Dakota Beacon

Election integrity is in far better hands with citizens like Lydia Gissele of North Dakota, than with members of Congress.  If you doubt this, read on.

All of a sudden the Democrats have discovered the Constitution!  Unfortunately, only parts of it though.  

Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD) has pronounced the verdict on Trump’s next term as President - DOA, should he be elected in November.  After minute perusal of the Constitution to attempt to back up any illicit effort to prevent a person elected to the office by the people, should said person not be to Raskin or Democrats’ liking, he lit upon a post-Civil War amendment, the 14th, long used by anti-American legislators to erode the idea of American citizenship by attempting to extend the vote to non-citizens, he got out his magnifying glass and looked some more.  Aha! He struck what he regards as gold.  Section 3, Amendment 14, which states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Raskin proposes that Congress will not certify the election of Donald Trump.  The case he is trying to make, of course, is the old chestnut that Trump is an “insurrectionist”.  There are a couple of problems with this tactic, however, which Raskin has overlooked or simply hopes we will overlook.  This involves the rest of the Amendments, such as the 5th Amendment.  This states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.  (Italics supplied)

Trump has not been convicted or indicted on any charge of insurrection.  Unless this happens very quickly, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has no bearing whatsoever on Donald Trump.  But then, the 5th Amendment, like the 2nd, is not a favorite with the Democrat hierarchy.  

Now, should Congress elect to disregard the 5th Amendment, rendering the entire Constitution null and void, there is another unindicted insurrectionist in the race.  Kamala Harris, acting as an accessory after the fact, has been and continues to be raising funds for the release of those involved in the actual insurrection of 2020 - the burning down of America, through her Minnesota Freedom Fund.  Nice name for an accessory to arson and mayhem.  Perhaps if Congress follows the suggestion of Mr. Raskin, there would be no one certified President-Elect in 2024.  

It is certainly arguable that there was an on-going insurrection where buildings - businesses, public buildings, even police stations - were burned to the ground and citizens terrorized by bands of roaming BLM and Antifa thugs.  These are the criminals Kamala Harris wants released to ply their trade again.  Those who went through that hell and the survivors who lost businesses and are now expected to pay for restoration of the cities under the added burden of increased insurance costs to cover these horrendous losses, might well consider those events an insurrection.  In contrast, nothing was torn down or burned down in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, and the only person who was shot was Trump rally attendee and supporter, Ashli Babbitt.  Babbitt was, as we all know, a 12-year United States Air Force Veteran, deployed in her country’s defense no fewer than eight times.  She committed no crime beyond the possible charge of “trespass”, in that she entered the Capitol building through a previously broken window, unarmed.  She was shot in cold blood by an officer of the Capitol Police, Lieutenant Michael Byrd.  It has come to light since that many of the so-called “insurrectionists” were in fact federal employees - plants, in other words.  On the other hand, where you burn down a police precinct facility, a public building for law enforcement, this comes way closer to “insurrection” than anything that happened in Washington on January 6, and this is what Harris defends.

Most insurrections - at least those in the modern era - involve the use of firearms as well as arson, unless they are a palace coup.  The incidents throughout the summer of 2020, which Harris champions, certainly did.  The event that took place on January 6, 2021, certainly did not, at least insofar as the rally attendees and Trump supporters were concerned.  Those mainly involved Trump hats and Gadsden flags.  If I were Raskin I think I would tread carefully there.  

Finally, we need to step back and look at just what Raskin proposes from the standpoint of “insurrection”.  What he suggests, inasmuch as it involves the rejection of the vote of the people, is almost exactly what he has termed an “insurrection” as on January 6, 2021.  There is one exception to that comparison, however, and that is that while in 2021, at least one state with enough electoral votes to change the outcome requested that the vote NOT be certified until there had been time to investigate and have a recount.  This was not the demand of the rally-goers, but the request of state officials in Wisconsin.  Had this request been granted there might have been a slight delay in the certification, but the result would have been clarified as to Wisconsin.  It might have made no difference or it might have made a considerable difference.  

(As to charges of “false electors”, anyone who has been educated in our electoral system knows there are two slates of “electors” - one for each party - which cast the actual electoral votes.  The so-called “false electors” would have been legitimate Trump electors had the popular vote in Wisconsin supported Trump, just as the other slate, the Democrat slate, was regarded as “legitimate” to cast the Wisconsin votes for Biden.)  

It could well be said that Pence led an insurrection by failing to honor Wisconsin’s request for clarification of that state’s vote, and the rest of the members of the Senate who concurred were complicit in this insurrection.  

It would be constructive at this point to drop the “insurrection” nonsense altogether - for both sides.  I have been very critical of those who have supported Trump’s candidacy this time out of their devotion to the allegedly stolen election because he did nothing to address the problem of that year’s voting.  He, in fact, contributed hugely to it, as he has to most of his other problems, in that case by rushing through a bill to allow voting by mail, which greased the wheels for the steal.  Since then he has done nothing to address the myriad election fraud issues (unlike Governor DeSantis, for instance).  Trump could have gone to every state in the Union over the past four years, helping to draw attention to the problems in each respective state, had he wished to deal with election fraud.  He could have met with anyone interested in reform in each state and helped them to find solutions, or at least brought light to the problems.  Instead he did nothing to address it.  And unlike Harris, he has basically ignored those who went to jail for legally assembling in Washington on January 6.  A multi-billionaire himself, he hasn’t even bothered to contribute, much less promote, a “Freedom Fund” for his own supporters, so in this regard he is far more detached than Harris.  

As intriguing as it is to burrow into the intricacies of various scenarios and “what might have been” with regard to the incidents of January 6, and the events which led to it, it would seem time now, with America in rapid economic decline, in the midst of an unwanted and ill-conceived foreign war, with our border in complete shambles and drugs and homelessness in our face in every city, that we should now focus on solving the problems of the present and forget palace intrigues to manipulate our elections, whether by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris against Biden or by devious schemes of the small likes of Jamie Raskin against Trump.  

It is time to look at the emergencies we face now, and, as Trump did not exemplify himself, begin to clean up the election process.  As is usually the case, simpler is better and less corruptible.  We need to quit trying to play with the process and tinker with the outcome and instead go to all paper ballots, hand-counted, signed off on at each precinct by all parties’ election judges and sealed with wax and turned in to the County Clerk and then to the Secretary of State in each state.  It used to work pretty well.  The worst cases would be stuffed ballot boxes.  No electronics should be allowed, no high-tech pencil reading - just plain old ballot counting by plain people.  In the open, with anyone who wishes as witness.  No more secrets, no more machines, no hanging chads or pens that can’t be read by scanners, no mail-in ballots, no harvesting of ballots.  Just one election day, with the exception of individually applied-for and approved absentee ballots.  

Although DeSantis effected some significant improvements in Florida - eliminating mail-in voting, cleaning up the poll books (canceling dead and otherwise illegal “voters”), for example, through his state’s legislature, other people as individuals can make a difference.  In North Dakota, Lt. Governor Independent candidate Lydia Gessele as a private citizen mounted an initiative for election reform which would have eliminated voting machines altogether - an inspired and logical response to the 2020 fiasco, and one of lasting benefit to her state.  Sadly, the requisite number of signatures were not presented by the deadline to get this measure on the November ballot.  This is a shame, but should not deter us from taking every opportunity as individual citizens to take action - legal and productive action - to clean up this mess.  We obviously can’t wait for the likes of Congressman Jamie Raskin to act constructively. 

This should never be a partisan issue.  Our elections and their integrity is all that separates us from pure tyranny.  It is in everyone’s interest to address this.  Perhaps in North Dakota it was seen as something we could let “George” do, perhaps those who felt Trump’s election was stolen thought it would be enough to “ride or die” with his candidacy this year and “fix it” that way - which would do nothing to fix it, of course.  This is a serious issue, one which Trump and those who felt he and his voters were robbed needed to get down to work on immediately following the certification in 2021.  Instead we had a lot of fist-shaking and snarling about fraud and nothing done about it, save for people like Gessele and DeSantis - both of whom seem to have been ignored by the very people who should be enthusiastically and energetically supporting them.  It is a sad commentary on the people of the United States.  They have become weak and lazy in their presumed freedom and prosperity, seemingly unaware that it can be taken from them in the blink of an eye.  

In conversation with Ms Gissele, I learned that although the initiative measure for election integrity won’t be on the November ballot, it has a very good chance of being on the ballot in the June 6 primary in North Dakota.  Signatures are still being collected - a mere 10,000 more could do the trick, although more would be a better cushion.  Gissele said that the final cut-off under North Dakota law is September 27 of this year.  So although delayed, the measure is still alive.

If Donald Trump were worth his salt, in this writer’s view, he would have had Gissele as his guest of honor at the Republican Convention and told every American to do the same as she is doing and listed her many accomplishments in citizen activism in her state.  Instead we got to hear more about him “taking a bullet”, and nothing about election reform from anyone.  A real leader would have been more forward-looking.

Only people like Raskin seem to be interested in the election process at all, and he seems more engaged in thwarting it than in protecting it.  But - there you go.  Decisions are made by those who stick around and make them, not by those who simply sit back with clicker in hand, surfing channels and whining about “stolen elections”.  

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