Democrats have made it clear that, when it comes to gaining power, they can no longer be trusted to do the right thing.

We have to wonder how many close elections, rightly won by a Republican candidate, unscrupulous Democratic election officials have stolen. This is not paranoia. Unfortunately, it’s the new reality. If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that we can never again give Democrats the benefit of the doubt, especially when the situation involves power.

Florida Governor and Senator-elect Rick Scott appeared on Hannity last night to discuss the current situation in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Overseeing events in Florida for the Democrats is lawyer Mark Elias, who is a partner with the Perkins Coie law firm, where he is in charge of their Political Law practice.

He also served as the general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. In that capacity, he arranged to funnel money from the DNC and the Clinton campaign through Perkins Coie, to opposition research firm Fusion GPS to pay for the infamous Trump Dossier. He’s made his motives clear.

Elias declared on a conference call Thursday morning that the senator will be victorious and by the end of the month, he’ll be preparing for a fourth term in Washington. “At the end of this process Sen. Nelson is going to prevail,” Elias said. “I am very measured in how I treat what I say. When I say it is currently a jump ball … I mean that.”

He is not there to straighten out the ballot issues. Rather, he is there to make sure that Sen. Bill Nelson wins at any cost.

Unfortunately, the passage of time makes fraud detection all the more difficult. It’s great that Rick Scott and the NRSC filed lawsuits on Thursday evening against election officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties and won both suits on Friday evening. But time is of the essence when processing ballots and we have to wonder what fraudulent activities officials have been able to cover up in the meantime.

Why do recounts only seem to benefit Democrats? In the very close 2004 Washington gubernatorial election, Democrat Christine Gregoire defeated Republican candidate Dino Rossi. Close initial results gave the race to Rossi as did a second machine recount. Lo and behold, a third manual recount gave the race to Gregoire by 127 votes.

Another well-known recount which resulted in a Democratic victory actually changed the course of history.

Sometimes, the difference between the passage or failure of controversial legislation comes down to one vote. After a close election night victory for Republican Senator Norm Coleman, a recount, and much legal wrangling, Al Franken was declared the winner in the 2008 Minnesota senate race. Ballots seemed to materialize out of the blue and many Republicans suspected fraud. Two years later, even the left leaning U.S. News & World Report acknowledged that Franken’s seat may have been fraudulently won.

It looks increasingly likely that at least one member of the United States Senate may owe his seat in the world’s greatest deliberative body not to his charisma or the persuasiveness of his message but to voter fraud. As the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund reports, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken’s narrow, 312-vote victory in 2008 over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman may have come as the result of people being allowed to vote who, under existing law, shouldn’t have been.

It was found that the votes of convicted felons, considered illegal votes under Minnesota election law, propelled Franken to victory. “The number of felons voting in two counties alone exceeds Mr. Franken’s victory margin.”

The significance of Franken’s win is that his vote was critical in passing Obamacare.

Newt Gingrich writes that as the Democrats try to steal elections, their dishonesty threatens the very fabric of our country.

Remember Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia Stacey Abrams’s assertion that her “blue wave” was made up of both legal and illegal residents. Remember that 22,000 of the applications her voter registration group filed in Georgia were either canceled, duplicative or couldn’t be reconciled (probably because the voters did not exist). In Arizona, you can bet that many of the 400,000 mail-in ballots still outstanding will turn out to be non-existent or cast by illegal immigrants – or simply made-up by the election officials in two of the state’s most liberal counties. Already, the Arizona Republican Party has alleged that left-wing election officials in one county destroyed evidence related to early voting irregularities.

How many more elections must be stolen from Republicans before we take action to prevent fraud from the beginning. What measures can be taken to ensure election integrity going forward?

Should we look to technology for a solution?

Blockchain technology has been bandied about as a solution but it would leave our elections vulnerable to hacking by foreign governments.

“Building a workable, scalable, and inclusive online voting system is now possible, thanks to blockchain technologies,” writes Alex Tapscott, whom the Times describes as co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute. Tapscott is wrong—and dangerously so. Online voting would be a huge threat to the integrity of our elections—and to public faith in election outcomes. Tapscott focuses on the idea that blockchain technology would allow people to vote anonymously while still being able to verify that their vote was included in the final total. Even assuming this is mathematically possible—and I think it probably is—this idea ignores the many, many ways that foreign governments could compromise an online vote without breaking the core cryptographic algorithms.

Until technology offers a way to guarantee against hackers (foreign or domestic), internet voting isn’t an option.

What then is the answer? Should early voting be eliminated? What safeguards can be put in place to guarantee the integrity of absentee ballots? What can we do to ensure that election officials are strictly adhering to state election laws?

The two areas of the election process most vulnerable to fraud are voter ID laws and the handling of paper ballots.

In today’s world, identity is of the utmost importance. My husband and I visited our son at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia last month. Upon arrival, we had to visit the security office, provide photo IDs, social security numbers, fill out a brief questionnaire (signature required) and have our pictures taken. After a brief electronic check, we were issued passes.

Why should anyone expect less scrutiny for the right to vote in a US election? Is it really too much to expect voters to provide a photo ID? I don’t think so.

It was believed that the use of human-readable paper ballots would go a long way to prevent election fraud. “Paper ballots form a body of evidence that is not subject to manipulation by faulty software or hardware and that can be used to audit and verify the results of an election.”

The use of paper ballots is a good idea, but the most important part of the vote counting process is the physical handling of the ballots themselves. Especially when they are handled by corrupt election officials. It is during the physical handling of the ballots when election results are most vulnerable to fraud. Marco Rubio said that private vehicles in Broward County were transporting paper ballots on Thursday, which does not exactly inspire confidence.

Do we need to install teams of nonpartisan election monitors to observe ballot gathering, counting and delivery as is necessary in the elections of third world elections? Apparently we do. Certainly we can no longer trust the Democrats.