Silver Surfer

Everyone wants my opinion on Texas; in a sense, it’s an opinion on multiple states that fall into the same category. Our elections rely on public trust that results are genuine, reflecting the real intent of legal voters. That is at the root of the national election integrity crisis - people increasingly struggle to trust outcomes. States that enshrine mail-in voting (universal or expanded) entrench a process that the rest of the world views as highly susceptible to corruption and cheating, making elections less secure. The model in those states is to ensure the side that can best harvest ballots never have a low turnout election. At the core of election corruption is the voter roll. Studies and reveals have pointed out fraudulent (dead, moved, non-citizen, illegal, fake) in red and blue states, and they get worse with Auto Voter Registration (24 states). We have been operating elections like this, with bad rolls, for decades, well back into the middle of the 20th century. Combined with mail in balloting states they provide a never ending stockpile of harvestable ballots (see CA or WA). Texas reported 267,000 mail ballots on 10 million total. Not enough to change the outcomes. Therefore, if Texas (or SC, MS, KS, IA, etc) have election corruption as instrumental to outcomes this year, it is contained in the electronic election infrastructure (“the machines”). The failure to pursue election transparency/audits in elections that were won by GOP candidates, especially after 2024 when multiple senate seats tanked after Trump was declared the winner of those same states, has made it infinitely more difficult to pursue today. I spoke with a candidate who won his US House race in Texas yesterday, who is a big advocate of election integrity reforms, and told him he is in a position to call for an audit of his own race. He has skin in the game and isn’t able to be branded with the “sore loser” label. I will be pressing him on this and there are several other candidates who can be approached on it if you know them personally. But time is of the essence. There will be people who read this who think I suddenly think elections are fair, or worthy of public trust. I didn’t think that after 2024 and wrote an entire compendium of findings from 2020/24 changes, analyzing the laws of the various states and the impacts on vote counts. Elections in this country are full of holes no matter which party wins them, and the failure to accept that presents a major operational hurdle for when your desired candidates aren’t called the winners. There will also be those who read this and assume I’m doing something other than point out the fact that we must do things differently this time if we want the answers we need. The president has briefed the nation on foreign efforts (and successes) in breaching databases and people who know a lot more about the electronic infrastructure have highlighted the issues with systems in use across the country. Without primitive election systems in place and voter rolls not filled with bad entries, we will forever be in this same position - incapable of verifying election outcomes. My relative restraint on this topic this year is based more on the lessons learned in seeking transparency than it is any belief that we have secure elections people should trust instinctively. Candidates who won races are the only ones in a functional position to drive scrutiny into the 2026 midterms, and for exactly this reason I believe NC was the best target for a 2020 audit. I hope this clears the air. Elections in America are no more trustworthy than they were 6 years ago. The only difference is that 6 years worth of case studies suggest different tactics must be used to compel the necessary transparency, and it is much more difficult than it would be from the perspective of winner.