Candidates and elected officials complaining about election fraud would be slapped with a gross misdemeanor charge, fine, and/or jail sentence under a plan by Washington’s far-Left governor Jay Inslee. The anti-free speech bill has now advanced from a Democrat-controlled committee with a “do-pass” recommendation to the state legislature.
And you thought it couldn’t get worse.
In 2020, Democrat governors and their underlings used COVID-19 as the excuse to change election laws, many times using emergency powers sans legislature, expand mail-in balloting, and remove what few security measures remained, such as signature matching. Recently, a state court ruled that Pennsylvania election changes by fiat were illegal under the state constitution. These aren’t lies. They happened. They may have changed the results of the election. The take over of local elections offices by Mark Zuckerberg’s “Zuck Bucks” also continues to fuel complaints. But Washington’s Gov. Inslee believes people seeking or holding elective office who complain about election chicanery should be punished for holding those wrong-thoughts. They should be silenced and maybe even jailed for up to a year.
In Inslee’s bill, loudly complaining about election fraud that accused complainers knew was bogus, as adjudged by a “jury” according to the governor, could lead to violence. The person who uttered the words should go to jail, he reasons. Inslee has never said these words in response to the Antifa and BLM riots during the election of 2016 and 2017 to depose the democratically elected Donald Trump.
Would be a shame if this video of leftists destroying DC during Trump’s 2017 inauguration went viral pic.twitter.com/5neEoZcGLG
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) January 14, 2021
Mere weeks ago the measure looked dead-in-the-water because of its sheer absurdity and obvious contravention of the First Amendment, which we note was written explicitly to protect political speech. But when a Washington Post article alerted the east coast Leftist political class that Inslee’s unconstitutional efforts were flailing, Harvard Law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe and George Washington University Law’s Catherine Ross got in touch to see if they could rehabilitate Senate Bill 5843 or at least give one of America’s least talented governors a little of their reflected glory and gravitas. Clearly, Governor Short Bus needed their help, they reasoned.
Mind you, Tribe’s contribution was no better than a book blurb and basically said we don’t know if this would pass legal scrutiny, but “this bill represents, at the very least, a thoroughly sensible, responsible, and good faith effort to address a serious problem imperiling democracy and to do so in a manner that respects the text and purposes of the first amendment.” Tribe inveighed against Jan. 6, 2021, assuming political speech caused people to riot at one door of the Capitol Building, but not the other.
Ross said she read the Washington Post story, which mentioned her previous slapped-down efforts to attack political speech. “But on reading this piece,” she said, “I agreed with the governor that these are exceptional times in which lies about the results of the last election pose a realistic threat. [emphasis added]. She offered in Zoom testimony before the State Senate Government and Elections Committee that she “consulted and helped craft the language which I do believe addresses the First Amendment problems.”
Indeed, Inslee continues to call this clunker of a bill “carefully crafted” as if these are magic words that hide his totalitarianism with sugar-coated pixie dust.
Related: Nick Searcy Blows the Lid Off the Jan 6. Narrative With ‘Capitol Punishment’
Inslee used to believe, “when everyone speaks, Washington’s stronger,” but the man who has uttered more untruths as an adherent to the Church of Global Warming has thrown over that more egalitarian viewpoint of political speech.
Inslee and his Democrat minions supporting this assault on democracy gutted and stuffed the bill to include the professors’ changes they hoped would give the bill a veneer of “neutrality.” “I think this bill is really pro-democracy,” testified Inslee over Zoom, “because it’s neutral it applies to every politician regardless of your party and it is very carefully written to protect the first amendment as well.” But neutrality in a Democrat-controlled state with a Democrat attorney general with the power to determine who’s targeted by what laws hardly seems neutral. See the J6 prosecutions in Washington, D.C. to assess Democrats’ ideas of blind justice.
Inslee says the anti-free speech bill is the height of democracy and “is consistent with all that we hold dear.” In his testimony last Friday he said his bill “preserves healthy debate but it does not allow people to foment violence through knowing lies.” And who adjudicates that “healthy debate” or whether one knew at the time one uttered words that they were “lies”? Well, a “jury” of course, says Inslee.
Inslee spent time with Stacey Abrams, the woman who has never conceded to the person actually elected as the Georgia governor.
Why does Governor Inslee want to throw Stacey Abrams in prison? Seems very anti-intersectional.
Will high-school teachers dare discuss the election of 1876? https://t.co/bUbTcsdf7B
— tedfrank 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 (@tedfrank) January 9, 2022
He’s touted Hillary Clinton’s lies about Donald Trump and Russian collusion.
We’re going to get to the bottom of whether Trump was a Russian asset, but we’ve long known he’s an American liability. https://t.co/dw1854tSlM
— Jay Inslee (@JayInslee) January 12, 2019
He called Trump a “clear and present danger” and a Russian asset.
The people who demonstrated outside the state capitol building in Olympia after the 2020 election believed the election had been stolen. Now we know there was a concerted effort by Democrats to put their thumbs on the election scales. The jury’s still out on the extent to which there was election fraud. But Inslee doesn’t want anyone who can do something about it to talk about.
Gag ’em.
Did anybody else notice that George Washington was wearing a face mask during Governor Jay Inslee’s news conference on COVID-19 today?
What do you think Washington would say? pic.twitter.com/biodqBfrWY
— Preston Phillips 🇺🇸 (@PrestonTVNews) July 8, 2020
On Jan. 28, the State Senate Government and Elections Committee moved this monstrosity out of committee with a “do pass” recommendation.
The Washington Policy Center’s fact sheet on this bill is something an elementary school student could have written, not because it’s poorly done, but because it states what should be obvious to everyone about the First Amendment. “The bill would violate the First Amendment; the courts have consistently ruled that censoring political speech is unconstitutional,” observes WPCs Paul Guppy. “The bill targets ‘officials and candidates for office’ even though ‘incitement to violence’ by anyone is already illegal under content-neutral standards,” he notes.
No matter. Put ’em in jail.
Inslee claims his bill shows that “politicians are not above anyone else,” but his bill sets forth two standards of speech, one for candidates and officeholders and one for everyone else. That won’t stand.
Why waste time and money with a bill destined for the totalitarian scrap heap? It will serve as a filter and will chill free speech by deplorable and undesirable Kulaks left standing in Washington state. And, who knows? Maybe Washingtonians are dumb enough to allow a precedent to be declared because they believe Inslee when he says “we don’t have to choose between protecting democracy and protecting free speech. We have done both” in this bill.”
Liar.
