(Headline USA) Deep-pocketed and often “anonymous” donors are pouring over $100 million into an intensifying dispute about whether it should be easier to vote by mail, a fight that could determine President Donald Trump’s fate in the November election.
Critics of the effort—which leftist election-stealers began clamoring for the very same day Trump declared a national emergency in response to the coronavirus pandemic—have pointed to mounds of evidence showing ballot mishandling during recent primaries and special elections.
In one particularly egregious example, a Georgia couple announced that activists had registered their cat to receive a mail-in absentee ballot, even though the cat, who they believe was a Democrat, had been dead for more than a decade.
Other states have reported carelessly discarded ballots following efforts to mail them to every registered voter—even as Democrats fight tooth and nail against complying with federal laws that require them to regularly update their voter rolls.
And the problems don’t end with illegitimate ballots. Those who vote by mail face no guarantee that their ballots will arrive in time to be counted, as many have been waylaid and rerouted at the post office—often from districts where the count would likely lean conservative.
Proponents claim that in-person voting would simply be too great a risk given the dangers of the virus.
Even allowing those who are not vulnerable and susceptible to serious health consequences could risk spreading it to asymptomatic carriers, they maintain.
But oddly, even though the media reports that the large majority of spikes in coronavirus cases have been in solid-red states, these activists have channeled the bulk of their effort into more purplish battleground states.
In Wisconsin, cash-strapped cities have received $6.3 million from an organization with ties to left-wing philanthropy to help expand vote by mail.
Meanwhile, conservatives have pledged to fight back against the corrupt effort as blue-skewed areas apply their highly effective “sue till blue” strategy to use courts to force changes in the election laws.
Some, for example, have sought policy changes under emergency provisions that would eliminate state laws requiring a witness for absentee ballot voters.
It is unclear how this is intended to mitigate the spread of the virus since witnesses could still observe within the recommended six feet of distance while wearing a face covering.
Some groups are even raising money to prepare for election-related violence.
“The pandemic has created a state of emergency,” said Laleh Ispahani, the U.S. managing director for Open Society, a network of nonprofits founded by billionaire progressive donor George Soros. “Donors who haven’t typically taken on these issues now have an interest.”
As these issues wind their way through courts, conservatives warn that activist judges could decide complex policy matters that often were already settled by state legislatures.
“The wrong way to go about this is to run to court, particularly a week or two before an election, trying to get judges to intervene and second-guess decisions legislatures have made,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project.
The Republican National Committee has pledged $20 million for voting litigation.
Still, it may not be enough to counter the massive amounts that the Left is funneling—both overtly and secretly—into their election-stealing initiative.
Those efforts have involved a rogue’s gallery of some of Democrats’ shadiest and most corrupt foot-soldiers, including former Attorney General Eric Holder and failed Georgia gubernatiorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Also involved is the notorious lawyer Marc Elias, dubbed Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer” by President Donald Trump.
Elias is best known for having commissioned the Steele Dossier on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and for several past efforts to overturn GOP election-night victories by locating mysterious bags of uncounted ballots.
But he has been deeply involved in battles to conceal Democrats’ dark-money sources, and ironically in at least one case where he actually sought to use absentee-ballot-fraud allegations against Republicans.
Even after leading the case against former Republican congressional victor Mark Harris—who was forced to relinquish his newly won seat in North Carolina when corrupt leftists accused him of ballot-harvesting—Elias and others on the Left coyly deny that such practices could undermine election integrity.
While Republicans are focused on the courts, Democrats are seeking also to mobilize their base in support of the mail-in ballot effort.
In Wisconsin, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit with ties to left-leaning philanthropy, has donated $6.3 million to the state’s five largest cities to set up ballot drop boxes, help voters file absentee ballot requests and expand in-person early voting.
Desperate for an influx of revenue, cash-strapped cities like Kenosha, Wisconsin—a historically blue area that swung for Trump in 2016—have shrugged off the dubious sourcing of the funds, particularly if they themselves happen to support the ideology.
“Due to COVID, there definitely has been a higher cost. Is there a financial shortfall on that basis? Of course,” said Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian, a Democrat.
Through the left-wing grant, Kenosha received $863,000—roughly four times what the city budgeted for the election.
Much of the money on the Left is likely to come from a series of nonprofit funds controlled by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors, which typically routes upward of $500 million a year to causes supported by liberal donors.
The firm—founded by former Bill Clinton surrogate Eric Kessler—has been instrumental in financing so-called resistance groups following Trump’s election.
And some nonprofits they’ve provided seed money were responsible for millions of dollars in TV advertising that targeted Republicans during the 2018 midterms.
They’ve also pioneered the practice of creating “pop-up” organizations: groups that appear to be grassroots-driven efforts to influence public policy, which use trade names that obscure a deep pool of resources from those with ideological or financial motivations.
The firm recently registered a handful of trade names for groups that appear to be focused on voting rights, records show.
Another effort Arabella Advisors are involved in, the Trusted Elections Fund, aims to raise between $8 million and $10 million in case the pandemic leads to chaos in November.
The group claims it is preparing for potential foreign hacking of state voting systems, “election day or post-election day violence,” as well as contested results.
It is unclear, however, whether those preparations support or oppose the hacking.
A Trusted Elections Fund representative declined to comment. But a two-page summary available online elaborated on their aims.
“Philanthropy has a responsibility to make sure that we are prepared for emergencies that could threaten our democracy,” it read.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
