According to President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, it is now a federal crime to prevent illegal ballots in presidential elections.

Barely 30 days before the 2024 election, the Justice Department sued the state of Virginia to prohibit its removal of the names of noncitizens from voting rolls. //

The Virginia lawsuit is simply the latest in Democrats’ long war against honest voting, which began with the Clinton administration’s Motor Voter Act. That 1993 law mandated voter registration in every welfare and food-stamp office in the nation. Brent Thompson, executive director of the Fair Government Foundation, observed in 1996, “The Motor Voter law did away with a panoply of anti-fraud mechanisms long relied on by the states to police and deter fraudulent voting.”

In 2015, the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton condemned voter identification requirements as part of a “sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people.” //

But the panic induced by Covid-19 enabled politicians to radically loosen the rules for the next presidential election. Many states made it easier—if not automatic—to vote by mail, even though a 2012 New York Times analysis concluded that “fraud in voting by mail is… vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention.” Some states abandoned any effort to verify mail ballots, dropping requirements for matching signatures, return addresses, or having a witness verify the person and the vote. Civil Rights Commissioner J. Christian Adams noted that “Democrats succeeded in tossing out state laws related to absentee ballot verification, deadlines and a whole range of laws all in the name of Covid.” //

A week after Election Day, the New York Times ran a banner headline across the top of the front page: “Election Officials Nationwide Find No Fraud.” How did the Times know? Their reporters basically called election officials in each state and asked, “Did y’all have any fraud?” A total lack of fraud in an election with more than 100 million voters would have required divine intervention to achieve. Biden’s 2020 victory became the election equivalent of the Immaculate Conception. //

Preventing bogus ballots should not be treated like a moral or theological issue. When did verifying votes become a crime against democracy? Why is the Justice Department crusading to turn voting into an entitlement program for non-citizens? Do Democrats seek to make the actual voting as fraud-ridden as politicians’ campaign promises? Elections need rigorous safeguards against fraud because, as Thomas Paine warned long ago, “the trade of governing has always been monopolized by… the most rascally individuals of mankind.” Four presidential elections since 2000 have been heavily tainted by allegations of foul play. American democracy has zero legitimacy to spare at this point.