The Ten Points to True Election Integrity Revisited for the Trump 47 Era
Topic: Election Reform
It is no secret I wish very much to be part of sweeping election reform in the United States, especially now that Donald Trump is on his way back to the White House. I have forwarded my employment request to many in his circle of colleagues in hope that it lands me an interview and consideration as a special advisor who can help turn ideas into reality.
In 2022, after collaborating with many experts in the election integrity field, I published my Ten Points to True Election Integrity. If implemented, election fraud would be practically eradicated, leaving only voter fraud to contend with, which is quite rare and heavily penalized. By using the term election fraud, I mean the widespread effort of bad actors or governments to completely manipulate election results and evade law and procedure in doing so.
Since first published, we Americans have lived through two federal elections – the 2022 midterm and the 2024 Presidential election. Lots of new knowledge waits to be gleaned and integrated into these solutions, so here is my first commentary on the Ten Points as we await the arrival of our new President and his mandate for reform. I recommend you read each point’s linked elaborative article and reflect upon my thoughts below them as you make your way through this post.
Voter registration is the foundation for all election corruption. This is obvious based on Michigan’s corruption, featuring more registered voters than there is population over age 18 in the state, the exposure of multiple voter registration fraud rings in Pennsylvania prior to this year’s election, and in how states that underwent voter roll purges, like Iowa or Nevada, suddenly became much more Republican.
I am convinced the best way forward today is to encourage all states to adopt the North Dakota model and force the others who won’t comply to do so. They do not register voters (the only state to operate in this way), and instead require them to provide identification to receive a ballot. They also happen to have the cleanest elections in America according to my model.
When states move toward Automatic Voter Registration, they move toward permanent “blue state” status. President Trump managed to flip Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan in this group this year, but only by slim margins and not without those states having their own familiar issues.
II. Ban All Electronic Elections Equipment
Putting aside the unsettling reality that when you use an electronic voting system to vote, you are sending your choices into a black box that must be transported to a central counting location in which it is integrated with software you cannot see nor audit yourself, how many more times must we hear reports about tabulators broken or machines not functioning properly? These issues create long delays at polling stations and do God knows what with the votes that have already been cast on the systems, and we’ve seen it all over Pennsylvania this year, and in Maricopa County most notably in the Hobbs-Lake debacle of 2022.
As with Obamacare, it’s not an actionable solution to simply repeal the machines, they must be replaced with a solution that works, or electronic voting enthusiasts will have all the ammo they need to revert to them in the event major counties change paths. More on that in a bit.
III. Voter ID with Paper Ballots Only
Show up at polling station, present ID, get paper ballot, vote, leave. How simple is that? If it can be combined with the North Dakota voter registration model, meaning there is no registration, then all eligible voters will have no issue filing in and executing their duty as citizens. Many have commented on the map showing the states that don’t use Voter ID contrasted with the ones that do, a stark Harris-Trump support picture, and I think it is fitting that states that are so bereft of fundamental sense to omit Voter ID would also have election laws that effectively create permanently blue states, like Automatic Voter Registration and expanded mail-in balloting. Speaking of:
In recent months, I’ve begun to refer to this point as Severely Restrict Mail-In Voting, pointing to the asterisk in the header. So many first world countries have banned mail-in voting, you’d be a fool not to at least be curious as to why our states, particularly our blue states, are expanding or even making comprehensive, the practice. I think I know why – when combined with bad voter rolls and a lengthy early voting or early mail-in period, mail-in balloting provides the best opportunity to pair a ballot to a bad registration and given enough time, ample opportunity to bank bad votes through ballot harvesting.
There is a good reason Oregon, Colorado, California, and Hawaii aren’t remotely competitive, and why states like Arizona suddenly are. It’s because they are operating systems that rely completely or mostly on mail-in voting. Voting systems were not designed to be convenient; they were designed to be secure. While I do not support suppressing people at the polls or deliberately making the in-person voting process more difficult that it needs to be, my recommendation to President Trump is to pursue a system of voting that allows only for overseas military, legitimately disabled, and qualified overseas citizens to mail votes in. Trust in elections is eroded at incalculable levels when a “mail ballot dump” reverses leads in the dark of night as seen every election in places like Milwaukee.
I made peace with early voting as it exists today in the last two weeks of this latest election once it became clear to me why President Trump pushed his supporters to take part in it. In doing so, he robbed the media and the left of a valuable narrative that would have gone something like this:
Wow, Democrats lead Republicans in Pennsylvania by 750,000 mail returns and by 8% in Arizona. Look at this poll suggesting Harris may turn Trump into Walter Mondale.
He realized, in the era of corrupted elections, that commanding the election narrative was just as valuable as commanding the votes. After all, I believe he had the votes in 2020 but lacked command of the narrative. It wasn’t that way this time around; however, despite the success with early voting being a main driver of his own victory, President Trump has stood by the repeated point that single-day voting must be implemented. That is because he realizes a lengthy period is required for election fraudsters to corral as many bad ballots tied to bad registrations as humanly possible to swamp what is always an enormous GOP turnout on Election Day. All others will be accommodated by:
VI. Drastically Smaller Precincts
I can hear the complaining now – but we don’t want to wait in long lines in Maricopa County, where there will be more than 2 million people voting on Election Day if we don’t get to vote by mail or vote early!
Somehow, we managed to process our elections and know the winners by bedtime many decades ago, before we decided to crater a functioning system for convenience, and I believe as innovative as Americans have proven to be, we can do it again. Drastically reduced mailed ballots and early voting requires the return of precinct-level voting and ballot counting, and it must be managed to have no more than 1,200 to 1,500 voters per precinct. This is a mighty administrative undertaking, but one that must be done if we are to avoid the complete disasters that we see in states like Washington, California, Arizona, Utah, and Alaska that spend so much time counting mail-in ballots it leaves the rest of the country, especially in huge states like Texas and Florida, aghast and feeling that such lengthy delays, when combined with illogical or suddenly reversed outcomes, are wrought with impropriety.
And in my mind, the appearance of impropriety is enough to undermine trust in our elections system, which is required if we are to uphold a Constitutional Republic. Notice how no one is questioning the outcomes in Florida and Texas, but Arizona’s are heavily scrutinized. Getting back to precinct-level voting and getting rid of voting centers is the way to do it. With these smaller sizes, precinct workers can hand count ballots and ensure accuracy without the use of a single machine.
In military tactics, it is well known that when armor (tanks) is present, infantry will be, too. They are required to protect the armor from flank or rear attacks. Likewise, where there are urban areas and massive quantities of mail ballots, there will be ballot harvesters, whether they are operating in a state that considers the harvesting practice illegal or not.
I have extensively mapped precincts in all battleground states since the 2020 election, and I believe it shows me where this practice is taking place. See the map of the Philadelphia area from four years ago, below:
It appears to be a game of “look here, not there,” in which the inner city and most urban wards of Philadelphia display organic shifts and trends, but the ballot bloat is found elsewhere, like further to the northwest in Montgomery County. I believe bloated ballot totals in the hinterlands of a state are likely due to local ballot harvesting activities, but in densely populated areas, it is more like organized crime. With voter rolls proven to be corrupted and registration fraud rings constantly being busted, it makes sense to me that a list of bad voter registrations can easily be obtained and distributed, with one person in charge of making the mail-ballot request, and others in charge of getting that ballot in over a lengthy early voting window.
Florida has made ballot harvesting a felony. Greater research by President Trump’s next Attorney General, perhaps Florida’s own Matt Gaetz if he can get through the Senate’s confirmation process, is required and should be pushed through the courts as a blanket ruling. This will cripple the mail-in fraud factories everywhere if enforced.
VIII. Election Day is a Holiday
To quell all the whining and complaining about being forced to line up at a voting center on Election Day, President Trump could declare Election Day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years, a national holiday. There would be no point in making this move if restrictions cannot be placed on mail and early voting, but I believe this policy position would receive major public support and go a long way in receiving public buy-in to such drastic changes to a vulnerable system awash with cheating.
Election Day. Not Election Month.
IX. New Reporting Requirements for Transparency
Since initial publication, this point has risen in prominence. I’ve likened the issue here to men playing poker. Two are left at the table, and one flops a three-of-a-kind with Kings. The other gets up, excuses himself to the bathroom, and then returns ten minutes later, only to flop a three-of-a-kind with Aces. No one would let him take the pot, and he’d be lucky to escape the venue with all his teeth still in his mouth.
Why, then, do we allow the largest counties in a state to repeatedly overwhelm the smaller counties with late and untraceable vote dumps of “absentee” ballots? In Nevada, Washoe and Clark Counties contribute seven of every eight votes. In Arizona, Maricopa and Pima Counties are responsible for more than three-quarters of the statewide vote. Milwaukee County has become more and more creative each passing cycle to give itself more time to “count” ballots and license to be the last county to report in what are always close statewide races.
Remember, ensuring the public trust in elections is critical for obtaining public buy-in. After all, our country’s system of government was founded on “consent of the governed.” I support reform in this regard that would require the top ten percent of counties by population to report their votes first and in totality, giving permission for all counties in the lower ninety percent of population to withhold totals until that is done. There will be no more dumping of ballots once the remaining counties have reported their votes.
X. Heavy Prison Sentences for All Who Commit Fraud
Clearly, I’m not the only person who realizes there must be serious consequences for those who defy election law and therefore cancel the votes of legitimate American voters:
This is America, and we are known for the rule of law. President Trump’s Department of Justice must cripple election fraudsters in such a way they will understand they have much more in common with Boss Tweed than they once thought.
Conclusion
We will not be able to outsmart the system forever. We did it this time on the back of one of the most charismatic figures in the history of the modern world, and even he didn’t have coattails long enough to carry more than 53 Senate seats and the slimmest of House majorities because the elections system is so vulnerable that it allows for narrow margins to be evaporated by a single night of counting “newly found” absentee ballots no one expected to come in – except the corrupt who administer their elections without consequence for wrongdoing.
We will either make massive headway, both at federal and state levels, on cleaning up elections, or we will find ourselves locked out of the system within a decade.
President Trump, here am I. Send me.
Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.
Boom! Perfect plan. Now hopefully the Trump Administration will take your advice and bring you onboard to lead the effort.
Please add Seth Keshel to the ‘24 Dream Team roster!