ELECTION REFORM,
AN ALTERNATIVE TO HR-1
Memorandum for: We The People.
Subject: A Line in the Sand
By: Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired
March 4, 2021
BACKGROUND: H.R. 1, FOR THE PEOPLE ACT OF 2021 recently passed by the House of Representatives is a complete disaster waiting to happen. It certainly is not an act that is “for the People”; it is a bill specially designed to prescribe, from the federal level, implementation of the worst of the states’ 2020 election rules, procedures, and results.
INTENT: My intent is to present an alternative to the entire concept laid out in this 800-page monstrosity. Why an alternative?
Many agree that passage of HR1 strikes such a serious blow to one of our most sacred rights, free and honest elections, that it threatens the very existence of our Constitutional Republic. Democrats will say that is a gross overstatement by a bunch of Trump supporters. My response to them would be, are you willing to take that chance? Once the foundation of the Republic is breached, it is unlikely we can revive it to its original form and intent.
SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE PROVISIONS OF HR1:
· Automatic voter registration, same-day registration, and online voter registration; whereby election officials would have insufficient time to verify the accuracy of either voter information or eligibility.
· State Voter Registration Rolls: HR1 would require states to automatically register all individuals (as opposed to “citizens”) from an array of state and federal databases.
· It would ban witness signature or notarization requirements for absentee ballots.
· Restricts states from banning mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting.
· Prevents election officials from checking the eligibility and qualifications of voters and removing ineligible voters.
· Ban state voter ID laws by forcing states to allow individuals to vote without an ID.
· Requires states to restore the eligibility of felons to vote.
· Limits access to federal courts for anyone challenging HR1.
· There is more in those 800 pages in HR1 but that gives you a sense of the greatly enhanced opportunities for voter fraud. It is not election reform.
STATES’ RIGHTS: It is important to remember that States’ Rights are a foundational element of our Republic. HR1 places every meaningful element of the election process in the hands of the federal government. While States’ Rights are important, we also have to consider that many of the states got a “D” or an “F” in November 2020 preceding the election. We need to find some meaningful middle ground between Federal and State oversight of the election process.
THE ALTERNATIVE: Here is the beginning of a solution:
Large organizations (for purposes of this discussion, look at national election players as a “large organization”) have a greater chance for success if they do two things:
One is to have in-place an over-arching operational precept of Maximum Centralized Planning, Maximum Decentralized Execution.
Secondly, operate from an established set of standards; an organization without standards is a failed organization.
From the “maximum centralized planning” aspect, Congress should pass into law the following standards that must be adhered to by every state.
ELECTION STANDARDS:
· Information from a Voter ID Card will be the sole source of data for Stare Voter Registration rolls.
· The primary method of voting in all national elections is in-person voting. The only alternative is individually requested absentee ballots.
· Eligibility to vote is granted to every U.S. citizen eighteen years of age or older.
· No one can vote unless they are in possession of a State-issued Voter ID Card.
· The ballot for those persons running for president and vice president of the United States will be printed as a stand-alone ballot.
· Each presidential/vice-presidential ballot will be both hand-counted and “read” by a voting machine.
· States will scrupulously provide for multiple-person teams charged with the responsibility of establishing a clear and rapid (minutes, not hours) chain-of-custody for every presidential ballot. An example set of procedural rules are provided herein.
· National elections will be held beginning on the first Saturday in November with hours of operation as follows: Saturday, 7 a.m. through 7 p.m. Sunday, 12-noon through 7 p.m. Monday, a national election-day holiday with minimum-essential personal working across the country, 7 a.m. through 7 p.m.
· Election results will be released Tuesday after the Monday Election Holiday 12 hours after the polls close, beginning with 7 a.m. eastern standard time.
· For those unable to travel to a DMV, states will provide for submission of a notarized application along with a photo and required documentation to a DMV to receive a Voter ID Card.
COMMENT ON VOTING DAYS: In accordance with the Constitution, Congress shall prescribe the day(s) for national elections. Since 1846 that date has been the first Tuesday in November. Our citizens are notoriously apathetic when it comes to voting with the turnout normally around 60% of eligible voters going to the polls. In the 2020 election, a record number of Americans voted but still, an estimated 80 million did not. Having the election take place on a single mid-week, working-day is just plain stupid. Long voting lines and the inability to get off work limits the number of voters.
DEFINING THE PROBLEMS: If I was tasked to write the rules and regulations at either the federal or state level to solve the following six fraud issues, it would probably be hundreds of pages long and ultimately relatively ineffective. But, a Voter ID Card in use by every eligible voter will PREVENT ALL OF THESE POTENTIAL FRAUDULENT PRACTICES.
ONE, VOTER REGISTRATION ROLLS: Across America, the states’ voter registration rolls are terribly maintained, highly inaccurate, and provide multiple opportunities for fraudulent activities. For example, Judicial Watch won a federal lawsuit requiring Los Angeles county to remove an estimated 1.5 million ineligible voters from its rolls. The Voter ID Card system will solve those problems and be self-policing.
Every state will retool its Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to also produce Voter ID Cards. They will produce three products; a driver’s license for the new driver who is too young to vote, a stand-alone Voter ID Card for any eligible voter who cannot drive, and a combination driver's license/voter ID.
Think of the Voter ID Card as a picture ID (like your driver’s license) with a “swipe” capability (like your credit card) that will display on a screen all of the voter’s personal data, as well as the dates the Voter ID Card, has been “used” during the current election cycle. The intent of the Voter ID Card Law is to positively identify a voter at a voting site with a current photo, a valid state Voter ID number, current address, and a history of voter activity. Everyone who desires to vote must have a Voter ID Card in order to perform in-person voting or to apply for an absentee ballot.
Every DMV-issued card will have a 5-year expiration date.
All cards issued by state DMV will contain a photo, full name, date of birth, address, sex, eye color, height, hair color, 5-year expiration date, and, most importantly, an individual driver’s license number and a Voter ID number. Voter ID numbers will be a 10-digit number beginning with the two-letter state abbreviation such as TX-456-789-3322.
In order to obtain a Voter ID Card, you must be 18 years of age and present, as a minimum, a birth certificate or naturalization papers, a valid Social Security Card, and two documents with a current physical address proving state’s residency.
The State DMV will immediately provide the State Election Headquarters with all Voter ID Card data. This will become the sole source for State Voter Registration Rolls. Upon the expiration date, that person’s name and data will automatically fall off the Registration Rolls and return to the rolls when the card is renewed. This routine will ensure the State Registration Rolls remain current at all times, are correct, and are self-policing. Under this Voter ID Card system, there will no longer be dead people voting.
TWO, BALLOT STUFFING: Casting illegal votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter. That cannot be done with this system because every ballot must have a Voter ID number on it and that number can only be used once during an election cycle.
THREE, VOTER IMPERSONATION: A person claims to be someone else when casting a vote. Every voter must produce a picture-Voter ID Card before they can get a ballot.
FOUR, VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD: Filling out and submitting a voter registration card for a fictional person, or filling out a voter registration card with the name of a real person but without that person's consent and forging his or her signature on the card. Voter ID Cards prevent this from ever happening.
FIVE, FRAUD BY ELECTION OFFICIALS: Manipulation of ballots by officials administering the election, such as tossing out ballots or casting ballots in voters' names. Every ballot will contain an individual’s Voter ID Card number that can only be used one time during a voting cycle.
SIX, ABSENTEE BALLOT VOTE FRAUD: A person attempts to fill out and turn in an absentee ballot containing false information. The Voter ID Card will not allow this because an absentee ballot application must contain a valid Voter ID Card number. The only way absentee ballot fraud can exist is if a registered voter has their Voter ID Card stolen; an insignificant number.
ACHIEVING FEDERALLY MANDATED CHAIN-OF-CUSTODY STANDARDS: From the above list of election standards, “States will scrupulously provide for multiple-person teams charged with the responsibility of establishing a clear and rapid (minutes, not hours) chain-of-custody for every presidential ballot.”
Personnel working the in-person voting sites will be organized as follows. All of the work will be accomplished by teams. Each team will consist of a person affiliated with each of the major political parties plus an observer.
The executive team will oversee all operations from opening through 7 p.m. each voting day and ensure that every procedure prescribed in the federal law is being adhered to.
The counting teams will manually count all in-person and absentee presidential/vice presidential ballots.
The accounting team will verify the count of each box of counted ballots, secure the ballot storage room and maintain the total presidential vote count.
The sequence of voting events:
· When a voter presents their Voter ID Card at the voting site, the voter administrative assistant will swipe the Voter ID Card and ascertain if that particular Voter ID Card number has already been used during the current election period. If not, the assistant will print out an individual ballot that has the voter’s full name, address, and Voter ID Card number printed on the ballot. In the presence of the voting assistant, the voter will sign the ballot acknowledging that the data is correct. That signature must match the one on the ID Card.
· Each voter will receive a ballot consisting of two pieces of paper. Page one contains only the names of the president/vice-presidential candidates and, if appropriate, a national referendum issue. The second paper is for all state and local candidates.
· The voter completes filling out the two-page ballot and presents the ballots to the person operating the electronic tabulating machine. Both paper ballots are entered into the machine; any subsequent ballots presented with that Voter ID number will be automatically rejected.
· The tabulating machine is the primary method of counting votes for the state/local candidates. The primary counting method for the president/vice president ballot is hand-counting. The tabulating machine becomes a back-up count in the event of a catastrophic loss of paper ballots by fire, flood, theft, etc.
· The presidential paper ballot will be retrieved from the tabulating machine and presented to the counting team. The counting team will consist of two people of differing political party affiliation plus a counting monitor. The counting team process will proceed as follows:
· Number the ballot in the upper right-hand corner. if, for example, the ballot storage boxes hold 200 ballots, the numbering will continue from #1 through # 200.
· Each counter and the monitor will initial under the page number of every ballot and record the date and time, thereby establishing chain-of-custody during the counting process. Each counter will be associated with a particular candidate throughout the counting process and will keep a tally of the ballots for their candidate.
· After each 100 counted ballots the counters and the monitor will confirm that the combined tallies account for 100, 200, etc. for example, 53 for candidate “a” and 47 for candidate “b”; 97 for candidate “a” and 103 for candidate “b”, etc., if the tallies do not total an even century number, the ballots, will be immediately recounted.
· The counting process is simple and quick; number the ballot, initial the ballot, record the date and time and enter the winning candidate on a counter-team tally sheet. All that can be completed in 10-15 seconds. Therefore, one counting team can process ballots from many voting booths and never jeopardize the security of the ballots.
· Upon completion of counting the ballots to fill a storage box, the accounting team will be called in. They will perform five chain-of-custody functions.
One: Instruct the counters to sign and record the date and time on their individual tally sheets and place them inside the storage box with the numbered ballots.
Two: Seal the ballot box with permanent adhesive tape.
Three: Place a permanent-adhesive ballot box accounting sheet onto the outside of the box. All members of the counting and accounting teams for that box will sign the sheet indicating also the date and time. The box will be numbered and the total votes for each candidate will be entered on that exterior box accounting sheet.
Four: The box number and its associated votes for each candidate will be entered onto the accounting team’s official presidential vote tally document.
Five: The box will be immediately moved to a secured storage room and logged in with the accounting team's signatures and date and time. That room must be off-limits to all except the executive and accounting team members. At no time can a single individual from any team enter the storage room alone or with an individual of the same political affiliation.
If for some precise reason, a box must be removed from secure storage, it must be done so by an executive team and they must maintain chain-of-custody until they log the box back into secure storage.
This same process will be used for counting absentee ballots.
ARE THE VOTING MACHINES WORKING? How do we know? Every morning run a ballot with a fake ID Card number through the system; did it reject it? Send a valid ID Card numbered ballot through twice; did it reject the second one? At the end of each voting day in every precinct, the Executive Team can run a tally of the votes from the presidential/vice-presidential ballot as recorded by the voting machines. Then compare the machine-tally with the hand-count tally as recorded by the Counting and Accounting Teams. If they do not match, go full-stop immediately and fix the problem.
CONCLUSIONS:
One: This nation desperately needs election reform.
Two: HR1 is not reform in any sense of the word. It is a classic Washington partisan political piece of crap.
Three: Voter ID Cards are easy, safe, reliable, and as close to tamper-proof as we can get.
Four: States have proven that they cannot assure We The People that they can produce a fair election process. Therefore, we must have some “maximum centralized planning” in order for the “maximum decentralized execution” to function properly.
Five: An organization without standards is a failed organization. The federal government must set the standards for national elections. Go back and review the ten standards above.
Six: We don’t need 800 pages of congressional crap to “solve” our election problems. We can/must do it with an 8-page (or less) document produced from the above 2900 words.
Seven: The federal government passed a law that becomes effective
1 October 2021 requiring any person at least 18 years old to have a “Real ID” in order to get on a commercial airliner. The requirements for a Real ID are the same as those specified above for a Voter ID Card, proof of citizenship, social security card, etc. Have we heard the Democrat Party cry foul? Are democrats uniformly against Real IDs? No. Then why are they so outspoken and firmly against any requirement for a voter to present an ID?
BOTTOM LINE: This is a Line in the Sand for this great country. There is a crisis of confidence across America over many states’ election standards or the lack thereof. It’s time to get mad as hell at the mental midgets in Washington and do something. Now!
H.R. 1, FOR THE PEOPLE ACT OF 2021 has already passed the House. S 1, THE FOR THE PEOPLE ACT OF 2021, is under consideration in the Senate. If you agree with this alternative to election reform, please do two things immediately. Forward this to your email list of friends and family. Secondly, contact the members of your Congressional Delegation.
By the way, I was recently introduced to an easy way to contact my reps in Washington. There is a smartphone app called KwikLetter (see below) which streamlines the task of writing and mailing a letter that will actually reach the office of any/all elected representative(s) in your home district. While it is unlikely your elected officials will personally read your letter, in all probability their staff will catalog your opinion on the matter addressed.
Very Respectfully,
Marv Covault
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, a columnist for THE PILOT, a national award-winning local newspaper in Southern Pines, NC and the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.
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