I mentioned to Mike Stenhouse on an episode of In the Dugout that will air soon that the danger of mail ballots may only be resolved when powerful people begin to worry that they won’t be better at it than their opposition. That’s why it’s important to increase awareness of videos like this, from Connecticut:
I think you’d have to be crazy to think this isn’t happening around the country, wherever mail ballot voting is too easy. And to those who insist that there’s “no evidence of widespread fraud,” I can only say you’re missing the point.
Outright “illegal ballot” fraud is the final margin applied to broader levels, from systemic suppression of news and bribery of constituents to constantly changing rules and arduous campaign regulations to ordinary ballot harvesting. All those layers, though, are why I’m skeptical this will be fixed. The powerful own too many layers.
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Remember when then-Governor Gina Raimondo (a Democrat, if that needs saying) insisted we needed truck tolls to fund her RhodeWorks program to finally fix the state’s infrastructure? Well…
As with the state’s pension system — which the state went right back to reamortizing as soon as Raimondo left her treasurer role — she’s a master of setting up solutions for which she won’t be around to be accountable.
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Originally published September 10, 2023. Update added charts.
Of all 14 candidates from both parties running in Rhode Island’s special Congressional race for district 1, Democrat state Senator Ana Quezada of Providence received the eighth most votes. She received the 10th most votes on primary day itself, and the 12th most early votes. But on the mail-ballot front, she excelled, coming in third.
That’s quite a showing, and the difference between her mail ballot votes and in-person votes is stunning. Her appeal, let’s say, is surprisingly selective. With the peculiar exception of Donald Carlson, who dropped out of the race shortly before primary day, she’s the only candidate to receive more mail ballot votes than primary-day votes. Not including Quezada and Carlson, the average candidate’s mail ballot votes amounted to just 13% of the candidate’s total votes. For Quezada, it was 57%.
Zooming in on the results, Quezada’s feat becomes even more impressive. In Providence, Quezada came in third place overall on the strength of her top number of mail ballots. She received more mail ballot votes than the top two contenders — Gabriel Amo and Aaron Regunberg — combined. Adding Sandra Cano’s mail ballots to their total just barely overcomes Quezada’s advantage.
At the precinct level, Quezada’s selective appeal takes on new dimensions. She received more than half of all mail ballot votes in eight of the 19 precincts. Yet, in nine of the remaining precincts she received no more than two mail ballots. The contrast with in-person votes is stark, as well. In all but one of the precincts where she won the mail ballot race, her mail ballot votes exceeded her primary-day votes, and in that one, it was a tie. She also lost all but one of the precincts on primary day. And again, other candidates’ mail ballots were fractions of their total votes, not a majority.
Somehow, the enthusiasm for Quezada in certain areas apparently did not spill into other precincts, and it did not translate into in-person votes. In six precincts, she won more than three-quarters of all mail ballots, yet she only won primary day in one of those. How does a candidate do that?
Two possibilities present themselves: plain fraud or ballot harvesting. Thanks to recent changes, no witnesses or notaries are required to be named on mail ballots, so the only name interested Rhode Islanders can check appears if somebody else picks up the ballot for a voter (and the security of that system is not something on which I can comment). On that list, the state has Lazaro Quezada — which is Ana’s husband’s name — picking up 86 mail ballots in the districts in which Ana strongly dominated and 105 total, which is four times more than the next most-prolific collectors. A Miguel Quezada picked up another nine. Most voters sent in or delivered a request form, and there is no record of any help they may have received doing that.
This raises an important question: Given these peculiar results, can the Board of Elections, Secretary of State, and Attorney General even investigate if they wanted to? In some precincts, Quezada received all but a handful of mail ballot votes, so contacting the voters could shed some light, but that’s quite a bit of labor when a simple requirement for witness signatures could make such ballots much more secure. Even if Quezada’s mail ballot efforts are totally straightforward and legal, Rhode Islanders should ask themselves if a campaign of picking up, delivering, and turning in ballots will ensure the representative democracy they want.
Be that as it may, Rhode Islanders should make a point of learning Quezada’s secret, either to justify necessary mail ballot reform or to compete. We can be sure special interests are mastering the game. Indeed, given her limited local reach, it could be that Quezada has merely offered us a warning of what other candidates are already doing, but with more calculation and subtlety.
Featured image by Shutterstock.
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Underdog sports team hires a beautiful and pop star with a surprising soft side to pretend to date one of its players to boost its ratings, and they wind up falling in love.
On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- The RIGOP and Leonard’s expectation that campaign attention just happens
- Magaziner gets in shots as the D-mob’s nerdy guy
- Neronha slips and slides in the X-Twitter mudpit
- A BOE retirement shows the people serve the government
- Ana Quezada’s retirement deal sets her up in the machine
- The PILOT light too low in Providence
Featured image by Justin Katz using Firefly.
I mean, what’s the point?
Not only has Secretary of State Gregg Amore already publicly proclaimed Amo the winner, but by the time of this debate it’s likely more than 30% of all ballots will already have been cast.
Let’s cut to the chase. Instead of an election, Rhode Island might as well have a sort of electoral college whereby the people who harvest mail ballots each gets a proportional vote in the outcome. It’d be more honest.
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Yesterday, through the ministrations of U.S. District Attorney Zachary Cunha under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Biden administration pressured Rhode Island’s Washington Trust bank into a multimillion-dollar settlement and imposed a big PR hit over alleged racism in its lending practices. Journalists are faithfully transcribing the “redlining” narrative they’ve been handed, which means our state is not having the important discussions needed on this topic. The racist lending is supposedly “proven” through statistics and disparate outcomes based on race and neighborhood, but nobody seems interested in details.
To my eye, the key detail is the banks the Biden Administration considers to be “peer lenders,” which are supposedly less racist than Washington Trust. As far as I can tell from the settlement, “peer” is defined as receiving no fewer than half Washington Trust’s number of home mortgage loan applications and no more than twice that number. That sounds like regional banks, but presumably, it could also include niche lenders specifically serving minority neighborhoods or the small online lenders that seem to proliferate.
In other words, a few online banks somewhere in the country could be lifting the average to a degree a specific brick-and-mortar bank in Rhode Island shouldn’t be expected to achieve, all things considered. A serious study (and a serious judicial investigation) would provide a table of all of the “peer lenders,” not just compare one bank to the group average. If there are just a handful of banks in the pool, and if some are focused on serving this particular community, then it’s possible that a majority of the “peers” could be just as “racist” as Washington Trust, but when grouped with a few with very high percentages of lending in these neighborhoods, the average goes up.
If this is the case, then the district attorney could investigate other banks, and Washington Trust would be among the “peer lenders” group with a better average. With millions of dollars and deep, sensitive social divisions on the line, basing accusations on statistical outcomes, we should expect a more substantive analysis than might be required for a project in an undergrad course. Along similar lines, notice that in all the detailed maps in the DA’s exhibits, not a single one shows detail from another bank. It is as if the prosecutors know that nobody is ever going to demand that it actually prove a case.
Unfortunately, our local news media is unlikely to pursue a narrative (which I’d bet is the truth) in which a local Rhode Island institution is being shaken down by a cynical Democrat administration looking for political talking points to shore up one of its key dependent constituencies.
Even more, none of this touches the broader question of whether every bank needs to solicit applications from minority areas. The existence of peer lenders that are receiving the applications suggests that residents are able to find lenders, and I’ve seen no argument that mortgages from Washington Trust are especially beneficial. Social and economic costs are associated with the federal government’s shaking down American businesses in order to foster racial grievance headlines, and we should be having a public debate whether the benefits (if there are any) are worth it.
Featured image modified from Shutterstock.
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From the time he first entered politics in a serious way, we’ve been warned that Donald Trump represented a unique threat that would destroy our country. This has provided an important lens for evaluating the events that have followed.
For instance, during and after the 2020 election, many of us have questioned the narrative that, “Donald Trump will impose (or would have imposed) dark fascism to our country… but we’re totally not doing anything beyond the usual fair-is-fair rules of elections to elect a visibly deteriorating career politician who was notably corrupt and dishonest even when he was healthy.”
Now, it’s “We will never have a real election or any freedom again if Donald Trump is reelected… but all of these many prosecutions of him (consisting of novel theories and charges that typically don’t result in legal action) are totally not political persecutions, but the straightforward application of the law by the books.”
His detractors seem to think the prosecutions are landing as if they were evidence of the claim of Trump’s unique threat, but I don’t think that’s the picture most Americans think they’re seeing.
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The story has moved on since I made a note to highlight this, but it remains an important point, particularly because suggested by a Republican:
Mayor Kenneth Hopkins is on the defense after three City Council members voiced strong concerns about the city potentially using its $6-million share of Gov. Dan McKee’s “Learn365RI” money to buy the iconic − and financially struggling − Park Theatre.
The notion that McKee should be fishing for positive headlines around the state by pretending more government funding of recreational activities will somehow improve education is bad enough. The idea that the money can be spent on government takeover of deteriorating privately owned properties for some unspecified reason — while arguably completely in keeping with the governor’s true motivation — is beyond the pale.
Whether Hopkins was just freelancing with this idea or had a tacit wink and nod from the governor’s office before the media spotlight hit his window, Rhode Islanders should make it clear that the impulse toward waste and corruption has to stop. (We should also recognize the value of splitting government between the parties to a significant degree.)
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One hesitates to make too much of an activist article like Steve Ahlquist’s August 9 report and transcription of a conversation with a Woonsocket city worker. However, two observations are worth making, considering Progressives’ ascendance in Rhode Island and beyond.
The first relates to the underlying issue. The city has installed armrests in the middle of some park benches, and activists are complaining that they’re “anti-homeless architecture,” as Ahlquist’s headline puts it. By intent or otherwise, the armrests make it difficult for homeless people to lie down on the benches, which Progressives find to be an assault on their rights.
Just so do they disregard the rights of the broader public, who ought to be able to set standards for the character of public spaces. Ahlquist and others may obstinately dispute the point, but the presence of homeless people changes the aesthetic of a space, not to mention raising legitimate concerns about health and safety. One needn’t pass moral judgement on them to observe that the conditions and recent histories of the homeless tend to correspond with concerning behaviors and mental health challenges (at least those of the bench-sleeping subcategory) and speak to the condition of the surrounding society.
Indeed, as Ahlquist notes, a man’s dead body was found on one of these benches in the winter. Helping people in these circumstances is an important concern (for which the Progressives and I would offer different solutions), but taking measures to prevent their dying on park benches is a reasonable step for their safety and for the public good.
The second point has to do with the light Ahlquist shines on the city worker. For the moment, anyway, Progressives still claim to take the side of the workers of the world, although that may have more to do with the fact that labor unions’ core value is actually the financial and political support of the Wokers of the world, rather than honest labor.
Yet, note what happens when a worker’s job leads him to take a position Ahlquist doesn’t like. Somebody has been removing these armrests, and the policy having been created at a higher level of authority, this man’s job is to maintain and replace them. In Progressive eyes, this makes him an enforcer of unjust power. He’s no longer within the fold but becomes part of the wicked power structure.
The job of a public worker, that is, must be to implement and enforce the Progressive ideology in whatever form it might take on a given day. This conclusion is no surprise. In all things, from media hypocrisy to the different standards of justice being applied to Americans based on their political beliefs to the ability to enjoy God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, the decisive criteria is agreement with them, and everybody must choose between cooperation and common sense, on one side, and fealty to the Woke, on the other.
Featured image by Justin Katz on Adobe Firefly.
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