Voting and Counting

Steyn on the Oakley Show
November 15, 2018

https://www.steynonline.com/9001/voting-and-counting

On Wednesday afternoon, I kept my midweek date with John Oakley on Toronto's Global News Radio 640. First up was an unusually raw political memoir, after which we moved on to Florida recounts and more. Click below to listen:

For that brave band who prefer me in vision, tonight, Thursday, I'll be with Tucker Carlson south of the border at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific - and right here, just ahead of that, in audio only with the next episode of our nightly radio serial The Scarlet Pimpernel.

For those Ontario listeners who enjoy my visits to the Oakley show, we hope to see a few of you at my forthcoming stage appearances with the great Dennis Miller in western New York and Pennsylvania. We know at least one Montrealer coming to the Rochester show, but, if you're anywhere along the QEW, it's a lot closer. And Kingston (or even Ottawa) isn't that inconvenient for the Miller/Steyn Syracuse gig.

The Mark Steyn Club is now well into its second year, and, if you're finally getting round to maybe perhaps possibly considering becoming a member, please see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership, or our second Steyn Club cruise, setting sail on September 4th next year. We are grateful for the support of all our friends around the world - from London, Ontario to London, England, to London, Kiribati - and look forward to welcoming many more in the months ahead.

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17 Reader Comments

chickensoup • Nov 16, 2018 at 08:11

I cry as I watch my country slowly disintegrate into a fascist totalitarian repressive regime with the help of the oligarchs, the mega corporations and the education establishment. The political class has shown their hand and many need to be removed. Our youth are enervated by their handcuffs to the media, and the populace carries their chains in their pockets, staring at the little screens of diversion and ultimately, their jailers.

I am currently reading The Saboteur about the French Resistance. It seems to be a handbook into the future.

P. Gao

chickensoup • Nov 20, 2018 at 00:11

Well, in 45 days, according to President Trump's Executive Order, the DNI and DHS have to submit a report on whether they found any foreign interference in the election. That might get veerrry interesting in say, Arizona.
45 days from the election will be 21 December - winter solstice, when the lengthening of darkness at last stops, to enter the new period of increasing light.

chickensoup

P. Gao • Nov 20, 2018 at 08:04

Well, let us hope for more light, less darkness and to fight the good fight and hold the line.

Brian Buehler • Nov 16, 2018 at 01:11

Who are we kidding, the people who run the voting stations have bias. Who knows if the results of any election in any county is legit or not? Doesn't matter apparently since they can just produce thousands of votes from out of the blue. Soon, they'll allow migrants that have yet to enter the right to vote. In the end we all take it because nothing happens. The same people who say they'll change don't and the same thing happens. Can't even trust machines since the tech companies are run by libs too.

Owen Morgan • Nov 15, 2018 at 17:00

When postal voting was vastly expanded in the UK, by the then Labour government, it was blindingly obvious that the change was politically motivated and executed not only in full knowledge of the risks to the integrity of the system, but with the absolute expectation that the risks would be exploited. In every way, the extension of postal voting was designed to be compromised. The measure was plainly aimed very much at a specific segment of the population: not naming names, but a culture which is decidedly male-dominated, in which the women don't get out much and often can't communicate in English. The paterfamilias takes all the forms and fills them in himself and nobody bats an eyelid that every voter in the household votes the same way and shares the same handwriting. That's if the voting forms arrive in the first place, of course, since they are sent out in readily identifiable envelopes, easily intercepted.

Within no time (surprise, surprise) the system was being abused, with barely any repercussions for the abusers, but that was the whole idea, all along.

Ray Winchester

Owen Morgan • Nov 16, 2018 at 17:54

You can actually say Muslim areas on here.
You can actually say 50% of Pakistani (British) men are unemployed and 66% of the women.
The imams decide who is voted in.
Thankfully this a US site and they do have free speech, probably down to people like Mark and definitely Trump.
You are correct and there were no prosecutions that I know about in London for the voting abuse.
But it is UK wide.
Like the grooming gangs, our career politicians are weak and cowards.
Like today 6 got convicted from Rotherham and one of the children said she got raped by over a hundred British Pakistanis by the time she 16.
These people are NOT British.

Babs from Cali • Nov 15, 2018 at 16:07

I'm so sick of politics now I've decided not to watch TV any more and just delete everything I see on FB and everywhere else. Have elected officials and others given the responsibility to be fair, unbiased and honorable always been this corrupt or am I just seeing it for the first time? My belief that America is the one country where law and order are upheld across the land has been crushed. It's not just a matter of laws being broken over and over again, nothing happens to the lawbreakers, so they keep doing it and getting away with it. And every time they get more emboldened. I'm just sick to my stomach. We have literally become a banana republic and corruption reigns supreme. No one's going to go to prison or even be arrested, I'm betting. (Except for the creepy porn lawyer - maybe, maybe not.)

Fran Lavery

Babs from Cali • Nov 15, 2018 at 21:30

Sure, it's just like banana republic stuff and just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse. The idiots who run the elections in these counties that can't get their act together seem to know only one way to win elections. You and me both thought we were an exceptional country above this corruption, or at least had the possibility to right past mistakes. Guess it's our side's turn to wake up to the nightmares now. Except our side restrains itself and doesn't take to the streets and private property with baseball bats. What i've always thought is that the Left can't be allowed to win any more elections because they screw things up so badly. Not that the Republican leadership helped us advance our priority causes the last two years, but there's degrees of insults to the voters.

Brian Buehler

Babs from Cali • Nov 15, 2018 at 23:07

I'm with you. The fight is there in the left and seemingly there is none on our side. Our officials say the right things to us but when push came to shove, self preservation is priority one. Just as the swamp exists in D.C., so does it in the media, in academia, and in Wall Street. They all look out for each other and don't care about our opinions. They give us their opinions and tell us to believe it because we're all incapable and unqualified to have our own opinions. And for each and every time we elect the ones we want, we don't make sure they're doing their job and just trust them, a big mistake on our parts. Trump may have been a ray of hope for us conservatives but in a world of increasing darkness, it'll take more than one ray to guide us out. MLK told his people to show restraint just like our base is saying in response to the mob and we all know what happened to him. I worry about the price that will be paid in our fight. The anger and frustration that I have for what the left gets away with has gone gets unnoticed and Mark said it that once the people think that their voice doesn't matter, well, the alternative to the status quo isn't pretty.

Brian Buehler

Babs from Cali • Nov 16, 2018 at 01:03

I agree. Evil will always triumph when good people do nothing. That is what is happening in our country and around Europe. Things we would condemn are now the norm or all we do is condemn and that's the end of it. Nothing changes, things get worse. and we make excuses for why we shouldn't try to fix it. How can we be anything but angry. Laws only matter to those who are ashamed of breaking them and no one is ashamed anymore because no one cares and someone will fight for them because they're victims of the system, our system. Promises Made, Promises Kept may work with some things but this issue isn't one that's going to be fixed any time soon.

Fran Lavery • Nov 15, 2018 at 12:39

Our (R) US Congressman hopeful Yvette Herrell who appeared on Judge Jeanine's show last week is seeking to get the absentee ballots impounded that have been pouring in mostly "D" since Election Day.

It pays to write to these candidates about the freaky things one witnesses in the election office over at the county clerks office two weeks before Election Day, like watching an English speaker translate to an elderly Spanish speaker with hands fumbling with questionable looking IDs with addresses scribbled on getting the
voters registration card explained line by line. Sure, it proves nothing, gramps could be in from Zacatecas, Mexico for the weekend. Who knows?

But connect the dots and what do you get? A Democratic win by a few thousand votes the day after the election was supposedly decided in the Republican favor? How does that happen exactly? And the electorate has a right to know how it can happen or they lose total faith in the system.

David Watson

Fran Lavery • Nov 15, 2018 at 16:17

The solution is to change the minds of the half of the voters who make elections close enough that cheating pays. That half is seeking a dream that has never worked because it defies human nature. Many of them are kind and generous, but they're ignorant of the way things work in the real world. Our society is blindly tolerating the stark polarization that can only lead to violence -- or change.

Part of the solution is better education. Those who want a better world can learn better ways than hoping everyone else will feel as they do -- which ain't gonna happen. But we'll always have a segment of ignorant people. Successful societies try to minimize them. We currently have way too many. The education system has failed America while advancing the people seeking power by undermining American traditions.

The most effective way to deal with ignorant people is better marketing. Dumb people are easily led, and currently the better leaders are those who seek the power of totalitarian societies, which are always based on lots of dumb and timid people. If conservative, free market, self reliant people want to prevail, the only way is to convince the hopeful socialists of the better way. They're currently losing, or holding on by threads, and mostly inept at salvaging their leadership or themselves.

The only alternatives to victory are submission or violence. Many are hopeful for victory, while prepared for the conflict, but expecting the capitulation of our rulers and neighbors. Submission seems easier to many than traditional standards. But conflict between Americans will be overwhelmed by invasions by foreigners. If we allow the Mexican invaders, then muslims, Russians and Chinese will certainly follow. A balkanized America with warring fiefdoms is our likely future. All other countries prefer it, and will support it, since it diminishes American influence and wealth, leaving more of both for others. Difficult times ahead seems likely.

Fran Lavery

David Watson • Nov 15, 2018 at 22:26

In so many areas, we're failing. Changing education is a must do. Everything pivots on the students learning, and more than just learning, getting excited about our history. Small tweaks in the system would create a sea change of positive results. Bring back phonics! It worked. Bring back rote memorization. It worked. Bring back grammar. If children in elementary school are being promoted when they can't read and write, we are failing them and dooming them to a miserable economic future. If a racist society is not what we want, why not start right there? Give all the children the possibility of learning those things that excite them and what they don't get in curriculums, those things that fire their imagination!

Trump is the first person that I see come along in three decades or so who really is making noticeable changes. There's only so much one person can do and as many have commented here before, it's rather stunning what he has been able to accomplish with such little support even from his own side and the relentless combative Left. We'll get some judicial appointments since we kept the Senate, regardless of how Florida goes or how the Mississippi run-off goes. We picked up Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota which gives a net one, because we lost Arizona and Nevada. If we get Scott in Florida and the Mississippi candidate who took up Cochran's seat we would have a cushion but with Pence able to break a tie we'll still be okay, if, a big If, we could rely on Collins and Murkowski. Making solid judicial appointments is key to saving our Republic especially with so much unrest and anxiety in the air.

Steven Payne

Fran Lavery • Nov 16, 2018 at 03:02

Fran, both you and David point to education or changes thereof as a big part of the answer. Good luck with that. Oh, education is changing all the time, changing for the worse. I'm not sure what you mean by starting with a racist society, but that's the last thing we need -- even more education about racism. Listen to Lyndsey Shepherd's full encounter with those "educators" at Wilfrid Laurier University and tell me we need more of that.
And David, while a better education is indeed highly desirable, remember that, if only the highly educated votes had counted, Hillary Clinton would be president now. The segment you refer to as "ignorant" may be our only hope.

Fran Lavery

Steven Payne • Nov 16, 2018 at 10:39

No, no, no, no, not what I was saying, Steven. I didn't mean start with a racist society there, but what would transport us light years away from racism being used to describe our western societies, or "racist," or worse epithets being tossed out willy nilly, as even being acceptable in discourse would be to teach children very early how to read and write. How simple a concept is that! We used to do that.

The current trend of social promotion without the required basic skills in plain English, or whatever their first language, is not helping us or the children. Testing for weeks in the schools is killing the desire to want to learn. Maybe learning is not even taking place anymore in our schools. Is there time with the indoctrination going on? Who knows? I'm not in the schools but base my thoughts on hearsay from parents of the school-aged and other concerned citizens. Today's malcontents need victims to spearhead their mission to divide and destroy us. Eliminate the victims and the spearhead will be blunted.

The greater generations preceding us had less advantages and were higher achievers. We don't talk about our parents or grandparents who had to leave grade school in the early part of the last century to earn some bread money as victims, we talk about them as overcomers. Education should be the equalizer is what I was trying to communicate, instead it's the beast we feed that is destroying us from within, not to mention that we're wasting valuable time and talents. You know this, we all know this. How to prompt internal changes in the schools, that's the problem.

Right from the get go, it would remove victimhood if children can grab a book and read what is appealing. It would break down barriers if people can communicate properly. Divisions between economic classes would be mitigated if wealth or skin tone wasn't the deciding factor on who comes out on top but who has the most searing thoughts and penetrating communication skills. That's why we gravitate to people like Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson, Jordan Peterson and all the rest of our favorite speakers and thinkers.

It really is a wonder we've lasted as long as we have since things started unraveling in education. Thank the Progressives. Wouldn't it be refreshing if people across the country were glued for an hour or two to networks providing 24/7 coverage of great debaters discussing pros and and cons of great ideas instead of nincompoops spouting off around the clock?

Fran Lavery

Fran Lavery • Nov 16, 2018 at 12:01

P3: Correction: fewer advantages (or less of an advantage).

Joseph Dornisch • Nov 15, 2018 at 11:03

... And you say we don't need 4 months after the election to when the new government actually assumes power. You're obviously wrong, how is Broward county supposed to discover enough votes to control all the statewide elections in Florida in a mere 4 months. Apparently Arizona and some other states are taking notes from Florida on how to conduct elections.