My home state is no stranger to election fraud: New Jerseyans will remember well just last August when Paterson, New Jersey – the state’s third-largest city – had to hold a new election for a City Council seat due to massive mail-in voter fraud. Nonetheless, Phil Murphy and the Democrat administration in Trenton plowed ahead with their plans to conduct elections in New Jersey almost entirely by mail in November, ignoring pleas from local election boards to put safeguards in place to prevent the kind of widespread fraud seen in Paterson from occurring throughout the state.
Proponents of gutting election integrity laws in New Jersey will point to the Paterson case as an example of authorities successfully rooting out all cases of fraud. Democrats and liberal media pundits similarly respond to concerns of voter fraud with the same tired talking points about fraud being “exceedingly rare” and “easy to detect.” However, this argument is akin to assuming that because some drivers receive speeding tickets, all people who speed are ticketed. Common sense will tell you that relatively few people who speed actually receive a ticket. In the same way, we can never know for certain how much fraud there was in the 2020 election cycle – or in any other past election cycle – unless we assume that election officials caught every single instance of fraud. Democrats may be willing to make that bet, but I, along with many other Republicans, am less willing to take such a chance when the integrity of our democratic process is at stake.
Instead of assuming that our current laws are good enough to catch every case of voter fraud and focusing only on making elections more accessible, we should be asking ourselves what we can do to make the ballot box more accessible and secure – not just one or the other. In order for our republic to thrive, Americans must believe that election outcomes reflect the actual will of the people, both from the standpoint of allowing every eligible voter to vote and ensuring the principle of one person, one vote. As such, it is incumbent upon all elected officials to take widespread concern about voter fraud seriously. If the people cry out for a conversation on election security, they should be heard by those in power.
Democrats have no interest in making elections secure. During the 2020 election cycle, Phil Murphy, like many other Democrat governors, unconstitutionally usurped the power of the legislature by creating his own election laws, throwing the true outcome of elections into question. In response, I filed a lawsuit challenging many of his actions. Unfortunately, the people of New Jersey were denied justice when the Supreme Court refused to take up the case and address the important Constitutional issues I had raised.
We can’t continue to allow Phil Murphy and like-minded Democrats to get away with such a shameful lack of accountability, and we can’t always rely on the courts to rectify such wrongdoing. We need leaders who don’t pretend that there has to be a trade-off between access and security in our election system. Making elections more secure doesn’t mean fewer people will be able to vote. On the contrary, elections are only secure when they enable every eligible voter to cast his or her ballot in a safe, timely manner. Moreover, our leaders can only govern effectively when the people believe they won fair and square. Changes to election laws must accomplish both of these tasks simultaneously.
If I am elected governor, I will immediately increase access to the ballot box while also restoring the resilience of our election infrastructure. To start, I will increase the number of polling places, targeting densely populated areas so that everyone has a convenient place to make their voice heard. I will outlaw ballot harvesting and make sure that only certified election officials have access to ballots. I will also ensure that every New Jerseyan has access to a government-issued photo ID, and then make sure that every citizen who wishes to vote shows that ID at their polling location or when requesting an absentee ballot. Unlike most Democrats, I do believe that African-Americans and other minorities are capable of acquiring and showing a valid photo ID. After all, I am from a minority group and have managed to do so my entire adult life.
It’s time for new leadership in Trenton that views election integrity as a top priority and not a secondary concern. Win or lose, all candidates should know that they had an honest chance on Election Day. Most importantly, all New Jerseyans should know beyond a shadow of a doubt, as is guaranteed to them by the Constitution, that their vote was fairly counted in filling the halls of their government.
Businessman and America-First candidate Hirsh Singh is running for the Republican nomination in New Jersey's GOP Gubernatorial primary.