We should never forget how we felt in the days after November 3, 2020.  Donald Trump’s sizeable Election Night lead mysteriously disappeared while we slept, and then...silence.  A surreal quiet followed in the days after the election.  There was little of the usual back-and-forth of the talking heads, no real argument about whether there had been fraud — just an eerie quiet that pervaded the political class, Silicon Valley, and corporate America.  Nothing to see here!  The most secure election in U.S. history!

Then in February 2021, Molly Ball wrote in Time magazine what we had surmised: we had been witness to election theft.  All the actors had a part to play.  In August, Hillary publicly set the stage by cautioning that Joe Biden should not concede on Election Night, that it might take days for things to play out.  Social media did their part by quashing dissent, declaring that claims of fraud were misinformation.  Corporate America congratulated the new president.  The Supreme Court inexplicably saw no reason to weigh in on the matter.  We had been saved by the left and the NeverTrumps from four more years of the orange Nazi in the White House.  As Ball famously wrote:

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream — a well funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information.  They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.

In the aftermath, many brave and intelligent people have stepped in to dissect how the theft was carried out.  Suddenly, people like Patrick Byrne, Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, Russ Ramsland, and Dr. Douglas Frank have become household names, among many others.  And there are scores of nameless, faceless mathematicians, data scientists, and cyber-security professionals who have spent countless hours demonstrating the improbability of the results and discovering the mechanisms of the fraud.  State legislatures have begun bolstering their election laws, and groups large and small have dedicated themselves to the cause of election integrity.  The interest of the American public in ensuring that elections are open and fair is at an all-time high.

The problem is, as is typical of conservatives, that these individuals and groups are not coordinating their efforts.  Because the right does not possess the hive mind of the left, those interested in election integrity find themselves ten years behind those who have decided to win at any cost.

What is needed is leadership in the realm of election integrity.  It should be someone, whether it is a person or a group, who is willing to find and pull interested parties together — to act as a clearinghouse of information and a talent agency of sorts for experts in their respective fields.  That person must possess enough clout to be listened to and a thick Rolodex of contacts.  This must not be overt or public, lest they be just another target of the left.  It should be done quietly and behind the scenes.

There needs to be agreement on the path forward, with ideas how to prevent future fraud coalescing around some central tenets, clearly communicated.  Black box voting machines, with their closed-source software, must be replaced with open-source machines.  New technology like the blockchain should be investigated.  Paper ballots, with thumbprint authentication for absentee ballots should be used.  Requirements for states to maintain voter list hygiene by coordinating their databases with other states should be mandated.  The public needs to be educated that Canada, Mexico, and most of Europe have a national voter ID card.  There has to be consistent, concise messaging from everyone on the side of election integrity and our political leaders.

All of this requires a willingness to coordinate and an ability to effectively communicate.  It is a herculean task.  Now is the time not for ego or internecine quarrels, but rather for bold leadership on the most important issue of our time.

The left has demonstrated how a well orchestrated, flawlessly executed effort can result in the largest theft in American history.  Those on the side of restoring free, open, and fair elections need a cabal of their own to set things right.  Who will step forward?

Image: tom.arthur via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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