Tucked away in the headlines early this week was the little-reported tidbit of information that has California Gov. Gavin Newsom, likely one of the nation’s most liberal governors, finally agreeing with former President Donald Trump that mail-in ballots need signature confirmation.
Unfortunately for Republicans, this push is only happening when Trump is firmly out and it’s a Democrat who is potentially losing his job; namely, Newsom himself.
According to ABC 23 Bakersfield, “The process of verifying signatures continues in the recall effort for Governor Gavin Newsom.
“Organizers of Recall Gavin 2020 said it has collected more than 1.5 million signatures. Now those in charge of the movement must verify all of them. If all the signatures are legitimate, a recall election would happen sometime this summer.”
To be fair, Newsom’s efforts to make sure that the votes to recall him are legal is a completely legitimate one. It makes complete sense that someone who has dedicated years and who knows how many dollars to get themselves into a position, wouldn’t want to be removed from it unless it were really the will of the people.
In addition to sharing a commitment to a range of issues with @GavinNewsom from addressing the climate crisis to getting the pandemic under control, @POTUS clearly opposes any effort to recall @GavinNewsom
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) February 9, 2021
It stands to reason that someone would want to make sure that if they were going to be removed from one of the most prestigious positions in the world’s most sought after superpower, they would think twice about allowing those who either don’t qualify to vote or are just adding votes for your enemy, to oust you from an office you believe the valid voters want you to be in.
The only question is: why is it good for Democrats and not for Republicans?
Why does it make sense for the liberal powerhouse and California governor to ensure that he’s getting real ballots, but the Republican president who ran one of the most dramatically supported campaigns in history should just accept a loss to a guy who literally can’t always find his way off the stage.
The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t make sense.
Signature verification is the least that an election can do to make sure that their vote count is fair. An even better measure would be to actually make a voter show up and provide ID in person in order to vote for absolutely everything from President of the United States all the way down to dog catcher.
‘Why,’ you ask? Does it really matter anymore? It was 19th-century social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman Fredrick Douglass who said that “A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box, and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.”
His comments were in reference to voting rights, but there are also many that believe the order of his “boxes” was intentional. In other words, if the ballot box fails, we take our issue up with the jury box. That procedure was attempted by the former president, and no one would hear his case.
The last and final box to protect us is the cartridge box, and it is a sad commentary on the state of our country that some Americans are willing to allow that final fail-safe to be taken from us.
It makes sense Newsom’s verification wasn’t bigger in the headlines, since it was completely contradictory to everything liberals said they believed in the Nov. 3 presidential election. It flies in the face of the complete and total faith that Democrats say they have in voters (whether American or not) and the entire system.
It doesn’t make sense why we let them get away with their potentially deadly contradictions.
