Early voting in the general election is now underway in 17 states, including Alaska.
We are now in the middle of election season, where the voting is done over a long and drawn-out period. The old tradition of one-day, in-person voting that I remember as a kid is long gone. It has been sacrificed due to the Covid pandemic and for other more nefarious reasons.
All states now heavily rely on mail-out ballots; some, like Washington State, are now exclusively mail-out voting. Election officials argue that mailing ballots to every registered voter in Washington is necessary to ensure every vote is counted. The problem is that when voter rolls are dirty and contain ineligible voters, and mass mail-out ballots are sent indiscriminately, ballots are received by people who cannot cast a legal vote.
This isn’t my opinion. In 2005, a bipartisan commission led by former president Jimmy Carter and former Reagan cabinet member James Baker III concluded that mail-out ballots are prone to fraud. Untended ballot drop boxes used to collect these ballots can be used to introduce fraudulent votes into the system.
If you need a refresher on how this is done, watch Dinesh D’Souza’s excellent documentary, “2000 Mules.” It covers this form of cheating in great detail and shows how Democrats cheated in the 2020 presidential election. Ignoring these warnings from D’Souza and members of both political parties, states have jumped on the mailed-out ballot bandwagon, and as a result, the public has lost confidence in our elections.
Despite problems with mail-out voting, Donald Trump’s prospects are looking great. He leads in the polls in most swing states and in the national popular vote. Two other positive indicators for his campaign might be even more accurate than the polling.
The first is Polymarkets, an online betting site that will take bets on the presidential election. While betting on elections is illegal in this country, Polymarkets is online and can somehow circumvent that restriction. On Friday, someone placed a huge $30-million bet on Polymarkets that Donald Trump would win the presidential election. Nobody would make a bet this large unless they had high confidence that Trump would win. That has to be encouraging to Republicans.
Secondly, this week, stock trader Stanley Druckenmiller said the stock market is already pricing in a Trump victory. He cited the price of DJT, the stock of the Trump Media company that owns Trump’s Truth social media site. The stock price had been trending down after the Democrat convention as Kamala Harris’s campaign was gaining momentum, but after her disastrous debate performance in early September, DJT stock has taken off like a rocket. Druckenmiller says this stock is a proxy for the Trump campaign and shows that stock buyers are bullish on Trump’s election chances.
Things are looking good for Donald Trump, but even if he wins on election day, that isn’t the end of the matter. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has said that Democrats may not vote to certify Donald Trump’s election and will use the 14th Amendment as a reason. That argument has already been debunked, but in an ironic twist of fate, if she loses the election, Kamala Harris will preside over the certification of election results on January 6.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
Harris and the other Democrats could try some shenanigans to keep Donald Trump out of office. If Harris loses, they may try to steal the election or to damage Trump’s political credibility in some way to impact his ability to govern. The election won’t be over on November 5. There will be many twists and turns from election day to January 20, 2025, when the next president will be sworn in.
Given Democrat threats and a dubious mail-out ballot system, the process after election day might be messy, but there is one thing we can control: Vote early and vote Republican. Ensure your friends do the same. Alaskans can choose to vote early from Oct. 21 to Nov. 4, or on election day – Nov. 5. I recommend you record your vote as soon as you can. The Democrats aren’t waiting for election day anymore, and neither should you.
The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.
1 Comment
The problem I have with early voting is that the votes should not be counted until election day. Until election day, my ballot is “supposedly” sitting safe somewhere from prying eyes? I’ll stick with voting on election day. If the election is shut down and we can’t vote, then it will be time to demand our right to vote in our election.