Democrats 30 Republicans 3--Losing the One-Party State Bowl

The headlines have been clear: the Democrats, despite crime, inflation, and raw intrusions into family life, did well in the mid-terms and are doing well now in special elections held across the land. 

Let’s be clear: Democrats think Republicans should be exterminated politically.

And the Democrats are winning the chance to do so because they have grasped, far better than the Republicans, the steps needed, in the modern electoral world, to obliterate the other side. They are carrying those steps out very very effectively:

1. 30-3. Where the Democrats can, they go after the mail-in, absentee, and electronic ballots while the Republicans are still laying plans for election day. The Ds start gathering votes and voters thirty days in advance of the election. The Rs start three days before the election and focus on voter turnout—on election day—at voting places—pulling levers on machines. Meanwhile, Democrats spend thirty days contacting and recontacting voters to vote—anytime—anyhow—anyways—at any place. Guess which model does the best job of getting voters to vote? And in favor of which party?

2. Voter registration. Voter registration is wonderful. Everybody agrees. Everyone should register. Right? But what happens if you don’t really care about politics and would never register if pressure were not applied. Or what happens when you register because your boss or your professor or your minister/rabbi/mullah/priest gently twists your arm, regardless of whether you have only a vague interest in voting and a vague interest in politics. I work on a college campus and “soft coercion” with voter registration by Democrats on students, students who could care less about politics and are desperately uninformed, is rampant. Students who do not register are treated as terminally dumb lepers. Probably the large majority of students who register do not know the difference between the Senate and the House. Likewise, the residents of nursing homes, homeless shelters, and the non-political are pushed relentlessly to register. The goal, however, is not to increase their knowledge or interest in politics, it is to get their addresses. 

So here’s what happens to the non-political or the apolitical. Voter registration puts a target on them. And it attaches a tracking system. Soon political operatives, almost always Democrats, show up at the door (they now know where you live, right?) and ask if you have mailed in your ballot yet. “Oh, you haven’t yet? I tell you what, why don’t you fill out your ballot now and I will be happy to drop it off at the box (or mail it for you or whatever).” So the non-political or apolitical person, who would not have registered and certainly would not have voted, fills out their ballot with a Democratic activist waiting patiently. Wanna guess how that person is most likely to vote?

3.  But the Democrats have gone beyond “soft coercion” in their attempts to garner registrations. Twenty-two states have “automatic registration.” Automatic registration means that when you interact with a state agency—usually your Department of Motor Vehicles or the equivalent—you are automatically registered—whether you want to be or not. Now all such states, at present, have an “opt-out” option, but some states make it hard to opt-out and most other states require at least several extra steps to “opt-out.” Most people are just going to say, “screw it” and let it go—even if they have no wish to be registered. After all, it is just another thing the government “requires” you to do. And then, two years later, when a Democratic party activist shows up at your door twenty-eight-and-a-half days before the election, while you are watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island, to check if you have voted yet (“and if we can help you, just let us know”) or to harvest your ballot, you do not connect that with the fact that a couple of years earlier you did not opt out of registration but just checked a box to save some time. Again, guess which party benefits from this, particularly when one party expertly uses the thirty or more day period for voting.

4. Of course, there is same-day registration, where you can walk up to a polling place and register and immediately vote. If you are interested in politics, it takes nothing to register. But, if you are not interested in politics, it is more than likely that there is another reason for a sudden, last moment day-of-the-election need to vote. And again, since Republicans tend to follow old-fashioned voting behaviors—like registering before the election, sticking to the idea that ballot boxes are the place where votes go, voting on election day, and such, the Democrats are the ones most likely to benefit.

5. Finally, more and more Democratic states are talking about “pre-registering voters.” What the hell is preregistration, you ask? Simple. The state registers teenagers who are sixteen or seventeen, even though they cannot vote yet. Registering an adolescent before they are legally able to vote is not forbidden by the national constitution or by any state constitution. But “preregistration” puts a target on “preregistered” youths and allows them to be tracked, propagandized, and directly contacted (their home addresses, after all, being now available) until such time as they suddenly become eighteen and can vote.

Then the  “pre-registered” teens become fair game. 

In short, the Rs are keeping their old-fashioned-vote-at-my-precinct-on-election-day-as-God-intended-it voters. The Ds can coerce, pressure, and perhaps modify the ballots of all other voters for at least thirty days. The best predictor of how someone is likely to vote is how they voted last time. The Ds are taking the many opportunities offered by modern voting practices to imprint their brand, early, on young voters and marginal or reluctant voters.

Has the 30-3 actually made a difference?

Consider the following. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania Democratic senate candidate, had a significant stroke long before the general election. His campaign schedule was kept light and tightly controlled. No one knew how much the stroke had affected him. His opponent, Mehmet Oz, a political novice, could not secure a debate with Fetterman until October 25, 2022, fourteen days before “Election Day.” At that point, deep into the voting process, at least 640,000 votes had already been cast (or thirteen percent of all votes that would be cast). Fetterman had approximately a 200,000 vote edge over Oz by October 25th. In the final totals, after voting booth ballots and other votes made in other locations had been tabulated, Fetterman won by a little over 263,500 votes. Given that the 640,000 votes received by October 25th were just the mail-in votes that had arrived by the date of the debate, those already in the mail or otherwise already on their way were not in the October 25th count. It is likely that Fetterman’s real total of votes cast by or on October 25th, was thousands above 200,000. In short, by the time of the debate—and a plentiful exhibition of his limitations—Fetterman, had a considerable, almost insurmountable edge. But, in votes cast after a debate that a number of Democrats saw as disastrous for their candidate, Fetterman's margin of victory barely increased . . . and that includes two more weeks of mail-in balloting that almost always bends heavily to the Democrats. Would Fetterman have been elected without the thirty days of mail-in balloting. I do not know. Would he have been elected if he had had to face Oz on September 25th instead of October 25? I do not know. It is very hard for a Republican to get elected to state-wide office in Pennsylvania. I am, nevertheless sure the vote would have been much much closer.

Donald Trump now has stated that:

“Our path forward is to MASTER the Democrats’ own game of harvesting ballots in every state we can. But that also means we need to start laying the foundation for victory RIGHT NOW.”

Trump has issued the correct call-to-arms. Given the comprehensiveness of the Democrat effort—not yet quite cradle to grave (but almost)—to require people to register, to set up calendars that favor coercion and ballot-harvesting, to begin to shape teens into Democrat sympathizers before they are even old enough to vote, to, in short, take away as many options as possible and close all but the narrowest of lanes to dissenting candidates (I.e., Republicans) the GOP is really looking at marginalization if not extinction. 2024 is too very close at this time. Can the Rs gather their wits about them and stop the Ds from turning the US into a de facto one party state? It is going to be very close.