Sortition
Newsletter of the Campaign to Defend the Right to a Secret Ballot
(CDRSB)
December 2020 Issue No. 14 ISSN 1756-4964 (Print)


US Elections: Fraudsters Discover They Cannot Fool
All Of The People All Of The Time

Our standpoint is being vindicated in the 2020 struggle for the US Presidency as evidence of fraud on a massive scale is gathered and used to challenge the Biden claim to have won the election. The Campaign to Defend the Right to a Secret Ballot (CDRSB) was formed in the UK in 2002 to oppose the use of postal ballots on demand and to seek reinstatement of limits and safeguards on the use of such ballots which were in place throughout the 20th Century. In 2006 we held a Conference on International Electoral Standards at the United Nations in New York.

There are two main strands of evidence of wrongdoing in the 2020 US Elections: first, electoral fraud by means of paper ballots, primarily by so called ‘mail in’ ballots; second, electoral fraud by means of vote counting technology including the use of computers. To date there have been multiple court actions in at least four states and also one ruling by a US Supreme Court Justice. The most significant decision so far is that by the Pennsylvania commonwealth judge Patricia McCullough on 27th November 2020 that the November 3rd presidential election results could not be certificated due to problems of perceived electoral fraud.

The ultimate outcome of these court actions and investigations will almost certainly have fundamental and historic consequences whichever side is eventually victorious. The highly accomplished lawyer Lin Wood has tweeted that the ‘Kraken’ released by Sidney Powell, the top lawyer pursuing criminal investigations of perceived voter fraud, is in fact a Department of Defence Cyber Warfare Program designed to track and acquire evidence of nefarious activities in the electoral process. President Trump has re-tweeted Wood’s remarks.

Lt. General McInerney has stated that Kraken is the nickname of the 305th Military Intelligence Battalion based at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. The 305th is a subordinate unit of the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade formerly under the command of Lt. General Mike Flynn. As we go to print Lin Wood has tweeted that President Trump should declare Martial Law.

Smartmatic
Powell’s findings include information that Smartmatic, an electoral technology company implicated in the vast scale of miscounted ballots fraudulently ‘switched’ from Trump to Biden, is chaired by Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, former Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum and Minister of State in the UK Foreign Office. Given that Malloch-Brown was the ‘keynote’ speaker at the December 2018 inaugural Christmas lecture of the Fabian International Policy Group it may reasonably be stated that he is a member or close associate of the Fabian Society.

It seems therefore that Trump supporters may be able to terminate Biden’s claim to be President. Nevertheless the struggle to ‘prove’ the existence of organised fraud by globalist forces has difficult obstacles to overcome. The CDRSB is among the most longstanding of extant organisations formed specifically to oppose the fraudulent use of postal ballots and as such we have a contribution to make in outlining the more general and historical context of present day electoral fraud.

Two letters published in the Daily Telegraph in 2001 following the UK General Election shown at the end of this newsletter led to the formation of the CDRSB in 2002. The late former veteran Labour MP and then also SDP MP George Cunningham wrote the first, published on 17th May 2001 and Dr Keith Nilsen wrote the second, published on 25 July 2001. Mr Cunningham explained at a 2002 CDRSB London meeting that he had opposed the introduction of postal ballots on demand in the Hansard Society even before the legislation was passed which facilitated their use - the Representation of the People Act 2000. He was mystified even then as to why no MP opposed the introduction of postal ballots on demand and we agreed with him that it seemed rather strange..He told us that he had argued that the logic of those who pushed for this reform was that they were prepared to abandon traditional safeguards against electoral fraud on the grounds that if no such crimes were consequently successfully prosecuted then that is tantamount to there being no significant increase in fraud. Mr Cunningham however argued such thinking was equivalent to shop owners failing to lock their windows and update their stock records while still expecting burglars to be caught and convicted if their accounts showed losses. That is to say, common sense indicates that if safeguards against electoral fraud are lowered such crime must almost inevitably increase while at the same time its perpetrators will also be more difficult to catch and ‘prove’ guilty.

As stated, the CDRSB is very possibly the most longstanding organisation formed to specifically oppose the use of postal ballots on demand. One exception to this circumstance is the work of the late Dr. Amy McGrath. She remained mystified throughout her life as to why no ‘parliamentary representatives’ seemed willing to consistently oppose the abolition of safeguards designed to protect the security of the secret ballot established first and foremost in Australia in 1856. She cooperated with the H.S. Chapman Society UK, which also in the early noughties opposed postal ballots on demand. Its last publication was in 2012 and its website still registers George Cunningham as an executive member even though he died over a year ago. Valiant struggles and convictions against organised postal ballot fraud have taken place in Birmingham, Tower Hamlets, Woking and Peterborough but the widely recognised as corrupt Electoral Standards Commission has failed to reach the obvious conclusion that postal ballots on demand facilitates such crime.

Against this background our work has included research, polling and lobbying activity both in the UK and in the USA. This work confirms that the majority of the public disapproved of the use of postal ballots on demand from their inception and more than likely still do today, especially given the debacle that is unfolding in the USA. The present struggle against election fraud in the USA is alerting present generations of voters to the dangers involved in abandoning long established safeguards against election fraud. Complacency to date in this field has been shown to invite greater levels of ‘deep state’ wrongdoing and attempts by such forces to ‘gas light’ those who protest against these antidemocratic practices. A fine example of such manoeuvres has been the claim by Chris Krebs, the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that the 2020 US election was the ‘most secure in history.’ This is not only wrong - it is quite an absurd claim. Common sense, as espoused most certainly by the late George Cunningham, shows this to be so. In the UK as Nigel Farage has repeatedly declared, there is ample and continuing evidence which shows that the abolition of safeguards in the use of postal ballots has led to increased levels of electoral fraud. Thankfully Chris Krebs has been sacked by President Trump.

Vast Gulf
We have lobbied representatives and scholars in Washington DC in order to promote the CDRSB. In 2003 Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a ‘left of centre’ elections expert, agreed to a limited extent with us and organised some research regarding this matter. Two such works document the historical development of US election practices following the establishment of the secret, ‘Australian Ballot’ in 1856: first, The Absentee Ballot and the Secret Ballot - Challenges for Election Reform by John C. Fortier and Norman Ornstein published in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Volume 36, in 2003; second, Absentee and Early Voting by John C. Fortier published in 2006.

These publications document a number of key features of this background which help illustrate the reckless and erroneous character of the movement to subvert and abolish safeguards regarding electoral practices which gathered pace in major democracies over the last thirty or so years. This despite the fact that in 1975 the French National Assembly voted unanimously to ban the use of postal ballots on demand in French general elections. The most consistent and significant of these features is the ‘vast gulf ’(p.484, 2003) in attitude between those who originally established the safeguards in virtually all states which adopted limited civilian access to absentee ballots and the ‘aggressive proselytizers’ (p.513, 2003) who have been seeking to subvert and abolish them. There are direct and indirect references to this gulf in 11 places in the 2003 publication (pp. 483, 484, 491, 492, 502, 503, 504, 509, 510, 513, 516).

Perhaps the most striking example of this gulf was that introduction of safeguards regarding the use of the secret ballot led to a fall in voter turnout (p.491) but this did not lead to any decline in the determination of early reformers to ensure that the integrity of the electoral process was to be fully maintained. By stark contrast it is the opposite motivation which has animated modern day aggressive proselytisers: despite claims that the introduction of absentee ballots on demand would increase turnout there is no substantive evidence that this has occurred. Yet the proselytising has continued unrelentingly for thirty years despite, as stated, the fact that the French National Assembly voted unanimously in 1975 to ban postal ballots on demand in General Elections.
The introduction of early and provisional voting has added to the complexity of the electoral process and so created yet more opportunities for fraud. Mail in ballots which do not have to be even applied for but are simply distributed en masse to those whose names and addresses are on the voter registration lists no matter how insufficiently updated they may be has similarly boosted opportunities for electoral fraud. This circumstance has been especially evident in the conditions of the pandemic which has provided a thinly plausible basis for further aggressive proselytising to universalise these methods.

The role of remote voting has been complemented by massive investments in automation of the voting process and with this computerisation of ballot counting systems. The application of these systems inevitably provides yet further opportunities for fraud.

Originally limited access to absentee voting was most usually granted to the old, the infirm and those who by occupation had to be away from home either on the basis that they cast their vote at a specific polling station away from home or on the basis that they had to fill out and sign their ballot witnessed by a notary before posting it. The authors suggest the original advocates of such safeguards would be ‘shocked’ (p.509) and ‘stunned’ by the scale of the subversion and abolition of such security measures that has been achieved over the last two or three decades. Originally absentee voting accounted for at most 4% of all civilian votes cast but now it is at minimum about 30% or, as is increasingly common, 100%.

This has been the background to the 2020 Presidential election and its challenges. The President’s lawyers have amassed hundreds of signed affidavits regarding witnessed acts of voter fraud and established that much of the voting technology was designed in Venezuela. Moreover they have obtained a signed affidavit testifying that it was deliberately designed to facilitate acts of electoral fraud. Despite this they are having difficulty convincing the main stream media and most of the Democrat and ‘RINO’ (Republican In Name Only) legislative and judicial establishment that Joe Biden’s claim to have won the Presidency is not valid. In short the Presidential election has been at the centre not only of the biggest act of voting fraud in US history but also the biggest attempt at ‘gaslighting’ the world has ever witnessed aimed at brainwashing the population into believing that such criminality can be overlooked. As shown above the conditions for this gaslighting have been long in preparation spanning decades of reforms which have undermined standards once held sacrosanct by American, Australian, French, Irish and British voters along with probably most voters throughout all the modern democracies.

A thorough understanding of these changes and the aggressive proselytising that has driven them has to take account of the possibility that they are not merely coincidental and haphazard: there certainly appears to be a pattern that is repeated throughout the USA and the UK. As it happens, these are the two countries where the Fabian Society has historically had its most extensive and formidable levels of elite support. There are patterns of activity in regard to electoral standards which could suggest that Fabian influence has been exerting a negative role.

The connections which have been unearthed within the realm of election technology between the former UN Deputy General Secretary Lord Mark Malloch-Brown and Venezuelan totalitarian extremism suggest once again that the Fabian and Communist movements may collaborate in antidemocratic schemes. There are clear similarities in tactical and strategic principles of approach which can be detected in these movements.

Permeation
Many communists take as a guiding light of their activities the strategic insights elaborated by Antonio Gramsci. He has been cited as the chief intellectual author of the so-called ‘long march through the institutions’ involving infiltration and ultimate hegemonic control of much areas of the ‘ideological state superstructure’ of capitalism, that is to say, primarily the media and university systems. Yet the Fabian Society has even older tactical methods which seem to presage this communist strategy. “Permeation” is the apparently more innocuous sounding substitute for infiltration as a strategic policy aimed at spreading the influence of Fabian ideology through all areas of elite power and control including most especially the academic world. The London School of Economics is among the prize achievements of this policy. Permeation is guided by the concept of the ‘inevitability of gradualism.” The ‘shocking,’ ‘stunning’ changes to the standards of electoral integrity that have occurred over the last thirty years in regard to the use of postal ballots and voting technology fit very well into a picture of radical change brought about by long term gradualist but unrelenting and aggressive proselytising. Change by incremental adjustments can be presented as mere innovative reform in the short term but when the cumulative long term result is viewed overall the picture emerges of a radical shift of the goal posts of democratic legitimacy well beyond the range of genuinely acceptable standards of integrity. The resulting change in mindset has been reinforced by mainstream media propaganda and a ‘cancel’ culture aimed at suppressing the right to free speech of those who seek to preserve real freedom and electoral integrity.

It has become apparent that these attempts at manipulating the electoral system are linked to a world project to effect a ‘great reset’ of political and economic systems. Here again there are affinities between the Fabian aligned elites of the modern world and those of a century ago upon an equally stunning and shocking scale. This is the most extreme example of how far from common sense George Bernard Shaw was prepared to go in 1928: “… Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under Socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well.” (The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism by George Bernard Shaw (1928).

Today this outburst of Social Darwinist extremism seems alien but it did not appear that way to the Fabian Society at the time before the total defeat of Nazi Germany. Social Darwinism also underpinned the early campaign for the use of abortion as an instrument of population control. Stalinism has never been defeated and has given rise to even more totalitarian methods of control in Kampuchea and North Korea. That is why Fabian postures on political theory admixed with ongoing curtailment of jury power (see Newsletter No. 13) and suspected involvement in election fraud render their ‘Great Reset’ campaign as a deeply flawed initiative.

World Economic Forum theorists have outlined claims that a much greater emphasis on health care - including mental health care - is necessary in order to control pandemics while at the same time harnessing the rapidly expanding power of mind control technology in the ‘fourth industrial revolution.’ The Fabian aligned elite want us to believe that the antidemocratic practices necessary to enforce the ‘Great Reset’ might lead to dystopian rule but nevertheless can be rendered acceptable because “it is for those who govern and each of us personally to control and harness the benefits of technology without sacrificing our individual and collective values and freedoms.” (Covid-19: The Great Reset, Klaus Schwab, Thierry Malleret, 2020 World Economic Forum, p.171).

In the next issue of this Newsletter we will address more directly the question of how we the people should ensure that ‘those who govern’ are made accountable to us. A first step in that direction will hopefully be that the attempt to defraud American voters is successfully defeated. If early victory is won and President Trump retains power for his second term it could provide a powerful foundation upon which to correct the damage that has been done to the US electoral process and bring about a reversal of the last thirty years of reforms which have subverted the integrity of that process. If it is to be properly successful, this reversal will have to include initiatives also to challenge the blatant bias of the mainstream and social media establishment and bring about full freedom of speech and thought within the University system. Most especially of all, such attempts to improve the democratic process might even facilitate a renewal in understanding of the US Constitution in regard to the legal process.

John Horne Tooke
The American Constitution was born from centuries of legal development in Britain following Magna Carta and before. The most significant achievement of this development was recognition of the pivotal role of jury power in ensuring that government is held accountable to law. Although much is now made of the Supreme Court, the American Revolution began chiefly through the determination of grand juries in the British American colonies to prevent unlawful and tyrannical indictments by the British imperial authorities against civil protest.

What may be described as the most constitutionally accurate description of jury power was made by John Horne Tooke, an English founding member of the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights established in 1769. Horne Tooke later became a founding member of the Society for Constitutional Information and later wrote the Constitution for the London Corresponding Society. He was held in high regard by Thomas Paine as the most trustworthy advocate of American independence. Horne Tooke was the only British subject to be imprisoned for supporting the American Revolution. Jefferson met Horne Tooke and referred to him as an ‘associate in persecution’ of John Baxter, author of a book on the History of England which was aimed at debunking David Hume’s work on that subject. Jefferson held Baxter’s work in very high regard over and above Hume’s analysis and wanted to establish it as the main text book on English history in the USA. During one of his several trials Horne Tooke described the role of the jury as follows: “In the performance of this duty to our country, I must beg you to observe, and carefully to remember it to the end, that there are only three efficient and necessary parties… the Plaintiff… the Defendant; and you, gentlemen, the Jury. The judge and the cryer of the court attend alike in their respective situations; and they are paid by us for their attendance; we pay them well; they are hired to be the assistants and reporters, but they are not, and they never were intended to be the controllers of our conduct… A Jury not entitled to inquire into the merits of the question brought before them, nor into anything that relates to the merits, is no Jury at all.” (John Horne Tooke by Minnie Clare Yarborough, 1926, p.148-149)

This definition of the role and status of the jury in its relation to the judicial branch has been neglected certainly in the UK but even also in the USA. This has resulted in the subordination of the judicial branch to so called ‘judicial activism’ wherein policies and judgements are distorted by factions within the judiciary. If jury power had been properly preserved in its full constitutional role as had been exercised in the revolutionary period such distortions would be at least moderated and sometimes even eradicated. Juries are not perfect but as a whole they are less prone to dishonest, corrupt influences. Reinstatement of their powers and role up to and including within the Supreme Court would not result in a ‘perfect’ form of government but it would help develop government to its least imperfect form as Madison had, knowingly, aspired to achieve.

If the electoral fraud now underway in the US is not repulsed an inevitably longer, more difficult period of struggle lies ahead. In either case the long term aims of defending democratic government should be formulated in as clear and far sighted a manner as possible. The CDRSB has conducted some considerable research in this regard in continuity with the results of the First Conference on International Electoral Standards which we organised at the UN in New York in 2006. Against this background included in this issue are the opening remarks made by Dr. Keith Nilsen at a meeting held at the British Library in 2018 which signal the ongoing direction of our work in this regard. The opening is entitled Towards a Common understanding for Constitutional Development at National and International levels of Application.’ The next issue of our Newsletter - number 15 - will more fully document our approach in its relation to the aim of conflict resolution established in 2006 while also resisting the flawed approach of the Great Reset.

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Towards a Common understanding for Constitutional Development at National and International levels of Application

The following are opening remarks made by Dr Keith Nilsen at a meeting held in the British Library on 18th October 2018.

The points made were agreed by the meeting and have formed the basis of further work since in continuing conformity to the approach adopted at the Conference on International Electoral Standards held by the CDRSB at the UN in 2006. These points will be more fully developed in the next issue of our Newsletter (No.15).

As I state in the CDRSB Newsletter No.13 (see www.sortition.com): “The Jeffersonian legacy hence laid the basis for but did not complete a form of constitutional design that could cater for long term, systemic change which could be accomplished by a combination of party representation, jury democracy and constitutional reform adjudicated by a Supreme Court that also included a jury - the most bottom up form of democratic government least susceptible to top down control. Such systemic change could have enabled distinct, large scale macroeconomic solutions to be tried out in practice both in production and in finance through regular, long term constitutional review. Jurors are randomly selected and as such it is a self evident truth of common sense that they are less likely to be influenced by the polarising demands of party faction - both open and secret - and so will be more able to adjudicate upon matters of systemic change upon an impartial basis. Jury power can not only provide the best safeguard against the development of tyranny but also the least imperfect means by which disputes regarding the contending merits of alternative systemic choices can be settled.”

The completion of this form of constitutional design would have involved preservation of the role of juries at the highest levels of legal interpretation and enforcement, including at supreme and constitutional levels and in regard to the use of special juries in international trade. It would also have involved expansion of jury power in the legislative and executive branches. Jefferson and Paine’s principle that the ‘earth belongs to the living’ would also have been fully enacted as a bedrock tenet of constitutional design, in so far as full recognition in regard to inheritance law and taxation policy would have been given to the understanding that inheritance tax is the most socially just class of taxation.

The first and most important principle to grasp in assessing the merits of this proposed form of constitutional design is Jefferson’s point that trial by jury is “the only anchor, ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of it’s constitution” (Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 11th July 1789). Agreement about this understanding can open the way to further investigation of the proposal. Alternatively, failure to agree on this understanding can help identify details of disagreement which can then be examined at greater depth.

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Letters Leading to Formation of the CDRSB
Two letters published in the Daily Telegraph in 2001 following the UK General Election shown below led to the formation of the CDRSB in 2002. The late former SDP MP George Cunningham wrote the first, published on 17th May 2001 under the heading 'Postal ballot promises more corruption.’ I wrote the second, published on 25th July 2001, which was edited in a less than perfect manner and given the heading by the letters editor of ‘Right to be Worried about Postal Ballots.’

The Daily Telegraph - 17 May 2001
'Postal ballot promises more corruption.’

SIR - In this election, for the first time, anyone can choose to vote by post, a change supported by all parties. By this means, we are effectively repealing the Ballot Act of 1872.

That Act's effectiveness lay not in permitting you to keep your vote secret, but in forcing you to do so. Anyone can announce how he has voted, but, if he voted in a polling station, he cannot prove it.

Postal voting has existed for decades but, until recently, the right to do so was restricted to those who, for medical or other good reason, could not get to a polling station. That the postal vote was so limited meant that the scope for corruption was equally limited.

The danger in a postal vote is that it is a witnessable vote. The rules tell a postal voter not to show his ballot to anyone, but, in the privacy of his home, there is no presiding officer to enforce that rule.

He can therefore show his completed ballot to a candidate or agent who may be in a position to provide some benefit in return. Being witnessable, the postal vote is a corruptible vote. That explains why, although we have had little electoral corruption, the few cases that have arisen have often concerned postal votes.

As a former MP, I can appreciate that we all want to see more people taking part in the democratic process, but there are safer ways of going about it. In some countries, special polling stations are open weeks before election day, so that those who know they will be away can vote in advance, but in the proper secret manner.
To give anyone who wants to ingratiate himself with a party the means to prove he has earned his reward is going too far in an effort to raise turnout figures. If the political parties want to repeal the Ballot Act, let them say so publicly and defend their betrayal of those in 1872 who knew something about electoral corruption and saved us from it - until now.

George Cunningham MP


The Daily Telegraph - 25 July 2001
‘Right to be Worried about Postal Ballots’

SIR - Your report on abuse of postal ballots (report, Jul 24) underlines the need for the public to be vigilant about proposals for voting reform which are being examined by the Electoral Commission.

Since the general election I have attempted to get a full national breakdown of the proportion of postal ballots cast and their results relative to the votes cast at polling stations. I have been told by officials at both the Home Office and the Electoral Commission that they have not been compiled and that there is no set time scale for such results to be published. It seems therefore that there may be no prospect of such information being made available to the public.

The former MP George Cunningham wrote to you shortly after the election to say that parties that wish to repeal the Ballot Act should do so publicly and defend their betrayal of those in 1872 who knew something about electoral corruption and saved us from it - until now.

I have also contacted the Federal Electoral Commission in the United States, which sent me research papers concerning the use of postal ballots in the various states. In the Land of the Free, it seems - though in the fairly recent past there has been the tendency to permit the increasing use of postal ballots - the tide of opinion has now turned against this development, in favour of the use of early ballot-casting facilities for those unable to attend polling stations on election day.

Dr. Keith Nilsen

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