Democrats are always protecting democracy from democracy. That means moving control over elections to the highest and most central possible bodies, federal and statewide, which is the opposite of democracy. But sometimes you have to protect democracy by destroying democracy. Where would democracy be if we had allowed hand-counting of ballots in elections? Good thing California’s one-party state is banning that.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation into law on Wednesday that will limit the ability of local governments to manually count ballots less than a year after one northern county’s governing board ditched its contract with Dominion Voting Systems and decided to tabulate results by hand.
Set to go into effect immediately, the law deals a blow to Shasta County’s conservative-majority Board of Supervisors, which voted 3-2 in January to cancel its contract with Dominion… In response, state legislators introduced and overwhelmingly passed AB 969 in September, which allows hand-counting under narrow circumstances: during regularly scheduled elections in places with under 1,000 registered voters and special elections with fewer than 5,000 voters. It will also block counties from canceling contracts for voting systems in the future without a transition plan and a finalized agreement for a new state-approved system.
The thing about totalitarians is that no matter how much power they have, they always want more.
California is a one-party state where elected officials are chosen by ballot harvesters working for community groups funded by the politicians they select. It’s a system that is democratic in the same sense that Vegas slot machines give suckers a break.
In this version of ‘stakeholders democracy’, the one that led Newsom to select an Emily’s List and SEIU activist for the Senate who wasn’t an actual elected official, the only meaningful political competition involves politicians competing for the support of the groups who can deploy the ballot harvesters.
Shasta County poses no meaningful threat to the one-party state whose current senators few state residents could even name, and yet it must still be stamped on.
“It’s not just impractical to hand-count, but it harms the election process. It will cost more and slow down our election results significantly,” Erin Mellon, the governor’s communication director, said. “Unfounded conspiracy theories have undermined our elections. California is focused on ensuring free and fair elections.”
The election process harms the election process. You have to ban hand counting ballots to ensure free and fair elections.
And you ensure them by making sure that they aren’t free or fair.
Eventually, they will announce that the only way to protect elections is to get rid of them. That’s an “unfounded conspiracy theory” of course. And it’s a good thing California’s one party state provides no foundation to conspiracy theories by having a special department that investigates and censors them.
“Report misinformation,” a flier from California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity blares. Social media users are urged to report “misleading” materials to the Secretary of State’s office.
A government office created by California Democrats is monitoring hashtags, classifying political speech it opposes by “threat level”, taking screenshots of posts, and then storing the information indefinitely, before reporting the offending speech to social media companies for censorship.
“Election Security is our number one priority,” the Office claims. But its focus isn’t securing elections by fighting hackers or voter fraud. Instead it’s fighting “the spread of mis- and disinformation”.
“We created the CA Office of Election Cybersecurity to keep your vote safe – so you don’t have to worry! The Office is a non-partisan government arm dedicated to ensuring your vote is safe,” Secretary of State’s office unconvincingly tweeted.
I feel safe. Don’t you?