I care about election integrity because I care about freedom.
What does election integrity have to do with freedom? Everything!
Voting is one critical and indispensable way citizens get to protect their freedoms! They vote for those who will do that.
But when cheating occurs or there is fraud in elections, it is those citizens who have been cheated out of the opportunity to protect their freedoms.
And freedom becomes at risk.
Ever since Election Night, November 3, 2020 I have always felt that something went very, very wrong with that presidential race. And I wasn’t by myself. Millions of Americans have felt the same way.
We have seen that the results of the 2020 presidential race defied every trend. For example, out of the 19 bellwether (historically proven leading indicators of election outcome, perfect since 1980) counties in the nation, Trump won 18 of them and Biden won 1. (By the way, Bremer County in Iowa is one of the bellwether counties!) Also, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina have all voted for the presidential winner since 1896 and all of them in 2020 went for Trump. In addition, since 1892, no incumbent president has gained votes in re-election and yet lost. Yet Trump lost although he gained votes in re-election. It doesn’t add up and is therefore circumstantial evidence pointing to fraud in the election.
Now enter the new documentary 2000 Mules. After seeing this if you don’t believe there was fraud in the 2020 election, enough to make it highly likely the election was overturned, then I would have to say no amount of evidence will ever convince you.
If you haven’t seen this documentary, 2000 Mules, by Dinesh D’souza, I would encourage you to do so at www.2000mules.com Dinesh D’souza investigates the work of True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips who used geotracking data from cell phones and official government video surveillance recordings of paid “mules” using ballot drop boxes to uncover massive, organized fraud that occurred in the 2020 election. (You have to see the movie to find out what a mule is.) They investigated Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Atlanta, Georgia; and Phoenix, Arizona. They demonstrate the voters of the 2020 election suffered a severe blow at the hands of an organized crime cartel engaged in a racketeering election enterprise.
It was shocking and alarming to see the video evidence right before our eyes of thousands of election crime felonies being committed. There is enough evidence for law enforcement to know the identities of these electioneering criminals and to prosecute them. Why hasn’t that happened? It should happen.
Dinesh D’souza and True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and others demonstrate a true love for the country by telling this story and revealing the truth of what happened in the 2020 election. Because if we know the truth, we can make the corrections needed to restore free and fair elections.
Everyone knew that mail-in balloting was happening in several states during 2020 and that increased greatly the chances ballot trafficking would occur. And everyone knew all of that would increase the chances of fraud happening. That led us here in Iowa in 2021 to pass a law prohibiting mail-in balloting and ballot harvesting or trafficking as they emphasized in 2000 Mules. We only allow the voter, a household or immediate family member or a caretaker to return an absentee ballot.
Even though here in Iowa we usually mail in our absentee ballots, that is not what is meant by “mail-in” voting. Mail-in voting occurs when the election office sends out a ballot to every registered voter unsolicited, without their asking for it. In Iowa a voter must ask for a ballot by sending in an absentee ballot request form in order to get their absentee ballot. This helps to ensure that the person who requests the ballot is the one who casts the ballot.
With absentee balloting as opposed to in-person voting, still there is an increased chance of fraud since you can’t entirely verify an absentee ballot to ensure the person who actually voted the ballot was the person who was supposed to vote the ballot. In addition when we passed a law in 2017 requiring voter signature verification on absentee ballots, the courts struck it down, so without signature verification that makes it even harder to verify an absentee ballot. With so many absentee ballots now being used by voters, I think it’s time to steer us away from absentee voting and back to in-person voting again. We already allow 20 days for early in-person voting. Now we need to make the change that absentee ballots would only be allowed under certain conditions: 1)Hospitalization, illness, or physical disability; 2)Military or Overseas; 3)Work-related trips; and 4)College students away at college.
Also in 2021, we passed a law allowing only one secure drop box per county and it would be on county property with video surveillance to monitor all activity at the drop box. It is required to be securely fastened to a stationary surface and be locked with a tamper evident seal. We are not allowing multiple drop boxes placed everywhere, unsecured, that would invite cheating to occur, as happened in 2000 Mules.
All of this ballot trafficking shown in 2000 Mules would not be possible without dirty voter rolls. For sure this was a problem in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. In Iowa I understand voter rolls have been maintained with varied amounts of diligence depending on the county auditor. So in 2021, we passed a requirement that the Secretary of State and county auditors maintain the voter rolls, hoping that would increase diligence where it was lacking. It was at that time that the Iowa Secretary of State’s office joined the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the interstate voter roll auditing system to help clean up our voter rolls by identifying Iowa voters who also voted in other states. But now questions have arisen regarding ERIC that need to be investigated.
Another issue pointed up by 2000 Mules is the fact that ballot paper is so ordinary they could reproduce ballots and election officials did not question whether the ballots were counterfeit. We need our ballots on counterfeit-proof paper so that it is easy to tell if a ballot is counterfeit. I introduced a bill to upgrade our ballot paper to incorporate currency (money) grade security features so that they are nearly impossible to counterfeit. This bill did not get taken up.
The election fraud operation revealed in 2000 Mules was aided and spurred on by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg private funding which was used to take over the administration of elections in selected areas, especially Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and others. They used the money to conduct massive get-out-the-vote operations in the 5 largest and most Democratic cities in Wisconsin: Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha. Iowa received ZuckerBucks and it was distributed to different counties but in such a way as to give more $ per voter in the counties that went for Biden, like Polk, Linn, and Johnson. I have urged House leaders to prohibit private money from being used to fund the administering of our elections and it is included in this year’s election bill. But the session is almost over and we still need to pass that bill!
Another very disturbing and outrageous fact that was revealed in 2000 Mules was that the National Republican Senatorial Committee knew about the systematic ballot stuffing and did nothing about it. That is unconscionable and very troubling.
For those that think I am digging up “old news”- “the election was over months ago, just forget it”. There’s no way we can forget it. There was enough wrong done that as a state we must ensure that all steps are taken to shore up the integrity of our elections. Otherwise, voters will not have confidence in their elected leaders or in their government. And in a republic such as we have, that confidence is critical to success.
If fraud occurred in the presidential race and if nothing is done, then what will happen in future elections? Evil that goes unchecked only increases. At what point do we act? When our voice is totally silenced and freedom totally gone? How many elections away is that? We should not wait to find out. We don’t have forever to act. Once too many wrong people get elected, we will not have the votes to put integrity back into our elections.
This is not about the result of any election. It is about preventing wrong-doing before we have another bad election like we had in 2020. A pre-emptive strike.
We have more to do to make Iowa’s elections immune to an organized election racketeering enterprise. Voters should be able to protect their freedom through the election process. We should act now to protect your ability to protect your freedom.
Thank you Sandy for writing this review. The U.S. Supreme court failed in its duty to take up the case brought by Texas and several other states to examine the facts of this matter. See for example here: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/12/11/texas-lawsuit-supreme-court-election-results/
There is certainly a great deal of smoke here and brushing it under the rug is not constructive. It’s also clear that Senator Ernst had no interest in getting to the facts in this case as discussed here: https://www.newsweek.com/gop-senator-calls-election-rigging-claims-trump-campaign-outrageous-i-do-take-offense-that-1548887 – However she did use the opportunity to again tout her military veteran status (yawn).
To be clear – I’m not saying there was election fraud. What I am saying is that Americans have a right to have the matter examined in a fair and impartial manner.
To even question the issues surrounding this election is to be cast into the outer darkness, which is the tactic of bullies and those who don’t wish to have matters brought out into the light for proper examination.
Mark Thompson, Deb Hild, Doug Campbell and other constitutional conservative Republicans are running to be elected this November 8. We are 100% with you Sandy Salmon, we appreciate your comprehensive diligence on many issues.
Sandy Salmon cannot do this alone. Why is there not bipartisan support to get this election mess cleaned up? Hmmm, maybe there is no money or power in returning freedom and truth to the voters and having free and fair elections.
Would love for us to impose a requirement that all Mail In ballots not cast by Active Duty Military come with both the ballot and the envelope notarized.
Help support an amendment for us to clean up Iowa’s Mail-In ballot mess. Find and support your local House/Senate district members who might support shoring up the loop-holes in Iowa’s ballots… before it truly is too late!!