Rabbi Hillel and the Secret Ballot

Who is the venerable Rabbi Hillel backing in tomorrow’s election? Read to the end to find out.

I have insider information but you’re going to have to read through to the end who Rabbi Hillel is voting for tomorrow.

“If I am not for myself, then who will be?
If I am only for myself, what am I”
— Attributed to Rabbi Hillel

“If I am not for myself, then who will be?”

This is Kamala’s problem. Throughout her career, she has been propelled forward by forces larger than herself.  We saw in her brief campaign that she has little clarity about the most important issues, and no passion for what she is saying. We’ve seen her glued to the teleprompter. I don’t know whether it’s true that she had bluetooth earrings during the one televised debate. 

She is clearly not her own person, and we must ask, who does she speak for? Who is controlling her? Is it the same backstage that is in control of the White House now that Joe Biden is incapacitated?

In this context, it’s especially disturbing that Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol and Alberto Gonzales and William Webster and a host of other neo-cons have backed Harris, and she has welcomed their support. These are the neo-cons who want to see the US use its weaponry to control the world, the neo-cons that we learned to hate when Bush and Cheney were in control. 

Kamala wants the US to have the “most lethal military” in the world. Is that Kamala speaking, or is she a mouthpiece for a cabal that wants America to be an empire?

“If I am only for myself, what am I”

This is Trump’s problem. Through his long career, he has been busy looking out for Number One. When the chips are down, he does what is best for Donald Trump.

In the White House, he couldn’t hold a team together. He has never been articulate about any program. He was born into wealth, and chose to use it for golf resorts and gambling casinos. 

It would be easy to dismiss Trump as just a goofy, self-centered businessman. But in my mind his biggest failure was in the response to COVID. COVID was sprung on him by the Deep State — it wasn’t his fault. But there were people telling him that closing down the economy was going to drive people into poverty and mental illness. Lockdowns might slow the spread of COVID, but in the end, everyone was going to get the disease anyway — and now we know that everyone gets it more than once. He was told about effective early treatments, and said some of the right things early on, but he didn’t have the confidence to stand his ground. 

Then came Project Warpspeed. It is madness to think you can develop a vaccine in six months. It is criminal to release it to the public with no long-term testing, no indication of safety. We know now that the trials in the summer of 2020 were rigged, and Trump could have known it if he had cared to investigate. The one White House insider I know tells me that Warpspeed was a political decision. Trump thought he could release a vaccine before election day and it would give him a second term. This is a VINO that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and disabled millions. Trump’s hubris was inexcusable. It was literally murder.

Whoever is elected, Benjamin Netanyahu will be our president for another four years. 

Harris and Trump are climbing over one another to profess their undying loyalty to the state of Israel, no matter what Israel does. Make no mistake — it is the US that has enabled the genocide in Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, and the terrorist assaults against Iran. Neither Trump nor Harris has the will to hold Netanyahoo in check. 

In 2002, Republicans introduced electronic voting to facilitate cheating.
If I believe this, I am a conspiracy theorist.

In 2020, Democrats introduced mail-in voting to facilitate cheating
If I believe this, I am an insurrectionist.

The secret ballot and the mail-in ballot

Traditionally, democracies have thrived when voting is out in the open, in the Greek Agora and the Roman Forum and town halls across New England. Secret ballots became part of our American electoral system only in the 1890s. 

Why were secret ballots adopted? The fear was that politicians were buying votes. Worse, employers could demand that their employees vote the company line or lose their jobs. 

These were legitimate concerns, but we lost some transparency in the transition. It is moderately challenging to design an open, transparent system in which we can be sure that votes are counted honestly without revealing how any individual voted.

Moderately challenging, but many nations have done it. Canada, Australia, and most European democracies have simple, transparent voting systems based on hand-counted paper ballots. It’s not that hard.

The US has had a less transparent system all along. But starting in 2002, we’ve had a hackable system. Our elections are open to wholesale vote-tampering by software, and no one would be the wiser. 

Exit polls were a check on election integrity until 2020. Then we adopted mail-in ballots, ostensibly to stop the spread of a disease. Mail-in ballots are a convenience.

But vote-by-mail is a nightmare, both for election integrity and for the secret ballot. It’s really the worst of both worlds. If ballots appear in a mailbox or drop-off box, there is no way to determine where they came from or whether the person who filled out the ballot was the individual whose name is signed thereon. 

With vote-by-mail, the advantage of the secret ballot is completely lost. There is nothing to stop people from buying and selling votes. There is nothing to stop employers from demanding that their employees show them a ballot filled out the way the employer prescribes. Employers or cult leaders or teachers or domineering husbands — anyone can coerce or purchase another person’s mail-in vote.

So what’s the point of secret ballots if we’re going to have vote-by-mail?

When I was an active and committed election integrity researcher back in the 2000s, I came to realize that neither party wants honest elections.

If I am not for electronic voting, I must hate disabled people.
If I am not for mail-in voting, I must want to spread disease..

I have inside information

So here, at last, is the promised reveal: 

Rabbi Hillel is voting for Jill Stein. He told me so himself. “Jews are going to have to stick together if we are ever going to stop Israel’s madness.”