To Testify To The Truth
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Aldous Huxley
“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts.
Facts can obscure the truth.”
Maya Angelou
“Knowledge is a process of piling up facts;
Wisdom lies in their simplification.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Everything we hear is an opinion,
not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective,
not the truth.”
Marcus Aurelius
“The very ink with which all history
is written is merely fluid prejudice.”
Mark Twain
Where to begin?
We had hoped to open by using “cozen” as a verb but couldn’t quite build a sentence around it.
Happily, there’s a gazillion synonyms for cozen: buffalo, pull the wool over one’s eyes, fake out, defraud, swindle, hoodwink, cheat, hornswoggle, hustle, misguide, deceive, delude.
We don’t buy the “truth lies somewhere in the middle” idea. And, in the weeks before the November 3 midterms election, Truth – based on facts balanced with wisdom – will be especially important.
How to find the “middle” between the American Civil Liberties Union – “With immigrant rights, trans justice, reproductive freedom, and more at risk, we’re in courts and communities across the country to protect everyone’s rights…” and the Heritage Foundation, which claims it “stands strong for conservative principles no matter who’s in office… leads the fight against the radical Left and the Washington establishment. We provide the policy, personnel, and strategic ammunition that will dismantle the Deep State and restore self-governance to the American people.” [EDITORS’ NOTE: Quotes from organizations’ home pages.]
For the moment let’s step past legal and illegal immigration numbers and focus on naturalization statistics, because they’re constant and indisputable (and certified by every administration without regard to party):
2010 – 1019 average: 730,100 per year
2021 – 2024 average 870,000 per year
2023 – 878,500
In Fiscal Year 2024, March (77,200) and May (76,300) had the highest numbers of naturalizations; September (72,900) and October (63,300) saw new citizens naturalized in time to register and vote before national elections.
These statistics were published at Naturalization Statistics | USCIS – the Web site of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. And they indicate that tens of thousands of new citizens become eligible to cast their ballots every month.
The Heritage Foundation site – “Last updated December 12, 2025” - reports “1,619… Proven Instances of Voter Fraud” between 1982 and 2025 but reports only 1,381 “Criminal Convictions.” However, on a deeper dive – “Ineligible Voting” combined with “Criminal Conviction” – the Heritage Foundation indicated a total of 340 results over 43 years. Under the “Fraud Category – Election Overturned,” the HF site reported only nine results – all between 2003 and 2015.
The Heritage Foundation site - https://electionfraud.heritage.org - lists a total of 30 cases of “Election Overturned” between 1992 and 2023; while it is time-consumingly difficult and near impossible to determine the specific election races or positions involved in all of these cases, most appear to be for small town councils or school board type elections and Texas – with six cases – accounted for the greatest number of “overturned elections.”
Among the states reporting the highest number of “Election Fraud” cases between 1982 and 2025 were: Minnesota (138), North Carolina (123), Illinois (117) and Texas (113). At least twelve states reported fewer than ten cases of Election Fraud during the same period.
Ultimately, the numbers – 1,619 “Proven Instances of Voter Fraud” and 1,381 “Criminal Convictions” – put the lie to the Heritage Foundation’s assertions that their own statistics “of what they describe as ‘voter fraud,’ which they have touted as containing ‘plenty of proof’ that ‘reforms like the SAVE America Act’ are needed.” (“Unpacking Myths About Noncitizen Voting – How Heritage Foundation’s Own Data Still Proves It’s Not the Problem Its Made Out to Be,” American Immigration Council, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, August 13,2026.)
[CONFESSION TIME: “Bless us, readers, for we have resorted to the Google AI machine because the next issue is beyond our mathematical abilities.”]
A grand total of 1,323,296,096 popular votes were cast in U.S. presidential elections between 1984 and 2024. For perspective:
In 1984, 92,654,861 – 55.2% of the eligible population of Americans - voted in the presidential election.
In 2004, 122,349,480 – 60.1% of the eligible population of Americans – voted in the presidential election.
In 2024, 154,308,000 – 63.1% of the eligible population, but 4,173,688 fewer than had voted in 2020 – Americans voted in the presidential election.
[EDITORS’ NOTE: We’re providing the link for the Heritage Foundation statistics - https://electionfraud.heritage.org. – for the Doubting Thomases. Here’s a warning: The site is somewhat difficult to maneuver and, especially if you buy the “bovine-after-product” (We cleaned that up.) assertions about all those “illegal aliens voting” and “stolen elections,” make certain you’re at ground level and far removed from anything sharp.]
In anticipation of the November midterm elections and that one party and its Heritage Foundation allies will continue to throw gasoline on the fire of” illegal immigrants and non-citizens are voting,” let’s look at how numbers are thrown around to engender fear.
(For example (from the HF Web site):
“In New Jersey, at least 616 known aliens ended up in the state’s voter registration system just a few years ago. Since 2021, nearly 200 aliens were initially on voter rolls in Arizona.
“While these figures may appear relatively small compared with the general population, they reveal a couple of crucial points.
For one, alien voting is not limited to one individual state or region. For another, “alien voting has spanned years and is not limited to one election cycle.
“The fact is, alien voting can change the outcome of close elections, especially in local ones where turnouts usually total just a couple of thousand votes.
Given the lack of verification of citizenship of those registering to vote, the problem is no doubt worse than these numbers would indicate, since election officials seem to find out about aliens on the voter rolls almost by accident.” (“Illegal Aliens Are Still Voting in Our Elections,” The Heritage Foundation, July 10, 2024, Matthew Tragesser)
Note, please, the hysteria-producing hypothetical. It’s possible but it lacks nuance, context and proof.
Here’s a hysteria-producing hypothetical: The Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church states that any priest can be elected pope. Father Flynn is a Catholic priest. Therefore, hypothetically, he can be elected pope. It’s possible. And hysteria-producing.
On July 22, 2026 in a speech in Georgia, President Donald Trump declared, “They caught thousands of votes in New Jersey where illegal aliens were allowed to vote. Thousands and thousands.”
Politifact.com, part of an international consortium of fact checking organizations sponsored by the Poyner Institute and the Knight Foundation, two of the nation’s leading sponsors of professional and nonpartisan journalism, examined the HF hypotheticals and the presidential hysteria about New Jersey and aliens (“Did ‘thousands’ of immigrants illegally vote in New Jersey? Trump hasn’t proven that,” Politifact.com, Amy Sherman and Louis Jacobson, July 24, 2026):
“On July 21, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said she had learned the previous week about a software error in the state’s motor vehicle system that led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people between June 2023 and June 2024 who had indicated that they were not U.S. citizens. At the time, Democrat Phil Murphy was governor.
“Sherrill said the error was discovered and corrected in June 2024, but state officials did not make it public at that time. Sherrill said election officials are removing anyone who is improperly registered.
“‘These individuals answered ‘no’ when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers’ licenses and identification cards, but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,’ Sherrill wrote in a statement.
“Sherrill said a preliminary analysis showed that ‘fewer than 400 individuals’ cast ballots. In a press conference Sherrill said that the majority were voters unaffiliated with a party.
“If each of those 400 noncitizen votes had been cast by someone in the U.S. illegally that number does not come close to the ‘thousands and thousands”\’ that Trump said. (In 2021, New Jersey expanded eligibility for driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status.)
“Darwin Pham, a Sherrill spokesperson, said of the 400 voters, ‘We do not know their citizenship status, only the responses they submitted during the software error.’ Officials at the Motor Vehicle Commission and state elections office did not respond to our questions.
“New Jersey is one of dozens of states that have refused to comply with the Justice Department’s demands to turn over all voter roll information, citing privacy concerns. The department’s lawsuit against the state is pending.”
“Facts are stubborn,
but statistics are more pliable…
There are lies, damned lies and
Statistics…”
Mark Twain
“If at first you don’t succeed
try at least two more times
so your failure is statistically significant.”
Abigail Drake
It’s almost impossible to establish precisely how often the gentleman from Mar-a-Lago has repeated his August 18, 2025 “Truth Social” claim “We are now the only country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.” (“Trump said the US is the ‘only country’ that uses mail-in voting. That’s wrong,” Politifact, August 18, 2025, Amy Sherman.)
Hmmmmm.
Turns out that, after an August 15, 2025 Alaska meeting with the murderous Russian President Vladimr Putin, the gentleman golfer told a conservative American television political commentator the Russian had assured him the 2020 U.S. election was “rigged” because of mail-in voting.
Here’s the facts: Twelve nations - Canada, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Republic of (South) Korea, Liechtenstein, Luxenberg, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States – permit all citizens (including the gentleman from Mar-a-Lago) to vote by mail. Twenty other nations permit mail-in voting under certain conditions.
Moreover, the gentleman from Palm Beach voted by mail-in ballot/absentee
August 2026 Primary Election in Florida
March 2026 Special Election in Florida (despite being in Palm Beach during the early voting period when he could have gone to vote in person)
Florida 2020 Primary Election (a representative picked up his March presidential primary ballot and his August state primary ballots. His motorcade repeatedly drove passed and early voting site in March 2020.)
New York 2018 New York midterm election via absentee ballot
New York 2017 Mayoral election via absentee ballot
Jesus answer Pilate,
“My kingdom is not of this world.
If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest…
But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king.
In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world
is to testify to the truth.
Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate.
John 18:36-38