” but the Governor beat their endorsed candidate 53-45. everytown.org/press/shameful…

Everytown said that they “won’t let Texas voters forget that their lawmakers chose gun extremists over public safety,” but Abbott beat their endorsed candidate 54-43 and the GOP expanded their majorities in the legislature. everytown.org/press/governor…

Everytown claimed that “57 percent said they would be less likely to vote for Gov. Noem if she signs this type of legislation.” She signed the  constitutional carry bill, and went on to be reelected 62-35. everytown.org/press/will-gov…

Tuesday Takeaways.

What, if anything, did the midterms tell us about the country — other than underwhelming Republicans could still take the House and Senate?

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, American elections radically changed to mail-in and early voting. They did so in a wild variety of state-by-state ways. Add ranked voting and a required majority margin to the mess and the result is that once cherished Election Day balloting becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Election Night also no longer exists. Returns are not counted for days. It is intolerable for a modern democracy to wait and wait for all sorts of different ballots both cast and counted under radically different and sometimes dubious conditions.

The Democrats — with overwhelming media and money advantages — have mastered these arts of massive and unprecedented early, mail-in, and absentee voting. Old-fashioned Republicans count on riling up their voters to show up on Election Day. But it is far easier to finesse and control the mail-in ballots than to “get out the vote.”

The country is divided in more ways than ever. America’s interior just gets redder and the bicoastal corridors bluer.

Exceptional Republican gubernatorial or senatorial candidates like Lee Zeldin, Tudor Dixon, and Tiffany Smiley in blue states like New York, Michigan, or Washington cannot win upsets against even so-so Democratic incumbents — even during a supposedly bad election cycle for Democrats, laboring under a president with a 40 percent approval rating.

Similarly, media-spawned leftist heartthrobs like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams can burn through hundreds of millions of dollars. But they still cannot unseat workmanlike Republican incumbents in Texas and Georgia.

Out-of-state immigration has only solidified these red-blue brand polarizations.

Over the last decade, millions of conservatives have fled California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania to Florida and Texas.

The former states got bluer as New York governors like Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul said good riddance to fleeing conservatives — who were welcomed as refugees to red “free states.”

As voters self-select residences on ideological grounds and the deleterious effect of blue-states’ governance, the country is gravitating into two antithetical nations. Americans vote not so much for individual personalities as blocs of incompatible parties, causes, and ideologies.

Debates count for little anymore, especially after the disastrous performance of winners Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman and Hochul.

Democrats often limited or avoided them altogether. And the Republican charging and complaining that they did so meant little at all.

Democrats still voted for Democratic candidates, regardless of Fetterman’s clear cognitive inability to serve in the Senate and despite President Joe Biden’s failures, harm to the middle class, and unpopularity.

Most Republicans are similar party loyalists, but not quite to the same degree — at least if some feared supporting a hardcore Trump-endorsed candidate might give them grief among family and friends.

Winning or losing means revving up party bases, not running as much on a variety of issues. Biden’s vicious attacks on conservatives as semi-fascists and un-American worked. When he recklessly warned that democracy’s death was synonymous with Democrats losing, he further inflamed his base.

Biden also goaded young people to vote by temporarily lowering gas prices through draining the strategic petroleum reserve, offering amnesty for marijuana offenses, and canceling half a trillion dollars of student loan debt. He told young women that they would die without unlimited abortions. And most of that mud stuck.

In contrast, Republicans wrongly assumed all voters, red and blue, sensibly cared most about spiking inflation, unaffordable food and fuel, an open border, and a disastrous foreign policy.

Americans do worry, but also demand concrete solutions that they often did not hear from even insightful critics of Biden’s ruinous agendas.

Moreover, in the last days of the election, Biden and the media effectively smothered those existential issues by claiming the country was threatened by insurrectionists and pro-life fanatics. Stooping to claim the attacker of Paul Pelosi — a crazed, homeless, nudist, illegal alien — was the veritable tip of the supposed MAGA insurrectionary spear proved to be effective Harry-Reid-style, October-surprise demagoguery.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis likely emerges as the dominant force in conservative politics. His landslide win in Florida carried all down-ticket statewide candidates throughout Florida, which has become as utterly red as California has turned all blue.

Related: What Happened on Election Night? I Think I Have Some Answers

To the degree Republican gubernatorial candidates not supported by Trump easily won their races in states like Georgia and Ohio, they helped Trump-supported senatorial candidates. To the degree Trump-supported gubernatorial candidates lost badly such as in Pennsylvania, they hurt Trump-supported senatorial candidates.

Trump’s pre-election unexpected attack on DeSantis may have turned off a few thousand independents and Republicans from voting for Trump-affiliated candidates. And his pre-midterm boast that he would likely run for president may have scared — and energized — some last-minute, hard-core anti-Trumpers and Democrats to go out to vote.

Pollsters got it wrong — again. But this time once trustworthy conservative pollsters had little inkling that the simmering left-wing base was enthused by wild talk of abortion and insurrection. The real under-polled voters were not silent, wary Trump supporters, but this time around seething upscale women and college students.

Final takeaways?

Democratic opposition to a flawed and impaired Biden running again in 2024 will recede. Republican loyalty to the unpredictable Trump could fade.

VOTERS WEIGHED TWO VERY DIFFERENT GUN CONTROL BALLOT MEASURES

Two states this week posed gun law questions to their voters and received two quite different results at the polls– neither one very encouraging to the anti-gun crowd.

IOWA

Republicans carried the day by large margins almost exclusively– including Gov. Kim Reynolds besting her opponent by almost 20 points, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley picking up his eighth term, and all four Congressional seats going red including the one held by Democrat incumbent U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne’s. With that in mind, it should be no surprise that a pro-gun ballot initiative met with slam-dunk approval.

Iowa Constitutional Amendment 1 – Right to Keep and Bear Arms, with 95 percent of the votes tabulated by Wednesday night, earned 745,118 “yes” votes against just 398,881 “no” votes, a nearly 2:1 ratio.

As detailed by voter guides:

Shall the following amendment to the Constitution be adopted?

Summary: Provides that the right of the people of Iowa to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

Full Text: Article I of the Constitution of the State of Iowa is amended by adding the following new section: Right to keep and bear arms. Sec. 1A. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

 OREGON

In a state that houses such wildly progressive hubs as Portland and Eugene, any rational-thinking person would imagine that an anti-gun ballot initiative of almost any nature would gain an easy up-vote in the largely blue state. After all, Biden carried the state by 16 points just two years ago.

However, Measure 114, which crams 12 dense pages of gun control into a still ambiguous 68-word question, met with a very divided voter turnout.

The ballot question:

Requires permit to acquire firearms; police maintain permit/firearm database; criminally prohibits certain ammunition magazines

Result of ‘Yes’ Vote: ‘Yes’ vote requires background check, safety training, fee for permit to acquire firearms; state police maintain new permit/ firearm database; criminally prohibits certain magazines; exceptions.

Result of ‘No’ Vote: ‘No’ vote retains current law: seller/ transferor must request criminal background check; permit, safety course not required; no magazine capacity restrictions.

Despite the anti-gun group cheerleading for Measure 114 rushing to declare victory on the initiative, voters except for those in the Portland and Eugene metro clusters rejected the new host of restrictions. As of Wednesday night, the results showed Measure 114 winning the day in only four out of Oregon’s 36 counties with a total statewide tally breaking at 793,015 (50.8 percent) in favor vs. 767,077 (49.2 percent) against, with some 72 percent of votes counted. While the numbers are still tight as of the time of publication, a “yes” vote of such a slim margin is hardly a popular mandate for what may eventually be ruled an unconstitutional limit on Second Amendment rights.

Already, some Oregon sheriffs are vowing to refuse enforcement of the measure should it become law.

“Unfortunately, we are seeing the passage of Ballot Measure 114, which creates a required permitting system in order to purchase firearms AND bans gun magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds,” wrote Linn County Sheriff Michelle Duncan on Wednesday. “This is a terrible law for gunowners, crime victims, and public safety. I want to send a clear message to Linn County residents that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office is NOT going to be enforcing magazine capacity limits. This measure is poorly written and there is still a lot that needs to be sorted out regarding the permitting process, who has to do the training and what exactly does the training have to cover.”

Turn Off, Tune Out And Drop Out

The votes are in and they have been counted. The great red wave that everyone expected never materialized. The expectation going into the election was that the Republicans would score an easy victory, picking up about forty seats in the House and enough Senate seats to gain the majority. Because America is a haplessly corrupt society, we may never know the final results, but someone will assign final numbers and it will be a slim victory for the GOP.

Of course, the flash analysis will come pouring out of the media, most likely blaming the results on Trump and the insurrectionists. You see, just as the media warned, democracy was on the ballot and this time democracy own. The Republican side of the uniparty will happily go along with it. They will expedite their plans to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 for the good of our democracy. The whole thing is ridiculous but we are ruled by ridiculous people so this is to be expected.

The main question out of this election is about the legitimacy. Should we believe that the brain damaged hobo was the people’s choice in Pennsylvania? This is a good bellwether for this election, because John Fetterman is as close as we have come to putting a horse in a Senate. His opponent is ridiculous by normal standards, but in comparison to Fetterman he is Cicero. We are now required to pretend that a brain damaged hobo won the Pennsylvania Senate race.

The reason this particularly race is key to the legitimacy question is that there is no answer that supports the democratic system. If everything was above board and the people did vote for a brain damaged hobo, then this is proof that the public should never be trusted with such decisions. The openness to voting for a brain damaged hobo should be a disqualification to voting. On the other hand, if the vote is rigged again, then there is no reason for people to bother voting.

Of course, you can shift the question further up stream. What kind of political system produces a brain damaged hobo and a Turkish carny as the two options? Before you even get to the question of election integrity, you have to see that the system has problems far deeper than vote rigging. This turns up all over the ballot. In Georgia, the choice for Senate was between a brain damaged former football player and guy who used to hustle old black ladies for donations.

In Massachusetts, they are celebrating the first openly lesbian governor. Before Maura Healy was famously gay, she was famously stupid. Given the centrality of Massachusetts in the American empire, it is a good representation for how our democracy actually works. Politics in that state have been dominated by drunkards, perverts and degenerates for generations. The system they have imposed on the country selects for increasingly ridiculous candidates.

If we accept wholesale vote rigging is now a feature in many states, there is a limit to how much can be done. Historically, the Democratic machines used to be worth about five percent in the areas they controlled. That is enough in reasonably close elections, but not enough to overcome a wave election. All of the polling and history said this should have been a historic blowout of the Democrats, even when adjusting for the shenanigans that are now a feature of our democracy.

In other words, the results speak to something more than shenanigans. Either people skipped the election, seeing no point in it, or we are now locked into a partisan divide that makes elections pointless. Going back to Pennsylvania, either Oz lost because people thought he was just as ridiculous as Fetterman or partisanship has made elections in the state meaningless. After all, elections pivot on the ability of people to change their minds from election to election.

The current vote totals in Pennsylvania say that about five million ballots were counted in the Senate race. The governors race, which got far less attention, garnered the same number of votes. In 2020, 6.9 million votes were counted. What this says is that close to 30% of the entities that filled out ballots in the 2020 election decided that they had no reason to fill out a ballot this time. This strongly points to the conclusion that voters were given no reason to vote for either party.

Put another way, the polling shows that people are angry about the economy and the culture, but they did not see hope in either party. They were not even moved to strike out at the ruling party. Harry Truman famously said “If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time.” In this age, given the choice between a uniparty zombie and uniparty opportunist, people will choose the zombie.

The people endlessly yapping about democracy will no doubt claim that democracy won this time, but the turnout numbers suggest otherwise. The uniparty offered up a series of ridiculous choices and 30% of the voters stayed home. They refuse to follow the script because the directors showed no interest in the drama. Neither party offered a compelling reason for anyone to vote, so they were left with the partisan zombies and civic nationalist dead enders.

For the people hoping democracy lost the election, this is a good result. The exit polls show that over 75% of the vote was white. Outside of the freaks and crazies, that cohort currently has little or no representation in our democracy. The best thing they can do is boycott the process until they have a party that will represent their interests. Perhaps the midterms were the start of quiet quitting leaking into politics. Turn off, tune out and drop out of a system that has nothing to offer.

While Iowans go for RKBA, the left coast of Oregon pulls the rest of the state the other way.  I see federal lawsuits galore, due to Bruen.

Oregon passes Measure 114, one of strictest gun control measures in U.S.

Three changes would occur under Measure 114: Oregonians would be required to get a permit to buy a gun. A background check would have to be completed before a sale or transfer of a gun occurred. It would ban the sale or transfer of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.AP

Oregon voters passed one of the country’s strictest gun control measures, a long-sought goal of a grassroots faith-based campaign.

Partial returns tallied as of 11:15 p.m. showed Measure 114 leading 51% to 49%.

Most of the votes left to be tallied were in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, all favoring or heavily favoring the measure.

The measure will require Oregonians to obtain a permit to buy a gun after completing a firearms safety course and would ban the sale or transfer of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

It also will close the so-called Charleston loophole by requiring state police to complete full background checks on buyers with permits before any gun sale or transfer. Under federal law now, firearms dealers can sell guns without a completed background check if the check takes longer than three business days.

“We began this historic campaign to save lives with faith, and we remain hopeful as we wait for all of the votes to be counted,” said the Rev. Mark Knutson, one of the chief petitioners, speaking earlier in the night to supporters gathered at Portland’s Augustana Lutheran Church.

“We thank everyone that helped put Measure 114 on the ballot and supported us every step of the way, gathering signatures, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and turning those precious ballots in,” he said. “We are eternally grateful for your strength and dedication.”

The highest support for the measure was in Multnomah County, with 75% to 25% in favor. The measure led in Washington County 62% to 38% and Clackamas County at 52% to 48%. The measure led in Lane County at 54% to 46% and in Deschutes County at 51% to 50%.

The measure was losing in Marion, Jackson, Linn and Douglas counties.

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Iowans approve right ‘to keep and bear arms’ in state’s constitution

Iowa voters have adopted a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would add the right “to keep and bear arms,” adding language that goes beyond the protections contained in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, according to unofficial results.

Iowa will become the fourth state with “strict scrutiny” language to protect gun rights in its state constitution, achieving a longtime goal of Republicans in the Iowa Legislature.

The majority votes in the “yes” column Tuesday made up about 66% of the votes. The “no” votes to reject the amendment accounted for 34%.

The language of the amendment states: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

The amendment described the right to keep and bear arms as “a fundamental individual right,” requiring any restrictions on gun rights to survive “strict scrutiny.”

Strict scrutiny is the highest legal hurdle for legislation to clear. It requires any restrictions on gun rights to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest.

Supporter: A ‘historic day for freedom, civil rights and the Hawkeye state’

Supporters said the amendment was necessary to protect Iowans’ rights from infringement. Some advocates for the amendment said courts reviewing Second Amendment cases have not been protective enough of the right to keep and bear arms over the years, which is why they supported adding the language in the Iowa Constitution.

The Iowa Firearms Coalition President Dave Funk praised the approval of the ballot measure Tuesday evening, calling it a “historic day for freedom, civil rights and the Hawkeye state.”

At the Republican Party’s election night event in Des Moines, the crowd cheered as at television screen flashed news that voters approved the constitutionally amendment Tuesday night.

Adam Bentz, 44, of Ankeny, supported the measure. He said he is not a “gun nut.” He started hunting about a decade ago and owns “very few” guns. He also supports background checks for prospective owners.

“The constitution’s pretty clear,” he said, nursing a Busch Light as the crowd thinned out inside the Hilton Des Moines Downtown. “We have it spelled out. We have the right to bear arms. It just makes sense at the state level that we would have the right to bear arms as well.”

Opponents said the amendment would make it easier to strike down existing gun laws and make it harder to pass new regulations. The Iowans for Responsible Gun Laws called the amendment “reckless,” saying it would “only serve to put Iowans in harms’ way.”

“The potential consequences of this amendment’s passage, from expensive lawsuits in the Iowa courts to impacting current law and the safety of Iowans, will be far reaching and dire for our state,” the coalition wrote in a statement Tuesday evening.

Tuesday’s vote was the final step in Republican lawmakers’ effort to amend the state’s constitution to create higher standards for future gun control proposals. Republican lawmakers passed the language again in 2019 and 2021, allowing it to appear on the ballot this year.

Guam Elects First Republican House Delegate Since 1993.

Guam has elected a Republican as its non-voting delegate to Congress for the first time since 1993, an encouraging development for the GOP in the first 2022 midterm race called.

Republican James Moylan, a senator in the Guam legislature, has defeated Judith Won Pat, former speaker of the Guam Legislature, according to the Pacific Daily News.

Partial, unofficial results from the Guam Election Commission showed Moylan leading with 17,075 votes to Won Pat’s 15,427.

Moylan is only the second Republican to be elected to the delegate seat since its creation in 1972, according to the report.

Democrats will maintain control of the Guam legislature, however, with nine seats to the GOP’s six seats.

Guam’s incumbent Democratic Governor Lou Leon Guerrero and Lieutenant Governor Joshua Tenorio also defeated former Republican Governor Felix Camacho and Guamanian senator Tony Ada by 11 percentage points.

BLUF
A political party that has convinced itself the country faces an existential crisis if its opponents win at the ballot box, and that doesn’t even pretend to serve anyone other than its base of college-educated leftists, is a toxic combination. Such a party is of course incapable of winning a majority, but it’s also incapable of relinquishing power, which makes it by far the greatest threat to democracy our country now faces.

Democrats Are Not Going To Relinquish Power Peacefully

The 2022 election results aren’t that hard to predict. Republicans will win and they’ll win big. The only questions on that front are how large will GOP majorities be in the House and Senate, and how many governor’s mansions will the GOP control? Will the red wave be a tsunami or just a massive breaker?

Beyond the numbers game, the larger question looming over this midterm cycle is why, at a time when inflation and the economy are top concerns for the vast majority of Americans, did Democrats choose to run mostly on abortion extremism and hysterical fearmongering about “threats to democracy” — issues that appeal to a rather narrow, left-wing slice of the American electorate that already reliably votes Democratic?

Why didn’t Democrats at least pretend to care about ordinary things like the rising cost of groceries and gas, worsening crime in major cities, and a looming economic recession? It’s one thing for President Biden and Democratic Party leaders in Congress to refuse to address these things as a matter of policy. But it’s quite another thing to refuse even to acknowledge that these are real concerns for most Americans right now.

One would think that simply on the basis of crude self-interest — say, clinging to their razor-thin majority — they would muster the will to pretend to care and at least pledge to tackle these issues, even if they’re lying. But they could not even do that. Why?

The answer doesn’t bode well for the country. Yes, Republicans will carry the day, retire Nancy Pelosi, and shatter the career aspirations of an entire cohort of middle-aged Democrat politicians like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams. But that’s only half the story, and maybe not the most important half.

Democrats’ inability to moderate even a little bit, their unwillingness to snap awake to reality and respond to voters with some measure of empathy, however small, is of course a consequence of the party’s capture by its radical left-wing base. (Henry Olsen had a good line related to this in The Washington Post recently: “[T]oday’s Democratic Party increasingly looks like the Depression-era Republican Party, which consisted of powerful elites who lost touch with the working-class majority.”)

The danger comes when Democrats refuse to accept that they have no mandate from the people to remain in power, and inevitably seek some other justification for clinging to it. For all their talk of “threats to democracy” from Republican “election deniers” — one of the most asinine political epithets of our era, by the way — it’s Democrats who pose the real threat. This cycle has made it clear that they are not trying to forge a majority coalition. Their appeal is exclusive to left-leaning, college-educated voters and the woke institutions and corporations these people now control. That might be a minority coalition, but it’s such a powerful one that it opens new possibilities to scheming Democrats: that there are other ways than winning elections to gain and retain power.

The mumblings of President Biden about “ending coal” and fossil fuels, saving democracy from insurrectionist election deniers, affirming the radical agenda of the transgender lobby, and championing abortion extremism are no accident, however confused the president might otherwise be about where he is and what’s going on. They are, in effect, signals to the elite power base in American society, and they are meant to convey reassurance: we’ve got your back, ordinary Americans be damned.

In the face of a massive electoral loss, then, do you really think a political party that has aligned itself with elite interests and woke morality, that controls the White House and the administrative bureaucracy, that is supported by corporate media and Big Tech (with the recent exception of Elon Musk’s Twitter) is going to simply relinquish that power? Hand it over to the very people it has been decrying as the destroyers of our democracy? Allow someone like Donald Trump ever to get near the White House again?

No, of course not. What Democrats did in the six months leading up to the 2020 election — not just the rioting and looting, but the rigging or “fortifying” of the election through lawsuits and coordinated online censorship — should be understood as a dry run. The Democrats will use every executive branch agency, every tool of law enforcement, every malign demonstration of force at their disposal to remain in power, or at least to deprive real power from Republicans.

Even before Trump won the 2016 election, we know the FBI began crafting an “insurance policy,” the Russia collusion hoax, in case he won. Recall, too, how every major Democrat denounced Trump as “illegitimate” after he won, how left-wing street thugs rioted in major cities, how elected Democrats managed to hobble Trump’s presidency through endless investigations and a frivolous impeachment. And above all, we saw how they were determined not to let the same thing happen in 2020. And it didn’t.

Keep that in mind as the midterm results roll in this week (and next). There’s a reason Democrats and the corporate media have been pushing hard the message that we won’t know the results of key races for days, maybe weeks. It’s not just about counting absentee ballots, it’s about getting the rigging in place, either to claim victory or deny the legitimacy of the vote. Whatever Democrats say they fear Republican “election deniers” might do, they themselves are preparing to do the same or worse.

A political party that has convinced itself the country faces an existential crisis if its opponents win at the ballot box, and that doesn’t even pretend to serve anyone other than its base of college-educated leftists, is a toxic combination. Such a party is of course incapable of winning a majority, but it’s also incapable of relinquishing power, which makes it by far the greatest threat to democracy our country now faces.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft Responds to Joe Biden’s DOJ’s Attempt to Harass Cole County Clerk

Over the weekend, TGP reported that the Biden regime was harassing a local county clerk in Missouri in an effort to plant federal DOJ employees onsite during today’s election process.  

Assistant US Attorney Charles Thomas wrote Cole County Missouri Clerk Steve Korsmeyer this week and notified him that the Biden DOJ will be in Jefferson City, Missouri on Monday and Tuesday to inspect and harass election officials during the midterm elections in Missouri.


As most of you are aware, this is the most radical far-left office in the US government.

Why are they making a visit to the middle of Missouri on election day? Why did they spring this on the Cole County Clerk now?

And does the DOJ have jurisdiction over Missouri elections?

And should they not have gone through the Secretary of State’s office?

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is very capable, and honest, and has an open door. Why did they bypass the Missouri Secretary of State?

On Sunday Secretary of State Ashcroft responded on Twitter to the actions by the corrupt Biden DOJ.

Secretary of State Ashcroft announced he was supporting Steve Korsmeyer, who rightfully declined the DOJ’s offer to harass voters in Cole County.

Secretary of State Ashcroft goes further and offer the DOJ to discuss their request further at his office.  SOS Ashcroft backs the local county clerk.

Roll, Tumbrels, Roll.

Ten years ago, back in the halcyon days when we simpletons believed the Republicans were at least some of the time an opposition party, and that Willard Mitt Romney was a man of probity and character, I wrote the following in the pages of National Review Online about the election that was about to take place. The piece was entitled “Crush Them.”

Conservatives have a rare opportunity tomorrow to do something they signally failed to do in the landslide elections of 1972 and 1984: finish the job. Nixon’s victory was vitiated by Watergate and quickly revenged by Woodward and Bernstein, leading to his replacement in 1974 by Jerry Ford, a man who exactly nobody thought was qualified to be president of the United States, probably including Ford himself. Ford led to Jimmy Carter, whose ineptitude and weakness in turn lead to Ronald Reagan, who swept Carter away in 1980 and then smashed Walter Mondale and the Democrats to powder in 1984.

And then, having won a famous victory, conservatives went home and left it to the establishment GOP in the form of another man who never should have been president, George H. W. Bush, to fritter away the fruits of ideological victory and be supplanted by Bill Clinton.

In retrospect, of course, William Jefferson Blythe III was Pericles of Athens compared to Barack Obama Joe Biden, who far more than Clinton has revealed the true face of contemporary American left-liberalism in all its coercive ugliness: a blizzard of executive orders; the deployment of the regulatory agencies that have (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) “sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance”; and the naked Marxist appeals to race and class envy. The most anti-American of American presidents has run the most un-American of campaigns.

Change only a couple of words and it’s déjà vu all over again: shuffling, senile Joe Biden really is the zombified embodiment of Hussein’s third term, staggering, one hopes, toward utter electoral disaster later today as long-suffering Americans finally awake and rise up against the tyranny of les aristocrates who have been torturing us these past two years and more. A la lanterne!

As my regular readers know, I have long described the Democrat Party—not just its lawless and fascistic modern incarnation, but going all the way back to its inception when Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, notorious traitor, and the founder of Tammany Hall, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804—as “a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.” Indeed, I even wrote a small monograph concerning its violent, seditious history, still available on Kindle.

Now, after two years of Biden, everyone can see just how awful the Democrats really are. Not simply the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition, but (as they were during the Civil War, which they started) a movement actively hostile to the founding principles of the country that continues to give them shelter and legitimacy. Indeed, they have become the Anti-American Party, advocating unfettered abortion, public criminality, political violence, economic destruction, radical egalitarianism, an obsessive racialism that would make a Nazi blush, open and undefended borders, and the abrogation of the Constitution: a document they’ve long despised and which they are now actively trying to repeal.

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