One of the key principles in the American criminal justice system is that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. That is, unless someone can prove otherwise, we must assume that the defendant isn’t guilty of the crime they’re accused of committing.
That’s all well and good. But what if there isn’t a defendant? What if someone is actively working to hinder an investigation to determine if a crime has even been committed?
I say, once that happens, a line has been crossed and the paradigm should be flipped. The person or persons responsible for obstructing the investigation should be considered guilty until proven innocent. Once someone obstructs the process of determining if a crime has been committed, the onus should be on them to prove their own innocence. We should assume that they are guilty unless they can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they’re not.
We’ve seen this play out numerous times since the election. Any time someone wants to investigate the possibility of election fraud, other parties (presumably bad actors) work to thwart an investigation. Sometimes they challenge in court, other times they destroy evidence and still other times they refuse to cooperate. The obstruction has been perpetrated by State Attorney’s General, State Supreme Courts, Governors, election boards and other local officials. In fact, I can think of no instance where election officials have voluntarily cooperated with an investigation.
The most recent example of this is in Maricopa County, Arizona. The Board of Supervisors have refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the Arizona Senate to hand over the voting machines and over 2 million ballots from the 2020 election. The Arizona Senate will be fast-tracking a contempt charge against the Supervisors, probably tomorrow (Monday). If that happens, the five members of the Board of Supervisors are going to jail.
I’ll say that one more time. The Board of Supervisors for Maricopa County would rather go to jail than cooperate in an investigation into election fraud.
Let’s pretend for a moment that there wasn’t election fraud in Arizona. If I had been in charge of running the elections, I would be completely cooperative with an investigation to prove otherwise. Because, I would be certain that they would find nothing to indicate there was a problem. It wouldn’t matter to me if they were trying to prove the presence of fraud or the absence of it. I know there was no fraud so either type of investigation would prove fruitless. I would win regardless of the motive behind the investigation.
So, I’d cooperate, they’d investigate, and find nothing. The Republicans in the Arizona Senate would be the ones looking foolish and I’d come out looking great because I was totally transparent and cooperative. But only if I wasn’t guilty.
There would be absolutely no benefit to me or anyone else to obstruct an audit of a completely fair and above-board election. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by anyone to hinder an investigation that could prove that the election was run fairly. Unless it wasn’t.
If the election wasn’t run fairly, if there was election fraud, then there would be a lot to gain by a lot of people if they could make sure that an investigation never took place.
This tug of war between the Arizona Senate and the Board of Supervisors has been going on for months. Even if they suddenly decided to cooperate and hand over the election materials, I wouldn’t believe the results of any audit. The voting machines and the 2 million ballots in question have been under the control of the Board of Supervisors this entire time. They’ve had plenty of motive, means and opportunity to tamper with the evidence. I suspect that the only reason they’re stalling is that they haven’t quite finished tampering.
Any reasonable person would look at the actions of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors and conclude that they’re guilty of something and are likely still committing crimes. Their actions are not those of innocent people. By ignoring a subpoena and obstructing a Senate investigation, they have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they’re hiding something. Something worse than going to jail for contempt.
They’re not motivated to help with the investigation because it will likely uncover what that “something worse” is. I say we flip the paradigm and presume their guilt. Since they’re obstructing an investigation into election integrity, they should be considered guilty of election fraud until they can prove that they’re not. Because, if they truly are innocent, having to prove that they’re not guilty should give them plenty of motivation to cooperate.
