Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, what should be our chief concern in this important election year? Should it be the right candidate for president? Certainly, that will be the obsession of the country.

Others, perhaps more wise in thinking a few steps beyond, they point out that local candidates in state, city, and county offices have far greater impact on our lives and should therefore be our focus. And various issues on local ballots are important too, like bond measures or constitutional amendments. But there's one issue that unfortunately is of such cruciality that it cannot be ignored. And that's ballot integrity. Yes, dear listener, ballot integrity is of far more importance.

Your vote is being stolen. What does it matter who and what is on the ballot if your vote is compromised? Even if one were to magically resurrect George Washington to run for president? It wouldn't matter if the vote was rigged in favor of Joe Biden. Joseph Stalin is famous for saying, and I quote, those who vote decide nothing.

Those who count the vote decide everything. Unquote. Joseph Stalin, tyrant. Bingo. And that says everything, doesn't it?

Implicit in Stalin's little witticism is the cynical corrupt assumption that his ideal is to have a facade of choice by the people in an election with the certainty of a rigged outcome in the party's favor. Why take any chances? This is the way of all tyrants, and it is the way of politicians in the United States of America America in our own day. But it was not always so. It used to be that if there was anything close to being sacred in politics, it was a person's vote.

It was his primary and most effective means of exercising political power within the government administering power in his life. It meant the vote that he had some measure of control over what went on among the political forces at work in this society. It became the primary feature of a representative republic. Now, people vote in socialist tyranny like Stalin's Soviet Union or America's deep state, but it is a mere exercise in appearance while the reality is that a select few make the real decisions.

People vote in a democracy, a pure democracy too, but a democracy is nothing more than a tyranny of the majority, where, for example, if 51% of the people vote to feed Christians to the lions again, then you might as well break out the salt and pepper, brother, because it's going to happen. Someone once said that a democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. That's a pretty good description. In a representative republic, however, like the USA was first crafted to be, the people vote for others to represent them in government.

And those representatives, in turn, they make, enforce, and adjudicate the laws that govern the voters. Those public servants are accountable to the voter and must stand for re-election periodically in a kind of performance review by the people. In addition, a representative republic is chartered by a written constitution, which has provisions that protect the rights of the minority, no matter what the will of the majority may be. It is not a democracy. We are not a democracy.

And that is why you have ostensible guarantees in the Bill of Rights in our Constitution, for example. Those Bill of Rights guarantee free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right to bear arms, the right to privacy, or the right to a trial by jury. It means that although the two wolves may vote to have lamb chops for dinner that night, the sheep may stand on his right to serve a tossed salad instead. He has a constitutional right, that sheep, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In a representative republic, the average man can run for public office himself to exercise power, or he can support candidates with time and money to exercise power. But the one thing that is an inherent God-given right for which every man is, his vote, his yea or nay, concerning a person or policy that is before the people, it is often called a franchise of power. A franchise is a subsidiary of the larger body of a corporation. For example, each individual McDonald's is a subsidiary restaurant of the larger body of McDonald's restaurants. It is a franchise of the whole.

And so too, each individual voter is a subsidiary of the larger body of the republic, holding a franchise of its power in the form of his vote. Consequently, his vote is the concrete manifestation of political power for the improvement, protection, and exercise of his life and livelihood. And over the eons of man's progress, this franchise of power has developed its sacred quality. If, after all, we have been endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, then among those rights is his vote. And since it is God-given, it is sacred.

Now, by having a franchise of power in the vote, it does not mean that by casting his ballot, he automatically gets his way for what he votes. It also does not mean that his vote is only symbolic of freedom, but that if the aggregate, in the aggregate, his vote prevails in the election, well, it is translated into policy. What it does mean is that regardless of the outcome of an election, his rights and privileges are protected, no matter which policy or politician may prevail. So, those societies which protect and cherish a representative republic see the vote exercised by each individual as sacred, that is, given by God.

And it's not to be profaned by compromise or theft as it is in our own day. All of this is in jeopardy in America today. We know that the Democrats stole the presidential election of 2020. It was blatant and in our face. And here are just a few of the tactics that were employed by Democrats, especially in swing states.

A swing state is a state like Pennsylvania or Michigan, where the numbers are closely divided between Republicans and Democrats. Some of the tactics, well, there were leftist intimidation tactics, such as those of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Yeah. And there were secret consent decrees, for example, in Georgia, where both sides had agreements made beforehand, which short-circuited investigations. Well, there was also the abuse associated with mail-in ballots.

Oh, the mail-in ballots. They were sent to dead people. They were sent to people who had already moved out of the state years ago. They were even sent to pets. There was also the notorious Dominion voting machines.

Their software had the ability to flip votes between candidates that's been demonstrated, and yet they've gotten away with it. There's also been the manufactured fake ballots that were numbering in the tens of thousands, excuse me, the hundreds of thousands in Georgia, for example. And there were also then voting by illegal aliens. That has to stop, dear listener. Voting by illegal aliens.

Non-citizens voting in our elections. There were also the notorious drop boxes that were set up and operated all over blue cities, and they operated illegally, stuffed with unsecured ballots. That has to stop, too, in the future. And then there were also voter drives funded by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, for example, that targeted heavily Democrat districts. There was also the rejection, you remember, this was notorious in Georgia in particular, the rejection of Republican observers during vote counting procedures.

That is one of the reasons that so many of those illegal ballots snuck by the doorways because of the rejection of Republican observers. And then there was also the transportation of ballots across state lines. Obviously, to achieve Democrat victories in key states. Well, on we could go. But anyone with a modicum of curiosity will find an abundance of evidence, an abundance of evidence with a minimum of effort.

The problem is that so many Americans are profoundly incurious. Yes, so many of my fellow citizens are profoundly incurious when it comes to the tyranny closing in around them like a tightening noose. Oh, it's frightening to consider tyranny. It's easier to ignore. It is more soothing to pretend that things are normal and so much more soothing to listen to the blandishments of the mainstream media.

They say things like, there's no evidence that the election was stolen. And only the profoundly incurious will take the thoroughly discredited CNN and mainstream media voices at their word. Or they'll say, this was the most secure election in history. In other words, don't look. Don't do your own research.

Or they may say, if you doubt the results, you are a conspiracy theorist. Yeah. Oh, you don't want to wear that label, do you? But I tell you, if you think that I am a conspiracy theorist, theorist, excuse me, if you think I'm a conspiracy theorist, then I know that you are a naive, brainwashed. Pollyanna.

Oh, the progressive left and this administration, dear listener, are engaged in ubiquitous gaslighting. Gaslighting is nothing more than lying boldly, blatantly to your face, despite the evidence before you. Oh, it's like saying, who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes? My uncle used to say that gaslighting was like saying, don't drool on me and tell me it's raining. Although it's not quite drooling that the word that he used.

No. Oh, gaslighting the mainstream media, the progressive left, this administration is gaslighting us. In fact, one is now characterized as a white supremacist by asserting the obvious. That is that the election was stolen by Biden and the Democrats. These epithets are meant to shame you.

They are meant to shame the timid anyway, into staying away from any, any investigation into the truth of these matters. Don't even think about thinking the election was stolen or we will stick these labels on you. Dear listener, if these kinds of tactics work, what it means is that they will repeat these same tactics during the next election cycle. Steal one election, shame on you. Steal a second election, shame on me.

We must not let them steal another election. But what must always be kept in mind, dear listeners, that Democrats have for decades challenged the legitimacy of a whole host of elections and they've conveniently forgot it now that their integrity is on the line. They expect you to forget, for example, they expect you to forget Stacey Abrams. She was the Democrat candidate for governor in Georgia in 2018 and she lost to Republican Brian Kemp. In the end, she gave a bitter, angry, non-conceding concession speech, but she continued to maintain that she had won.

She also filed suit to challenge the results and the manner in which the election was managed. Well, also, we all must always remember Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have for years denied the legitimacy of the 2016 election, maintaining Russian interference as the reason, of course, and that led to a whole host of investigations into Donald Trump too. Well, in addition, going even further back, Democrats, I remember this, Democrats denied the legitimacy of George W. Bush's defeat of John Kerry in 2004. Democrats also denied the legitimacy of George W. Bush's defeat of Al Gore all the way back in 2000.

And that suit went all the way to the Supreme Court. And when the court decided in Bush's favor, oh, the Democrats cried, Bush was not elected. He was selected, right? Ostensibly by the Supreme Court. So what we have here is, of course, the age-old, unprincipled argument by convenience, where one side of an argument is taken because it fits an agenda.

Oh, that's been done with the climate change too, right? Remember, the climate is cooling. That goes all the way back to 1976. So one side of an argument is taken because it fits an agenda while taking its exact opposite side when it suits a new agenda. And with the climate, of course, the climate is now warming, right?

Ha, ha, ha. Climate science has nothing to do with it, does it? Political science has everything to do with it. And so it is here. When it served their interests, Democrats challenged the elections where Republicans won.

But when it served their interests, Democrats shut down or stigmatized challenges to elections where Democrats won. There is no integrity. There is no principle at stake here for Democrats. Only politics. Only power.

This is why we have a fraud in the White House. Democrats made a Herculean effort at defrauding the electoral process at every turn in 2020. And admittedly, they succeeded. We have to congratulate them on that, at least. And most Americans, most Americans sat idly by and let it happen with no follow-up consequences.

Governor Brian Kemp refused to challenge the results in Georgia, for example, despite evidence of fraud and a personal appeal by President Trump. And both Michigan and Wisconsin, in their respective legislatures, refused to postpone certification of electoral delegates until investigations into voter irregularities were conducted. Yes, they intentionally ducked that responsibility. And of course, Pennsylvania just outright played monkey, see no evil, hear no evil, and do no evil to the egregious evidence of fraud on election night in their state. On and on we could go.

Nothing was done. No protests made. The 2020 presidential election was filled with more irregularities than a senior on a nursing home meal plan. But most Americans, this is still the case. Most Americans are still raised in public schools.

And so they have an antipathy for doing their homework. They have an obsession for not being bothered while on their devices. And they have a propensity for believing what the authorities at the podium tell them. Oh, such people are lost. They're in the dead zone.

They're beyond reach. And unless something extraordinary intervenes, such sleepwalkers will continue to be herded into the chute of slavery like sheep to the slaughter. But not everyone is like this, fortunately. Not everyone is like this. Just a couple of examples.

And one comes to mind, the movie 2,000 Mules. Perhaps you've seen this movie, 2,000 Mules, produced by Dinesh D'Souza. And Dinesh D'Souza does yeoman's work in documenting the overwhelming numbers of fake ballots that flooded the tabulating centers in cities like Philadelphia. Now, a mule is someone who humps burdens of ballots to a host of ballot drop boxes for money. He's not voting personally, but merely taking those ballots from someone else and putting them in the drop boxes.

And one ingenious investigator followed a number of these mules via their cell phones and caught them on film in this process. Oh, it is estimated that more than enough such fraudulent ballots were cast to influence the final outcome. Well, there's then also somebody like Mike Lindell. Mike Lindell. What a character.

The ebullient MyPillowScion has lent his reputation, his energies, and his funds towards demonstrating that the fraud of the 2020 election was perpetrated, indeed, with success. And he's helped found organizations like Cause of America, which is dedicated to doing research on the election. He hosted a cyber symposium, which brought forth some of this evidence. And he has championed several lawsuits that hope to expose some of the secret consent decrees, for example, and irregularities in the states over certification of ballots. More power to you, Mike Lindell.

What needs to happen is that states need to secure their election routine before the 2024 presidential election transpires. And time is running out, dear listener, I don't have much hope that states will secure their election routine before the 2024 election. Oh, we need to do things like get rid of the drop boxes, prune the voting rolls of the dead and the relocated. We need to restrict the illegal alien from voting. That should not happen.

And we should disallow the unsigned, the undated and incomplete ballots that used to never happen in our elections, but it's been happening recently. And we need to return to things like same day voting and same day counting of the votes as well. It used to be that we could finish the counting of the votes overnight and have the results by early morning of the next day, not going on for weeks and weeks. And we need to go back to paper ballots and throw out the voting machines. And then finally, we make need to make sure that monitors for both parties are there to oversee procedures.

Oh, these are the minimal measures that need to be adopted by every state. If the American people will ever have confidence in our elections again, right now, the American people have no confidence in their elections and rightly so. But this has not happened in the four years since this sloppy circus of incompetence and fraud happened. Very little has been done. There have been incremental measures taken here and there.

For example, in Texas, there's been comprehensive legislation that tightens when, where, and how ballots may be cast, especially by mail. And in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania has been utterly deadlocked, impotent to get anything done. In Michigan, it's been kind of a mixed bag. There has been state funds appropriated for drop boxes. Oh man, states are going to fund drop boxes.

That's not good. But on the positive side, electronic ballot tracking and notification system has been instituted. In Wisconsin, there's been modest changes. There's been a Monday count of absentee ballots so that we don't have all that confusion on Tuesday when, you know, all the absentee ballots are in already. So count them on Monday rather than Tuesday.

And they've been verifying voters' citizenship. That's good. Whistleblower protection too, when officials suspect fraud. And there's still a battle over absentee ballots, however, that may not be decided before 2024. In Missouri, they've done a voter ID requirement.

That's all. And in Georgia, they've enacted voter ID requirements. They've also limited drop boxes. And they are also allowing state takeovers of local elections when they freeze up. And they've also begun to invalidate provisional ballots.

So some things have been done. But if this is all that has been accomplished in the last four years, then we can be certain of one thing, dear listener, certain of one thing, and that is the decrepit fraud. The commander in briefs will stumble his way to the podium to cynically take his oath of office for another four years and proceed to violate every phrase of it. It seems the United States of America must learn another bitter lesson in tyranny before she awakens. That is, as Stalin says, those who vote decide nothing.

Those who count the vote decide everything. Dear listener, our constitutional republic was not sketched out on a napkin during afternoon tea by the founding fathers. A kind of constitutional republic which can be tossed aside. Because Gen Z thinks it's so yesterday. No.

It was centuries. Our constitutional republic was centuries in the making, with roots stretching all the way back to the tribal republic of Israel. And that constitutional republic was secured to us by the blood and treasure of better men than us who preceded us. And we are frittering it away. We are obsessed by what's trending on Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, excuse me.

We are obsessed by what's trending on Twitter, or who the Yankees drafted this year. And it will be genuinely tragic if we lose that constitutional republic. At the center of that heritage is the character and integrity of the franchise of power bequeathed to every citizen by God himself. That is our vote. If indeed you believe that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, then you must confess that our vote is sacred.

And it is in jeopardy in this day and age. What no aspiring tyrant dared to do in our past, it's never been tried in America in the past. Oh, what no aspiring tyrant dared to do, and that is compromise the people's vote, is being cynically, blandly done by the pathetic people in power at present. Oh, and no one will come to save the day, dear listener. No, there's going to be nobody on a white horse who comes in, waves a magic wand, and writes everything.

No, it will have to be us. It will have to be the people who insist that our franchise of freedom is respected. We must write, we must activate, we must do, and we must indeed insist that our elected servants, our elected representatives do all they can to protect our franchise of freedom. It's up to you, dear listener, dear voter. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

New Geneva meets for Holy Word, on Sunday. We invite you to come and visit us and see who we are and find out just indeed what kind of people we are. We meet on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street for Holy Worship, and you can call us for more information or give me some feedback, too. Tell me what you think by calling 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.