Securing Our Elections

Is the notion that the 2020 election was likely stolen by the establishment a wild conspiracy theory or a well-reasoned conclusion? My view is that there is strong evidence that something was really wrong with the 2020 election and that its outcome likely changed as a result. Let’s remember that President Trump won 12 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. He won more votes than any sitting President in history. Yet, the guy who spends most of the campaign hiding in his basement is now President.

Let’s take a look at what the facts demonstrate:

1.) Several swing states used the pandemic as an excuse to illegally ignore their election laws in ways that made it easier for the Democrats to cheat. Whether they did cheat is open for debate. But the mass mailing of ballots, ballot harvesting by political operatives, and reduced signature verification requirements opened the system up to fraud like never before. Five of the states that ignored their own election laws swung from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020.

2.) The FBI, State Department, and other government agencies colluded with social media to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. Elon Musk has produced conclusive evidence of this. Polls show that this alone could have changed the outcome of the election.

3.) U.S. government agencies, the entire political establishment, and the mainstream media lied about everything from Russia's Collusion to a great job the Trump administration did with the COVID-19 pandemic. They did this to discredit him with American voters. It's one thing for political operatives to lie, it's quite another when government agencies get involved to help one side.

4.) Mark Zuckerberg donated over 400 MILLION DOLLARS to government election offices in Democrat strongholds across the country. In one instance, a special prosecutor found that this violated Wisconsin bribery laws.

It’s easy to conclude that the outcome of the election was certainly affected and likely changed by these events.

The Voting Machines Had Issues Too

There has been a lot of speculation about the role Dominion Voting Systems played in the 2020 election. I don’t want to rehash that here, because most of the speculation doesn’t have much if any basis in fact. But there were definitely technical issues with their voting machines that made them less than secure. For example, they hadn’t implemented the latest security software and best practices. Dominion used an older version of Windows (Windows 7) which has security vulnerabilities that were fixed in Windows 10 and 11. The machines are also not supposed to be connected to the Internet. But in 2017, the Department of Homeland Security found three dozen voting machines that were connected to the Internet. If they found three dozen, there were likely more. We also saw several instances of equipment failures in both the 2020 and 2022 elections.

How can we secure our elections in the future?

There are several ideas that, if implemented, would help secure our elections and restore trust in our system. Here are a few of the most important ones:

1.) Require Real ID to Vote

The U.S. Government is requiring Real ID to board a plane starting in May of 2025. Real ID both proves residency, like a driver’s license, and citizenship, like a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers. Requiring Real ID to vote will ensure that people who vote in an election are actually allowed to vote in that election. North Carolina voters tried to implement a voter id law, but it was blocked by a Democrat majority on the State Supreme Court. The new GOP majority on the court has agreed to rehear the case. Let’s hope that they side with the voters.

2.) Update Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act

Section 230 provides legal immunity for content posted on web platforms, with the understanding that these platforms don’t exercise editorial control over their content. We now know that platforms including Facebook, Google, and Twitter actually do exercise editorial control over the content posted on their sites. That makes them publishers, not content delivery platforms. The censorship of conservatives would end overnight if Section 230 were updated to only provide legal immunity if the platforms stop fact-checking, shadow-banning, and other forms of censorship. Of course, the platforms could still ban pornography which was the original intent behind the words “community standards” in the law.

3.) End Mass Mailing of Ballots

Washington was the first state to implement a 100% election-by-mail system. It took them years to work through the process. In 2020, several states tried to implement such a system overnight. The problems were predictable. For example, thousands of people who worked in tourism left Nevada when the casinos closed during the pandemic. How many were mailed ballots? What happened to those ballots? Did they get forwarded to out-of-state addresses? Did the people who moved out-of-state vote illegally? Or did Democrat ballot harvesters collect the ballots and fill them out themselves? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answers to these questions. To ensure these questions never arise in the future, a person should have to request a ballot and verify current residency, with their Real ID before receiving a ballot in the mail.

4.) Strengthen Election Interference Laws

Will anyone involved in censoring the Hunter Biden Laptop story be prosecuted, convicted, and jailed for election interference? Probably not. This is a huge problem especially when government agencies are involved. Laws relating to election interference need to be strengthened. They must also include real punishments, like imprisonment and steep fines.

5.) Secure the Voting Machines.

Voting machines should be based on open-source software, not proprietary software as is the case today. We need to see how the code registers, counts, and reports votes. Also, both political parties.

should be allowed to hire their own auditors to inspect the voting machines and software to ensure they meet modern security standards, are not connected to the Internet, and verify that they function properly and produce correct results.

Paper Ballots are not a panacea.

Many patriots believe that we need to go back to paper ballots to secure our elections. But anyone who has lived in a Democrat stronghold knows that it’s easy to cheat with paper ballots if you completely control the election process. A great example was the 2004 Gubernatorial election in Washington. The Republican candidate won the automated count. Then he won the manual recount. Then magically, they “found” uncounted mail-in ballots in Seattle, and the Democrat was declared the winner.

What can we do now?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about the declining level of trust in society. Nothing will destroy trust in our system faster than biased government officials running fraudulent elections. We must ensure the integrity of our elections if we are to survive as a peaceful, high-trust country. The first step is to get organized and agree on an agenda. Voter id is essential. The other ideas mentioned above are important too. And there may be more things that can be done. Then we need to get involved with our State Legislatures. Some things, like updating the Communication Decency Act can only be done at the federal level. So, engaging with our U.S. Senators and Congressmen is important too.

Our 230-year-old experiment with self-governance must not be allowed to end. But it will come to an end if we don’t act to stop the establishment from robbing us of our voices by stealing our elections. The time to act is now.

The Blankenburg Report

Eric Blankenburg

Eric is a husband, father of four, technology guy, U.S. Air Force veteran, and left coast refugee. He is a lifelong conservative and “disgruntled” Republican, who has sought ways to help the GOP live up to its values. When Eric is not working or spending time with his family, he likes to write about a variety of current issues. Eric is a regular writer for Liberty First Grassroots (LFG).