{"id":1737465,"date":"2022-11-14T07:02:30","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T12:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1737465"},"modified":"2022-11-14T07:02:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T12:02:43","slug":"we-need-to-talk-about-what-didnt-happen-on-election-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/we-need-to-talk-about-what-didnt-happen-on-election-day\/","title":{"rendered":"We Need To Talk About What Didn\u2019t Happen On Election Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwe-need-to-talk-about-what-didnt-happen-on-election-day%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1737465&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A number of noteworthy things did not happen on Election Day 2022. Everyone knows the red wave didn\u2019t happen. But that isn\u2019t all that didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n<p>The chaos at the polls that was going to be caused by the presence of citizen poll watchers did not happen. Despite being hysterically predicted (hoped for?) over the past 18 months by reporters who wrote the same story with some version of the same headline <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/politics\/election-officials-brace-for-confrontational-poll-watchers\/ar-AA12vmVq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">again<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/nowthisnews.com\/news\/poll-workers-are-nervous-about-potential-violence-ahead-of-next-weeks-midterms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">again<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/u-s-warns-of-security-threats-ahead-of-midterm-elections-11664826276?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">again<\/a> \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/politics\/election-officials-brace-for-confrontational-poll-watchers\/ar-AA12vmVq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cElection Officials Brace For Throngs of Poll Watchers, Fearing Disruption and Chaos\u201d<\/a> \u2014 or some variation on that theme. <\/p>\n<p>Every story breathlessly claimed that having citizen observers engaged in the election process was a \u201cthreat to democracy,\u201d with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/2022-election\/election-officials-are-bracing-trouble-still-hoping-best-rcna53777\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">NBC News<\/a> warning in early November, \u201cElection officials are bracing for conspiracy-fueled threats \u2014 while still hoping for the best\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Biden administration did its part to sow seeds of dissension by launching in June 2021 a national hotline at the FBI for reporting \u201cthreats to election officials and workers,\u201d creating a task force to address \u201cthreats against election workers.\u201d But nary a word from Attorney General Merrick Garland about protecting poll watchers, even though <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/18\/245\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">federal law<\/a> makes it a crime to injure, intimidate, or interfere with poll watchers.<\/p>\n<p>Every training conducted by those of us doing such training included instruction about behavior, and that they must be \u201cPeaceful. Lawful. Honest.\u201d Yet, without evidence, the closer we got to Election Day, the more hysterical the headlines became, warning of violence at the polls resulting from too many observers watching the process.<\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t happen. There was no violence, and the citizen observers did what they had been trained to do: watch, observe, document, and report. These citizen volunteers fulfilled an important statutory role of transparency in the election process, a fundamental component of the election codes of virtually every state. Not holding my breath that any reporters and news outlets who attacked these volunteers will ever apologize.<\/p>\n<p>Some other things didn\u2019t happen in the midterms, like transparency in verifying the identity of voters casting absentee ballots. No one outside the election officials themselves can confirm that verification even happened, or how well it was done. Factors such as proof of identity, U.S. citizenship, residence, and eligibility to vote are basically unknown because the process takes place almost entirely in secret. <\/p>\n<p>The election systems and laws built over the last part of the 20th century envisioned an important role of citizen observation of the election process at polling places and in precincts. Virtually every state election code is premised upon the notion that the political parties will each appoint observers and designate election workers who will watch each other and serve as the voters\u2019 eyes and ears. <\/p>\n<p>However, as states have moved to voting by mail, that presumed transparency, oversight, and supervision are eliminated. Most states, including Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina (not to mention the all-mail voting states like Oregon and Washington), conduct voter verification procedures completely behind closed doors,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are many crucial steps in our election process for the electorate to have confidence in the outcome. They didn&#8217;t happen last Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1533,"featured_media":1737468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1737465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1737465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1737468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1737465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1737465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1737465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}