RUSSIANS AND ELECTION FRAUD? YEAH, RIGHT!

Monday, July 27th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

RUSSIANS AND ELECTION FRAUD? YEAH, RIGHT!

 

“The Russians are coming!  The Russians are coming!” And according to politicians in both parties, they are out to infiltrate the entire U.S. election process. President Trump is looking under every rock to find the culprits involved. And down here in Louisiana, the Secretary of State’s office is calling for the immediate replacement of some 10,000 voting machines at a cost of $60 million. Wow! This looks like a real crisis. But is it?

I have a bit of knowledge about the election system, having served as Louisiana’s chief elections officer for eight years, and as president of the National Secretaries of State Association. I’ve been hearing the cry of election fraud and the need for new voting machines for years. Try as I did, I never could find much election day shenanigans.

Oh, there was occasional voter hauling and paying a few folks to vote a certain way. But widespread voting irregularities, or some group like the Russians infiltrating the internet to fix elections is pretty far-fetched.

 The initial allegations of supposed Russian penetration of the election process came from the Department of Homeland Security following the past presidential election where 21 states were supposedly at risk.  But DHS was so worried about Russian subversion that it didn’t ever notify any Secretary of State. Some major threat!

Now I don’t doubt for a minute that the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans and any number of nations would love to tamper with our election system. After all, America has been doing that very thing in countries all over the world for a number of years.

A study from the Carnegie Mellon Institute reports that the U.S. has a long history of rigging polls, supporting military coups, channeling funds and spreading political propaganda in other countries. The study found that there were 117 “partisan electoral interventions” between 1946 and 2022. That’s around one of every nine competitive elections held since World War II. The majority of these, almost 70%, were cases of U.S. interference. And these are not all from the Cold War Era; 21 such interventions took place between 1990 and 2022, of which 18 were by the U.S.

So, is an unsuccessful effort to infiltrate our elections, as the U.S. has been doing to other countries for a number of years, a justification for Louisiana to spend $60 million on supposedly tamperproof voting machines? Hardly. As Earl Long once said, “Let me pick the company that makes those voting machines, and I’ll make them dance.”

There is no necessity for new expensive voting machines. The more sophisticated they are, the more likely that they can be hacked. The key, as obsolete as it seems, is to have a paper trail. As the Washington Post has argued: “Virginia rightly took 2016 as a wake-up call and retired its vulnerable DRE voting machines. But that’s not good enough. The federal government should mandate that all elections must, at a minimum, be able to produce an independently verified paper trail for every election held at both the state and local level.”

 

We here in the Bayou State do not need the feds to tell us what to do. But a backup paper trail of how votes were tallied makes sense, even in this day and age. Yes it’s the  21^stcentury, but the best protection against voter fraud is probably using 1^stcentury technology – PAPER.

 

Back in 1979, when I was first elected as Secretary of State, there were numerous charges of election fraud, particularly in close elections. I appointed an Elections Integrity Commission to investigate. The commission found some mistakes by voting commissioners but no sign of actual fraud. Voting took place on those old heavy Shoup machines. And you know what? They worked fine and produced a paper trail for verification.

There are a number of small and portable voting machines on the market that allow for a paper trail and at a reasonable price. Actually, the machines the state uses now are sufficient. In a financially busted state like Louisiana, $60,000,000 can find a much better use.

 Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com. 

 

TO OUR YANKEE FRIENDS, WE SAY — GET A LIFE!

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

TO OUR YANKEE FRIENDS, WE SAY — GET A LIFE!

 

Our friends up north need to let it go.  According to a cross section of northern commentators, the Second Reconstruction may be over, but they think a third one may be necessary.  The first came with the demise of the South following the Civil War. The second began a century later when the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965.  But this is no longer the ’60s, and the Supreme Court, with whom I often disagree, got this one right. The South can finally be treated like everyone else.  And this apparently makes a good number of our northern friends, particularly on the east coast, disgruntled.

Consider the Washington Post’s take in an Op Ed by their columnist Harold Meyerson. He writes: “If the federal government wants to build a fence that keeps the United States safe from the danger of lower wages and poverty and their attendant ills and the all-around fruitcakery of the right wing white South, it should build the fence from Norfolk to Dallas. There is nothing wrong with the fence as long as you put it in the right place.”

 

This kind of attitude goes much further than just having a problem with voiding the Voting Rights Act. When you refer to Southerners as fruitcakes, and suggest a border to keep them in their place, it reflects a weird desire for sectionalism, and a long tired grudge to keep re-fighting the Civil War.  Look, we down here acknowledge that the South lost the war.   But that was then, and most of the South has let it go. But it appears that many in the North still have trouble with it.

As I travel throughout the country, I’m still somewhat surprised by the stereotypes of southern living held by a good number of those folks living above the Mason-Dixon Line. Oh, we have our share of Good Ol’ Boys, and I do tell my share of redneck jokes.  I miss George Jones, I like country music, and I do drink Dixie Beer.  But the South is not all Bubbas and banjos.  Well, all right, I do play the banjo and my doctor’s name is Bubba. But a number of northern opinions reflect the South as being outside what is considered to be the American norm.

Many non-southerners form an opinion of the whole South from movie stereotypes like Steel Magnolias, Sweet Home Alabama, and a recent hit, The Help. TV hits like the Dukes of Hazard, Mayberry, and the Beverly Hillbillies created impressions that will stick with viewers from Boston to San Francisco for a lifetime.  And who can forget Deliverance? University of Tulsa cultural studies professor Robert Jackson says that the film is “powerful and pernicious. It’s had a tenacious hold on people’s imaginations, establishing the hillbilly as a kind of menacing, pre-modern, medieval kind of figure.”  There’s a great deal of nostalgia about an earlier way of southern life and romantic notions about southern life today. Sure we love to watch and re-watch Gone with the Wind.  But so do millions, not just all over the U.S., but all over the world.

 

Numerous writers migrated to New Orleans to find their creative juices.  Tennessee Williams, Robert Penn Warren, Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Ernest Hemingway, to name a few. Food?  You can have New York and San Francisco.  I’ll take Emeril Lagasse, John Besh and a host of other Southern restaurateurs any day.  And at half the northern price.  Maybe, just maybe, there is some envy about a culture that seems to produce an inordinate number of “rednecks” who are talented, creative, and so successful that it puts the rest of the country to shame.

Jazz, the blues and country music were born in the South.  Did you know that America’s first opera house was in the New Orleans French Quarter?  And what about American patriotism and commitment?  47% of all the U.S. military casualties in recent Middle East wars were from the South.

Not only can the South be eloquently defended, but there’s also a case to be made for southern exceptionalism. Sure there are continuing problems to be worked out, just as there are all over America. And maybe there is a case for reconstruction. Not because the south wants to “rise again.”  No, it’s a reconstruction of bigoted and outdated northern attitudes that have held both north and south back for many years.  So you folks up north take care of your “fruitcake” comments. Oh, and can you please pass the grits and biscuits?

 

Â********

We say grace, and we say “˜ma’am,’ If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn.”

 

“”Hank Williams, Jr., Country singer

 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com. 

 

 

 

 

VOTER DISTRUST IN LOUISIANA AND ACROSS THE NATION!

Wednesday, July 15^th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

VOTER DISTRUST IN LOUISIANA AND ACROSS THE NATION!

 

And I thought voters were distrustful, angry and confrontational a few years back when I held public office in Louisiana.  This coming federal election is viewed by many, including yours truly, as a herculean and rather grim battle between good and evil, left and right, the good guys and the scum, Wormwood and the Patient, and Saint Michael vs. Satan.  But guess what? There could be no victors.  We all could lose on November 3^rd..

 Remember the movie “Christmas Vacation?”  The hero is surprised by a Christmas bonus of a subscription to the Jelly-of-the-Month Club.  His reaction reflects what many voters think of those elected officials representing them: “Cheap, lying no good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, over-stuffed, ignorant, bloodsucking, dog-kissing, brainless, hopeless, heartless, worm headed sack of monkey bleep!”  You get my drift.

 

The average voter is looked on by these politico wondercan’ts as being too dumb to understand what the issues are all about.  We are the Rodney Dangerfields of the political process, and we don’t get any respect. The Washington crowd has all the answers, and your and my opinions have become irrelevant.

“Goldfinger” is my favorite Bond (James Bond) movie.  Remember when Bond (James Bond) is tied down on a table with a laser beam about to be cut in half, and he tells the bad guy, “You expect me to talk?”  Goldfinger answers: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.  There is nothing you can talk to me about that I don’t already know.”  That reflects the attitude of too many members of Congress who think they have all the answers, spend our tax dollars putting the country all the more in debt, and then look on those peons back home as irrelevant to their personal “get me elected” agenda.

One example of our delusional leadership is what’s happening in the Middle East.  Don’t you remember?  We have been at war there and have assumed a massive expenditure in dollars and American lives.  The financial cost is approaching three trillion dollars, and the weekly military expenditures are running $2 billion a week. Yet you will not find a congressional campaign anywhere in the country that acknowledges the mess that has been created.

I once had the chance to visit in Washington with Ahmed Chalabi, who was the leader of the Iraqi National Congress and the former Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.  He talked of the bitterness of many Iraqis towards America.  “We wanted a provisional government after the demise of Hussein. The Americans wanted occupation. We thought America would be liberators, but instead they became occupiers.”

Then he said something quite disturbing. “The vast majority of Arabs think the 9/11 tragedy was instigated within the U.S.A. You are the strongest country in the world.  It’s hard for many Arabs to believe that 19 young men with box cutters could do so much harm to America.”

The U.S. spends billions on Middle Eastern oil, and the proceeds get funneled to the very enemy American soldiers are fighting. We seem to be at war with our allies, and the U.S. is the only country in the history of the world to pay for both sides of the fight.

We are decades away from peace in that region, the cost is staggering to our economy, yet not a word, not a suggestion, and not a voice of concern is being raised by any candidate in my home state of Louisiana or nationwide.

So the choices get tougher as Election Day approaches. Do you throw the present bums out, and end up with new bums? Like the Who song says: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”  It looks like a crapshoot folks. There is a lack of any strong will to address what ails this nation by candidates on both sides of the isle.  So if you roll the dice, unfortunately, you may lose either way.

*******

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com.  

 

 

DOESN’T ANYONE TAKE TIME TO VOTE?

Monday, July 6th, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

DOESN’T ANYONE TAKE TIME TO VOTE?

Remember the 1970 song by Chicago: “Does anybody really know what time it is, does anybody really care?” Louisiana held an election last week and only 17% of registered voters showed up. Only a handful of voters, both Republican and Democratic, bothered to cast a ballot for United States Senator, one of the most important offices in the nation. So why wasn’t there more interest?

Louisiana has become a strong red state with major advantages for the Republican candidate. A number of Democratic-leaning voters feel going to the polls is just not worth the effort. “Why bother if my vote really won’t make any difference,” is the feeling of many more moderate-inclined voters.

It’s much harder for candidates to get to voters today. It used to be that a voter had the choice of three TV stations, a few radio stations and one local newspaper. The internet has changed all this. From cable to web newspapers to information streaming, voters have so many new choices. And political media campaigns often get lost in the scuffle. It is simply much harder to get to the average voter without raising and spending more campaign dollars.

“Retail politicking,” particularly in statewide races, has become a thing of the past. Up until just a few years ago, candidates would never miss the chance to shake hands at numerous well-attended festivals and fairs across the state. When I was out looking for votes during my seven statewide elections, I would send over a convertible at the crack of dawn on parade day to get in the front of the line, often jousting with a number of other candidates. Today, few statewide candidates show up for such events.

Now candidates raise campaign dollars and hand it over to consultants, who then decide how the money is to be spent. And the majority of the spending is for 30-second attack ads in the final days of the campaign. Both sides attack each other, and voters are relegated to the choices of bad or worse. As one candidate put it: “I want voters to hold their nose and vote for me.”

The press does not cover political campaigns like they once did. This is a reflection of the financial cutbacks by newspapers, radio and TV stations across the state. Radio stations are doing much less local programming. Thousands of voters used to listen to interviews about local and state politicians during morning and afternoon drive time. But much of the programming is now syndicated, with stations using talk show hosts who have little interest in local politics. TV stations in the state, with a few exceptions, no longer have the resources to do any in-depth comparisons of candidates. The result is that voters are less informed, and thus less interested.

I wonder if many voters in the state know how to vote anymore? Today, more and more voters toe the party line, and look for either the R or D after a candidate’s name. Too often, we don’t consider which candidate has a broad vision for what is in the best interest of Louisiana.

Have we relegated ourselves into “kneejerk” voting based on single issues?
Consultants talk about the Catholic vote, the abortion vote, and the Cajun vote, often all based on self-interest, and not founded on a range of issues that are critical to getting Louisiana out of its economic doldrums. If these “self-interest” issues are not on the line, doesn’t this dampen the interest in going to the polls?

And finally, there might be some truth in the view of comedian Jay Leno. “If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.”

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.