They were a little late on the “stolen election” bandwagon, but now Jackson County Republican Party officials are denying that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, despite the lack of any credible evidence to support that view.
A resolution first approved by the party’s executive committee and confirmed four days later by a unanimous vote of the county’s central committee stated, among other things, that some secretaries of state improperly conducted the 2020 election, that the “2,000 mules” video thoroughly debunked “. irrefutably demonstrates” voter fraud involving mailboxes, and that “substantial voter fraud” occurred in key cities.
It goes without saying at this point that all of these claims are false.
That obviously doesn’t matter to local Republican Party officials who gave the document their stamp of approval. They also apparently don’t care if they just followed the lead of the Texas Republican Party, which adopted a similar resolution at its state convention.
Political party organizations generally work to support and elect candidates who share their views on public policy issues. But this county-level organization is spending its time and energy tearing down the system that elects these candidates, questioning the very legitimacy of the government they supposedly want to help run, nearly two years after an election that failed turn out well
Rendell Embertson, chairman of the Jackson County Republican Central Committee, when asked if he personally considers Biden’s presidency illegitimate, couldn’t give a straight answer, saying it was an “interesting issue,” adding that Biden “was our president,” and “I pray for him.”
And yet the resolution he voted for clearly states: “We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election and hold that the incumbent President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”
That seems clear enough. There is no “problem” there.
Embertson wants to say he finds no fault with the Jackson County Elections Office. This is good as it does a professional job of driving elections. But he makes noises about dead voters, moving voters and double counting.
These are perennial complaints from critics who want to cast doubt on the results of the elections. And yet, from 2000 to 2019, there were exactly 38 fraud convictions in Oregon, out of 61 million votes cast. That’s a solid record. If Embertson has actual evidence of even a single instance of fraud, he should bring it to the attention of state authorities.
If it’s any consolation, these Jackson County Republicans aren’t the only ones falling under the spell of deranged conspiracy theories. In Washington state, for example, a county Republican chapter warned people not to vote early in that state’s Aug. 2 primary because it would tell “bad actors” how many fake ballots they had to print to steal the election.
Meanwhile, it’s heartening to note that at least one local Republican leader, former state senator and Ashland Mayor Alan DeBoer, completely rejects the central committee’s misguided resolution, calling it “totally wrong.”
We hope that other local GOP leaders reject it as well, and that GOP voters listen to DeBoer and not their local party officials.
