© Jack Cashill

WorldNetDaily.com - September 23, 2010

ormer Naval fighter pilot Will Royster asks a good question, “If we won’t allow Somali pirates to hijack our ships, why do we allow them to hijack our elections?”

Royster has experienced this paradox up close. It was his election that was hijacked, specifically the August 3 Democratic primary for the 40 th district Missouri State House seat.

With no Republican in the race, the winner of the Democratic primary was sure to win in November against a nominal libertarian opponent in this overwhelmingly Democratic Kansas City neighborhood.

When the votes were counted and recounted, conservative Democrat Royster had lost to the machine Democrat John. J. Rizzo for this open seat by one vote, 664 to 663.

But even before the final recount, Royster had learned from Republican election judges and others that the election had been hijacked.

Royster started gathering affidavits from the judges, and their testimony suggests to what lengths Democrats are prepared to go to salvage the November election.

In one polling place, a Somali woman who had earlier been handing out Rizzo literature accompanied four of her fellow Somalis to the registration desk. According to the Republican judge, she signed in for all of them and accepted ballots for them.

“I saw her place the ballots on the table and fill them in herself,” testified the judge under oath. “The same woman came in with several groups of people throughout the day.”

Later, a Somali man came in with a half dozen or so of his compatriots and then came back later with seven or eight more. He told some of them to “vote for Rizzo,” and for others he just filled out the ballots for himself.

When the Republican judge confronted the Somali man presumably acting as interpreter, he told her that the voting Somalis were “blind and could not speak.”

The Democratic supervisor watched and did not nothing. “As far as I know,” the supervisor said of the Somali interpreters, “they are able to fill out the ballots for those people and sign the book.”

This is nonsense. According to the law, one interpreter can help only one family member and the voter has to take an oath to the effect that he is either blind or cannot read and write. None of this happened.

Other polling places were just as corrupted. A second Republican judge testified that at her site a Somali man brought in a Rizzo sign, pointed to it, and instructed the four Somali women with him “how to cast their vote and whom to vote for.”

When this judge alerted the Democratic supervisor, he ignored her. Later, he called her a “filthy Republican judge.” A voter at this same polling place would hear this same supervisor “loudly ranting about former President Bush.”

At still another polling place, a volunteer poll worker “personally witnessed Abdul Kadir Sheikh escort approximately (30) Somali voters into the polling place.”

Another worker at that same site put the number of Somali voters under Sheikh’s sway as “many more than 30.” She also saw him “sign their names in the registration book.”

More troubling for the November election is the failure of the local media to report on the Somali involvement. As far as I can tell, the Kansas City Star, which endorsed Rizzo, has not mentioned the word “Somali” in reference to this election in any of its print editions.

In none of Star blogs on this election did its reporters express any curiosity about the wholesale ignorance of the Somali voters or whether they were even citizens.

This is not surprising. A legislative effort in Missouri two years ago to require that voters provide photo IDs or birth certificates inspired widespread hysteria among Democrats and, at the risk of being redundant, the media.

“The hard work of citizens and groups around this state who opposed this proposal played a key role in making sure this legislation was not passed,” said a boastful Robin Carnahan, the Missouri Secretary of State.

Carnahan is now running for U.S. Senator against Republican Roy Blunt. For all of her pieties about disenfranchisement, her minions will be working this November to get every Somali in Missouri to the polls, fully indifferent to the fact that their fraudulent votes will cancel the votes of legitimate citizens.

The law may be loose on proper IDs, but to vote in a federal election like U.S. Senate, the law is firm: the voter must be a citizen. To become a citizen, according to official documents, an individual has to “connaître l’anglais et être au courant de l’histoire et du gouvernement des États-Unis.”

This translates, “know the English language and be current in the history and government of the United States.” I cannot imagine that the requirements for Somalis are any different than for the French.

Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment, the media, and the local courts seem indifferent to this most fundamental of our laws. So far Royster has failed in his effort to secure a new election or even a meaningful recount.

At the most recent court hearing, five election judges testified on Royster’s behalf. No one challenged their testimony, but Judge Stephen Nixon refused to rule in Royster’s favor. Although conceding the various violations, the judge attributed the failure to the seemingly benign error of the election judges.

Royster understands something about the value of citizenship. He flew 43 missions over Iraq in Desert Storm and left the Navy only after being injured when ejecting from a crippled plane.

“With all due respect to Judge Nixon,” said Royster, “I respectfully disagree with his decision to decriminalize election fraud and voter fraud in the state of Missouri.”

And if the allied interests of the Democratic Party are willing to do this to one of their own, imagine what they will do to Republicans this desperate November.