Democrats and their corporate media allies want to federalize everything: the police, our health care, our schools, our lives… Despite the Obamacare debacle, despite the deaths caused by federalizing the health care of our veterans, despite the dehumanized monster that is the IRS and TSA, the jaw-dropping corruption in the FBI and Deep State, the push to federalize everything marches on.
This includes our elections.
God help us.
Just try to wrap your mind around the debacle of Monday night’s Democrat Iowa Caucus happening everywhere, happening in every election, happening during a presidential election.
You might be thinking, Wait a minute? Isn’t Iowa the perfect example of why we should federalize elections? It was a local screw up!
Let me respond to that in two ways…
First off, it was the national Democratic Party that came up with the voting process that burnt to the ground last night. It was not only a top-down thing, it was a top-down thing created by the very same central planners who want to federalized control the voting and tabulating process in every state, country, precinct.
Here’s Tom Perez, the head of the Democratic National Committee, bragging on the three years of preparation that went into last night’s historic debacle.
Iowa is a perfect example of federal central planners marching into a state where nothing was broken and attempting to “fix it” with an app and a whole new way of choosing your preferences.
Well, they “fixed it” all right.
Now just imagine how much better off Democrats would be today had this debacle only happened at the precinct or county level, as opposed to state-wide. Right now, the entire caucus looks like a total wipe-out. All that money, time, and energy for nothing. Thousands of voters who took the process seriously, who studied the candidates and went through the hassle of caucusing, are now disenfranchised.
There are some 1600 to 1700 precincts in Iowa. A debacle in one precinct or even a dozen (which is unlikely), would have almost no effect on the overall outcome.
Secondly, even if you want to be unreasonable and declare this debacle a local debacle, it is still EXHIBIT A in the case against a one-size-fits-all process. The last thing you want is a system where one person’s mistake affects everyone and everything.
Things work best when ever precinct is its own fiefdom. This ensures mistakes are confined to one small precinct, or that fraud is confined to one small precinct — anything that goes amiss is compartmentalized by default.
With a smaller operation, there’s also more accountability.
Think about how this works in the real world. Imagine trying to get satisfaction if you have a complaint against someone at the IRS or a big corporation. Just the thought of it is daunting and intimidating. You just know it’s going to be a time suck. But if your accountant screws up, you can get some satisfaction. If a small business screws up, you can go right to the owner, the guy personally invested in making this right.
It’s much, much, much easier to demand accountability from local government than the bloated, Orwellian bureaucracy the federal government has become, and the prospect of personal accountability keeps those responsible on their toes and determined to do things right.
There are around 120,000 separate precincts in this country. Even Mr. Federalize himself, Barack Obama, admitted in 2016 that you can’t rig an American election “in part, because they’re so decentralized.”
The dangerous siren song of federalizing voting was at its loudest during the 2000 presidential election, during the Florida recount. This will never happen again, they said. It will all be centralized and electronic and regulated and streamlined. All our problems will go away.
At the time that sounded pretty good. The recount was agonizing. Who wants to go through that again, right?
But you know what, in the end the process worked. While it was excruciating watching poll workers stare intently at ballot cards, at least there was a paper back up, and that’s the other thing…
Although it doesn’t really pass the smell test, Iowa’s debacle is being blamed on a new app that was supposed to make it easier for the 170 or so precinct captains to report the results. We’re told the app broke down.
Assuming that’s the truth, the good news, so we are told, is that there is a paper backup for the actual votes taken.
That paper trail is everything.
These dumb ideas about voting from our iPhones, or voting via computer touch screen (which many places do), is a disaster waiting to happen.
You go into your local precinct. You fill out a paper ballot. You’re within a few feet of the handful of people responsible for what happens to your sacred vote, and that keeps everything tidy, neat, accountable, and honest.
Keep it simple. Keep it local. Keep it as analog as possible.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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