The Cheat Is On

You've got to hand it to Democrats. Instead of committing voter fraud, they've got a better idea -- making it legal! And judging by this midterm's House races, the strategy finally paid off.

In places like California, the GOP sat in stunned disbelief as their double-digit leads evaporated like a puff of smoke on election night. Seats in reliably-Republican areas like Orange County vanished in races that, days before, weren't even close. Candidates like Young Kim, one of the shoe-ins heading into Tuesday, watched Democrats chip away at her lead in a cloud of provisional ballot-counting. A week later, she lost. By that point, the questions were already swirling. What happened? And how had pollsters gotten California so wrong?

Turns out, the plan had been set in motion years ago -- thanks to some crafty Democrats, who decided if they couldn't win by the rules, they'd just change them. With the help of a liberal legislature and governor, Democrats started systematically rewriting the rules to box out Republicans. In an article that will make most Americans' blood boil, the Washington Times explains exactly how the Left pulled off their California stunt. And how they could take that same playbook to a state near you.

Of course, it's a unique situation in California, where the ratio of Democratic leaders makes even Republican seats ripe for stealing. One of the biggest breakthroughs came in 2016 when the state passed a law that lets anyone "walk into an elections office and hand over truckloads of vote-by-mail envelopes with ballots inside," Townhall explains -- no questions asked, no verified records kept." That opened the door to what a lot of people witnessed this year: Democrats knocking on doors to either "help" people vote or pick up their ballots for supposed delivery. It's called vote harvesting. Most states outlaw it. In California, the idea was so controversial that even the Los Angeles Times editorial board fought it.

"Ballots are supposed to be sacrosanct," the editors write. "When you vote at your local polling place, poll workers don't urge you to support this candidate or that." The Democratic operatives who show up at people's houses to collect their ballots can strong-arm voters, cajole them, or outright defraud them. There is no safeguard, they point out, "to ensure that the ballots make it to official election facilities in time to be counted." Then there's the "integrity of the ballot itself. It's one thing to trust the U.S. Postal Service, which presumably doesn't have an interest in state and local races, to deliver your ballot. It's quite another to trust a stranger who shows up at the door one day promising to make sure your vote gets counted."

What's to stop someone from trashing those ballots? Or, as Attorney General Ken Paxton discovered in Texas, vote for you? "The harvesters sit around and fill these out by the hundreds, often by the thousands," said one political consultant. The abuse is so rampant that states like Montana are weighing a widespread crackdown. People have been caught casing nursing homes, low-income housing, and illegal immigrant work sites offering -- in the name of "community service" -- to make voting more "time efficient."

RedState posted a video of just how methodical Democrats have been this election. At one house, a woman named Lulu rang the doorbell, knew the name of the people inside, and then explained that they're offering a "new service, but only to, like, people who are supporting the Democratic Party. It's a service; I'm just trying to pick up your ballot and show you how to do it if you don't know."

Unfortunately for Californians, that's just the tip of the manipulation iceberg. There are new laws that let illegal immigrants vote (San Francisco spent $310,000 taxpayer dollars registering 49 of them), prisoners, and -- thanks to a 2015 court ruling -- felons. Then there's the "motor voter fraud." Because everyone who interacts with the DMV in California is automatically registered to vote, the state's RNC committeeman Shawn Steel writes, there've been at least 77,000 cases of double registrations.

Democrats also got creative with young people, launching a pre-registration program for 16- and 17-year-olds. It is, Steel warns, a way for the Left to lock in voters "while they're young and more likely to identify as liberal Democrats." "Of the 89,000 minors that participated... only 10 percent registered as Republicans." In some counties this year, absentee ballots were mailed to every adult -- whether they requested it or not! As if that weren't outrageous enough, California accepts ballots up to a week after Election Day and gives voters with rejected ballots a second chance.

Liberals are playing the long game. And unless Republicans learn how to beat them at it, no lead -- or seat -- is safe.

Also in the November 29 Washington Update: