Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Will the Sitting Vice President Please Stand Up?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Vice President Mike Pence has often pledged loyalty to the Constitution, and on January 6 he should stand up for it and the unborn. Under the Twelfth Amendment Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, is responsible for deciding the integrity and validity of the Electoral College votes for president.

“The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted,” commands the Twelfth Amendment. Under this provision of the Constitution, the congressmen and senators are to be assembled as mere witnesses, with no power to intervene or participate in the process of counting the votes.

Pence should notice that in roughly a half-dozen states there are rival certificates which cancel themselves out, and Pence should decline to certify those states’ votes similar to how multiple state Electoral votes were disqualified in the 1860s and 1870s. Pence’s role should not be limited by the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which law Professor Edward B. Foley wrote in 2010 “is inadequate, unwieldy, and arguably unconstitutional.”

On Sunday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) filed a federal lawsuit to confirm the unconstitutionality of the Electoral Count Act, which cannot alter the Twelfth Amendment. This Act, which has never been upheld in court, attempts to dilute the authority of the Senate President by restricting debate and authorizing votes on certification by Congress.

Hanging in the balance today are millions of the unborn, as Biden stated that he would appoint the pro-abortion Xavier Becerra as his Secretary of Health & Human Services (HHS). Biden himself is unfit to serve a full four years, so Becerra's radical fellow Californian Kamala Harris could become president without being elected to that office.

Pence has ample basis for declining to accept and open Electoral votes from contested states. The signatures on millions of mailed-in ballots were never verified and were improperly counted for Biden, including 2.6 million such ballots in Pennsylvania alone.

No bank would refuse to verify signatures on contested checks. The selection of the next president is just as important, and the potential fraud on millions of ballots renders the reported results unworthy of certification.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows traveled last week to Georgia to observe a review of a sample of signatures there. But he was denied access merely to observe, as many poll watchers were improperly blocked on Election Day and afterwards.

Democrats remain confident that they have pulled off a heist which continues for the upcoming special election in Georgia on January 5. Yesterday an Obama-appointed federal judge blocked a cleaning of the election rolls of improper voters prior to that election of new senators.

Georgia officials have sent warning letters to thousands of people who have improperly obtained mail-in ballots despite not residing in Georgia. The letters are destined for the trash can, as Republicans almost never really prosecute anyone for election fraud, particularly out-of-staters.

In Wisconsin, tens of thousands of votes should be disqualified due to fraudulent representations of confinement. A quarter-million people in Wisconsin were registered under a claim of indefinite confinement, not all of which were valid.

Lame duck Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) was reelected in 2016 on the coattails of Donald Trump, who garnered more votes than Toomey there. Toomey announced at age only 58 that he will leave the Senate for undisclosed, probably lucrative opportunities rather than fight to hold his GOP seat, while continuing to be ungrateful to Trump.

Like a bank president who looks the other way while his bank processes unverified signatures on checks, some Republican senators deny awareness of election fraud. But under the Twelfth Amendment, such weak-kneed senators do not certify the votes.

Senate President Pence alone has the constitutional authority to recognize Electoral College votes. Pence should decline to recognize the Biden votes from the states tainted by fraud and having rival slates.

Pence could seek a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of his authority on January 6. Better yet, Pence should act in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment by declining to accept tainted certificates, and then enjoy watching Democrats scamper to the Supreme Court to seek intervention.

Pence could also do what Democrats insisted was necessary before voting in the impeachment trial earlier this year: call witnesses and hear evidence. If essential before voting on a removal of a president, then likewise before certifying a fraudulent presidential election.

No one would be disenfranchised by Senate President Pence if he declines to recognize tainted certificates from states lacking election integrity. This election would then go into the House of Representatives, where each state would have one vote on behalf of its residents in choosing the next president.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Counting Every Fraudulent Vote

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The mantra “count every vote” has been twisted to “count every fraudulent vote,” and that is how the presidential election is being stolen from President Trump. Politicians pompously lecture the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump about how important it is to count every vote, but what the politicians are actually doing is allowing every fraudulent vote.

Whenever a single fraudulent vote is allowed, it negates a law-abiding vote. Counting every legitimate vote requires carefully excluding every potentially improper vote.

Voting by mail necessitates an authentic signature to reduce the possibility that the ballot was cast in an improper way. Yet multiple swing states have not allowed independent verification of the signatures on the millions of mail-in ballots cast in those states.

In Georgia, after weeks of complaints by those who voted properly in the November election, the Secretary of State has finally agreed to permit a random sample of signatures to be reviewed by a liberal university, while proclaiming that such a review could not possibly change the result. A real audit would not be limited like that.

An absurdly low number of only about 2,000 absentee ballots out of more than 1.3 million were rejected in Georgia last month for signature deficiencies, which is barely one-tenth of 1%. Amid rampant ballot harvesting, a more realistic number of invalid signatures would have been far greater.

The reported margin of difference between Biden and Trump in Georgia was less than 12,000 votes, which is less than 1% of the mail-in ballots counted and included without proper signature verification. A full signature audit, which there is still time to do, would likely discover that more than 1% of the mail-in ballots lack verified signatures, thereby potentially changing the result.

Ballot harvesting is the bundling of ballots in the names of many voters, and sending them in. But ballot harvesters can have difficulties duplicating the signature of every voter, and Georgia admits that invalid signatures occur yet failed to exclude as many ballots as it should have. Election officials in many states were intimidated by the “count every vote” slogan. Instead they should be trained that counting a single fraudulent vote has the effect of disenfranchising a lawful voter, thereby tainting the election.

Since it is a matter of public record who votes, the signatures on all those ballots should be scanned and posted on the internet alongside the signatures on file for public scrutiny, just as monitors at in-person polling booths are allowed to double-check signatures. Within days of such a posting the fraud would be easily spotted by the public, along with how often it occurred.

That is, of course, exactly what Biden supporters do not want to happen. They want to brush all this under the rug, and move on to steal future elections starting with the next one in Georgia, on January 5th.

One excuse liberals give for blocking a full, independent signature audit of the mail-in ballots is that it is no longer possible to match a specific signature with a specific ballot and thereby disqualify the ballot. But statisticians can easily solve that problem by comparing the percentages of mail-in votes that went for each candidate.

A full signature audit in Georgia, for example, could easily result in the disqualification of more than 30,000 ballots. The remedy would be to consider the margin by which Biden won among mail-in ballots from the same regions, and disqualify the votes for Biden based on that percentage.

Alternatively, the election result for the entire state could be tossed out. Electoral College votes need not be accepted by Congress from every state, and Congress should count the votes only from those states that have election integrity.

Members of the new 117th Congress should put the contested states on notice now that if they refuse to allow a full signature audit of their mail-in ballots, then their Electoral College votes will not be counted on January 6th. That is the day when the House and Senate will determine the validity of votes cast by the Electoral College on December 14.

While the Supreme Court recently held that a state lacks legal standing to challenge a defective voting procedure used by another state, Congress has the responsibility not to accept Electoral College votes from a state which included fraudulent votes. Senators need to object to allowing states to include fraudulent votes with invalid signatures on mail-in ballots.

When students cheat on an exam, as occurred this year at West Point, the remedy includes disqualifying the entire exam, not merely a portion of it where the cheating can be proven. The counting of improperly signed mail-in ballots occurred in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other key states, and on January 6th Congress should disqualify all of their Electoral College votes.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Vaccination Is Not the Answer to Covid

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The first Covid vaccine is rolling across the nation, but many Americans are not buying the hype. Despite months of nonstop publicity in the media, only about half of those polled say they will get the shot when it becomes available.

Fifty percent is not nearly enough, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has already accepted an appointment as Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. Fauci didn’t say if he and Joe Biden intend to vaccinate millions of other Americans against their will.

According to Dr. Fauci, 75 to 80 percent of Americans must be vaccinated over the next nine months, in order to have any chance of getting back to normal by Christmas of next year. If vaccinations fall short of that goal, Fauci says a return to normal life would likely be postponed years into the future, if ever.

And don’t think that if you agree to get the shot right away, you will have permission to throw away your mask, head back to the gym, dine in restaurants, hang out in bars, or visit family over the holidays. These familiar activities will not be allowed until we reach so-called herd immunity, after virtually everyone has been vaccinated, and then only if it is effective.

The biggest cheerleader for mass vaccination, billionaire Bill Gates, candidly admits that basic American freedoms will not return anytime soon. “Bars and restaurants in most of the country will be closed as we go into this wave, and I think sadly that’s appropriate,” he said, adding that “big public gatherings will still be restricted” throughout 2021.

Warming to his favorite subject, Gates pontificated that “certainly mask-wearing has essentially no downsides.” Maybe there are no “downsides” for someone who sits all day at a computer, wrestling with the buggy software that Gates made billions of dollars monopolizing, but masks have plenty of “downsides” for millions of ordinary Americans.

Vaccination will not end the mask-wearing, and promoters of masking insist it protects against catching the virus. England already has Covid vaccination and yet its deputy medical officer predicts that the British may still need to wear masks for years into the future, which should reinforce doubts about the value of vaccination.

Assertions that the coronavirus vaccines are 90% or 95% effective are misleading. The term effectiveness is used by some to mean merely reducing the severity of the illness, rather than providing complete immunity.

Questions have been raised about the sufficiency of the testing data, and whether serious adverse effects such as Bell’s palsy were misleadingly portrayed as being non-serious. Millions of Americans have allergies, and severe allergic reactions occurred among early recipients of the Pfizer vaccine in England.

The Pfizer vaccine is the first to use mRNA technology, which prompts a recipient’s own biological cells to generate a protein in order to spark an immune response. Long-term effects of this new technology remain untested and unknown, as are its possible effects on reproduction.

Meanwhile, the tyranny of lockdown continues unabated, as reflected by the $15,497.76 per day fines being imposed on the Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey. Not one case of Covid has been linked to the fit patrons of that gym, whose co-owner Ian Smith marched with other Trump supporters in Washington, D.C. last Saturday.

Those of us who failed to defend the gym are next on the chopping block, as mandatory vaccination looms on the horizon. A bill in New York’s Democrat-controlled legislature would force the public to receive the Covid vaccine, and vaccination may be required of millions as a condition of keeping their jobs.

Meanwhile, reports in peer-reviewed medical journals of safer, less-expensive approaches to Covid continue without sufficient publicity. Last month a mostly unnoticed article in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology described how vitamin D deficiency is correlated with a nearly four times greater risk of death from Covid.

There are numerous reported benefits of vitamin D, which President Trump himself took to quickly overcome Covid in October. Yet little is said by public health authorities or the media about how taking vitamin D may sharply reduce the risk of severe illness from Covid.

Operation Warp Speed was not just for a vaccine; it was intended “to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.” Yet hardly any effort is being made to develop and distribute treatment by therapeutic medications, in order to keep Covid victims out of hospitals and off ventilators.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) courageously held a hearing last week on early treatment options, with compelling testimony by physicians who have actually treated Covid patients successfully, and kept them out of the hospital. Early treatment does not fit the liberal game-plan to deprive us of our liberty by making mask-wearing and lockdowns the “new normal.”

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Deadlines Must Yield to Investigate the Fraud

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Liberals should not be allowed to run out the clock to prevent a thorough investigation of the election fraud. When the weak Attorney General Bill Barr said he has not seen enough evidence of election fraud, the translation is that he has not yet thoroughly investigated it.

Robert Mueller spent more than $30 million and nearly two years investigating frivolous accusations about the 2016 election, so it is silly to expect sophisticated fraud in this election to be proven in 35 days. Yet partisan deniers of wrongdoing try to misuse deadlines found nowhere in the Constitution to certify an unconstitutional election.

There is only one deadline in the Constitution for filling the office of president: January 20, every four years. Plenty of time remains to consider the mounting evidence of how this election was stolen, and for key state legislatures to choose an untainted set of Electoral College members.

The Constitution does not require a vote of the Electoral College on December 14. Between 1888 and 1932 – a span of 12 presidential elections – the members of the Electoral College cast their votes on the second Monday in January.

Ratification of the 20th Amendment advanced the Inauguration from March 4 until January 20, but until then it is appropriate to ferret out election fraud to make sure the right person is sworn into office. Indeed, Biden and Democrats should welcome the investigations as enthusiastically as they pushed the Mueller one.

The timetable set by federal statutes has already been violated by Democrats. Federal law dictates that “The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year.”

If that law had been complied with, Trump clearly won the election because more than enough votes were cast on November 3 to give Trump a solid majority of the Electoral College. Trump’s opponents want to ignore that federal statute in order to include hundreds of thousands of improper mailed-in ballots.

In Michigan, less than one-half of one percent of the 3.3 million absentee or mail-in ballots received were rejected, which is an implausibly high rate of success for millions of people performing a tricky and unfamiliar task. A study by ABC News of the 2016 and 2018 elections showed that an average of 1.2% of those ballots were disallowed.

Mail-in ballots have been counted in implausibly high percentages of even 100% for Biden. By reducing the rejection rate to nearly zero, Biden received an unfair boost in the close states, tipping the result in Georgia.

Yet Georgia still refuses to do a signature audit of the mail-in ballots, even after its weak Republican Governor Brian Kemp said that such an audit should be done. Kemp claims he lacks the authority to order this basic review of election integrity.

“Your people are refusing to do what you ask. What are they hiding?” Trump tweeted in response. He held a massive rally in Georgia on Saturday at which he observed, “We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do.”

Governor Kemp admits that he has the authority to call a special session of the legislature, which could immediately select an untainted slate of electors. Yet he refuses to do that, too, and legislators fail to convene on their own as they could under the U.S. Constitution.

The effect is to rob Americans of an honest presidential election. This week Texas courageously sued Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin for essentially stealing this presidential election.

Unlike the other pending lawsuits, Texas sued directly in the Supreme Court as authorized by the Constitution when one state sues another. This prevents the High Court from ducking the issues.

“A dark cloud hangs over the 2020 Presidential election,” Texas points out in its filing. This dark cloud results from Democrats’ own actions, as they improperly changed election rules in swing states without approval of the state legislatures, as required.

Pollster Patrick Basham confirms what most Republican voters know: it is statistically unlikely that Trump would have lost a fair vote count. “Donald Trump did very well, even better than four years earlier, with the white working class,” Basham points out.

“He held his own with women and suburban voters against all or most of the polling expectations, did very well with Catholics, improved his vote among Jewish voters.” Basham added that Trump “had the best minority performance for a Republican since Richard Nixon in 1960, doing so well with African-Americans, and importantly with Hispanics.”

The Supreme Court itself has held, in Burson v. Freeman (1992), that election fraud is “successful precisely because” it is “difficult to detect.” Americans are entitled to an honest election result and any delay that may be necessary to fully uncover the fraud.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Rampant Election Fraud Continues

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“Voting in Georgia when you are not a resident of Georgia is a felony,” blustered the ineffective Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday, as he denounced well-publicized efforts to enlist temporary residents to vote in the January 5 election for two seats in the U.S. Senate. “Third-party groups have a responsibility to not encourage illegal voting.”

But he and other Republican state officials have the responsibility not to use a voting system that allows fraud in the first place. Occasionally urging people to behave, and not to exploit a system rife with vulnerabilities, does not prevent fraud when the political stakes are so high.

Of the 4.9 million ballots counted in Georgia in the recent presidential election, some 3.9 million were cast by the Friday before election day, and many of those ballots were mailed in without verifiable proof of their legality. Yet Joe Biden insists he won the Peach State by just 12,670 votes, or only three-tenths of 1% of ballots cast.

President Trump properly said he is “ashamed” of ever having endorsed Georgia’s do-nothing governor, Brian Kemp, who continues to fail to protect election integrity there while control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance with the upcoming runoff election.

As of last Friday, a whopping 900,000 Georgians had reportedly requested mail-in ballots, many of which will probably be filled in or returned by Democrat operatives paid to boost the numbers for Democrat candidates, as they did for Biden. Unlike in-person voting, there is no meaningful way to protect against fraud in filling out and returning mail-in ballots.

Raffensperger announced that the New Georgia Project had “sent voter registration applications to New York City,” which is a potential violation of Georgia law. He declared that NGP, recently headed by Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock and before that by Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, is under investigation as are three other groups.

Such investigations should have been done long before now, of course. And since election fraud by Democrats is rarely prosecuted, no one is holding his breath that any real prosecutions will ever happen.

Way back in 2014, the office of the Georgia Secretary of State, which was then headed by now-Governor Kemp, had investigated the same group, yet delayed three years before referring that case to law enforcement. Charges were never brought, which is typical when the accused are liberals.

Other Georgia groups now being investigated include one which allegedly mailed “absentee ballot applications to people at addresses where they have not lived since 1994,” another which purportedly registered a dead Alabaman to cast a ballot in Georgia, and a third which urged college students to change residency to vote.

Elections should not rely on begging people not to cheat. Kemp, Raffensperger, and the GOP-controlled Georgia legislature should be installing safeguards to ensure that fraudulent ballots are caught and rejected before they are counted.

Georgia law requires voter ID for casting a ballot in person, and yet permits mailing in ballots by anyone and everyone. There is no justification for permitting massive stuffing of the ballot box by unverified voters.

In Pennsylvania, Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough suspended mailed-in ballots as a violation of that state’s constitution, in a case brought by newly reelected U.S. Representative Mike Kelly of Erie. Judge McCullough properly questioned the 2.6 million mailed-in ballots which erased the landslide victory earned by President Trump on Election Day, when he won among in-person voters by nearly 700,000 votes.

The Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which had already allowed mail-in ballots to trickle in for days after Election Day in violation of state law, quickly reversed the good ruling by the lower court. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not express any doubt that the mail-in voting violated its constitution, but permitted it anyway by saying plaintiffs should have sued earlier.

The Pennsylvania Senate held a hearing last week about election fraud but then failed to take action as authorized by Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution to pick electors for the Electoral College. Republicans improved their majority in the Pennsylvania legislature this election, but Democrats insist Biden won the state based on an implausible imbalance in mailed-in ballots.

Neither mailed-in ballots nor electronic voting machines can be properly audited to ensure the same level of integrity associated with traditional in-person voting. To restore confidence in the process, states should return to traditional paper ballots, marked in person by each voter on Election Day.

While the Leftist ground game steals elections, Republican campaigns continue to be dominated by ineffective, highly paid consultants who enrich themselves with commissions for placing television ads. The result could make the January 5th Senate runoff election in Georgia a pathetic television rerun of the recently stolen presidential election.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.