Clearly, fraud — i.e., removal of our votes or undermining the aggregate values of our votes — has taken place in this presidential election.  We see more mail-in ballots being counted in some places than were sent out.  We see vote totals for Joe Biden or Donald Trump being reported in decimal places rather than as whole numbers.  We see ballots being trucked into Pennsylvania from New York, and then the truck disappearing from its parking place.  We see batches of votes arriving at polling places in the middle of the night at polling places in battleground states that incredibly show 97% for Biden and 3% for Trump.

We have witnesses stating that some or many absentee ballots clearly were Xeroxed — i.e., had not been filled in by hand.  Also, we see an offensive video from Election Night in Georgia, where vote-tabulators and observers were told to go home at 10:30 pm because of a water main break.  But there was no water main break, and after they left, a group of four remained and pulled out large batches of votes in four parcels that were stored under a table.  Though everyone had been sent home, and counting was officially suspended until the following morning, they continued counting.  They look so nonchalant as they follow a path that seems to epitomize corruption.  The Georgia authorities subsequently feel no need to explain each of these actions — from sending people home to mis-stating the cause of sending people home to counting without observers present, and to finding ballots to count apparently hidden under a table.  The lack of detailed explanation while exonerating the actions seen on the tape itself increases our suspicion and disgust.

There are 19 bellwether counties in the country that have voted for the winner of every presidential election for 40 years.  Thus, there is a regular and reliable correlation between their voting expression and the president-elect of our country.  Yet in this election, 18 of those 19 counties cast the majority of their votes for President Trump.

President Trump had many rallies during the campaign that had between 20,000 and 40,000 people present.  Mr. Biden could barely muster a couple hundred at best.  Yet we are asked to believe that he received millions more votes than President Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012 — and millions more than Trump, who received five million more than he had in 2016, when he won his first term.  This defies a commonsense appreciation of reality.

Additionally, much has come to light about the Dominion voting machines that were used to vote and tabulate the votes in over 30 states.  How safe are their programs from interference by malignant forces?  Can they be accessed and influenced through the internet by individuals or malevolent players in world politics?  Did their software automatically set ratios favorable to Biden and adverse to Trump?  Did the political bias of the company's leadership translate into evil manipulation of the equipment — either nationally or in certain states? 

These questions have been raised, and this writer believes that they should have been raised long before the election.  In fact, certain Democrats had raised these questions a couple of years ago, but serious follow-up did not take place.  Now, when a multitude of voices, including myself, raise these same questions, the same Democrat legislators are silent.  These same individuals were silent when there were abominably offensive demonstrations (even in the U.S. Senate) against Justice Kavanaugh, and when there were violent demonstrations earlier this year in major cities following the death of George Floyd.  The inability to speak out against wrongdoing — extreme wrongdoing! — when it is in support of your side is a sure sign of lack of integrity.  The Democrat senators and representatives clearly lack integrity.  Thus, they are like the evil Macbeths in William Shakespeare's play by that name.  They will tolerate any evil to gain and to keep power.  But like in Macbeth, where the forces of good led by Macduff return to re-affirm legitimacy, the dark forces of the leftocracy operating in our land will be expelled from power and punished.

What are the moral and practical conclusions from understanding that the public in some fundamental sense has been betrayed?  The Ten Commandments tell us that it is wrong to steal.  Despite this command from Almighty God, theft remains an ever-present issue.  The very concept of theft implies the legitimacy of private property, which is why Karl Marx, following Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was an enemy of God, declaring religion to be the "opiate of the people."

"Private property" applies not only to things, but also to intangible aspects of reality and to behaviors.  Thus, particularly in our internet era, we see growing instances of identity theft.  People's names, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, and emails are taken over or re-directed for nefarious use by parties unknown to the individuals who are victims of this theft.

Likewise, our votes become a type of property, albeit non-physical.  While we must register to vote, the vote itself is submitted anonymously, thus being uniquely ours but having its strength or weakness only as it becomes part of the aggregate.  Thus, the stealing of a vote is an attack on our individual rights of ownership, yet it may feel abstract or remote at the same time in a way that having one's handbag ripped from one's arm does not.

Because of the partially remote dimension of our victimization — it does not intrude on our immediate well-being as ordinary property theft does — it becomes more difficult to know what to do, what our reaction should be, to rectify the wrongs that have occurred.  Yet we know that "as ye sow, so shall ye reap."  In the entire narrative of fraud, strangely missing are the names of real or possible fraudsters — those who either perpetrated this fraud or who stood by and acquiesced in its manifestation.  This omission of names is probably the most serious aspect of the entire process of certification and investigation.  The unwillingness to name names and to reveal the fraudsters has been the most serious problem, I think, with the post-election developments.  All those who neglected their duty, neglected to report those who neglected their duty, and passively went along to get along, like Macbeth, will feel the consequences of their lack of diligence and integrity.

Image: Tom Arthur via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.