Why US 2022 Midterms Reinvigorated Fraud Suspicions

The November 2022 midterms once again prompted suspicions of election irregularities and apparent fraud among US conservatives following inexplicable glitches in voting equipment, long queues, and delays in ballot tallying.

The left-leaning mainstream media are celebrating what they call the failure of the much anticipated “red wave”: the GOP took the House by a narrow margin, while the Dems managed to maintain their control of the Senate.

However, some Republican voters suggest that instead of stealing the GOP’s thunder, the Dems simply “stole” the votes via illicit schemes. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the 2020 presidential election, which saw eleventh hour changes to voting rules due to COVID-19 and Joe Biden’s subsequent victory in a number of swing states by a slim margin, left many questions unanswered.

Instead of sorting things out two years ago the Biden administration and the Democratic Party dubbed any attempts to question the fairness of the 2020 vote a “Big Lie” and branded suspicious MAGA voters “domestic terrorists” and “semi-fascists.” It’s hardly surprising that such demonization of those who questioned suspicious vote tallies failed to restore trust in election integrity.

Hence, when President Joe Biden and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced on the eve of the midterms that “we may not know all the winners of elections for a few days,” some Republicans apparently thought: “And here we go again.” Confusion grew further when reports started to emerge about glitches in election equipment, long queues, lack of paper, messy conduct of election authorities, and days-long ballot counting in a number of states, to cap it off.

Maricopa Midterms

Maricopa County has again come into the spotlight over alleged election irregularities: at least 72 out of 223 voting locations experienced technical problems related to ballot-on-demand (BOD) printers on Election Day, when mostly GOP voters cast their ballots (most Democrats are believed to have taken part in early voting).

Earlier this week, the Arizona attorney general’s office kicked off an inquiry into Maricopa County’s handling of the elections, demanding explanations with regard to well-publicized irregularities and adding that there is evidence of “statutory violations.”

“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright wrote on November 19 to the county’s chief civil division attorney, Thomas Liddy. “Furthermore, statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of title 16.”

The Arizona AG’s office demanded that the data be turned over before the county sends its final canvas certification of the vote on November 28. The ongoing controversy is aggravated by the fact that both the state’s attorney general and gubernatorial races were razor-thin. Thus, Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh was outpaced by his Democratic rival Kris Mayes by just 510 votes out of more than 2.5 million ballots. Likewise, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs leads her GOP competitor Kari Lake by some 17,000 votes.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a US economist and ex-assistant secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan, expresses skepticism about the fairness of the Arizona vote and the state’s attorney general’s ability to sort things out.

“In Maricopa County the Democrat candidate for Governor [Katie Hobbs] is also the Election Commissioner,” said Roberts. “She is perfectly placed to control election procedures and vote counting. The machines failed by design in Republican precincts. This prevented Republicans from voting. Those who waited for hours were given paper ballots and told their votes would be counted later. Later, the Democrats announced that somehow the uncounted ballots got mixed with the counted ones and can’t be differentiated. Vote counting also stopped for most of three days running while fraudulent ballots were created for Democrats. I don’t think the Arizona attorney general can do anything. If he tried, the presstitutes would say he was trying to steal the election for the Republicans.”

Remarkably, it turned out on Friday that Maricopa County officials moved their planned 9:30 am MST certification meeting to 8:00 am on November 28, i.e. an hour before they were subpoenaed by the attorney general office to provide data and clarifications about the election irregularities. The maneuver was reported by Kelly Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party. “What are these guys hiding?” she tweeted on November 25.

Maricopa 2020 Elections & Independent Audit

Meanwhile, the mainstream press has already ridiculed the Arizona GOP as election deniers, shrugging off reports of the mess on Election Day as not being a big deal.

Still, those who followed the controversy surrounding the 2020 vote in Maricopa and the election audit saga in the county take the mainstream press’ narrative with a grain of salt. Back in November 2020, Joe Biden won the county by more than 45,000 votes, and outperformed Trump statewide by a margin of 10,457 votes, or 0.3 percent of the roughly 3.4 million ballots cast. The Arizona GOP audit of the Maricopa 2020 election results exposed a string of anomalies, omissions, inconsistencies, and election irregularities.

Even more remarkable were attempts by the Maricopa Supervisors Board and Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to disrupt the examination of ballots, withhold subpoenaed materials, and smear third party independent auditors. At the time, US mainstream media added fuel to the fire, calling the Arizona audit “disgraceful,” “outrageously partisan,” “alarming,” “bizarre,” and spreading the “Big Lie.” On top of that, the US Department of Justice threatened Arizona Senate President Karen Fann that the use of an outside contractor to audit the ballots may be in violation of federal law and amount to illegal voter intimidation.

Arizona wasn’t the only state where audits were attempted in response to complaints about the alleged election irregularities during the 2020 vote. Problems involving duplicate votes, unmatched ballot totals, apparent non-citizen votes, and “phantom” ballots were reported in a number of swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Dr. Roberts, who does not rule out a broad effort by Democrats to manipulate elections, suggested that the Dems are deliberately targeting swing states: “There is no need for Democrats to steal elections in blue states which they win without theft,” he said. “They focus on the swing states in which they usually control the largest cities. It is in the swing states that measures are used to minimize Republican voting and to maximize Democrat voting.”

He has also drawn attention to the unusually protracted vote counting: “Over the course of my life, until 2020, the result of elections was known by midnight and, if not, by the next morning,” the former Reagan official stressed.

Dems Trying to Water Down Election Rules

Meanwhile, Republican observers have long chastised the Democratic Party’s years-long efforts to loosen ID requirements and other election barriers, as well as to legitimize ballot harvesting, email voting, automatic registration, and many other practices which, according to the GOP, could open the doors to election fraud.

In January 2022, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, DC, published its Election Integrity Scorecard of 50 states and the District of Columbia on their election laws. According to the chart, mostly blue states have the lowest scores in terms of election integrity.

The Republicans have also been accusing Dems of intentionally neglecting the border crisis and promising to legalize illegals to change the demographic composition of red states and beef up the Democratic electoral base. Back in 2013, the US mainstream press admitted that immigration reform could become an electoral bonanza for the Dems, given that Hispanic migrants-turned-citizens tend to vote for left-leaning politicians.

Still, the Republicans are not doing enough to boost election integrity and restore trust in democratic institutions in the country, according to Dr. Roberts.

“The problem goes beyond the Democrats and presstitutes,” the former Reagan official said. “The Republican Party is an Establishment party. It does not represent Republican voters. The Republican Party has no principles. Its agenda is to be part of the Establishment and continue to make deals. This is why the Republican Party did not support Trump, and it is why the Republican Party does not support candidates allied with Trump. What Trump needs to do is to pull his followers, who constitute a large majority of Republican voters, into a new party, and let the Republican Party die.”

“Listen carefully to the interview Tucker Carlson has with Steven King, and you will understand why there is no future for Trump supporters in the Republican Party. Understand also, that Trump is hated equally by both parties, because he is leading a revolt against the Establishment. By parties, I am referring to the leadership who control the purse strings of campaign funds,” Dr. Roberts concluded.

https://sputniknews.com/20221126/why-us-2022-midterms-reinvigorated-fraud-suspicions-1104714424.html