Three Reasons the Garvey Glitch Undermines Public Trust

Topic: Elections

Lots can happen in the span of one week.  Today marks six days since the utter electoral annihilation of Nikki Haley, five since she dropped out, and just one day until Donald Trump most likely clinches the Republican nomination.  In these six days, California – supposedly the most technologically sophisticated state in the U.S. – has managed to count 69% of its vote.  While Donald Trump clobbered Haley in the Republican presidential race there, the state operates other races, such as that for the U.S. Senate, in a fashion called jungle primary.

A jungle primary dumps all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, into the race together.  Blue states with a weak opposition Republican Party have found jungle primaries as a reliable tool for guaranteeing Democrat vs. Democrat races in General Elections, which has a carry-over effect of depressing Republican turnout for other races that may be more competitive.  Genius concept, really, and one that only Democrats have the malice to pull off.  Longsuffering California GOPers must have been shocked, then, to find longtime L.A. Dodger hero Steve Garvey, a longshot Senate candidate, polling more than 45% of the vote against his Democrat opponents right up until this happened:

Move along, everyone.  Nothing to see here – especially not a 23.5% swing in the race and Garvey dumping 924,248 votes – more votes than Trump had in 22 states and Washington, D.C., each, in the 2020 presidential quasi-election.  While the race is still very close, it will not change the matchup between entrenched bureaucrat Adam Schiff, one of the primary architects of the various schemes to entrap President Trump, and Garvey.  I reached out to the Garvey campaign to see what their stance was about this “glitch” – and the response was more of less crickets, chalking it up to “human error.”  I have seen a few explanations online for this “error,” including one that blames Orange County for errant vote reporting favoring Garvey.  Again – maybe this is the case; I am not here to determine if there is foul play or not – I am here to explain why are elections need not be shrouded in mystery, and why people are rightly up in arms about the discrepancy.

Let’s go ahead and accept “human error” as the reason for the flip, which can also be verified from stills from the Fox News programming, rather than malfeasance and corruption, which is a common occurrence in California.  Even if that is true, and the adjustment was simply to reconcile the election results for sake of accuracy, the occurrence does nothing but undermine the public trust in our elections necessary for bolstering the operation of what we are supposed to have in America – a Constitutional Republic administered through consent of the governed.

When is the last time one of these flips, of which there were several noted in 2020, and even in the 2019 Kentucky Governor’s race, worked against Democrats?  I remember nearly everything, and I cannot recall a single occurrence when a last-minute audible, “glitch,” or accidentally discovered box of ballots tipped an outcome in favor of a Republican candidate, especially a populist one propelled by grassroots energy and shared disgust of the entrenched political class.