Excellent piece, Laura. Thank you. Thanks for posting, Nicholas.
Sara Sent from my iPhone > On May 10, 2022, at 6:50 PM, Nicholas Ribush <nickrib...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > ICYMI! Laura Berland's piece appeared in yesterday's Lincoln Squirrel (please > subscribe). > > Last Thursday a group hosted by Lincoln residents Tom and Edith Risser came > to Bemis Hall to make a presentation on “election integrity.” I decided to go > see what it was all about. > > Upon entering Bemis, a man who seemed to be involved in the logistics of the > event, upon seeing my mask, asked me if I was sick (not in a caring way). I > responded “No, and I’m trying to keep it that way,” to which he responded, > “Good luck with that.” Not off to a good start. Over the next few hours we > would hear a lot about our individual liberties being eroded, but I guess my > individual decision to protect myself from deadly disease is an affront to > others’ “liberty” and not worthy of respect. > > The first speaker spent a long time questioning the legitimacy of the voting > process in Massachusetts, deriding the evils of mail-in voting (haven’t > members of the military voted via mail for a long time?) and urging the > audience to oppose the implementation of permanent mail-in voting. She > suggested that many town clerks across the Commonwealth are hiding something, > although it wasn’t clear exactly what they are hiding. The speaker reported > that one clerk told her “she had seen things.” The speaker didn’t share what > those “things” were. She also took issue with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla > Chan’s well-documented grants across the country for voting logistics in > 2020. Zuckerberg is a name that can certainly rile folks up. > > The second speaker suggested nefarious things were going on in Rhode Island, > particularly at universities. We saw lots of charts and slides and heard lots > of phrases like “this raises questions” and “this is interesting” and “we’re > not making any accusations, but we really need to look into this.” > > What we weren’t shown was any actual evidence of voter fraud. No reams of > ballots that demonstrated that dead people voted, or people voted in more > than one place or that voting machines were manipulated. There was no > explanation of how their claims of voter fraud squared with the results from > Cyber Ninjas, the company hired by the Arizona GOP-led Senate to carry out > the audit (and which received roughly $6 million in donations from Trump > supporters). Cyber Ninja issued results showing that Biden should have been > credited with 99 more votes and Trump’s total was improperly inflated by 261 > ballots. > > The third speaker revealed what seemed to be the underlying objective of this > exercise when the Biden bashing started. These folks clearly were not happy > with the results of the 2020 election. Well, I didn’t like the results of the > 2016 election, but I didn’t question the vote tally. The third speaker told > us that because he saw 55,000 people at a Trump rally the night before the > election (and he assured us that he knew what 55,000 people looked like), > that there was no way Trump could have lost fair and square. > > By this time, I was worn down with fatigue, so I departed, thereby missing > the star attraction of the evening — a man dressed up in full Revolutionary > War garb. This guy looked impressive, tall, and commanding, but I was pretty > sure I wasn’t going to be getting any new information. I was beginning to > think this all fell into the realm of theater. I love theater but not theater > pretending to be something else. > > When I go in to cast my vote in Lincoln, I’m always impressed by the > organized process and how confident I feel in our voting system. We all want > our elections to be fraud-free and fair, but if you can’t point to an actual > problem, then there’s no fix to be made. Simply undermining confidence in the > voting process by suggesting that nefarious things are going on is a danger > to our democracy and, to that extent, we should pay attention to this effort. > > -- > The LincolnTalk mailing list. > To post, send mail to Lincoln@lincolntalk.org. > Search the archives at http://lincoln.2330058.n4.nabble.com/. > Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. > Change your subscription settings at > https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln. >
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