In the closely-watched elections in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams would never, ever even consider questioning the results of an election, the Associated Press has caught Georgia Republicans plotting a sneaky trick to ensure their victory in the Senate and gubernatorial races. So what is this diabolical plan and how do they propose to pull it off? Republican leaders around the state have been putting the word out to their voters that they should wait and vote in person on election day. For those who have received mail-in ballots, they advise them to fill out the ballots but hold onto them and go submit them in person at their polling place on November 8th. This cunningly devious plan is intended to make it harder for any mysterious boxes of Democratic ballots to magically “show up” at the last minute (perhaps in the trunk of someone’s car) and tip the scales in their favor. You can almost see Boris Badenov’s fingerprints all over this scheme.

Republican activists who believe the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump have crafted a plan that, in their telling, will thwart cheating in this year’s midterm elections.

The strategy: Vote in person on Election Day or — for voters who receive a mailed ballot — hold onto it and hand it in at a polling place or election office on Nov. 8.

The plan is based on unfounded conspiracy theories that fraudsters will manipulate voting systems to rig results for Democrats once they have seen how many Republican votes have been returned early. There has been no evidence of any such widespread fraud.

So there are some leftists who apparently smell a rat when the state GOP advises people to actually show up and vote at their polling place on election day? If the actual objective for people on both sides of the aisle is to increase people’s confidence in the integrity of the elections, how is this possibly being viewed as some sort of suspicious activity?

This is something I’ve been beating the drum about here for quite a while now. If people don’t have faith in the integrity of some of the voting machines and they want to feel more confident, hand delivering a paper ballot that you filled out yourself, watching your name be checked off the list, and seeing the ballot being deposited in the box is a pretty good way to do it. Granted, you still can’t be 100% certain of what will happen to your ballot when the counting begins, but that’s why there should be election monitors from both parties on hand when that process takes place.

Personally, I would argue that if your primary concern is that too many people might show up on election day and vote, perhaps we should be asking how ready you are to hold an election. The AP report warns that doing it this way could lead to “long lines on Election Day” and it could “push back the processing of those late-arriving mailed ballots.” If that happens, they suggest that some of the ballots “likely would not get counted until the next day or later.”

And what exactly is the problem with that? Where is it written that we have to have a final, verifiable tally by midnight on the 8th? Do you want to get this done fast or do you want to make sure that it’s done accurately? If you can’t answer that question with a straight face, I’m going to be rather skeptical of your motives.

Massive mail-in voting has been a disaster since the idea went mainstream during the early days of the pandemic. It absolutely wrecked the election process in New York’s 22nd congressional district in 2020. (We still have no idea who actually won that race.) There seem to be some people who aren’t entirely unhappy about all of that confusion, however. Everyone who is physically capable of doing so should be able to show up at their polling place on election day and submit a valid ballot. After the voting hours end, the ballots should be counted in the presence of monitors from both parties and the results should then be submitted to the central board of elections where a final tally will be determined. This isn’t long division, people. It’s not a mystery. And there’s nothing wrong or “sneaky” about asking voters to cast their ballots in that fashion.