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Pushes left-wing narrative despite evidence.
by Rob Roper
Last week WCAX’s Calvin Cutler interviewed me for a story he was doing about state senate Democrats putting in a bill to enshrine the federal Voting Rights Act into state law as a hedge against the Trump Administration’s desire to restrict mail-in voting and to ensure only citizens are allowed to vote in our elections. I appreciate Cutler’s reaching out to me, but I am left with a bone or two to pick with his editorial decisions.
Here’s how WCAX distilled my fifteen-minute interview with the reporter:
The president says it’s aimed at curbing mail-in voting and what he describes as fraud.
Some in Vermont have similar concerns about the current system.
“A handful of votes can swing a state house or senate election,” said Rob Roper.
Rob Roper, a conservative columnist, has concerns about Vermont’s universal mail-in ballot system and the potential for ballots to be filled out by others. He says the system could be tightened up with a voter ID law.
“We have a system in Vermont now where it is impossible to detect absentee ballot fraud because we do not have tools in place for election officials to detect it,” Roper said.
But top election officials stress current election systems are safe, have boosted turnout, and have only resulted in a handful of alleged fraud cases.
Yeah. That’s the gist of my take on the situation, and I get that for a two minute and fifty second news story a lot of any conversation has to be left on the cutting room floor, but here’s my beef: I didn’t just say (“Roper said”) Vermont’s absentee ballot system is not secure because there are no tools in place to detect fraud when it occurs, I brought Cutler the receipts.
Back in 2021, when the legislature was debating the bill that would make the Covid emergency measures of mailing live ballots out to everybody on the voter checklist without request, top elections officials testified before both the House and Senate Government Operations committees that our absentee ballot system in Vermont is, in fact, NOT secure.
Then Director of Elections, Will Senning, admitted that if someone got a hold of someone else’s absentee ballot, or multiple someone else’s ballots, filled them out, signed the name of the voter to whom the ballot was sent, and submitted it, those fraudulently submitted ballots – his words here – “will be processed, and [the voters for whom the ballots were intended], will be checked off as having voted.” That’s not secure.
Moreover, the City Clerks from Barre and Montpelier testified respectively that stealing unwanted or unclaimed ballots for purposes of influencing the outcome of elections is “an opportunity that’s out there,” (GREAT!), and if bad actors engage in this kind of absentee ballot fraud, “we can’t necessarily stop them.” Again, this is not a system that is secure from fraud. Not at all.
I shared video of this testimony (see above) with Cutler and talked him through it, yet he and his editors chose not to present this evidence to their viewers. Worse, they decided to give the last word to people who are clearly misleading the public: “But top election officials stress current election systems are safe, have boosted turnout, and have only resulted in a handful of alleged fraud cases.”
False! Maybe. And they have no idea how much fraud is or isn’t taking place.
Based on the evidence I showed him, Cutler knows full well that when top election officials tell the public our current elections systems are safe, THEY ARE LYING because we can see that they tell a different story when pressed in official testimony. I know I’m only a citizen journalist and Cutler is the supposed real deal, but from my humble perspective this is the real news scoop here: uncovering a betrayal of public trust, or at least calling out and questioning the inconsistency. But instead, he chose to participate in the cover up.
Also based on the evidence I showed him Culter knows that that the claim that the system has only resulted in a handful of alleged fraud cases is a manipulation of the truth to perpetuate a lie (see Bill Clinton’s “it depends what your definition of “is” is as an example.) While it’s true there are very few legally pursued “cases” regarding absentee ballot fraud in Vermont, election officials – as we have seen from their own testimony – have no clue if and when absentee ballot fraud is occurring. They can’t detect it. They can’t catch people who commit it. So, they can’t truthfully say they know for certain it isn’t happening.
A system that can’t detect fraud will never produce evidence of fraud. Their argument for why we don’t need a common sense voter ID law is like saying we don’t need a radon detector in our house because radon has never been detected in the house, so it must be perfectly safe. Breathe deep! Yes, it’s absurd. And the reporter knows it and chose to give credence to rather than challenge this absurd proposition.
And my last issue with the piece is that, while it is news that this bill is being put forward by senate Democrats, it wouldn’t have taken too much effort to mention that there is a Republican bill in the House, H.670, that would put a voter ID requirement into Vermont election law – something that multiple polls indicate around 80 percent of the public favors. Maybe WCAX do a story about that? But in the event they don’t, call your Representatives and Senators and tell them to support the Voter ID bill.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 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, Elections
What else could you expect from a CBS station?
Cutler is only a puppet out there doing legwork for the left’s machine. The left works it this way wherever they can get away with it. The best way to combat this nonsense is to bring it on out like you have here. We in Rutland, have the same problem getting meaningful, true wording in the letters to the editor. Just ask Don Chioffi, a good friend of mine who writes a lot, but the public does not know that better than 70% of what we send never sees daylight. Their answer; BALANCE.
My a…!
I hope Guy Page and Company understands that what they are doing for the population in this state is tremendous, and greatly needed and accepted. God Bless these folks whose mission to get it completely stated and right is 180 degrees opposite of wcax, wptz & others.
People are hungry for the truth, in a timely format. That is VDC in a nutshell.
And of course, Rob Roper is doing his thing too .
Amen! When during the Covid Lockdowns we were summarily provided “Absentee” Ballots by mail, I was furious. When we were told to sign an “Affadavit” affirming we had not nor were planning to vote twice (or multiples) that election day in order to secure a Live ballot at the polls, I was insulted.
The 2nd election I arrived at the polls with my unopened “Absentee” ballot complete with 5 – .38 Special bullet holes through the center. They were offended. I advised that I mutilated the ballot to prevent fraudulent use by others. And I offered my driver’s license as ID which was refused.
Living in rural Vermont we need to get out more and in the real world, bad people do bad stuff like steal ballots to use fraudulently for their favored partisanz…
I know Groton is a small town but when our town clerk gets a mailed in ballot she pulls the voter registration paperwork and compares the signatures. A small effort with a great affect.
Your comment is ridiculous. The signature is on the outer envelope, not the ballot. Did the town clerk check the security seal of the inner envelope and can she testify FOR SURE that the envelope had not been tampered with and the ballot inside replaced? No, of course she/he didn’t, because the envelopes are easy to open. There is no security. This is just for starters, there are even more heinous things possible.
Interesting that Groton’s Town Clerk compares the “voter’s” signature on the certificate envelope with the voter’s registration paperwork. So… I have to wonder, if the Town Clerk discovers that the signatures don’t match, or doesn’t think they do, what will happen, since the Town Clerk has no authority under the law to compare signatures? Will the Town Clerk take this before the BCA, who are election officials? Might be interesting to know, but I’ll bet that ballot is tabulated anyways. Or as someone who is no longer with us said, “Prove me wrong!”
Thanks Rob, when will Vermonters wake up? You, VDC,the Maine Wire, and even Nick Shirley are despised by the left as we all know, where is their breaking point when they will start eating themselves? Great work, the mainstream media is so corrupt, who called them Fake news first,DJT!
In Winooski, our city clerk has repeatedly said, non-residents allowed to vote in local elections, have no secondary voter registration list.
When asked at a voting event, where one was, it didn’t exist.
In regard to voting mail in ballots, I received seven at my home. No one cared.
Just think how many rentals, get in this transitional community?
Real ID, is a simple process at all DMV sites, let’s stop gaslighting everyone.
None of the local channels are what they used to be. They are all so woke that it about makes me sick to watch the local news. It makes me wonder if the god that they truely worship is divine, or, in reality, one of the oligarchs Boinie is always railing against. I have always thought that when it comes to the national news networks that it is a case of the tail wagging the dog. What I mean by this is that the Dem/Progs/Socialists, and their lifelong bureaucrat minions, get their orders from the woke press, who then reward them with favorable coverage. DJT has upset that status quo with his unfettered ability to put them in their place. I love it !
I know an overseas voter who votes Dem and he got two ballots ,he called Act Blue, and he was told to vote both, in case one gets lost in the mail, and they will not log the vote twice…yea right. He voted twice.in NYC ,ya think they didn’t count twice? If you think otherwise Bernie Sanders has a bridge to sell you in his home state…Brooklyn, NY.
Cutler is not a journalist. He and most of his ilk are in fact activists.
I received 3 extra ballots that did not belong to me. I reported this to the Vt Sec. of State and was told, do not use the ballots. I was offended by this because I am a law abiding citizen and had no intention of using the extra ballots. I was not told to report the extra ballots to the town clerk. This would not matter because unless the person requested to be removed from my address, the town clerk could not remove the names So I know without a doubt that our mail in ballots are not secure Also there is no way to prove that fraud is occuring I heard that an extremely large amount of ballots are mailed out far more than there are registered voters The potential for fraud is enormous WCAX should report this instead of trying to dupe the public into believing there is no fraud.