President Joe Biden’s abysmal debate performance may have been the worst since Richard Nixon sweat profusely and appeared grayish while debating John F. Kennedy. Biden’s campaign should be dead in the water after last Thursday. But thanks to Democrats’ efforts to alter and exploit our election system, winning elections isn’t as simple as just being a coherent candidate.
Biden’s atrocious performance could not be ignored. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called for Biden to drop out of the race. The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich wrote the “best part of this debate for Democrats is that it happened on June 27.” Politico’s Irie Sentner said Biden’s stumbling and incoherence “was impossible to ignore.”
The man with the nuclear codes is only really alert between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., Axios reported, citing White House aides. European leaders were also reportedly concerned about Biden’s ability to lead, even before the debate.
But by breaking and bending election laws for years, Democrats have changed the landscape of American elections — and built in a safety net that helps them drag subpar candidates across the finish line.
Democrats’ Vote-Harvesting Operations
One of the ways Democrats do this is by targeting supposedly nonpartisan “get-out-the-vote” campaigns at likely Democrat constituencies, and deploying ballot-harvesting operations to take advantage of low-propensity voters.
Democrats have long relied on progressive nonprofits purporting to be “nonpartisan” to help turn out likely Democratic voters. Restoration of America, a conservative political action committee, found that “more than 150 left-wing nonprofits spent $1.35 billion on political activities between 2021 and 2022,” as RealClearInvestigations’ Steve Miller explained.
“The groups work around legal restrictions on nonprofits that accept tax-deductible donations by selectively engaging in nonpartisan efforts including boosting voter education and participation,” Miller wrote, noting that much of the money targets left-wing constituencies via groups like the Voter Participation Center and Center for Voter Information. Both groups’ mission targets “young people, people of color and unmarried women” — three core demographics for Democrats.
Additionally, President Joe Biden is using taxpayer dollars to turn out voters, especially targeting demographics that are more likely to vote blue.
Biden signed Executive Order 14019 in March of 2021, directing federal agencies to develop plans to “promote voter registration and voter participation.” The Department of Education, for example, issued a memo in February stating federal work-study funds could be used to pay students to work at government agencies to register voters or serve as poll watchers. Voters between the ages of 18-29 broke for Democrat House candidates during the 2022 midterms nearly 2-1 when compared to Republican candidates, estimates show.
The Supreme Court recently announced it will not consider hearing a challenge to the executive order until Sept. 30 — after the order has already done what Biden intended it to do for the 2024 election.
Democrats Target Election Security Laws
Perhaps Democrats’ biggest tactic to rig elections in their favor is by weakening election laws, such as by vilifying basic voter ID requirements and popularizing mass absentee balloting.
Biden’s home state of Delaware recently enlisted former Obama administration Solicitor General Don Verrelli to argue in favor of state laws permitting early voting and permanent absentee voting. The Delaware Superior Court had found a 2010 statute permitting permanent absentee status violated the state’s constitution, since the constitution “limits absentee voting to only such general election where the voter cannot cast a ballot in person for a constitutionally enumerated reason.” The Delaware Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision this week.
The mass absentee voting apparatus popularized by Democrats in 2020 at the height of Covid-19 panic made elections less secure and makes it easier for ballot traffickers to take advantage of the voting process.
In Alabama in 2017, for example, a judge overturned preliminary election results in the Wetumpka City Council race after throwing out eight absentee ballots that were cast for the incumbent because either the signatures were forged or they had not been properly filled out. Just this past March the state implemented a law that makes paying people for “collecting, prefilling, completing, obtaining, or delivering” ballots a Class B felony, as my colleague M.D. Kittle reported.
Democrat election officials have also been known to arbitrarily — and extralegally — change election rules. In Michigan during the 2020 election, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issued guidance to election officials to presume that signatures on absentee ballots are valid. Three years later Benson would issue further guidance on how to conduct signature verification for absentee ballot applications and envelopes, telling election workers they must initially presume the signatures are valid. A judge recently ruled Benson’s guidance is unconstitutional — but it was used during the 2020 election nonetheless.
Meanwhile, Biden’s Justice Department has vowed to fight election security laws it deems “burdensome” and “unnecessary” like voter ID requirements or those limiting absentee and mail-in voting.
As part of their long-term strategy, Democrats are also looking to Congress to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act which would effectively allow the DOJ to take control of local and state election laws. For example, states or localities requiring voter ID would be subject to DOJ scrutiny. This legislation is a watered-down version of another federal elections takeover bill, HR 1, that Democrats pushed in 2021. HR1 sought to mandate mail-in ballots and delay final results by eradicating legal deadlines for those ballots, as my colleague Joy Pullmann explained.
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Democrats aren’t oblivious to Biden’s weakness, but they’ve spent years pushing fundamental changes to our election system that boost their candidates, no matter how unpopular they may be. To beat Biden, Trump doesn’t just need to show himself to be a better candidate — he’s also running against Democrats’ election machine.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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