By Michael Bielawski
The National GOP Committee calls for election reform, voting unanimously in August for the “Resolution urging a ‘return to excellence’ in American voting and elections.” A member of the Special Election Committee for the Vermont GOP has offered VDC some updates on Tuesday morning.
The resolution calls for “the broadest possible participation to all voters” and they are calling for “ensuring the integrity of our voting and election administration is critical and foundational to maintaining a civil and decent society decentralized from a federal government as the founders intended.”
It calls for physical paper ballots that can be examined by the voter before being turned in. It states that “Election experts agree that the most resilient voting systems use paper ballots, either marked by hand or with an assistive device and are verified by the voter before any means of tabulation.”
Mark Coester
Mark Coester is on the Vermont GOP Special Election Committee as well as a representative for Vermont to an election integrity event hosted by MyPillow CEO and election integrity activist Mike Lindell. Lindell spearheaded the effort to put this resolution together and get it to the National GOP for the vote.
He spoke about the challenges concerning election integrity, including recalling how elections used to be done in Vermont with more transparency.
“We used to walk into the polling place [and be handed] three ballots, go in the voting booth and take out #2 pencil and fill out the ballot that we wanted,” he said. He described that the two unused ballots were carefully discarded and the filled-out one is handed in all in a manner that did not reveal how the voter voted or even for which party they voted.
He noted that it’s hypocrisy for the Democrat party to deny election fraud is an issue.
“We’ve got video of the Democrats screaming election fraud for 20 years straight and they weren’t wrong but they just quieted it down,” he said.
Coester says he participates in conference calls with Lindell and that these efforts will continue through Election 2024. He pointed to FrankSocial.com to spread election news, it’s a social media site by Lindell intended to circumvent the social media censorship on some of the other big platforms.
More on the Resolution
The resolution itself generally discourages the continued embracing of electronic means of voting.
It states, “The Republican National Committee boldly opposes means of voting that do not have the proper safeguards in place and are exclusively delivered electronically and calls on every county and state in the nation to use as the default ballot systems which are fully auditable, namely hand-marked, voter-verified paper ballots to make sure that every voter is represented by a paper record.”
The statement also takes aim at their political opposition. It states, “Elections have been under assault from those on the Left as they attempt to implement schemes and intentionally inject chaotic administrative changes that have drastically changed how elections are conducted in hundreds of the most populous counties and regions across the nation.
In conclusion, their statement calls for a return to simplicity and tangible security measures.
It calls for “a return to the simple and proven methods of precinct, ward or geographically-defined localized voting with auditable balloting procedures using paper ballots, in fair, reasonable limited time periods, using proper identification to strengthen voter confidence and to ensure that American election procedures can be a fair and open process for all to participate.”
Election fraud in the news
In the news this week another northeastern city is having to redo its mayoral primary election due to disturbing video that has emerged of an apparent ballot-stuffing scheme.
“A Connecticut judge has dismissed the results of a Democratic mayoral primary election in the state’s largest city and ordered a new election be held after video surveillance captured people placing multiple absentee ballots into outdoor collection boxes,” the Fox News report states.
Americans are unconvinced that elections are fair
A poll from last June reveals that a majority of Americans expect that there will be fraud in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 54% of Likely U.S. Voters believe cheating is likely to affect the outcome of the next presidential election, including 30% who think it’s Very Likely. Forty-one percent (41%) say election cheating is unlikely to affect the 2024 outcome, including 24% who consider it Not At All Likely,” their report states.
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle