One must have fairly thick skin to be in the newspaper business. We have opinion pages, and we express our opinions. We encourage others to do the same. If it isn’t libelous, and if you sign your name, we’ll happily print your written opinion. My two greatest friends since childhood lean politically left. Decidedly left, as a matter of fact. They are still my best friends, and we continue to text and/or e-mail weekly.

That being said, in response to those who tell us that we now need to simply go along with this radical crew that is attempting to hijack this great Republic and “bring us together as a nation”, we refer to the words of a great American who didn’t own slaves, was an independent and critical thinker, and remains in our opinion one of the greatest of our founding fathers.

In 1787, as anxious citizens waited outside Independence Hall of Philadelphia to hear the results of the Constitutional Convention, as the delegates left the building, a woman in the crowd asked, “Well Doctor, what have we got?” Without hesitation, Benjamin Franklin replied: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

We offer our readers the following viewpoint from Bart Marcois, reprinted from The Epoch Times. Certainly rings true to me.

How an International Election Observer Sees the US 2020 Election.

My first experience as an international election observer was in Yemen, in the fall of 1992. I was the American Embassy liaison with the professional election observer community. To the shock of the international community, and to my personal surprise, those elections were mostly free and fair, which was how we certified them. Not one of us could say the same thing with a straight face about the U.S. election of 2020.

First, the Media

Election observation missions begin months prior to Election Day. They start by examining whether all political parties have equal access to the media.

In the 2020 American political sense, it is not the government that controls media access, it is the collusion among the legacy media and Big Tech. And although the private sector censorship is not absolute, it is enough to change electoral outcomes. Phony fact checks, the corruption of search results, the social media algorithms that censor some views and elevate others: all amount to restricted information flow.

We would rate this system partly free, but not fair.

Clean Process

In Yemen, in 1992, the election officials performed a simple extraordinary act of reassurance to voters. Thousands of voters were lined up outside the school, waiting for the polls to open. The officials carried the wooden ballot boxes outside and showed the waiting voters that they were empty. The crowd burst into spontaneous cheers.

The boxes were locked and voting commenced. Each voter had to present an identity card, and was given a paper ballot with the name and symbol (for illiterate voters) of the candidates. They marked the ballots in secret, and slipped them into the slot. When the polls closed, the boxes were sealed with melted wax and marked with the thumb-print of each party representative. Until the votes were counted and certified, those boxes were accompanied by representatives of every political party. It took more than two days, but they never stopped counting, and they never blocked the observers.

In Tunisia last fall (the cleanest election I’ve ever seen), the process was similar. Every voter showed an identity card, the name was checked against a list, votes were inserted into secured boxes. The votes were counted at each polling place, in full view of observers from political parties, embassies and the international observers. The whole election was counted and reported within three hours of polls closing. No voters reported difficulty accessing the polls, and every polling place had the same procedures.

The American Shame

Compare that to the elections in four cities in America last month. In order to believe Joe Biden won the election, you have to believe that he beat not only Donald Trump, but also the records of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; but only in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee. Not one of these elections can pass scrutiny.

In every other big city in America, Biden underperformed Obama and Clinton, but in those four cities, he scored ten points more than either of them. How? Each city showed a persistent pattern of harassing and intimidating and excluding election observers. Each shut down counting for several hours on Election night, and sent observers home, or chased them away.

Each showed an enormous and statistically impossible spike in votes for Joe Biden, recorded only during the hours when no observers were present. In Detroit and Philadelphia the after midnight vote deliveries came in trucks or vans, while in Georgia they were pulled from under the tables.

Each city also had multiple reports that mail-in ballots were not scrutinized properly for signature matches, for residency, or for proper ballot procedures. While votes in conservative areas of these states were allowed to follow proper procedures, voters from heavily Democrat areas were not. Failure to require uniform application of election laws in every jurisdiction is a sure disqualifier. Similar stories came from Nevada and Arizona.

The Voting Machines

Adding to the lack of transparency for the voting process, there is no direct correlation in any of these states between votes cast and votes counted. The ballots were entered into machines, which reported totals in decimals. Sworn affidavits tell us these machines and their software were developed by Venezuelans at the behest of Hugo Chavez, specifically for the intended purpose of manipulation and fraud.

User manuals for the machines show they can connect to the INTERNET, that batches of votes can be transferred from one candidate to another, and they do not leave an audit trail. Dominion Voting Systems received a $400 billion “investment” from China four weeks before our election. These are all clear hallmarks of election interference.

Free and Fair? You Be the Judge

Can you certify any of the following:

• Were impartial observers verifying signatures on mail-in ballots?

• Did each party have equal access to provide information to voters through the media?

• Were election laws applied uniformly for all voters in all jurisdictions?

• Were ballot counting procedures uniform in every city in these four states in question?

• In these four states in question, were they monitored by independent observers at every moment?

• Were ballot deposit procedures transparent and uniform?

• Can you certify that no extra ballots were introduced into the counting center from outside the normal counting process?

The honest answer is “NO” to every single question.

Bart Marcois is a former career foreign service officer, and was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs. He has served as an international election observer in several countries, and in over 30 domestic elections in several states.