How Do We Know Who to Trust?

We are in a time where we’ve seen the obvious political agendas of the news outlets and where opinion is offered as fact. How then do we know whether or not we can trust the results of the election?  Each side will make its claims, each side will say the other is lying, and each side will find fault with something about the election.

In the past, we looked at politicians as trustworthy public servants.  Can the same be said today?  We’ve had four years of the vilification of the President so can we trust him?  Then again, we had eight years of the celebration of a President who claimed his administration was “scandal free.”  Unfortunately, even the smallest amount of research shows that is a pure fabrication.  If we consider President Obama’s time we see:  A gun running scandal that led to the death of a federal agent.  An IRS targeting scandal that called into question the impartiality of the IRS approval tax of free status when it came to requests from conservative organizations.  The unexpected withdrawal of forces from Iraq that led to the creation of ISIS.  The claims  the Islamic riots in Egypt and the over throw of Libyan’s dictator were due to some minor YouTube video.  The failure to help the Ambassador in Libya when he was attacked by violent mobs.  The dispersal of Kaddafi’s stockpiles of weapons after he was overthrown.  How about the cages he built to house children at the southern border?  The list could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

These same observations can be made of Representatives, Senators, Governors, State officials, and so on down to the lowliest bureaucrats.  How many politicians have enriched themselves and their families while claiming to make life better for their constituents?

So, now we come to the question, who can we trust to reassure us that our vote was counted and the election was fairly run and the results legitimately reflect the will of the people?

Our Constitution delegates the running of elections to the individual states.  It is their job to organize, train and equip the state to run a fair and unbiased process.  For most of the states the job falls within the purview of their Secretary of State and if history is to be understood they have done that reasonably well, although there are always exceptions.  If there weren’t those exceptions the jokes about the dead voting in Chicago, the paying for votes of Irish immigrants coming off the boat to support Tammany Hall, or the resurrection of newly found ballots wouldn’t exist.  The controversy of recounts, having people try to determine what a voter really intended, or what constituted a legal ballot would not be a consideration.

Now, in this information age we come into a new spectrum of data manipulation.  We see in the nature of polls a natural bias that may exaggerate one set of data or eliminate another.  With our transition into massive voter data collection, we also see the potential for vote manipulation.  When one side points this out, and the other side dismisses the possibility we are left with a legitimate question, why would one side not acknowledge the possibility?

My conclusion is a simple one.  One side thinks they have control of the data and the other side does not. I’ll leave it to you to decide how you answer that question.  But at the end of the day, we individual voters really don’t get to say who we trust or not.  Until something remarkable changes our system we must accept the decisions of the individual Secretaries of State, and of course the court challenges that arise from questions about those decisions.  My takeaway from recent elections is we can no longer trust the media projections sent out to support a clearly bias agenda.

How Come?

How come in today's political discourse we hear people like Chris Hayes on MSNBC telling us what is wrong with things like the Electoral College, but we never see them advocating for a movement to fix the problem, just a plea to abandon the constitutionally mandated process?

Hayes notes the Federal judiciary has, since the early 1960s, been mandating a "one man equals one vote" requirement and the same should be required of the Presidential election.  What he fails to address is the historical context that drove the founding fathers to the decision of first how the states should appoint their senators, and then why the Electoral College was established to protect the rights of the smaller states by preventing the larger states from imposing their will by dominating the Presidential Election with sheer numbers of voters.

Going to the courts seems the popular approach these days, expecting some judge to impose their will on the other two branches of government, but ultimately this will fail as judges change over and society changes.  Take, for example, the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in 1957 in the case of Dred Scott v John F.A. Sanford, where the court ruled that escaped slaves were not citizens and remained the property of the slave owner.  This decision ultimately led the nation into war and was finally resolved with the creation of the 14th Amendment.  The precedent set by Dred Scott became moot and non-binding from that point forward.

If the brilliant minds of the DNC and progressive-left don't like the fact Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 because he won the necessary votes in the Electoral College and they think their path to power is by eliminating the college and going to a popular vote then just get the Congress to craft an amendment and have a 2/3 majority of states approve it.  If you can't do that then all you are doing is whining and that is getting pretty old and tiresome.

p.s.  Back when politicians could talk to each other we fixed the issue of how Senator's are appointed with a change to the constitution (17th Amendment), so don't tell me it can't be done.  Perhaps it just can't be done when each side is yelling at the other about how stupid they are.

Where There's a Will

What do you do if you have a problem that is too big to tackle the conventional way?  Why you get creative and find solutions you can implement, even if it means breaking a few eggs.

That appears to be the case with the Democrats right now.  Rather than admit they lost the last election because of a flawed candidate and an equally flawed campaign strategy they have chosen to focus on the issue of our electoral college versus the massing of democratic voters in big cities in the east and west.  The mantra from the DNC after President Trump’s upset victory has been “But we won the popular vote!  It just isn’t fair!”

Now we have states with Democratic Governors and State Houses beginning to move to invalidate the will of their own voters and cast their lot with those of NYC, LA, Seattle, Boston, Atlanta, and the other major metropolitan areas.  How are they doing this you ask?  Easy, they write legislation that will commit their electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote.  The assumption being no Republican can ever win over the majority of voters so they will most certainly go to support the Democratic candidate. 

But what if a Republican were to campaign and win in the cities, but not the flyover states?  While not an obvious scenario, it is possible.  What if a Republican were to win the popular vote and not the electoral vote, would these same Democrats rejoice in their decision?   For example, suppose there was a fissure in the DNC and one of the losing primary candidates decided she should run as an independent, as happened in the 1960 election.  In that election, Nixon lost to Kennedy by less than 115,000 votes (a result that would be immediately challenged in recount) but lost in the electoral college by 84 votes.  What if the contest had ended in a tie in the popular vote with the independent candidate drawing off just enough of the democratic vote?

So far, Colorado has taken the lead, but Delaware and perhaps other states will follow.  The funny thing is politicians never seem to learn from past experiences, and this appears to be another example.  Remember when the Democratic Senate cast aside the tradition of requiring 60 votes to confirm a judge and now find themselves on the losing side of simple majority votes?  Today, thanks to their shortsightedness, all they can do is attempt to destroy the person in the hopes they will withdraw or be withdrawn by the President.

Not being a Constitutional scholar, I wonder how the choice to align electors with the popular vote, rather than the votes cast within the state will play out as these laws are challenged in the courts?  And they most certainly will be challenged for on their face they potentially disenfranchise the choice of over 50% of the state’s voters.

What I do know is these types of moves can and will be cast as responding to the will of the people, but in reality, they are nothing more than political power grabs that remove any illusion that politicians believe the people they were elected to serve should have a voice in the governments they run.