TOM COTTON ON THE WAVE OF VIOLENT CRIME AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

TOM COTTON ON THE WAVE OF VIOLENT CRIME AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

Last month, our friend Sen. Tom Cotton delivered an important address on policing and criminal justice in the U.S. The speech, delivered at the Manhattan Institute, was called “Breaking the Crime Wave.” You can read it here.

That the U.S. is experiencing a wave of violent crime is beyond dispute. Even the mainstream media is reporting on that crime wave (see below, for example). Some Democrats are even acknowledging its existence.

Sen. Cotton discusses the causes of the crime wave. These include (1) the unwillingness of big city prosecutors (some elected thanks to cash from George Soros) to prosecute entire categories of misdemeanors, (2) the creation by some governors and mayors of “sanctuary jurisdictions” that shield criminal aliens from prosecution, (3) the undermining in many states and localities of the cash-bail system, (4) the federal jailbreak legislation that Donald Trump backed, (5) the release of prisoners in many jurisdictions on the theory that this was the humane thing to do during the pandemic, (6) the “BLM effect” which massively curtailed policing in neighborhoods most in need of vigilant law enforcement, and (7) mass resignations by police officers in response to the demonization by BLM and Democratic politicians of those charged with enforcing the law.

The remainder of Cotton’s speech is a harrowing description of violent crime in various American jurisdictions, all of which are controlled by liberal Democrats, plus his common sense answers to the question of how to break this crime wave.

Speaking of harrowing, check out this article from today’s Washington Post. The title is “Thousands of bullets have been fired in this D.C. neighborhood. Fear is part of everyday life.”

The Post isn’t kidding about either proposition in its title. It reports that in a little more than the past three years, crime scene technicians found 2,759 bullet casings — byproducts of shootings involving rifles, pistols and shotguns — in about a one-square-mile area of Southeast Washington D.C. (I spent the first seven years of my life in Southeast D.C., but in the area where we lived, the crime scene techs found “only” about half that number of casings.)

According to the Post, bullets from these casings “have struck people, pockmarked parked cars, embedded in walls of homes and shattered windows of businesses filled with patrons.” The situation has reached the point that “patrol officers carry ‘quick clot gauze’ used by troops in war” to stop people from bleeding.

One can imagine the effect of this environment on law-abiding residents. If one can’t, the Post lays it out pretty well.

The Post’s article brings to mind the absurdity of one of the left’s talking points (or former talking points, I hope) about policing. At one point in the demonization of the police that followed the death of Freddy Gray in Baltimore, it became fashionable to complain that Black areas of the city were over-policed. This “over-policing” skewed the arrest statistics such that large numbers of Blacks were being arrested while Whites were getting away with similar crimes.

It’s true that, in D.C., for example, if the police pulled manpower from that small area in Southeast where all those bullet casings were found and it redeployed officers to the posh sections of Northwest, fewer Blacks would be arrested and a small number of additional Whites might be busted on drug charges.
But such a move would make no sense. The police force is needed in large numbers where violent crime is prevalent.

I don’t think many on the left are publicly advocating such a redeployment of the police any longer. But the left is producing a de facto “un-deployment” of police from high crime areas by driving officers out of the force and deterring those who remain from actively policing high-crime areas.

So Southeast D.C. will continue to experience thousands of bullets flying around, and fear will continue to be a big part of everyday life. The same will be true in cities all over America where Democrats are in charge.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/tom-cotton-on-the-wave-of-violent-crime-and-what-to-do-about-it.php

Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   7/27/2021

Off the grid; pure camping pleasure

A pristine Cascade lake, our “go to” spot of natural beauty for reconnecting to nature, has given us 30 years of such experiences. Changes have required adaptation; our favorite campsites are reservable, requiring a 6-month look ahead to when we’ll “for sure” arrive. The traditional approach—arrive on Sunday when campers are leaving and take the best available—has given way to online maps, site descriptions and limits, and online bookings and emails.

Two weeks at a campground can be a window into “normal” America (we love The Bernie Mac show and how he calls viewers “America” before comedic rants about family, kids, etc.). Left to their own devices, camping equipment and styles, whether an overnight, weekend or extended stay, folks are there to have a good time with zero unpleasantness.

What conversations we overhear or engage in come without “politics or religion” and typically include things seen and done elsewhere, who else is camping and where they’re from. A long-time friend, fellow skier and paddle board fisherman, who we first met when he was a campground host, gives us some good-natured banter over our Trump-supporting thoughts vs. his NPR-soaked ideas. Since he and I have endured hip shots or surgeries, my long hair and bandana earn me the “MAGA hippie” label, he’s the “left-wing hippie.”

While White campers do predominate the scene, we’ve seen and talked to those of Samoan, Asian and Hispanic descent without a clue about their politics. What we do see is what any “normal” person would observe: girls, boys, men, women, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. There is no middle position when DNA science and born physical anatomy are considered; on their own, girls and boys become women and men.

Nobody much cares what choices adults make regarding their friends and intimates. Yet, nobody is ok with having their private thoughts and principles damned as inferior, needing “re-education” into philosophies and beliefs they know to be nonsense—and known to be nonsense for all of human history.

Men aren’t women and can’t become women, only men with artificially-added female features (and vice versa); no man can give birth to a child; no woman can be a father, only a self-chosen “father figure” to a child. A child loved by 2 women or 2 men is just that, and may or may not suffer confusion later in life, as might a child in a dysfunctional family; either situation may be healthy or not, depending on variables.

What is not healthy—an abomination against free speech and religion—is for secular, political authorities to tell religious medical, adoption or humanitarian groups that they must set their beliefs aside and place children with same-sex couples, employ homosexuals, or pay for/provide abortion or sex-change procedures. A federal judge just so ruled in support of religious freedom. Doctors deserve the same.

That was one brave judge; there are those who will twist my words, deny my right to legitimate opinions, and project their own hatred of conservatives, saying we hate gay people. The political left, blind to their own viciousness, intolerance and hatred, will target such judges.

Vile, emotional threats—while usually not followed upon—do have the intended result: to intimidate constitutional judges from saying “no” to overreaching laws and policies that illegally usurp those put in place by the Framers. Even the rulings of the Supreme Court are tempered so as not to upset the legal framework of leftist/socialist laws and policies; the Supreme Court won’t even step up to hear such challenges out of timidity in the face of criticism.

Election fraud, especially fraud that could, if reversed, change election results, has even the highest courts reluctant to make constitutional rulings. They don’t want another “Bush v. Gore,” even though when the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, it was upholding Florida law and the concept of “equal treatment” that Gore’s minions violated by selectively recounting Gore-friendly counties.

Watching states rack up large Trump leads on election night, some of us recalled the thinly-veiled threat that late-arriving mail-in ballots would swing it to Biden.

When it was revealed that 1) counting stopped in crucial states with Trump leads, 2) windows were covered to prevent observers from seeing the process, 3) tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots appeared giving Biden just the lead he needed, after which 4) a normal Trump/Biden mix resumed; and when 5) the Supremes refused to examine the evidence—real evidence—we knew the fix was in.

I speak for most Trump supporters who, in spite of knowing all of the above to be true, would have been satisfied if actual forensic audits—not just repeating the tabulation done the first time on the same pieces of paper—showed that each of the states in question (NV, AZ, GA, PA, MI, WI) had actual Biden wins. Maybe by more, maybe by less; maybe Trump lost some but won others. However, a mere 43,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin were all that denied Trump an Electoral College tie.

Some of the Maricopa County (AZ) audit results cast a lot of doubt on Biden’s thin 10,500-vote win. Reportedly, Arizona Senate’s hearing showed 168,000 fraudulent ballots printed on illegal paper, 74,000 mail-in ballots received that were never mailed, 11,000 voters were added to the voter rolls “after” the election and still voted, access logs to the machines were wiped, and the election server was hacked during the election. We are willing to believe it was all legit but the burden of proof is now on the Democrats—if you don’t want us to believe you stole a state—don’t act like you stole it and now don’t want to get caught.

THANK GOODNESS FOR CENSORS

THANK GOODNESS FOR CENSORS

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, FACEBOOK, FREE SPEECH

The Biden administration has enlisted Facebook to police conversations among Americans. This is because the rest of us are too dumb to be trusted, and may fall for “misinformation.” So how does Facebook carry out its mission of uplifting our discourse? By censoring conversation about hoes in gardening groups:

A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than 7,500 members discussed the long-handled bladed implement, which is spelled with an “e,” unlike the offensive term.

When one member commented “Push pull hoe!” on a post about preferred weeding tools, Facebook sent a notification that read, “We reviewed this comment and found it goes against our standards for harassment and bullying,” a moderator said.

Bryan Preston comments:

This is funny and would be a lot funnier if the Biden White House hadn’t deputized Facebook to chase you and me around on its platform if we post something the regime doesn’t like. But it has.

Dumb White House plus dumb censors = a major problem.

Facebook doesn’t like it when gardeners talk about how to deal with Japanese beetles, either:

The extra set of eyes did not prevent a subsequent post in the group from being automatically disabled because of “possible violence, incitement, or hate in multiple comments,” Licata said.

“Kill them all. Drown them in soapy water,” and “Japanese beetles are jerks,” were some comments Facebook deemed offensive, according to the moderator.

Japanese beetles are indeed a pest, and my wife pursues them with Caddyshack-like single-mindedness. She has drowned many in soapy water. But I suppose the problem here is the name. Just as we can no longer have the “Indian variant,” we can’t have garden pests named after their place of origin. That appears to be Facebook’s view, anyway.

The Biden administration is dumb and Facebook is dumb, so in that sense they are made for each other. But the rest of us shouldn’t stand for it.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/thank-goodness-for-censors.php

U.S. CORONAVIRUS CASES RISING BUT DEATHS FROM THE VIRUS AREN’T

U.S. CORONAVIRUS CASES RISING BUT DEATHS FROM THE VIRUS AREN’T

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN CORONAVIRUS

The spread of the Wuhan coronavirus in the U.S. has accelerated, apparently due mainly to the delta variant. Last month, reported new cases were averaging around 17,000 per day, according to Worldometer. Now, they are averaging around 40,000 per day.

The good news is that deaths attributed to the virus aren’t increasing. A month ago, the daily death count was said to be around 350-400 per day. Now it’s slightly lower — more like 300 per day. Both totals represent a decrease from May, when the daily death count was coming in at more than 600.

What explains the fact that cases have increased, but not deaths? Timing might be a big part of the explanation. Naturally, there is a lag between becoming infected with the virus and dying from it. The increase in cases began around three weeks ago, so maybe not enough time has passed for it to translate into a spike in deaths.

Another plausible explanation is that a portion of the new cases are among people who have been vaccinated. The vaccine is believed, with good reason, not just to decrease the likelihood of infection, but also to decrease the likelihood of experiencing serious illness or death from the virus.

Finally, it’s also possible that the delta variant isn’t as deadly as its predecessor. However, I think it’s too early to credit this theory.

It may be worth noting that the UK’s spike in reported cases, which is much sharper than ours (so far), began approximately seven weeks ago. The daily death count there has increased recently, but only to about 50 per day, so we’re talking about very small numbers (again, so far).

We should keep an eye on the number of deaths in the U.S. attributed to the coronavirus in the coming weeks. Of particular interest will be the percentage of such deaths that occur among the vaccinated. It’s likely to be very low.

If deaths are almost exclusively among those who haven’t been vaccinated, which seems to be the case so far, the appropriate governmental response would be to encourage people at any meaningful risk to get vaccinated, but to permit them, as a matter of civil liberties, to assume the risk of not doing so.

Placing restrictions on what people who are vaccinated can do would not be an appropriate response, for they will have been shown to be protected from serious illness. Neither would placing restrictions on the unvaccinated, for they will have assumed the risk associated with that status.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/u-s-coronavirus-cases-rising-but-deaths-from-the-virus-arent.php

GAINING DEPTH ON GAIN OF FUNCTION: JOSH ROGIN’S VIEW

GAINING DEPTH ON GAIN OF FUNCTION: JOSH ROGIN’S VIEW

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN CORONAVIRUS

I cited the judgment of Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin in “Fallacious Fauci strikes again.” In my post I relied on Rogin’s brief tweets. Today Rogin expands on his judgment in the column “What the fight between Anthony Fauci and Rand Paul is really about.” Here is the heart of his analysis of the issue between Fauci and Paul:

Both men were playing to the cameras, but many scientists think Paul actually does know what he’s talking about. One of them is Rutgers University microbiologist and biosafety expert Richard Ebright, whom Paul quoted as saying this research “matches, indeed epitomizes the definition of gain of function research.”

Other scientists, even those who believe the lab leak theory likely, argue that Fauci is technically correct, although they note that the official definition is so narrow it enables anyone to avoid the review process Fauci himself helped to establish. In other words, if the oversight system for reviewing risky research is almost never used, what good is it?

But it doesn’t matter which “gain of function” definition you prefer. What everyone can now see clearly is that NIH was collaborating on risky research with a Chinese lab that has zero transparency and zero accountability during a crisis — and no one in a position of power addressed that risk. Fauci is arguing the system worked. It didn’t. Even if the lab leak theory isn’t true, what’s clear is that we need more oversight of this risky research, both in the United States and in China.

Fauci also told Paul there’s no possibility the research in the paper Paul cited directly led to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but Paul correctly called this out as a straw man. That specific project was only one element of the U.S. government multiagency effort that for years pumped U.S. money and know-how into these Wuhan labs, via the EcoHealth Alliance, including NIH, USAID and the Pentagon. According to an intelligence fact sheet released by the Trump administration and partially confirmed by the Biden administration, the WIV took our help and used it to build another, secret part of the lab, where they worked with the Chinese military.

Rogin concludes: “This is ultimately not about Fauci or Paul or even gain of function research. This is about getting to the truth of how this pandemic started so we can adjust our policies to prevent the next one. That means avoiding politics, not quibbling over semantics and pushing forward without bias or pre-conclusions. This is an urgent issue for our national security and public health.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/gaining-depth-on-gain-of-function-josh-rogins-view.php

POLL: COLLEGE STUDENTS OVERWHELMINGLY FAVOR RACE-BLIND ADMISSIONS

POLL: COLLEGE STUDENTS OVERWHELMINGLY FAVOR RACE-BLIND ADMISSIONS

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN HIGHER EDUCATION, POLL, RACIAL PREFERENCES

The youth of America may not be as clueless as the more pessimistic among us suppose. According to a new survey by College Pulse, 67 percent of college students strongly support “race blind” admissions. Another 18 percent “somewhat support” such admissions.

This leaves only 15 percent who oppose race blind admissions. Of that group, only 5 percent strongly oppose them.

The survey defines race blind admissions as meaning that “colleges and universities would not be able to take a student’s race or ethnicity into account in their admissions decisions.” That’s the obvious definition.

Among Blacks surveyed, 75 percent support race blind admissions, either strongly or somewhat. Only 10 percent said they strongly oppose this. Thus, even the intended beneficiaries of race-conscious admissions are against them.

College Pulse surveyed slightly more than 2,000 students from 113 colleges and universities. Participants were drawn from its database of more than 400,000 students from more than 1,000 states. The margin of error is +/- 2.5 percent.

More information on the survey is available here.

The results of the College Pulse survey are in line with Pew Research’s findings about Americans’ views on the subject in 2019.

It seems that racial preferences in college admissions are popular only among college administrators, Democratic politicians and liberal judges, and various other members of America’s elite.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/poll-college-students-overwhelmingly-favor-race-blind-admissions.php

TO BOYCOTT OR NOT TO BOYCOTT

TO BOYCOTT OR NOT TO BOYCOTT

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN BOYCOTTS, CONSERVATISM

We wrote here and here about Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling ice cream in Judea and Samaria, a rank expression of that company’s anti-Semitism. Now pro-Israel forces are fighting back. Israel National News headlines: “Republicans push back on Ben & Jerry’s following Judea and Samaria boycott.”

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) urged Americans to “take a stand” against Ben & Jerry’s following the decision.

“I think it’s really important that Americans here send a message to Ben & Jerry’s by not buying their ice cream, quite frankly,” Malliotakis said in an interview with former Democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind.
***
In Pennsylvania, Republican State Rep. Aaron Kaufer called out the Unilever-owned ice cream makers and in a Tuesday letter urged the state’s governor, attorney general, and treasurer to enforce a law that prohibits the state from contracting with a firm unless it certifies that it will not engage in a boycott of a person or entity that does business within their jurisdiction.
***
“Ben & Jerry’s surrendered to a continuous and aggressive campaign from extreme anti-Jewish and anti-Israel groups,” Kaufer said in his letter, adding that Pennsylvania officials “must work together, enforce the law and stand with Israel.”

Hikind, meanwhile, on Wednesday called for a boycott of other products manufactured by Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s in the US.

“Our stand against UnileverUSA for their participation in BDS movement through Ben & Jerry’s must be taken to next level. Do not purchase Unilever products! Hellman’s mayo, Lipton tea, Dove soap & Axe. Say no to the anti-Semitic BDS. Anti-Semitism can’t be the flavor of the month,” he tweeted.

A week ago tonight, Charlie Kirk and I appeared before a large group in Fargo to raise money for a proposed expansion of Center of the American Experiment into North Dakota. We talked about the fact that big business has gone weirdly “woke,” and what to do about it. A large part of the problem is that businesses fear the Left, but don’t fear the Right. Thus, they calculate that their best course is to knuckle under to the Left, which constantly threatens boycotts and other unpleasantness.

That needs to change. Conservatives need to put their wallets where their values are. Conservatives don’t like to mix politics with consumer choice–or, for that matter, other aspects of our lives. But the Left, as Charlie argues aggressively, has given us no choice. We need to fight fire with fire to get big business back into the middle of the political spectrum.

Unilever, anticipating blowback to Ben & Jerry’s gratuitous anti-Semitism, issued a statement distancing the global conglomerate from its ice cream company’s operations. That isn’t good enough. If we really want to put pressure on Ben & Jerry’s, we need to make Unilever feel some pain.

My general view is that I don’t care about the political views of the people or companies whose goods and services I buy. However, if those companies seek to influence me on political matters, they assume the risk that they may influence me not to buy their products.

Thus, I wouldn’t dream of buying a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. There are lots of great ice creams on the market, and I have no desire to fund that company’s crackpot leftism. To take another example, there is a brewery in Duluth called Bent Paddle that, by all accounts, makes excellent beer. But Bent Paddle has been a vocal opponent of development of northeastern Minnesota’s mineral resources, and excellent beer is everywhere these days, so I don’t buy their products.

This strikes me as one of a number of instances where, if we want to defeat the barbarian onslaught from the Left, conservatives need to toughen up. We have enormous consumer buying power, and we need to put that buying power to work.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/to-boycott-or-not-to-boycott.php

Democratic Politician Accidentally Tells the Truth About Media Bias

Democratic Politician Accidentally Tells the Truth About Media Bias

By Jeff Charles 

(AP Photo/John Raoux)

Don’t you just love it when they accidentally let things slip? Nikki Fried, who serves as Florida’s agriculture commissioner, accidentally made a stunning admission about the nature of the activist media and its role as the Democratic Party’s Ministry of Propaganda.

On Thursday, Fried, who is also running for governor, posted a tweet predicting that the Sunshine State would go to Democrats in 2022. She wrote: “Ron DeSantis has Fox News, but we have everyone else. Florida will be blue in 2022.”

Whoops.

As if anyone needed any further proof that the activist media is biased in favor of the left, Fried decided to give us yet another example. The tweet garnered no small amount of ire from the right. Here are some of the responses:

Fried’s moment of accidental honesty isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know, of course. Even Democrats who refuse to admit it know that Fox News is the only right-leaning cable news network reaching a significant number of Americans. The left also dominates print media and the entertainment industry.

Yet, conservatives have still been able to disseminate their views to the masses through talk radio, blogs, podcasts, and other forms of alternative media. It is for this reason that Big Tech along with its allies in the federal government is seeking to minimize perspectives with which they disagree.

Even now, social media companies like Facebook have been entangled in a spat with the Biden administration, which believes that they are not doing enough to suppress opinions on the coronavirus that are not Democrat-approved. Even further, Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced a bill on Thursday designed to attack Section 230 of the Decency in Communications Act, which shields online platforms from legal liability for content that is shared on their websites.

Klobuchar’s proposal will likely fail worse than President Joe Biden would if he had to give an unscripted speech. But the fact still remains: The left will never be satisfied with the level of dominance they have over the media and other American institutions.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2021/07/22/democratic-politician-accidentally-tells-the-truth-about-media-bias-n415005

DID THE FBI PROMOTE THE PLOT TO KIDNAP GOV. WHITMER?

DID THE FBI PROMOTE THE PLOT TO KIDNAP GOV. WHITMER?

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN CRIME, FBI, GRETCHEN WHITMER

The answer to this question appears to be that, yes, the FBI did. At any rate, that conclusion follows from this BuzzFeed article.

That the FBI promoted the plot does not provide a moral defense for the people who signed on to kidnap a governor. It may not provide a legal defense, either.

But if the FBI did promote the kidnapping plot, that’s a significant and disturbing fact about the FBI.

Here’s what BuzzFeed found:

The government has documented at least 12 confidential informants who assisted the sprawling investigation. . . .

[S]ome of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.

A longtime government informant from Wisconsin, for example, helped organize a series of meetings around the country where many of the alleged plotters first met one another and the earliest notions of a plan took root, some of those people say. The Wisconsin informant even paid for some hotel rooms and food as an incentive to get people to come.

[A key informant] became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group that he rose to become its second-in-command, encouraging members to collaborate with other potential suspects and paying for their transportation to meetings. He prodded the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping plot to advance his plan, then baited the trap that led to the arrest. . . .

Last week, the lawyer for one defendant filed a motion that included texts from an FBI agent to a key informant. . .directing him to draw specific people into the conspiracy — potential evidence of entrapment that he said the government “inadvertently disclosed.”

(Emphasis added)

Your tax dollars at work.

The entire BuzzFeed exposé is worth reading. Readers can draw their own conclusions as to whether the FBI should be acting as it seems to have done in this case.

Right around the time the exposé was published, we learned that Richard Trask, an FBI agent at the center of the investigation into the Whitmer plot, has been charged with assaulting his wife. The alleged assault occurred after the couple attended a “swingers’ party.”

It seems the wife didn’t enjoy the experience and told Trask so. As a result, she suffered bloody lacerations to the right side of her head, and had “blood all over chest, clothing arms and hand,” as well as “severe” bruising to her neck and throat.

Trask’s behavior towards his wife has nothing to do with the merits of the case against the alleged would-be kidnappers of Whitmer. But perhaps it provides insight into the kind of people the FBI used to promote the Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/did-the-fbi-promote-the-plot-to-kidnap-gov-whitmer.php

When It Comes to Election Reform, It's Still MAGA Country

When It Comes to Election Reform, It's Still MAGA Country

BY MATT MARGOLIS  

AP Photo/Jason Behnken

If anything good has come out of the 2020 election, it’s that a bipartisan majority of voters are siding with Trump and want more election integrity.

The 2020 presidential election was rife with accusations of election fraud and irregularities, and Americans on both sides of the aisle are clearly sick of people not trusting the election results.

Back in March, a Rasmussen survey found that a mere 26 percent of voters believe that “the right person was declared the winner in each of the last two presidential elections.”  It doesn’t matter who you voted for; you should believe that the election was conducted fairly. It would be great to believe that Joe Biden legitimately won battleground states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and even Michigan. But, as I’ve said before, Democrats chose to act guilty rather than sincere. They ridicule anyone who disputed the results as a conspiracy theorist, and they censor anyone who dares to raise a doubt.

Yet, according to an April Rasmussen Reports survey, a majority of all voters, 51 percent, believe it is likely that cheating affected the outcome—35 percent say it’s very likely. Furthermore, the same survey found that voters are far more concerned with election integrity than making it easier to vote. “Asked which is more important, making it easier for everybody to vote, or making sure there is no cheating in elections, 60% of Likely Voters say it’s more important to prevent cheating, while 37% said it’s more important to make it easier to vote,” explained Rasmussen. “Only 22% of voters say it is currently too hard to vote, while 34% said it’s too easy to vote, and 41% say the level of difficulty in voting is about right.”

Donald Trump, for his part, is not giving up the fight for election reform. “Election Reform must happen in Swing States like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona where voters have lost confidence in their electoral process,” he said in a statement last week.

It turns out that 61 percent of likely voters agree with Trump’s statement, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey published on Tuesday. That number includes 42 percent who strongly agree. Only 34 percent of voters disagree with Trump’s statement, including 25 percent who strongly disagree.

While support for the audits may fall on partisan lines, the desire for election reform clearly does not. Democrats have attacked various efforts to strengthen election laws. But, as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee Tommy Hicks recently wrote at our sister site Townhall, the Republican National Committee “is invested in a comprehensive nationwide effort to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

“We’re fighting for election integrity because it’s absolutely vital to protect the sanctity of your ballot from Democrat schemes to undermine voting security,” Hicks said, noting that their investment is “partially driven by polling that consistently shows the American people supporting our common-sense approach to securing elections.”

What does the polling say? According to polling, a large majority of voters support having all mail-in ballots received by Election Day, oppose ballot harvesting, and support voter ID. Imagine the polar opposite of H.R. 1. It’s something like that.

But, this isn’t so black and white. As Rasmussen notes, “Arizona’s audit of 2020 election results has been widely criticized, but a majority of voters nationwide approve of the election integrity effort.” A majority of Democrats also support the fugitive Texas Democrat lawmakers who fled the state to prevent the passage of an election integrity bill.

Related: Next Time Someone Tells You Non-Citizens Don’t Vote in U.S. Elections, Tell Them About Christine Chernosky

Nevertheless, these numbers still show the fight to make it harder to cheat in elections is a winnable fight. We’re still living in MAGA Country when it comes to election reform. The voters want election integrity, and let’s hope the GOP delivers.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/07/20/when-it-comes-to-election-reform-its-still-maga-country-n1463435