On Nov. 8, a fraudulent election was held. Right here in this district, right here where you are sitting now — a total and utter failure of democracy. A clear message from the political elite, your vote does not matter.
I don’t mean to suggest evil Marxists or Russians stole the election, but simply that there was no election and that the outcome was determined long ago by a system that has no interest in competitive elections. An establishment that draws lines and makes maps to benefit their party. This is called redistricting.
Redistricting happens in all 50 states, New Jersey has a partisan redistricting commission. It’s composed of six Democrats and six Republicans who meet to decide how the maps will be drawn, and therefore which party your vote should benefit most. Unsurprisingly, the Democrats and Republicans deadlocked 6-6. So, the state Supreme Court appointed a tie-breaker, John Wallace Jr., former state Supreme Court justice and registered Democrat.
According to him, Wallace picked the map put forward by the Democrats for one simple reason. “In the end, I decided to vote with the Democratic map simply because, in the last redistricting, the map was drawn by Republicans,” said the tie-breaker.
Knowing this, we see the problem here. Your vote is not a prize to be won, but a stock option, a commodity to be bought and sold. They have defrauded you of your vote, rigged the election and announced loud and clear to the politically advantaged that your vote does not matter.
It is obvious Democratic redistricting fixed the election here if we look at the facts. In 2020, Representative Mikie Sherill (D-NJ 11th district) campaigned hard and the election was competitive. She held her own 10 events where the public could directly interact with her before the 2020 election. After 2021 redistricting, she held zero from October to the election. Her website doesn’t even have information on her events, because she doesn’t host any. Of course, candidates go to events quite often. Sherill attended one here in late august, but the quality has shifted dramatically since the New Jersey maps have been drawn in her favor.
Unfortunately, the Republicans have done no better here. Sherill’s challenger is Paul DeGroot, who’s only held five events, the last of which was on Oct. 27. The outcome on Nov. 8 was fixed, whichever candidate had a ‘D’ next to their name was certainly winning.
Republicans also do their own rigging. Republicans have used “surgical precision” to disenfranchise minorities in North Carolina and Texas has by far mastered the art of the gerrymander.
Of Texas’ 38 House elections — only one is competitive. Gerrymandering can be done in two ways. Cracking spreads thin like-minded voters across multiple districts. With their voting strength divided, these groups can’t elect their preferred candidate. Packing, conversely, crams groups of voters into as few districts as possible, while the packed groups are likely to elect their preferred candidates, they can’t elsewhere.
Republicans have essentially fixed 37 elections, 24 for the Republicans and 13 for the Democrats, leaving just one election for the voters to decide. The biggest theft, the massive fraud in this country, the big rig, is happening right in front of our eyes.
You can think of it like a carnival game where the conditions are so “rigged” that you have no meaningful chance of winning, the fraud is in pretending that you could win. There’s no doubt that we are a democracy and our elections are real, but in most elections, the outcome is determined before voters reach the ballot box.
Out of the 435 House elections on Nov. 8, only 64 were “real” and did more than whether the candidate had a D or R next to their name matter.
It’s about time we take back these words. Fraud, theft and rigging.
We shouldn’t be so coy as to let former president Donald J. Trump get away with abusing the terms. Trump lost fair and square, and so have we.
The greatest theft of all time is happening in front of your eyes. It’s time we rage against rigged and fraudulent elections, the machine that keeps us in the dark and most importantly, those that abuse their power. And take the first step to fixing a problem, knowing it exists.
