I would like to call once again for both sides to stop
using elections as a partisan weapon.
As I’ve mentioned before, the claim by some Trump
supporters that a certain brand of voting machine switched votes was lifted
entirely from the Democrats’ 2004 playbook.
And, President Trump’s questioning of his loss in Georgia
was simply following in the footsteps of the losing candidate for Governor two
years before. She lost by over 50,000 votes and has never even bothered to try
to prove voting irregularities on that scale.
Just ask Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger,
who got into hot water from Trump supporters and was briefly celebrated by
Democrats for defending the integrity of Georgia’s election. He’ll be the first
to tell you that attacks on Georgia’s election system started not with Trump,
but with Democrats.
Democrats decided to take their partisan election attacks
nationwide. This is what led to H.R. 1, the so-called “For the People Act.” The
title alone reveals it as a propaganda bill.
They didn’t take the time to draft something from scratch
since the purpose was partisan messaging not enacting thoughtful reforms.
They just cobbled together every election mandate bill
introduced by a Democrat in recent years into one giant package, taking little
care to make sure it all made sense together and without working with local
election officials to see if it was practical.
Democrats have now reframed the same bill as a response
what they call the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was illegitimate. But, it
was actually written in 2019 to double down on Democrats’ own “Big Lie”
questioning the legitimacy of elections they lost in 2018.
America’s elections are free and fair.
That’s true in Iowa, in Georgia, and all 50 states. It
was true in 2018 and in 2020, and I am confident it will be true in 2022.
Foreign adversaries like Russia and China cast doubt on
the soundness of our democratic system, both to weaken us from within and to
justify their own repressive regimes.
Influence efforts to do just that have been part of the
KGB playbook from the beginning.
But, foreign agents can’t hold a candle to what we
Americans are doing to ourselves.
Casting doubt on elections may be good politics in the
short run, but it does real damage in the long run.
