(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not represent an endorsement for any political party or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)
There are critical components and protocols that must be implemented in 2024, ensuring every vote counts — but only those legally able to do so, are the ones casting votes.
When there are legal and/or ethical violations observed by poll watchers, there must be a real-time response to immediately address and halt violations.
That legal response chain should be comprised of the authority of county election boards, the courts, local and federal law enforcement, if necessary.
The Republican elections operation must consist of an integrated command and control operations center, one which runs the issue from the on-the-ground poll watchers/lawyers, up to a chain of command — in real-time — to analyze the report, and execute, where appropriate, pre-designated actions to stop the violations in their tracks.
This can include court filings, deployment of sheriffs, local law enforcement, U.S. Marshals, and/or the local FBI offices operating where the witnessed violations are occurring.
Coordination with media is also advisable, as a precaution which can capture purported malfeasance live on camera, wherever and whenever it's possible to do so.
Previous efforts to take these issues to court, three or four days after the vote has been certified, makes it 10 times as hard to address the issues, because the courts believe these issues should have been handled earlier at the local level, and/or dealt with by state legislatures when necessary.
We've seen that once the vote has been certified courts want nothing to do with the issue.
There must be a real time network, to get us into court immediately, when any illegal activity is suspected, not after-the-fact when it can't be undone.
Having been at the forefront of this, both on-the-ground on election day, and running the president's national investigation immediately afterwards, this writer would strongly suggest that the following structures be put in place, and all Republican lawyers and election volunteers be trained to use it:
- A defined chain-of-command, run by a command and control center. Its purpose? to report, track, and address any alleged illegalities, in real-time.
- A communications team structure - what to report, how to report, to whom, contact info/titles instructions distributed to all GOP participants.
- Analysis Team - a SME (Subject Matter Expert) team in place to evaluate reports in real-time, assess the legality of the situation, and push actionable items to the response team.
- Response Team - triage reports, identify what response should take place for each situation, assign recommended response to the action execution team.
- Action execution team structure - execute legal solutions, security/LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) deployment, evidence collection, track and trace actions/results/needs for additional resources/actions, follow-up to assess results.
- Evidence collection team - track all reports of any potential irregularities; collect: affidavits, names/titles/contact info of Democratic election-minders/facility directors/workers; structure of counting facilities, movement of ballots, drop box locations, security protocols, chain-of-custody for ballots, videos, etc.; control evidence collected by our team for later use where authorized; chain-of-custody rules to ensure admissibility, a tracking system for all above operations to show report-actions-results for an after action report for accountability.
- A phone tree – local GOP election representatives need to have a phone list in their hands and at the ready that they can utilize to report the suspicious and/or illegal activities. This should include the command center contact, the local attorneys who are hired to file injunctions, and law enforcement, to include the phone numbers of a contact at the police department, sheriff’s office, and local FBI field office.
As we have seen in the past, sometimes people don’t pick up their phones, or they choose not to act on reported information, so having alternate paths to an actionable solution is key.
Obviously, these must be pre-arranged, with the consent of law enforcement representatives, and our legal representation.
Such contacts contacts must be employed judiciously.
We must create a permanent structure modeled on the above to execute this year, and to have for all elections going forward.
Given what this writer saw in 2022, it appears that we have not learned from the mistakes of the past. It's time we formalize accountable polling/elections structures.
Lastly, we need to make sure that the law firms retained for the election response, are on our side. They should be supportive of the GOP, Donald J. Trump, and be on our side, forcefully advocating for us, if called upon to do so.
If they can't fill this bill, for whatever reason, they need to be dismissed from their role.
We’ve got to change our tactics if we’re going to defeat the enormous effort from the Democratic National Committee.
Just as former-President Donald Trump is our last chance to save the nation, equally so, is our mandate, to ensure that votes for him are not in vain.
Bernard B. Kerik was the 40th Police Commissioner of the New York City Police Department and is a New York Times bestselling author. Read Bernard Kerik's Reports — More Here.