How far down the slippery slope is this country? In Arizona, Maricopa County attorney Tom Liddy argued that it was “political malpractice” for a campaign to tell voters to vote in person on election day instead of voting early. In the ongoing election trial, Liddy argued that “you reap what you sow,” meaning that Lake’s campaign lost because of the strategy of urging voters to vote in person on Election Day.
Just how idiotic is this for a licensed attorney to argue in a courtroom that Americans do not have a right to a functioning system that allows them to vote in person on Election Day! Is the incomprehensibly incompetence of the Maricopa County officials to be excused by this statement?
A “shrink to fit” malfunction rendered ballots unreadable by machines. A printer setting error caused 42.5 percent of 113 ballots examined by Lake’s team to be invalid, because they were 19-inch ballots produced on 20-inch paper. And the printer setting changes that caused the issue were enacted on Election Day.
Was this incompetence or deliberate? The problems reading ballots led to long lines that disenfranchised voters. Again, was this the intent? Are the powers that be in Maricopa County trying to force people to use the fraud-prone system of mail-in ballots?
Liddy went on to argue:
“So we did not see — two days of testimony and all of those affidavits came in — evidence of a botched election. We saw evidence of a botched campaign, political malpractice. Who goes out and tells their voters, don’t vote on day one of early voting, day two, day three, all the way up to day 26 of early voting. Wait until the last second. That’s political malpractice. You reap what you sow.”
Liddy has a warped view of how elections should be run. In his world view, ballots are a commodity that needs to be harvested. Of course, the longer time there is to harvest, the more possibilities for fraud exist. Early voting needs to reduced if not ended and access to who has voted before an election is over needs to be eliminated.