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Behind the Lines is a Substack page run by Rob Roper and is republished here with permission
By Rob Roper
A political ad for Kamala Harris featuring a voiceover by actress Julia Roberts has sparked a lot of press coverage, but not for the obvious reason it should. In it a woman and her husband enter a polling place. The husband is clearly supposed to be a Trump supporter, and after he casts his ballot cheerfully tells his wife, “Your turn, honey.” Roberts’ voice comes in here with the message,
“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know…. Remember, what happens in the booth stays in the booth.”
Yup! And that’s not just true for women. The benefit of a secret ballot applies to everyone. Men too.
But with vote by mail, what happens at the kitchen table does not stay at the kitchen table where, if we are to take the marital dynamic portrayed in the ad as its presented, this husband would be looking over his wife’s shoulder as she made her choice. And he would not allow her to make the “wrong” one. He’d probably just fill out the ballot for her and force her to sign it. Or, if in Vermont where we don’t have signature check or any form of ID for mail in ballots, he’d just sign her name himself and tell the missus to go make him a sandwich.
In such a case – which the Democrats writing the ad must think is rather prevalent if they believe intimidated women voting the way their husbands tell them to is enough to sway the election – this woman has been disenfranchised (and probably received a roughing up for her expressing her political beliefs), and her husband has upended the principle of “one person, one vote” by effectively voting twice. All courtesy of mail in voting!
I’ll turn the scenario around a bit with my own script. Wife riffling through envelopes calls out to husband, “Your ballot arrived in the mail, honey.” Gruff husband distracted by his video game replies, “My vote don’t matter. Throw it away!” Celebrity voice over chimes in, “There’s one place in America a woman can steal her husband’s vote, and no one will ever know…. Remember, what happens at home election officials can’t see!” Husband, “Did you throw my ballot away?” Wife, with a conspiratorial wink at the camera, “Sure did, honey. Granny’s too!” Cut to elderly woman passed out in an easy chair, clearly suffering from dementia.
So, here on the day before actual election day, I want to thank Julia Roberts and Vote Common Good for (I’m sure inadvertently) reminding everybody why requiring voting in person, in private, at a polling place overseen by non-partisan/bi-partisan election officials is so crucial for preserving the integrity our elections and for ensuring the counted results accurately reflect the intent of the voters based on one person, one vote.
Abandoning a process that secures the two core pillars of our election system, the secret ballot and one person/one vote, for one that can’t secure either – vote-by-mail –guarantees that whoever loses an election will have a built-in excuse for not believing or accepting the stated outcome. This very dangerous and, not a recipe for healthy, peaceful, trusting society.
But, all that said, get out there and vote! This is the system we have, and we still need to win elections – if only to fix how we run elections! If you are voting in Vermont, make sure to bring your mailed out ballot with you to the polls on Tuesday, November 5th. If you lost it or never received it (yeah, fun feature), you can still vote in person. Don’t mail your mail-in ballot because it will not arrive in time to be counted. (Great system, I know.) Still, I ALWAYS vote, as every citizen should. If nothing else, it gives me the right to complain, which I prize highly – and you are not entitled to that if you do not vote. So, vote!
And if Trump wins tomorrow via a narrow margin in Pennsylvania or Michigan, our friends on the Left can spend the next four years wondering if it was all thanks to tens of thousands of women who had to fill out their mail-in ballots under the inspecting glare of their MAGA husbands in the seclusion of their own living rooms, courtesy of the vote-by-mail election policies they themselves championed.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
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Categories: Commentary
Another great point by Rob Roper. We need to go back to voting day with voting booths instead of voting season and drop boxes with 25 ballot “limits.” And absentee ballots only by request. I say let’s throw in some identification requirements, signature verification for absentee ballots and counting-by-hand. If the French can do it, we can do it. Make elections trustworthy again!
I agree with you 100%, Tom.
Simple, basic, tried and true American way of voting without myriad ways to cheat and subvert what was always and should always be a foolproof process.
You hit it out of the park, Rob. Grand slam.
If any state needs total election reform, unfortunately, it’s Vermont. As it stands now, our state has one of the most insecure vote by mail processes in the entire country, if not *the* worst.
But of course, nothing will happen here, and given the current landscape, nothing *will* happen in the foreseeable future.
Polls of all kinds have for years consistently come back with the result that 80% of the citizens of this once great country want paper ballots, one day voting, and Voter ID. Throw out the usual suspects (CA, NY, etc) and that figure probably jumps to 85%.
But our only chance here in Vermont (and the rest of New England) is if Donald Trump gets in and manages to implement nationwide change. I have no doubt Vermont will go kicking and screaming, backed up by leftist, liberal court decisions. These people don’t represent me. You?
Folks, I do believe this election is our final chance. I know there’s no way Trump wins in Vermont, but I pray every day that the rest of the country has enough common sense to get this country back on the right track.
If many of the couples I know are anything to go by, it’s far more likely the overly emotional, thoroughly state-media-gaslit wife who will be commandeering the mail in ballots and badgering the husband to vote her way or else. Just another typical case of leftist projection.
One of the first things a law enforcement officer learns is how to preserve evidence and the chain of custody of evidence. When mailing in ballots if there is any kind of break in the chain of custody of that ballot that ballot is subject to tampering. So, the employees union of the Postal Service which endorsed Commie-la and we are not supposed to expect there is no break in that chain of custody. The security of voting by mail is a lie.
“A lie is as good as the truth if somebody believes it”. – Flip Wilson as Geraldine
My take… mail in ballots should be for those whose duties keep them overseas, or reside overseas, or in the service of the country, outside of their voting town, the infirm, or too elderly, to go to the polling place… period.
All paper ballots due by election day, with voter being verified as a US citizen, proven via a sworn affidavit, and/or a copy of their passport, birth certificate.
If this were done, I can pretty much promise there would not be much future for progressive leftist candidate’s being elected to office, just about everywhere.
Take back America and vote all from the left spectrum out of office and vote in Team Trump for a back to the basics, common sense governance.
Yet, voter fraud is so minuscule as to be a statistical non-issue. I would be more concerned about efforts to suppress voter participation.
@Pete There’s no way to know how much voter fraud there is, so there’s no way you can declare it a “statistical non-issue.” There’s also no reason we can’t have fully secure and transparent elections, aside from… enabling fraud.
We can assert all we want that there is voter fraud, but it is incumbent upon those making those assertions to demonstrate it. Absent that proof, one is left with little more than innuendo and hypothesis.
So why’d you say it was so minuscule as to be a statistical non-issue then?
Got some proof, or nah?
Since I have yet to see meaningful evidence of substantial election fraud, I conclude that it is not there.
Of course, it is not possible to prove a negative. Hence, the burden of proof would belong to the one asserting that the fraud is there!
Regards,
You haven’t been looking very hard. At all.