Last week we published an opinion piece written by Ted Howze in which he asserted why he believes there was a illegal wrangling of ballots to get Josh Harder elected to Congress.

Of course, this wouldn’t even be a concern if we all had to show ID at the polls -– something Democrats oppose en masse.

I knew how the left was going to respond and, boy, was I spot on. Rather than address the issues Howze brought forth in a reasoned manner, the trolls went on the attack. I was in the line of fire as they suggested I was irresponsible to give Howze a platform.

Hey, if someone alleges voter fraud, I think we’d all want to be assured that our elections are conducted without fraud. I would hope the fair-minded person would not wish to tolerate voting irregularities when they are alleged and would have nothing to fear by an investigation. Instead, a vast majority of Democrats poo-pooed Howze’s theory and hurled the insults. Here is a sample:

• Dave Carreon: “Jeff Benziger, why are you giving this loony toon a platform to spread fake news and conspiracy theories? I realize he’s your preferred candidate for ca-10 in 2020 but cmon! If there is vote fraud he needs to prove it or stfu.” (I’m sure you can figure out Dave is saying “shut the f--- up.” So kind, so respectful).

• Alan Grover Daniel: “Republicans lost because of this type of propaganda. Stop being the problem and become part of the solution.” (Code for ignore and pretend the possibility of voter fraud. His comments remind me of that scene in Wizard of Oz where the “wizard” is busted and puts words in the fake wizard’s mouth and says: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”)

• Jose Martinez: “Jeff stop spreading lies.”

• Stan Lane: “It’s funny I have a lot of friends That are Republicans that voted for Josh harder... Ted Howze is a nut case Always whining about something...Stop the whining and Move on. When elections come around again if Josh doesn’t do what he said then vote him out. No wonder this country is so screwed up..except it and move on and get over it.There is life beyond this...” (Stan’s saying shut up and ignore what could be stealing of elections while calling an esteemed veterinarian a “nut case.”)

Lane, brother of Councilman Ken Lane, later suggested I leave the state.

Setting aside the personal attacks, let’s not look at the facts:

As of 9 p.m. on Election night, Jeff Denham was winning by 1,287 votes. That evening, Denham received 56,701 votes, or 50.57 percent, while Democrat challenger Josh Harder collected 55,414, or 49.4 percent. So with 112,115 votes counted as of that night, Harder was losing with 49.4 percent of the vote.

• For weeks the elections offices in Stockton and Modesto had an estimated 60,000 late absentee ballots and 19,000 provisional ballots to count.

• 112,115 votes is a huge sample of votes. It would seem logical that if the majority of the ballots already counted were Denham’s that a majority of the uncounted ballots would go to Denham. Applying the trend, out of approximately 79,000 remaining ballots, Harder should have claimed about 39,026 votes. Instead, he collected 52,694 extra – an anomaly of 9 percent points.

• Every Republican congressional incumbent in Congress was ahead on Election Night but lost their elections – including in conservative Orange County.

• Stanislaus County voters supported Republican John Cox for governor over Gavin Newsom, 75,116 to 70,711 votes – virtually the same percentages of the 10th Congressional District outcome on Election Night. So Cox (the Donald Trump endorsed candidate) polled 4,345 more votes than Josh Harder’s buddy Newsom. Yet in Stanislaus County, Harder received 74,580 votes to Denham’s 70,988? The same people who voted to send a conservative to occupy the governor’s chair actually preferred Harder – a guaranteed Trump obstructionist – over Denham, who agrees with Trump’s agenda of tax cuts and border security? Makes no sense.

How is it possible that, up until Election night, Harder was losing with 49.4 percent of the vote and yet he won 66.7 percent of the provisional and late vote-by-mail ballots? How is it explained when you consider that historically the change between the Election Night and final counts is less than seven-tenths of one percent?

Trying to be fair-minded about Howze’s assertions, I surmised that any fraudulent votes would have been flagged by the elections staff which is supposed to match the signature of voter on file with the one on the provisional ballot. Suppose someone had those voter signatures, maybe obtained on petitions, and forged them on provisional ballots. It’s totally possible given that we don’t require voters to show ID and prove who they are.

If Democrats were truly interested in guaranteeing fraud-free elections, they would back a voter ID law like the Republicans. But they don’t.

Now, at around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, I got a most interesting voicemail from a UC Davis researcher named Ekaterina Ponizaovskaya Devine who has a 650 area code number, which is a Bay area number. Rarely do I receive calls about columns I write, let alone columns written by others, and never any from the Bay area. Devine said she was “absolutely outraged” over us printing the Howze piece – which Democrat activist Lisa Battista terms a “nothing-burger” – and said voting fraud “is impossible.” Apparently a Trump hater, Devine said Harder was elected because we have a “lunatic of a president and Republicans doing nothing to control this situation.” She continued to assert in absolute terms that there was no voter fraud.

The frantic nature of her call struck me as very interesting. Why such a strong reaction? I couldn’t help but think of the wizard who wasn’t a wizard at all. Why was a woman from outside our 10th Congressional District so upset about an opinion piece printed in a small town newspaper, presumably outside of her congressional district judging by the area code? How did she even find the Howze piece as I’m sure she’s not one to be reading the little old Ceres Courier?

One prominent elected official in this county told me that underhanded tactics were used elsewhere in California to extract votes from homeless persons who were offered packs of cigarettes if they filled out a ballot. Apparently they use the address of the locald homeless shelter.

Mayor Chris Vierra suggested that voter fraud is possible but wouldn’t say if he thought it had occurred in the 10th. “The lists identify who is voting and who has not. Is it possible someone who hasn’t voted in the last 10 elections suddenly votes? Sure, it could happen but probably not likely in large numbers. Statistically not very likely. Could someone walk into a polling place with a card having the name of a registered voter (who rarely votes), I suppose that’s possible. The candidate has all the info. Again, I am not saying it did or didn’t happen, just that I believe it is possible.”

Ryan Schambers suggested that if “almost all the votes like the day of the election are Democrats then that proves that many of them are lazy and have to be coddled in order to mail their votes in.”

Schambers said in 2017 when he used a list to get out the vote he found “there were many houses of people registered to vote who moved or the building was demolished literally years ago and didn’t exist anymore. There is so much potential for voter fraud it is crazy. We don’t really know how much there is, obviously not enough to influence elections that aren’t really close, but there definitely is tons of potential for it.

“I also am not sure how much they are checking for someone voting twice or claiming to be someone else who is registered to vote but doesn’t. Also many instances I have had of someone like their mom voting for them without their permission.”

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I don’t doubt that Harder had an army of young 20-something Nanny State socialists running around with pie-in-the-sky promises that he would deliver the government freebies, to knock on doors. We even saw on social media the one doorbell video of a female Harder volunteer removing Denham literature from a door and replacing it with a Harder.

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So this well publicized caravan of gate-crashing foreign nationals who Trump won’t let in – they’d probably end up here in the Valley seeking taxpayer support and welfare – made a bee-line to California and not Texas, which is closer. What does that tell you about California being a welfare state for low-skilled, resource-sucking immigrants?

Speaking of the caravan, I saw a meme that was a good one. The meme came out after these poor innocent people trying to get our country with appreciative gestures like throwing rocks at law enforcement. It shows a man running with a mask over his face with the words, “If you don’t want to be hit with tear gas when entering a country illegally … then don’t enter the country illegally.”

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As many of you know, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burger and Hobby Lobby are Christian owned businesses. They’re also the most attacked by the left. So I wasn’t surprised when Rider University in New Jersey removed Chick-fil-A from a survey asking students what restaurants they would like on campus, “based on the company’s record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ community.” The fast-food chain was included in previous surveys.

To the left, just being Christian is somehow perceived as anti LGBTQ even though the company doesn’t discriminate against any group.

Here’s the pure B.S.: Rider says it understands some may view the decision as a “form of exclusion.” But the school says it wanted to be “faithful to our values of inclusion.” Huh?

* * * * *

Why not? People are altering their gender and coming up with all other classifications than male and female. Why shouldn’t a 69-year-old man sue to alter his age?

Emile Ratelband, a Dutchman, said he wants to legally be 49, saying he’d likely have better luck dating, getting a job, and making large purchases, such as homes or vehicles, if he were younger on paper. Makes sense to me. If a person can defy biological science to say he’s a woman instead of a man, why can’t a man defy biological science to change his birthdate?

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If you really want to know why Democrats want a lax immigration policy, all just look at Texas. Most of the state is red, except for the regions like Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston and all along the border with Mexico. That tells you a lot. It tells you that if Texas flips blue because of the immigrants, then the Democrats have a lock on the White House forever when you see how California, New York and Illinois are irrevocably blue. It’s not about helping the poor – it’s about the Left locking onto power.

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Interesting.  Of the 247,833 eligible voters in Stanislaus County, 147,866 ballots were counted as of Nov. 19. That’s a voter turnout of 59.6 percent.

The voter turnout in non-presidential election 2014 was 43.3 percent. In 2010 it was 53.48 percent.

The under votes are also interesting. Under votes are where a voter didn’t mark for either candidate, presumably because they had no confidence or didn’t have any idea who to vote for, such as high court judges where under votes were as high as 39,529! In the county superintendent of schools race, voters were also clueless as 19,562 under votes were recorded! For D.A., 19,342 voters left it blank!

In the 10th Congressional District, 2,269 in Stanislaus County opted to vote for either Denham or Harder. That’s probably because voters were much more swayed by the carpet bombing of campaign literature that cost both parties millions of dollars.

When only Democrats were on the ballot, many Republicans refused to fill in the oval, such as the 31,080 locals who didn’t vote in the lieutenant governor’s race, or the 21,581 who didn’t vote in the U.S. Senate race.

I think the top-two system is a joke. But then again, it was just a Democrat Party trick to do away with GOP competition once and for all.

How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com