“So you can print out as many ballots as you want?”

– The current top comment on The Gateway Pundit article “CA Implements Audit-Proof Way To Steal Election That Goes Into Effect Just In Time For Newsom’s Recall Election“, posted Sunday.

Now, we can’t blame any National Zero reader who doesn’t want to check out the article or the comments, but the multi-layered intricacy of the dumbassery here is actually quite breathtaking. First you have the commenters who didn’t even read the article and think that Californians can just print out a whole a ream of paper’s worth of ballots at home and each of those will count as votes as if the file for the ballot is not already pre-filled with the registered voter’s info.

The article doesn’t even allege that stupid shit. What it does say is that this “print your own mail-in ballot” system is new – it isn’t. I know this not because I did any research, but because the Gateway Pundit’s own fucking screenshot in the article says “For the November 3, 2020 General Election, any voter can request to use Remote Accessible Vote by Mail. A Remote Accessible Vote by Mail (RAVBM) system allows voters to mark their selections using their own compatible technology to vote independently and privately in the comfort of their own home” which is just… Wow.

The rest of the article goes on the allege a scenario where ballots printed at home are marked by a voter, folded up, placed in an envelope, mailed to an election authority counting center, opened, unfolded, stacked on top of other ballots, and then some “bleed through” where the ink from one ballot taints another. This of course omits the part where presumably the ballots are scanned immediately upon being opened, and probably on purpose, because the tabulation is irrelevant to the Gateway Pundit’s universe – they’re already operating under the assumption there’s going to be a CyberNinjas-style audit in California after the recall election where MAGA loyalists just dying to delegitimize Gavin Newsom get to examine every ballot for bamboo fibers.

Fantasy upon fantasy upon fantasy here. In conclusion, fuck the Gateway Pundit.