{"id":1738944,"date":"2022-11-15T06:05:08","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T11:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1738944"},"modified":"2022-11-15T07:02:58","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T12:02:58","slug":"what-didnt-happen-on-election-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-didnt-happen-on-election-day\/","title":{"rendered":"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\">12<\/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%2Fwhat-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=1738944&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--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Screen-Shot-2022-11-13-at-9.35.40-PM.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cpi.org\/2022\/10\/%ef%bf%bcpeaceful-lawful-honest-how-citizen-volunteer-poll-observers-and-election-integrity-advocates-will-triumph-over-leftist-media-attacks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cPeaceful. Lawful. Honest.\u201d<\/a> 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, with zero transparency available to observers.<\/p>\n<p>Even in Florida, where the law mandates \u201creasonable access\u201d to all voting procedures, including the matching of signatures to voter records, the county supervisors of elections allowed very limited access for observers to watch the signature verification. Thirty to 90 minutes per day to observe eight to 10 hours of signature matching is <em>not <\/em>transparency.<\/p>\n<p>What else didn\u2019t happen? Election officials didn\u2019t always follow state law. Having thousands of volunteers watching and reporting in polling places across the country gave observers a bird\u2019s eye view of the process \u2014 and what they saw wasn\u2019t pretty. Observers were trained in their state\u2019s election laws and how the election was supposed to be conducted. <\/p>\n<p>What observers saw and reported were repeated instances of election officials and administrators disregarding state laws on everything from where observers were allowed to stand or sit, to what observers were allowed to see, to the checking-in and validation of voters\u2019 identity at the polls. Other rules that went ignored included: validating the machine tapes at the beginning and end of every day to make sure that the numbers on the machines matched the number of voters recorded as having voted, allowing \u201cassistance\u201d to disabled or vulnerable voters that were tantamount to allowing individuals to bring in batches of voters or ballots, blatantly commandeering their registrations and the casting of their ballots, with no effort by poll managers or officials to stop them, or to ensure that the voters themselves were allowed to choose their own party registration and candidates.<\/p>\n<p>What didn\u2019t happen in Maricopa County, Arizona was the replacement of county election officials Bill Gates and Steven Richer, both of whom tried to sabotage the Arizona Senate audit of their management of Maricopa County\u2019s 2020 general election. They did nothing to ensure that the 2022 general election was conducted properly and competently. The chaos that was supposed to be caused by poll watchers was caused instead by election officials like Gates and Richer.<\/p>\n<p>What didn\u2019t happen is <em>anything <\/em>in state after state to clean the voter rolls, to remove the dead, the moved, the ineligible, the duplicates, and other entries that don\u2019t appear to be connected to an actual person eligible to vote.<\/p>\n<p>What didn\u2019t happen was the recognition by election officials that their job is to conduct the elections in accordance with the law \u2014 and to treat all voters and groups of voters equally. Their job is not to use tax dollars to run voter registration and Get Out The Vote drives in only certain areas of the community, but not in others: Think roving vans on college campuses to register and deliver votes of liberal college students, but never taking similar steps to ensure rural voters or students at technical schools are given the same access.<\/p>\n<p>There was no violence at the polls, thankfully. But so many other things also didn\u2019t happen, which must happen for the electorate \u2014 all of it \u2013 to have confidence in election outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>It is time to fix the problems in our election system that thousands and thousands of citizen volunteers have now witnessed and documented.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Cleta Mitchell is the senior legal fellow for election integrity at the Conservative Partnership Institute in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<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. The chaos at the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1737470,"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":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1738944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"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\/1738944","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1737470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}