We're Heading Straight for the Ballot Harvesting Monster

Topic: Elections

I take heat for various positions held regarding our current system of elections, whether we are talking about who won which states in 2020, or which practices for cleaning up elections are most important.  Ultimately, I am a point of reference and someone with a wide audience with which to share ideas.  You may not like it that I don’t think Trump won California in 2020, but that’s fine.  Disagreement is an American thing if we know how to deal with it productively (and by and large, we don’t, not within this movement or outside of it).

I was ready to throw the ballot harvesting baby out with the bath water after the midterms and said as much on social media, only to be sideswiped by my good friend Mitch Clemmons, who ran for the California State Senate and put up quite a ruckus (Mitch, I know you’re reading this and you’ll be texting me later about it).  Mitch told me he was going to make the Democrats regret making ballot harvesting a go-to tactic.  I have heard the same from Mike Terry of Patriots United Washington.

Indeed, I have even taken heat for stating simply why there is no other choice in certain states than to ballot harvest where legal.

My opinion comes down to this: we are going to need to “play ball” by the rules in states that permit ballot harvesting, just as patriots in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Utah, and other states that vote exclusively by mail do, while keeping our eyes on the ball to eradicate these reckless practices when in position to do so. Until then, we are stuck playing games that rely on the hope that Philadelphia doesn’t come up with 155,000 new harvested ballots to account for 150,000 new Republican harvested ballots, found exclusively after a four day pause to “count” the votes.

In case you need a run-down on why ballot harvesting (a felony in Florida) must be banned nationwide, you can read about that in my essay outlining the seventh of the 10 Points to True Election Integrity.  Joe Biden “won” the electoral votes of states with the least ballot harvesting restrictions, or legal ballot harvesting, by a score of 237-131.  Combining stuffed voter rolls with expanded mail-in voting, a lengthy early voting period, and operatives parading about in the dark of night snatching up loose ballots like Mario Brothers coins to drop into unsupervised drop boxes leads to electoral disaster, whether you think your local GOP can outdo full time, paid left wing extremists or not.

Referencing The Perfect Storm, just as the crew of the Andrea Gail was warned they were heading for the “middle of the monster,” those who believe we will find the fabled fountain of youth for winning elections by virtue of harvesting more ballots than Democrats, the very people who invented this diabolical practice, are heading for the middle of an electoral monster.  The political consultant class and Republican establishment types are the ones embracing ballot harvesting in a way that goes beyond what my friends mention above in that they will seek, while it is the only option to compete available, to excel at it, and then ban it if and when they achieve the political power to do so.

The most obvious logical fallacy to me is that anyone would expect the same people who stole a Presidential election, and God knows how many U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and state or local seats, to open all those envelopes in the aftermath of November 5, 2024, and the days (or weeks) to follow, and say something like:

I’ll be damned!  We don’t have enough ballots this time.  We will certify this world-changing Donald Trump victory in Nevada and not count ballots for the next week until we have more.  After all, fair is fair!

They didn’t even have 44,000 ballots in Philadelphia in 2016 at the end of election night.  They had more than 700,000 at the ready statewide in 2020.  They are playing for keeps, and we are playing for sport, or so it seems.  Democrats recommending Republicans learn to ballot harvest, while sounding like the famous learn to code taunt, is akin to:

Prime Mike Tyson inviting a heckler to a boxing match.

A cheetah inviting a tree slug to a footrace.

A karate master inviting a one-legged man to an ass-kicking contest.

I could go on, but I believe I’ve made the point.

Given that it is obvious based on mail ballot statistics, presence of drop boxes, and bloated vote totals that Democrats have mastered ballot harvesting in the key midwestern states needed to fall in line for a Trumpian victory, shall we examine just why the Democrats need to ballot harvest?  After all, they’ve already achieved the all-important propaganda goal of getting Republicans to accept and go along with the ballot harvesting plan, and we are still 18 months away from the ink having begun to dry.

Let’s consider Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), Michigan (15), and Wisconsin (10).  All three fit comfortably into a legitimate 2020 Trump victory column and would all go to Trump by at least ten points each in a real 2024 race.  As it is, the odds of carrying any of them are slim, and here we are not just backing, but championing, ballot harvesting, which they need in order to win. Why do they need it?

Because their urban, overwhelmingly Democrat slums of Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee are hemorrhaging population, so much so that unofficial 2022 population tallies reflect population losses in all three of their counties (Philadelphia, Wayne, and Milwaukee Counties).  Furthermore, these counties lag the rest of the state in voter turnout, even in the bloated 2020 election totals.

Philadelphia County, PA

2022 Pop. Estimate: 1,567,258 (12.08% of PA population)

2020 Votes Cast: 741,377 (10.72% of PA votes)

Wayne County, MI

2022 Pop. Estimate: 1,757,043 (17.51% of MI population)

2020 Votes Cast: 874,018 (15.78% of MI votes)

Milwaukee County, WI

2022 Pop. Estimate: 918,661 (15.59% of WI population)

2020 Votes Cast: 458,971 (13.92% of WI votes)

Philadelphia lags state turnout by 1.36%, Wayne by 1.73%, and Milwaukee by 1.67%.  Increasing turnout in these by 1.5% each to roughly normalize population share to state turnout share would yield roughly this many more ballots (not votes) counted:

Philadelphia – 103,729

Wayne – 83,090

Milwaukee – 49,640

While they are squeezing all of the toothpaste out of the tube and seeking to gain Republican consent to entrench these practices, they ingeniously know their population density will always carry the field.  They can normalize turnout by taking up an extra 1.5% of the state turnout share and crush any efforts for the GOP to ballot harvest in Republican strongholds, or in competitive suburban counties or precincts.  If Republican operatives go into a county that casts 50,000 ballots, and manage to crank out 4,000 extra, the time, effort, and money spent will be crushed by a simple budge in turnout in the Democrat strongholds that merely sets the county’s share of the overall state vote equal to its share of the population.

Republicans in the suburban or rural counties will be voting disproportionately on Election Day relative to their Democrat counterparts, who will vote - or “vote” - by mail during a lengthy early voting window, or in person where allowed and where bussed or incentivized.  A pack of Republican ballot harvesters going to a suburban neighborhood during an early voting period may be lucky to take in several hundred ballots with a 55-45 Republican split.  Democrats, on the other hand, are wise to spend their time collecting loose ballots in the projects, where the ballots are likely to be marked 90-10 in their favor.  At that point, turning in ballots that contain 10% Republican votes is beneficial because the return is overwhelming “turnout” for those candidates who must win.

How does a 90-10 Democrat collection split work with the increase turnout numbers listed above for my three midwestern focus counties?

Philadelphia – 103,729 more ballots

Dem – 93,356

Rep – 10,373

Margin – Dem +82,983

Margin in PA 2020 – Biden +80,555

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Wayne – 83,090 more ballots

Dem – 74,781

Rep – 8,309

Margin – Dem +66,472

Margin in MI 2020 – Biden +154,188

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Milwaukee – 49,640 more ballots

Dem – 44,676

Rep – 4,964

Margin – Dem +39,712

Margin in WI 2020 – Biden +20,682

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Now you should understand why the Democrats are rolling out “you guys ought to learn how to ballot harvest and take advantage of mail-in voting and early voting.”

1)         We have the watches, but they have the time.

2)         Their urban slums are not turning out organically post-Obama.

3)         Turnout must now be artificial based on bloated voter rolls and mail-ballot “access.”

4)         Republican consent cements their strategy and efforts to codify legal ballot harvesting.

5)         Population density disadvantages Republicans who can’t understand simple mathematics.

If our hopes are in ballot harvesting, we will fail to fix the electile dysfunction crisis.

Author’s Note: This article is open to all members of my journal. This research is time consuming and critical for forging a new path to a workable elections system. I would appreciate your subscription as a paying member of my SubStack if you find this work worthwhile.