Editor’s note: This is the first of a two part series based on an interview on Liberty Nation Radio with John Fund, acclaimed columnist and author of two books on election fraud, Stealing Elections and Who’s Counting.
One of the enduring legacies of the 2018 midterm elections, in addition to the Democrats winning back the House, was stinging accusations by both parties of voter fraud and official corruption in at least three races in Florida and Georgia. These disturbing and highly amplified charges, on top of leftist allegations that Donald Trump was illegitimately elected President, have further diminished confidence in the very way our country determines winners and losers. We turned to one of the nation’s leading experts on voter fraud, John Fund, to sort out truth from propaganda.
...under the Obama administration, the easy to vote part was fine, the hard to cheat part, they completely ignored it.
Tim: Republicans say Democrats tried to fabricate votes in Florida after the clock ran out on election night, and Democrats say the Republican who won for Governor of Georgia commandeered his own victory by engaging in all manner of voter suppression techniques. Which of these is true? One of them, both, neither?
John Fund: Well, let's look at the big picture first and work down. About 40% of the American people have zero confidence that their vote is going to be counted accurately, or fairly. That's a big problem for our democracy and our republic, because if people are that cynical about things, voter turnout is lower, people have less confidence in the outcome of the election, and view the actions of the government as less legitimate than they otherwise would be. So we all have a stake in proving our election process, and improving the perception of it.
In 2002 after the Florida meltdown with Bush v. Gore, congress passed a law called Help America Vote Act. What they said is, "We are going to provide money to the states for better voting machines and systems, but the states have an obligation to clean up their voter rolls, and act more responsibly, and try to preserve election integrity." That was bipartisan. Senator Chris Dodd, the democratic co-sponsor said, "We're a great country. We can make it both easy to vote and hard to cheat, we can do both."
John Fund
Well, at least under the Obama administration, the easy to vote part was fine, the hard to cheat part, they completely ignored it. There was not one single lawsuit, or federal action against any state that had refused or neglected to clean up its voter rolls during the entire Obama administration. In fact, Julie Fernandes, an Obama appointee, declared in a large staff meeting, "We are never going to enforce this, because it doesn't accord with our political priorities." What you now have is a situation where both in Florida, and Georgia, you had election officials who were so incompetent, so disorganized, that you can't tell where the incompetence left off, and where the fraud, or conceivably voter suppression began. So that's the first thing. We need to clean this up, and it's a national problem, not just a Florida and Georgia problem.
Tim: Now, I think back to the reality that a few thousand misguided votes for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach County because of a poorly designed ballot cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000, the famous recount of a lifetime. So I ask you, was what happened in Broward County this year really a case of incompetence, or really more fraud?
John Fund: Well it was both probably. Although proving fraud is harder than proving the incompetence, because incompetence covers up the fraud. By the way, with regard to Florida in 2000, of course, yes, Pat Buchanan got the votes that should have gone to Al Gore because of a poor ballot placement, at the same time though, we know about 1200 or 1400 felons who shouldn't have been voting, did vote, and I suspect the vast majority of them voted for Al Gore.
So you can go back and play what ifs on almost every level on that race. But what happened in Broward County was two things; very poor ballot placement for the Senate race, which meant about 32,000 fewer people voted on that line, if they split about the way that they split county-wide, the race would have been between within a few hundred votes. At the same time however, after the election, the elected supervisor of election said, "Well you know, we're going to let people change their ballot if it was rejected as an absentee because of a mismatched signature." There's allegations that they allowed people to come in far later than the legal limit, as late as a week after the election to try to change their ballot, to try to, I suspect, give more votes to Mr. Gillum.
This elected board of supervisors head, Brenda Snipes had been sanctioned by judges in the past for failing to meet transparency and open record laws, for reporting election results before the polls closed, for all kinds of problems. Her problems were so great, she resigned. She just left the office. I mean, she's out the building. By the way, her predecessor had to be forcibly removed by Marshals, that's how she got the job originally. Her predecessor was so incompetent, and fraud-stained, that she had to do that. So Broward County is a sinkhole of not only incompetence, but fraud, and I suspect the new governor Republican Ron DeSantis is going to try to find some election professional to make sense of it, because for the last 20 years, the county has been an embarrassment and we don't want them dictating the result of the 2020 presidential election like they did in 2000.
Tim: Indeed. I've heard many other county election supervisors in Florida outraged at this because of course the whole state gets smeared by the incompetence, or fraud, of Broward County.
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In part two of this series, John Fund analyzes serious allegations by Democrat Stacey Abrams of voter suppression by her victorious opponent, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, in the Georgia gubernatorial election.
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