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Election audits are necessary in a republic to assure system integrity, political legitimacy validation, and social harmony promotion. A free society agrees to orderly abide by the rules of the game if the rules are not deemed to be rigged. Representative democracy, the only authentic and sustainable model of popular sovereignty, levies enormous expectations on an accurate reflection of the will of the people.
Skewed shortcuts for political ascension where fraud or other indirect methods of attempting to impact election results are present, a national priority must be set to counter this enemy of self-government. Election auditing should not be labeled as partisan or feared as a politicized monster.
The distinction between an audit and a recount must be clearly established. The former is a comprehensive, multifaceted, and organic approach to election purity maintenance. As with any mechanical inquiry, the auditors (state or independent) are in search for defects that could or did produce cozened election results. The latter is the specifically targeted project of reexamining ballots. The notion of vote recounts usually is conducted in a highly time-sensitive setting and the degree or thoroughness of the recounting is dependent upon state laws and/or election board norms.
A method of transparency
Currently, there are audits, of some degree, in four states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire. Of these, the audits drawing the most attention are in Georgia and Arizona. Both states proved crucial for the Biden-Harris 2020 victory.
In Georgia, former President Trump lost the Peach State by approximately 12,000 votes. In Arizona, the figure was a little over 10,000. Had Wisconsin, another state lost by Trump by a razor-thin 0.63% or around 20,000 votes, been carried by the 45th president, along with Georgia and Arizona, the electoral college count would have been tied, handing over the 2020 presidential election decision to Congress.
The premise of these audits is not to overturn the pronounced and certified 2020 presidential election results. All anomalies and rampant irregularities aside, that is settled business. Both authorized parties that ordered the audits have established that regardless of the findings, the 2020 election would not be overturned. Thus, this should not be a partisan debate. However, judging from the establishment media’s headlines, like Associated Press, one would believe upon that the audits results could send Biden-Harris an eviction notice to leave the White House.
Arizona began its audit of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots and 400 election machines on April 23rd. Ordered so by the Grand Canyon State’s Senate subpoena powers, the upper chambers search seeks to assure Arizona citizens that the election system, if it failed, exercised diligence post-electorally and would most likely levy adjustments to the states election laws and norms.
In Georgia Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero ruled on May 21st that close to 145,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County must be unsealed and subjected to an audit. Oddly, even Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump’s nemesis during the recount in Georgia, agreed that this judicial decision prompted transparency. Immediately following the ruling, he emphasized that “Fulton County has a long-standing history of election mismanagement that has understandably weakened voters’ faith in its system. Allowing this audit provides another layer of transparency and citizen engagement.”
Among the considerations for the Georgia action was a December 2020 study by John Lott, a former Department of Justice senior advisor, titled “A Simple Test for the Extent of Vote Fraud with Absentee Ballots in the 2020 Presidential Election: Georgia and Pennsylvania Data.” In it, Lott’s analysis concluded that about 380,000 “excess votes” (invalid or illegal votes) went Biden’s way in both pivotal swing states.
Election audits are designed to uproot electoral imperfections in the system’s process by weeding through the symptoms in search of the causes. The Democrat’s insistence on institutionalizing, at the federal level, the very lax mail-in voting system that has given rise to the fact that half the country believes that they have an illegitimate president and vice-president, is solid enough reason to applaud the audits. Looking forward, under no circumstances should bills like H. R. 1 and S. 1, have any consideration. Perhaps this explains the left-leaning press’s obsession with attacking anyone who questions what happened in the 2020 election.
Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.