negligence Archives -

More Returned NRA Ballots

The issue with returned ballots is not restricted to eastern Pennsylvania. The ballot below was sent back to a Benefactor Life member residing in Nevada. Not only was it sent back to him but he received it in the damaged condition shown. I scratched out the name and he covered his address with a flyer to preserve his privacy.

In the comments section of my first post on this, another person in Tennessee has also received his ballot back in the mail due to the wrong Plus 4 ZIP and barcode. To date, the NRA has not issued any public notice of the issue with the envelope. How many more out there that have been returned or will be returned is open to speculation.

The person who had the first known returned ballot reached out the NRA’s Membership Department and got this response. I would urge anyone who had a ballot returned to do this.

If you have not returned your ballot yet, my original suggestion that you scratch out the Plus 4 ZIP and the barcode below the address still stands. It will prevent the USPS mail sorting machines from kicking it out as undeliverable.

If you have friends who are voting NRA members, you need to warn them about this. My fear is that a number of people will wait until the last moment to send in their ballots. Then, when it is too late to resubmit the ballot, they will get it back in the mail.

Frank Tait brought this to the attention of NRA Secretary and General Counsel John Frazer. Here is the response he and the person to whom the first ballot was returned.

It does appear that a small number of envelopes containing completed ballots for the 2022 NRA board election were mailed to our independent accounting firm for processing, but have been returned to sender. We are continuing to investigate this situation in collaboration with the accounting firm. It appears that this situation is limited to a specific geographic area, which may indicate a problem at a specific postal facility – not a widespread problem impacting the majority of ballots. We are committed to the integrity of the election process, and to ensuring that process works to the benefit of all voting members.
Notably, the address on the ballot envelope is the same one used for all ballots, both this year and last. Nearly 100,000 ballots were received last year for processing. So far this year, about 60,000 ballots have been received—which again suggests that this is an isolated issue. In other words, tens of thousands of NRA members are participating in the election without experiencing this problem.
If a ballot envelope is returned, the member can still vote. We ask that the member please enclose the entire return envelope in a larger envelope, and mail it to:
Rogers & Co.
P.O. Box 686
Dunn Loring, VA 22027
We regret the inconvenience for those who were affected by this issue. The NRA is confident that our election process is fair – and we thank our members for participating in this important undertaking.

What bothers me the most is that this is being treated like a small aberration by the powers that be in the NRA. If we learned anything from the 2020 elections it is that people get really pissed off if they perceive that an election has issues with their vote not being counted. I don’t care if it is a “found” bundle of ballots in the middle of the night or a valid mailed-in NRA BOD ballot that is being returned to sender as undeliverable.

To be sure this is not a case of malfeasance. It is a case of negligence. Moreover, it is a case of repeated negligence. John Frazer acknowledges that the same erroneous address was used last year as well. If I could see the error almost immediately, then why did the highly paid consultants, the accounting firm, and other experts at the NRA not catch it? Could it be that they assume the outcome of this election is preordained and they just don’t give a shit if my vote or yours is counted or not?

“I’m From The Government And I’m Here To Kill You”

That is the title of Second Amendment attorney Dave Hardy’s new book. It details how Federal negligence and arrogance got people killed and how the perpetrators got away free due to the law. I’ve been reading the book and will post a full review of it in the near future. From what I’ve read so far, I highly recommend it.

However, this post isn’t about Dave’s book but rather about how negligence on the state and local level in California allowed a mentally disturbed and often violent man to kill five people before he himself was killed in a shoot-out with police. The murders happened earlier this week in Rancho Tehama Reserve. In addition to the murders, this mad man shot up the local elementary school wounding one student.

The murderer was out of jail on bail from an assault in January where he had been charged with a total of five felonies and two misdemeanors. At the time he was released on bail, the judge in the case ordered him to surrender his firearms and had issued a protective order which barred him from “owning, possessing, purchasing or attempting to purchase firearms.” He had certified to the court that he had turned in his firearms to the custody of a local gun shop.

At the time of his shootout with police, the murderer was found to be in possession of two semi-auto rifles which seem to have been made by him as well as two handguns registered to someone else.

As reported by the Orange County Register, police were called to his residence many time between January and this week’s murders. However, he always refused them entrance.

Why were police called to his residence?

At a tense news conference Wednesday, police conceded that neighbors had repeatedly complained about (the murderer) firing hundreds of rounds from his house.

Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said authorities responded to calls several times, but the 44-year-old (murderer) wouldn’t open the door, so they left.

“He was not law enforcement friendly. He would not come to the door,” Johnston said. “You have to understand we can’t anticipate what people are going to do. We don’t have a crystal ball.”

So you have neighbors reporting that a prohibited person is having target practice in his yard and the local law enforcement does nothing about it. Let me repeat that he was out on bail awaiting trial on five felonies and had a protective order against him banning his possession of any firearm.

WTF?

As law professor Laurie Levenson of Loyola Law School makes clear below, they didn’t need his permission to enter.

“You can have probable cause even if officers don’t see a gun or hear shots,” she said. “They do not have to see the suspect with the weapon if all the circumstantial evidence indicates that he is violating the orders.”

Levenson said officers don’t even need a warrant to search a suspect’s home if they believe the caller and the evidence they are hearing and collecting indicate the suspect is firing a gun.

“If an officer believes there is someone with a weapon who is not entitled to have a weapon, the law permits the officer to go in,” she said.

While I imagine confronting a man who reportedly had both anger issues and was somewhat psychotic is dangerous, that is what police are paid to do and that is why they have SWAT teams.

No one knows if the killer’s wife, neighbors, and the random people shot or killed would still be alive if the police had intervened when the neighbors called to complain but the odds certainly are higher.

I don’t know California law as to whether the Tehama County Sheriffs’ Department can be held liable for negligence. As Dave Hardy makes clear in his book, under Federal law this negligence would come under the “discretionary function exemption” and not a damn thing would happen to that department.

The other thing I do know is that no new gun control law would have stopped this killer. There were laws on the books that were meant to prevent him from having firearms. They were ignored. Moreover, the police declined to enforce them even in the face of complaints from neighbors that indicated he was violating the law. Gun control laws stop the law abiding. They don’t stop criminals and they don’t stop those intent on ignoring the law.