(The following does not represent an endorsement of a candidate or political party on the part of Newsmax.)
“If I were King for a Day …” is not just an indulgence in imagination, but also a window into someone’s top priorities.
Donald Trump stated the only way in which he would be a “dictator” if elected would be to do two things on day one if re-elected: close the southern border and drill for more oil to hold down energy prices. In other words, if you like Biden’s immigration policy and gutting almost all offshore drilling sales you can vote for him, and if not vote for Trump.
Most conservatives, if given the opportunity to outline kingship for a day in 2024, would likely include electing a Republican White House and Congress, guaranteeing safety for Israel against Hamas and keeping men out of women’s sports.
If I myself were “King for a Day,” I would list the following:
1. Halt judicial attempts to remove Trump from the ballot
The first thing I would do is end the attempt to prevent Americans from choosing who they want for president.
The RealClearPolitics average indicates 38% of Americans would like to vote for Donald Trump, 37% for Joe Biden and 15% for Robert Kennedy Jr. Liberal lawyers are trying to deny Americans the choice of voting for Donald Trump by keeping him off the ballot — successful so far in Colorado and Maine.
Is it simply ironic that the same people who identify their goal as “protecting democracy” don’t see — or perhaps just don’t admit — that expelling an opponent from the ballot is a blatant attack on our democratic republic?
2. Get more conservatives to vote
The second thing I’d do as “King for a Day” is to re-engage conservatives’ focus on getting more like-minded patriots out to vote.
This presentation included a map with dots showing the 500,000-plus Wisconsin conservatives who did not vote in 2020 — a race lost by just 20,000 votes. Internal numbers indicate that turnout among faith-based evangelical voters may have been as low as 52% whereas almost 70% of other voters cast ballots.
I am not, in fact, likely to be king for a day, but I do feel that I can do something about this priority: I am starting this nonprofit to re-engage faith-based voters — just as I did nationally for the successful 2000 presidential election.
3. Require voter ID and signature matches
The third thing I’d do as “King for a Day" is reinstate Voter ID laws and require Utah-style signature matches for anyone who votes by mail rather than voting in person.
Everyone who wants to protect our Republic should want to ensure that voters are who they say they are — yet most liberal election organizations maneuver to overcome the three-quarters American majority who believe Voter ID should be required.
Look at Michigan, where a ballot measure last year asked voters whether they wanted Voter ID or some other kind of document; voters understood their “Yes” to be in favor of Voter ID, but in fact, it went to permit an alternative, thereby aborting any future attempts to legally require a Voter ID.
As “King for a Day,” I’d require Voter ID for general as well as in-party elections, and moreover, I would require state-of-the-art signature verification, as Utah has now.
4. Eliminate same-day registration
The fourth thing I’d do as “King for a Day” is go back to requiring people to register 10 days or more before voting, so election officials have time to verify whether a voter is in fact eligible, as opposed to, say, being registered in another state and voting there.
Liberal attempts to gut these rules are especially misguided; when same-day registration was on the ballot in New York, less than 40% of even the overwhelmingly liberal New Yorkers voted to allow same-day registration..
Students registering can be informed whether they are still registered back in their home state — and then they can choose where they are going to vote.
5. Stop social media efforts to divert conservative votes to spoiler candidates
The final thing I would do as “King for a Day” is to quash Big Data’s manipulation of social media to siphon off thousands of conservative votes to a spoiler Pro-life, Libertarian or Constitution Party candidate.
In Wisconsin in 2020 (just as one example) Biden garnered 1,630,866 votes — which would have lost the state had not the 1,659,080 conservative votes cast been split among the Libertarian (38,491), Pro-Life Solidarity (5,259) and Constitution (5,146) candidates.
The math is similar in a half dozen other states where millions of out-of-state dollars are spent to divert conservative votes to “spoilers” with no chance to win in order to switch presidential electors or flip U.S. Senate races despite a majority voting for one of the conservative candidates.
Of course, neither I nor any of us will be — or want — a king for even a day. The good news is that in a democratic republic, it doesn’t take a king to move these five policy goals. We can do it ourselves.
John Pudner is president of Takebackaction.org, a nonprofit home for Americans seeking true political reform. The organization's conservative solutions include: working for voter integrity through steps like voter ID; stopping illicit foreign money via groups from impacting elections; and supporting innovations like Instant Runoff/Final-Five voting to take away the opposition's incentive to fund spoiler libertarian or pro-life candidates, that often allow progressive candidates to win with less than 50% of the vote. Read more John Pudner Reports — Here.