Don’t Claim We Didn’t Warn You

June 10, 2020 (Raleigh) One of the biggest surprises we’ve had in the entire election integrity movement is how many othewise intelligent people, we call Wizards of Smart, still scoff at our work.

Whether by negligence or ignorance, these experts compromise on “bipartisan” laws with booby traps in them. I’ll save details for the book, but every time we catch such mistakes, we always get one of three responses:

  • Act surprised and vow to “fix it” later,
  • Show genuine surprise and start swearing about “bad Leadership,”
  • Act stunned and start swearing about us.

Sadly, HB 1169 has triggered that third option.

For once, we found the problem before lawmakers could sneak it into some nice-sounding legislation, so we offered to help them fix it without getting sued.

More Wizards offered strawman arguments and plowed ahead, so let’s just lay out the evidence and have you decide:

1) March 26. NC State Board of Election (NCSBE) Executive Director Karen Bell published a list of election law changes she wanted, in the name of COVID. Among them, she advises lawmakers to “establish a fund for returned absentee ballots,” but never mentioned anything about prepaid absentee ballots being illegal.

2) April 22. Director Bell a budget estimate of $3.64 million and again requests the money while failing to request the enabling change to election law that she will need.

3) May 22. On the Friday before a three-day weekend, “Ten Percent” Grange submits HB 1169. The bill “doesn’t mention” prepaid absentee ballots, but throws lots of money at counties to spend under CARES Act guidelines.

4) VIP alerts the public: Their omission is a blank check for counties to finance prepaid envelopes.

5) Wizards at the Legislature begin attacking our integrity and our motives, before “Wiz-splaining” how prepaid envelopes are “against the law.”

6) Our DC-base election law attorneys retorts, “Everybody knows the COVID Act allows prepaid absentee ballot envelopes,”  and we discover the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) website, advising election officials to “pay return postage for all absentee by mail ballots,” if they can get the funding.

7) May 9. Bill sponsor, “Ten Percent” Grange, assures Senate elections oversight committee that prepaid ballot envelopes are “against the law,” I then speak and remind the committee of the above facts. Six minutes after our request for proof of its illegality, NCSBE Public Information Officer, Patrick Gannon, shoots us the statute, confirming  Grange’s claim. NC law only allows the voter to fund the postage.

Picture of NCGS § 163-231.(b)(1), propping up Wizards’ claims.

How Will Courts Respond?

For those unfamiliar with our work, we’ve spent around nine years researching both voter fraud and election fraud from all across the nation. We frequently network with other movement leaders in an attempt to analyze the results of bad election laws already enacted in other states.

We’ve also been harmed by rogue federal courts who conspire with state officials in friendly lawsuits. As the commercial goes, “we know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.”

Lest I repeat it too often, Orange County (CA) activists began scouring their lists for any voters who had ballots that were not cast before Election Day. Once the results were announced, activists knew how many ballots they needed to steal the election.

Ultimately, California Democrats flipped seven “safe” Republican congressional races (statewide) between Election Day and the canvass. They harvested 250,000 ballots in just one county of 2 million voters.

North Carolina has 7 million voters.

Life After 1169

That’s why we offer a few simple questions:

Why not examine all of your own “junk mail” and note which ones lack postmarks?

  1. Yesterday, a Senate Democrat likened NC’s current ballot postage law to a “modern poll tax,” so how long will it take for somebody to sue the state over that law after the funding is approved?
  2. Since a “modern poll tax” was part of the excuses used by activist federal judges to kill our first voter ID law, what are the chances NC will prevail in a legal defense?
  3. Since the only reason we ever lost that voter ID lawsuit was because NC’s Attorney General, “One-Term” Stein, abandoned the case just before his probable SCOTUS win, how much defense do you think ol’ Josh will offer up for a “modern poll tax” that his party hates?
  4. Without a postage-stamp requirement in HB 1169, how many counties will send out prepaid ballot envelopes to their voters with some sort of metered mail prepayment?
  5. While the law “requires” all late-arriving absentee ballots to have a postmark, what happens when, oh, 100,000 of them show up after the election but before the canvass?
  6. How many state or federal judges would allow the state to throw out those 100,000 ballots.”
  7. How many NC elections will the Democrats be able to overturn because of this bad law?

We’re “sure” the Wizards of Smart in Raleigh have answers for all those angles, so I’ll just settle for being the first person to tell them this:

Don’t say we didn’t warn you!