Don’t let ‘2,000 Mules’ movie delusions undermine your right to vote in Kansas

The people who think Joe Biden’s election was stolen have a right to that opinion, no matter how misguided it may be and how resistant it is to being changed by actual facts.

But here in Kansas, we simply cannot allow their delusions to undermine our democracy or our access to voting.

It’s time to pat them on their tinfoil-hatted heads and tell them to go find a new hobby.

The local anti-voting coalition has set its sights on the 14 sidewalk ballot drop boxes installed in Sedgwick County during the 2020 election. They started as a hedge against the spread of COVID-19 and turned out to be a convenient and popular way for people to return their mail ballots.

Now, the anti-voters want them removed because, well, they watched a movie. We’ll get back to that.

There is absolutely not a single shred of evidence that the drop boxes have caused the counting of a single illegal vote. In fact, it’s safer than the Post Office because there’s a chain of custody and far less chance of votes getting lost.

There are two types of people attacking them: random wackos like your crazy uncle who always tries to trap you into listening to his theory on who shot JFK, and a smaller group of shrewd political operatives who cynically manipulate those folks’ fears to get them to oppose things that benefit them, like drop boxes.

It’s that second group you have to worry about. They like the idea of voting. They just don’t like the idea of you voting.

The more votes they can suppress, the more theirs count. And that’s the real agenda playing out in the attack on drop boxes.

They stoke fear of ballot stuffing by, you guessed it, liberal Democrats, which is a joke. If Kansas Democrats are stuffing ballots, they are laughably inept at it given their win-loss record.

The new bible of the anti-voting caucus is “2,000 Mules,” a movie by right-wing provocateur and paranoia purveyor Dinesh D’Souza, who claims Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

That’s the same Dinesh D’Souza who Trump pardoned after he pleaded guilty to campaign fraud. (You can’t make this stuff up).

I’m not going to waste time debunking the movie. Reuters, Associated Press, USA Today and even Ann Coulter have done a fine job of that.

D’Souza’s movie did prove one thing: You can separate die-hard “Stop the Steal” truthers from their money at $19.99 a pop if you tell them what they desperately want to believe.

About a week ago, the anti-voters descended on the Sedgwick County Commission, demanding the removal of our drop boxes.

Five spoke and another 50 or so filed written testimony, mostly cut and pasted from an online post by Donna Lippoldt. Lippoldt runs an organization called “Culture Shield,” which, as its name implies, tries to shield us from culture.

The speakers spun their theories and urged everyone to watch their mule movie and vowed to vote out commissioners who disagree with them.

There was a certain poetic justice in seeing commissioners Jim Howell and David Dennis having to squirm in the face of an unfounded political attack, since the week before they had facilitated one on Commissioner Lacey Cruse because she disagrees with them on the anti-abortion amendment on the Aug. 2 ballot.

Howell embarked on a 20-minute filibuster that boiled down to this: The boxes are as safe as any other method of voting; Despite that, I don’t like them and wish we didn’t have them; We didn’t buy them, a former election commissioner (Howell’s sister-in law, Tabitha Lehman) did; I watched 2,000 Mules; We don’t have the authority to remove them anyway.

Then he offered (or maybe threatened) to show them his 90-slide PowerPoint on election security.

Election Commissioner Angela Caudillo was dragged in to defend her security practices:

▪ The drop boxes are under 24-7 video surveillance.

▪ The boxes can only be opened with two keys turned simultaneously.

▪ The employees who empty the boxes work in two-person teams and they can’t be from the same political party.

▪ Ballots are counted and sealed for transport in a bag that never leaves the collection team’s joint custody.

▪ Ballots have to meet the same sealing and signature-match requirements as any mailed-in ballot.

Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman confirmed to me that he has received some of the same complaints about drop boxes, and that the same security precautions are in place for the eight that his office operates

Johnson County has about half as many drop boxes because it’s 480 square miles to cover compared to Sedgwick County’s 1,009.

To the league of anti-voters, I think I speak for a broad majority when I say this:

We’ve had enough of you and your antics. Ballot drop boxes are secure, convenient and we like them.

You don’t own them, we all do. And you certainly don’t own our democracy, which you’re trying to undermine.

So get lost. And take your ridiculous mule movie with you.