Democrats screaming that police watching drop-boxes might be "intimidating voters"

How many lies do ya think CNN's Democrat propagandists can pack into 2,000 words?  Take a look at this article CNN ran five days before the election:

Early voters dropping off ballots in Berks County, Pennsylvania, are confronted by a sight surprising for elections in the United States:  A pair of uniformed sheriff’s deputies armed with guns and tasers guarding the ballot box.  

"Uniformed sheriffs"--ARMED! [gasp!] "guarding ballot boxes"?  Why that's outrageous!  In all previous U.S. elections anyone could just walk into a "polling place" and stuff as many ballots as they liked into the ballot box, without any identification, right?

No, they couldn't.  All rational adults knew that would be a huge invitation to fraud, so it wasn't allowed.  EVERY polling place was guarded by police--in uniform, and [gasp!] armed, and no one thought that was unusual.

The only people wailing about it now are Democrats--because it makes it harder for them to cheat.

Directed by local election officials to question voters before letting them deposit their ballots, the deputies guarding the drop boxes underscore the growing schism in this country over the *debunked claims that the 2020 election was marred by rampant vote fraud. 

Ah, ya say the claims of "rampant vote fraud" were "debunked"?  Really?  Those claims were never investigated, let alone "debunked."  There were thousands of sworn affidavits claiming fraud--but no court ever heard any case in open court.  Even the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, in an unsigned ruling that didn't give any legal reasoning. 

Judges--unwilling to risk being called Trump supporters--simply dismissed all such affidavits and claims without  investigation.  Most were dismissed on the ludicrous grounds of "lack of standing"--a legal term for "you don't have the right to sue."

The beauty of dismissing cases on that basis is that it totally shuts off any further action in the matter.  And how can one rationally claim that voters lack "standing" to sue for election fraud?

To some in Berks County the deputies are only trying to ensure a fair and [honest] election. Others say their presence and direct questioning risks intimidating voters and stoking baseless conspiracy theories.

How amusing: Dems never complained about armed cops guarding polling places before, eh?  But NOW, for some reason, that "risks intimidating voters"?

Certainly it might intimidate *fraudsters*--which you'd think would be a good thing.

Having deputies at drop boxes “can obviously be very intimidating in the moment to those voters,” said the director of [a Dem front organization].  But it also “sends this broader message that our elections aren’t secure, that there’s widespread fraud … and what’s really abhorrent about this is, it’s based on a lie, it’s based on disinformation.”

No.  It's based on truth that the Dems (who run the elections) have refused to investigate.  The claims that there was no widespread, organized fraud are totally baseless.

Many of those efforts are tied to a *fringe group* of elected sheriffs influenced by former President Donald Trump’s repeatedly disproven claims of vote fraud.

Again, not a single claim has been examined in open court, subject to cross-examination of witnesses.  They've never been heard.  At all.

Those sheriffs have been telling their constituents they plan to police the midterm elections – even though that is normally the duty of election officials.

See, "election officials" are Democrats.  So we need to leave any "enforcement" of election rules to them.  It jus' not beez right to allow *non-Democrat* sheriffs to enforce our laws, eh?

Some of [the sheriffs] are aligned with so-called “constitutional sheriffs” groups that claim their members have the right to ignore or block federal or state laws they deem unconstitutional and to intervene in elections.

Again, Democrats only want reliable Dem election workers to monitor elections for honesty.  Other law-enforcement officials must NOT be allowed to enforce valid laws, cuz...reasons. 

[These sheriffs] could play a vital role in efforts to cast doubt on elections and make it easier for partisan officials to overrule voters’ choices this fall and in 2024.>>

Exactly how do Democrats claim these "partisan officials" will "overrule voters' choices," eh?  Seize their ballots and replace 'em?  That's an unsupported allegation--but their supporters believe it.

Sheriff Mark Lamb, of  Pinal County, Arizona, has perhaps been the most vocal of the bunch. He co-founded Protect America Now, a group that claims to be engaged in “a battle for the soul of America.”  The group also asks “patriots” to report suspected vote fraud to a hotline it operates in conjunction with the Texas-based election-conspiracy group True the Vote.

CNN's mention of this implies it doesn't even want citizens to *report* suspected vote fraud.  Why is that?  (Note the sneer-quotes around "patriots," implying that anyone who reports suspected vote fraud isn't *really* a patriot.) 

True the Vote is well known for backing a thoroughly-debunked disinformation film, “2000 Mules,” that baselessly claimed to uncover widespread drop-box ballot fraud in 2020.

In Kansas, sheriff Calvin Hayden has spent months investigating conspiracy claims about vote fraud, even though election officials in that state have said there’s no evidence of widespread fraud.

Hey, if election officials say there's no evidence of "widespread" fraud, that should end the matter, eh?  Cuz no one except "election officials" should be allowed to investigate fraud claims, eh?  And of course, if election officials screwed up and allowed bogus ballots to be counted even if they didn't have matching signatures or witnessed signatures or legitimate addresses, we would naturally expect state and local election officials to investigate their own incompetence with total, honest objectivity, eh?

David Mahoney, former president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said in his law enforcement career in Dane County, Wisconsin, he never investigated election fraud-–because such responsibilities fall to county clerks or state election officials, not sheriffs.

Oh, certainly.  Because if election officials cooperate with fraudsters or merely look the other way, who better to investigate claims of fraud than those same officials, eh?  Again, CNN's writers implicitly claim that only county clerks or "election officials" can investigate election fraud.  But they cunningly don't say that themselve, instead approvingly quoting a Democrat-supporting sheriff.

According to CNN, vote fraud can only be investigated by the people who allowed it--who are conveniently Democrats, approved by CNN.  Hmmm....

“If they think sheriffs across this country have the unique responsibility of enforcing vote fraud, show me the legal standing that allows that. We enforce laws that are on the books; we don’t make our own laws,” Mahoney said.

Except no one--NO one--has claimed sheriffs have the "unique responsibility of enforcing vote fraud."  (We think he meant to say "enforcing election laws to ensure there is NO fraud," but perhaps he was accidentally speaking the truth.)

“What really concerns me is that now we’re going to have this armed contingent of sheriffs who believe that by a physical, armed presence they’re going to protect the rights of voters, when I think it will have the opposite effect: to intimidate voters.”

It's interesting that no one EVER complained before now that having armed cops in polling places could intimidate voters, eh?  Only now, after Democrats found a totally safe way to "stuff the ballot box" with bogus votes in 2020, and a few sheriffs have decided to monitor those efforts.  So NOW the Mainstream Media complains that having cops in polling places "could intimidate voters."

CNN wails that when voters went to put their ballot in a drop-box in Pennsylvania, "armed deputies awaited to ask them questions such as, 'Is this your ballot?' "

Can you imagine?  How terrible!

CNN also found another line of attack, quoting a voter as questioning the "priority of assigning deputies to drop-box duty."  “I don’t want our streets to be unsafe because they have police sitting here monitoring a box,” she told CNN.

CNN writes "The idea of law enforcement officers intruding at the front lines of the election process troubles civil rights advocates."  

"Intruding" on the election process, eh?

CNN quotes an ACLU official bleating “The … aggressive law enforcement presence at drop boxes, especially here, where they’re in secure locations, in government office buildings, is unnecessary.  And any time you have law enforcement directly engaging with voters, you have a greater risk of crossing the line to voter intimidation.”>>

"A greater risk, ya say?  So do you have video of voters actually being intimidated--say, by being asked "Is this your ballot"?  Of course you don't.  But by bleating about "risk" most readers interpret that as "it happened."

"County commissioners expressed frustration at local residents buying into election conspiracies. Commission Chairman Christian Leinbach asked residents to “stop getting caught up in some of the crazy accusations that are out there about the county, because the county cares about election integrity.”

Ah, they care about election integrity, eh?  So that makes everything fine.

In September, though, county commissioners voted unanimously to have sheriff’s deputies question voters at drop boxes.

Pennsylvania’s acting Secretary of State then asked the sheriff not to comply, saying stationing deputies at drop boxes or questioning voters, claiming either “could adversely impact the fundamental right to vote.”

One has to wonder why a U.S. citizen would be "adversely impacted" by being asked "Is this your ballot" at a drop-box, eh?  But the reality isn't relevant--what matters is that the Dems can make the claim, and that generates opposition to efforts to prevent election fraud.