My father served in the Korean War and served two tours in Vietnam. My granddad served in World War II. All five of my uncles served in Korea, Vietnam or both.
Safe to say, my family loves this country and believes in what it stands for, despite all of its shortcomings. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Now, today’s Democrat Party and its allies in the media are attempting to overhaul our entire election system at the eleventh hour ahead of November.
As a proud small business owner for 27 years who is married with two wonderful children, I would often listen to all the stories about the Civil Rights movement as a child with my uncles, aunts and, of course, my parents. In fact, my uncle was a Baptist minister in Decatur, Georgia in the late 50’s and 60’s and joined the SCLC civil rights movement. He would endure vile and harsh intimidation and persecution. They fought and risked it all, not just in the military, but in their own streets, for the right to vote.
Yet, here we are, with the left trying to keep everybody home. To think we’re actually having a debate about whether it’s safe or whether we can practice safe social distancing to stand in a line at our local precinct polls in our neighborhoods is crazy to me.
I never thought as a 56-year-old black man in Atlanta Georgia that we’d be having this conversation in 2020.
If we can stand in line for lottery tickets and toilet paper, we can stand in line to exercise our sacred right to vote.
Dr. Anthony Fauci himself recently said there’s no reason American’s can’t vote in person if we follow social distancing.
These calls for a universal mail-in ballot election jeopardize the integrity of each American’s vote and expose our election system to massive voter fraud.
This blatant power grab is driven by the left and their hatred toward President Donald Trump, who has been the most pro-black president of my lifetime.
President Trump has delivered results for the black community, and now Democrats are using their age-old tactic of intimidation and social pressure to keep black voters “in line.”
President Trump is undoing injustices within our criminal justice system by signing the First Step Act. President Trump signed into law the FUTURE Act, making permanent $255 million in funding for HBCUs and MSI’s and increasing funding for the Federal Pell Grant program.
President Trump is championing Opportunity Zones, which is helping build back generational wealth among the Black community.
The fact is, President Trump is focused on result-driven leadership, not empty promises and divisive rhetoric like we see from Joe Biden, the left and their media allies. You see, Biden and the Democrats are singularly focused on the black vote, not the black community.
Too many brave men and women have fought, sacrificed and died to sully this process for partisan political gain.
The Civil Rights movement that my father and his generation were a part of was all about voting. It’s the right to vote in person that led to desegregation and progress.
My father and his brothers faced real discrimination. They faced actual voter suppression tactics. Yet my father and his brothers served in the military, went overseas and risked life and limb on behalf of this country. Why did they do it? Because they refused to accept victimhood as their destiny and because they believed in the promise of America and what it stands for.
A universal mail-in system exposes the process to fraud and abuse that traditional absentee voting doesn’t. In many cases where all-mail voting has taken place, partisan political organizations engage in what is known as ballot harvesting to influence elections. When combined with ballot harvesting, an all-mail-in election is exposed to exponentially more opportunities for fraud and abuse.
Ballot harvesting, which allows anybody to collect voters’ ballots to turn into a polling location, has the potential for fraud. It allows anyone, including campaign staff, to show up and take possession of a voters’ completed ballot for delivery.
My father always told me, “don’t put your destiny in another man’s hands.” So, why would I put my trust in a stranger’s hand when it comes to something as important as voting?
Joe Biden and the radical left now in control of the Democrat Party will not scare me from voting in person. They will not intimidate me or silence me.
Bruce LeVell is a 27-year small business owner and executive director of the National Diversity Coalition For Trump