The Lord hates dishonest scales, but he is pleased with honest weights. -Proverbs 11:1
I don’t remember the context, but once while teaching my advanced world studies 9th graders–a class that included a survey of the major world religions–one fellow looked surprised and said, “I didn’t think God hated anything!”
The Book of Proverbs in the Bible was written between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago; that was a simple, farming age. Trade then in basic necessities like salt, grain, and spices required careful measurements by scales and balances, to be sure both the buyer and seller were getting a fair deal. Scales that were rigged or weighted would always benefit one party and cheat the other. No wonder the Bible says, “The Lord hates dishonest scales.” Academics have researched for years the crucial importance of basic honesty and trust, for a culture to survive and thrive. No one likes to be cheated, and if every day we are fearful of being cheated, we engage in less economic activity and the economy and culture suffer.
Fast forward to today. Our culture is riven–perilously–by disputes surrounding the Nov. 3 elections.
On one hand, we have those who believe basically: “Trump lost; he is a sore loser and thus not conceding; President-Elect Biden will lead us and the world into sweetness and light.” That is clearly the dominant narrative we hear from the mainstream media, Big Tech, and the Democrat Party. (Granted, those 3 are now hard to tell apart.) Since most of the “information gatekeepers” in our culture belong to one or more of the above groups, no wonder this is the “Party Line” many Americans are hearing 24/7 and thus believing.
On the other hand, there are countless tens of millions of Americans who dispute that conclusion. Many are convinced the Democrats tried to steal the election and we are now in the middle of a coup. Even for those not ready to go that far, we still see and hear many stories and allegations that are questionable and point to voter fraud.
A common question many fair-minded people of good faith have been asking: “Where is the concrete evidence?”
I am not a lawyer, but I have agreed and been asking that same question. For one thing, gathering evidence and witnesses takes time. We live in a “McDonald’s culture,” where many of us are used to getting what we want right away.
Now that we are a month after the election, evidence is coming in, but I am concerned: how much are people seeing it? How much are people understanding? Most seriously of all, how much do people care?
It is my understanding, as of now, hundreds of Americans have come forward and sworn under oath that they saw questionable or even illegal actions involving the elections. These written statements are called affidavits; they are legal documents, and lying on one is like lying verbally in a court. That crime is called perjury, which can land a person in prison for up to 5 years on a federal charge. (State charges can be on top of that.)
So, most people would not put their neck out and risk years in prison to put out false affidavits. Plus, if Biden does win, those people could expect a vindictive Democrat administration to hunt them down and lock them up. Therefore, I take their testimonials seriously, and I think we all should.
Most Americans my age remember the summer of 1973. We hated much of that summer, because all our favorite cartoons were not on TV. Instead, all the stations broadcast daily congressional hearings of the Watergate scandal. With great ire, we turned on the TV each day to see the same thing: old men in Congress shuffling papers and talking back and forth.
As children, we could be excused for not understanding; after all, we were only kids. But think what that says about American culture in 1973. Even soap operas and other daytime shows for adults were cut, to make way for the Watergate hearings. That tells me, most Americans (and the TV networks) then were willing to sacrifice favorite (and profitable) daytime shows, to air Congress’ hearings and know what was going on in the government.
Speaking of TV, today much of our culture has been dumbed down, as generations of us have been conditioned first to 30-minute sitcoms, and now, 30-second online videos. It’s hard for many of us to pay attention to anything for very long, and that’s killing us.
On Nov. 30, the Arizona State Legislature held open hearings where some of these witnesses who have signed affidavits testified. The hearings are 10 hours long; I have only heard snippets but want to hear it all. As I often say, “Don’t take my word for it”: watch the link below, or even just parts as time allows, and make up your own mind.
Because time and space are short, here I want to briefly mention a few testimonials from yesterday:
- Some voting machines in Arizona were left unsupervised for a week.
- A single person in a room of voting machines could quietly insert a jump-drive and change the algorithms of the machine. That is, it could change the vote count and outcome.
- A person anywhere online–”even in Nigeria”–could hack into the system and change the vote totals.
- A retired college professor of choral studies said she volunteered to be an election worker/observer “just for the experience” and “to help the country.” She now admits she was naïve, assuming that all players involved were in it to be honest, but she said over and over “I was very uncomfortable with what I saw and experienced.” Many times she was so far from the ballots, she could not see them at all. Countless other times she saw a ballot with a legible signature matched up with an envelope where the “signature” was only a mark or “chicken scratch.” In other words, those 2 documents could not have possibly belonged together, yet they were still counted as a “vote.” Several times she expressed her questions or unease to the voting supervisor, only to be told “just sit over there” or “don’t worry about it.”
- One poll supervisor said she saw a stranger in her precinct and spoke to him. He made a comment, “It sure is a lot hotter here than it is at home,” and when she asked him where he was from, he replied “Los Angeles.” When she asked him why a Californian was observing an Arizona precinct, he said, “This is a troublesome precinct and I’m here to flip it blue.” He told her that was his second precinct to “work” that day. He was wearing a certain kind of t-shirt and a few hours later another man with the same kind of t-shirt came in and into the area, so that gave her the impression this was some large, well-organized movement.
- A professional mathematician, Bobby Piton, claimed this about the voting data from Arizona: “I believe they’re fraudulent … assuming that the data that I got is accurate.” As punishment for his involvement in the public square and sharing his professional expertise about math, Twitter suspended Piton as he was giving his testimony. Don’t be fooled: Such censorship is a sign of tyranny. I addressed this threat more in my Nov. 30 column, “Why I kissed Twitter Good-bye.”
These are dire times. This is not about “Trump vs. Biden,” or “Red vs. Blue.” If we lose free, transparent elections, we lose everything. This is about free elections and free people, or fake elections and tyranny.
Watch for yourself!
– Scott Dreyer
Sources:
Arizona State Legislature Nov. 30 hearings on election integrity:
