By Senator Dennis Linthicum
October 29, 2024
Here’s a quick story about the pile of potential tragedies brought to the public’s doorstep by Oregon’s majority party. Again…
The one-party state has had more than its share of unsavory news recently, mostly regarding election integrity. The apparent weakening of the voter registration system looks to be rather pernicious and purposefully designed to diminished the integrity of our registration system.
With only a handful of investigative journalists available to dig through the legislative dumpster, this item has remained buried and has not yet received prime-time notice. Today’s example is a law, HB 4133 – passed in 2022, that created a fourth option for identifying oneself as a valid voter in the registration process. This bill was advertised as “an effort to make voting more accessible to minority and underserved communities.”
In Oregon there were three valid forms of ID: a drivers’ license, a drivers’ permit, or a State issued ID card. HB 4133 added another option, a valid Social Security number. But look at the actual wording and you will see that a SSN is not required, rather only the final four-digits are required.
Gov. Kotek and Secretary of State Lavonne Griffin-Valade have spent serious time signaling that they are appalled by the mistakes made at the DMV when employees mistakenly identified foreign documents as legitimate for verifying US citizenship. In the current controversy, the DMV chalks up the inappropriate registration of non-citizen voters as “clerical errors,” saying that clerks had mistakenly identified people as U.S. citizens, when they were not.
The governor issued a Press Release saying they will, “act with new urgency to look into how far the problems in automatic voter registrations extend.” Plus, the Governor’s statement claims, “Any error that undermines our voting system must be taken incredibly seriously and addressed.”
This pattern follows the text-book strategy for managing a “Limited Hang-Out,” as I explain in a previous newsletter. The idea is to give the public just a little bit of information (some or all of which may be misleading) and the public will soon forget or otherwise get distracted.
The taxpayer funded reporters at Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) got right to work defending the governor with this classic bit of stylized propaganda:
“Under Oregon’s pioneering motor voter law, the DMV registers Oregon residents to vote when they get a driver’s license or state ID as long as they provide proof of citizenship like a U.S. passport or birth certificate.”
This is nothing short of a magnanimous write-up, entirely generous and very progressive. The propagandists (OPB reporters) pretended a bit of precision paired with an equal helping of leniency and developed a beautiful pioneering story. However, the only problem is this doesn’t accurately describe Oregon’s Revised Statute or the voter registration requirements.
First is the common-sense test.
Could you cash a Lotto ticket with the final four-digits of the winning number? The last four digits of your credit card, cell, or bank number can be used as confirmation for your eyes, but these digits have no relevance for any one else. This is the essence of private data. It only means something to you but doesn’t have any value to others. This is essentially redacted data, like the kind of information routinely released by government to hide the unsavory details.
Why then, would legislators demand useless data as a valid method of identification? Would you vote for any legislator that is not capable of recognizing the blatant problems with this legislation?
Remember, this came on the heels of the heated Biden/Trump 2020 election. At a time when public trust in the electoral process was fragile, defending and strengthen the electorate process should have been the priority, not introducing measures that would dimmish electoral integrity.
Look at the legalese used to avoid meaningful and transparent avenues for registration that would also prevent fraud and/or misuse. Shouldn’t we be focusing on measures that would reinforce voter confidence? Instead of implementing laws that seem to conveniently align with political domination shouldn’t we vote for sincere and genuine social improvements?
Does this bill warrant the mass-media’s endless gushing over Oregon’s Democrat majority?
Today’s news is filled with concerns, investigations and hand-wringing over temporary pauses in DMV voter registration, but this was all too little, too late. Now that registration deadlines have passed, we can see that these DMV news stories describe the job of reviewing the source documents as the keys to authenticity. This is because the DMV actually has scanned images of these source documents so they can review, investigate and make corrections.
But this is only because documents to review exist. We have yet to hear any news regarding the final four-digits of any SSN that is being questioned or verified. Why not? Can you see the problem?
What methodologies would you use to “validate” or “verify” the final four-digits of an SSN? How many persons have the same final four-digits? How would a person prove that they were the individual person, #1212, and not the other person, #1212?
This issue reflects the modern Democrat party’s love for the collective and apparent disdain for the individual. They have been driven by a conceited sense of knowledge and self-importance to the point that they are willing to impose their own will onto the rest of us. This is why the radical-left, well known for their obfuscation and keenness for word-twisting, likes to claim the high-ground when it comes to saving “our Democracy.” As an informed reader you already know that the American nation was founded, not as a democracy, but as a republic.
Our nation’s founders had nothing but disdain for “democracy.” James Madison, in Federalist No. 10, wrote,
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
Fisher Ames’ 1788 speech during the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention added these thoughts,
“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.”
The above two references were written when our constitutional republic was still just a gleam. The original intent of our American republican form of government was to be a bulwark against the pernicious behavior of the wealthy, well-connected and powerful people who would seek to control and dominate situations for their own gain.
Our American government was not created to be a giant-vending machine. Rather it was created to protect and safeguard the lives, liberty, property and just pursuits for each and every one of us as individual citizens.
Set it Right – Vote Right!
… and… Stay tuned for more unbelievably ludicrous details from Oregon’s single-Party, Democrat majority.
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For more information about me and my candidacy:
♦ Video with Oregonian Editorial staff
♦ Debate with Oregonian Editorial staff
♦ A series of newsletters on election integrity
♦ Election Website
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E-Mail Dennis Linthicum: sen.DennisLinthicum@gmail.com
