Vice President JD Vance sat down with Joe Rogan for the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, and the two spent a good chunk of time talking about election integrity, mail-in ballots, and how illegal immigration affects congressional representation. As Trending Politics reported, the conversation covered some topics that will absolutely not calm anyone down at Thanksgiving dinner.
Rogan kicked things off by pointing to the massive influx of illegal aliens and asylum seekers released into the country under the Biden Administration. "They just opened the border and not just encouraged people to come across, but facilitated it," Rogan said. He then brought up a point that gets surprisingly little mainstream attention: illegal aliens are counted in the census, which means they factor into congressional apportionment. States with large populations of non-citizens get extra congressional seats and electoral votes, and wouldn't you know it, most of those states happen to lean blue. What a coincidence.
Vance agreed, saying, "It should only count citizens, but it doesn't, and that actually steals congressional representation away from areas that have lower illegal immigration. Which is its own problem." So basically, if you live in a state that actually enforces border laws, you get rewarded with less representation. Democracy is fun like that.
The conversation then shifted to mail-in ballots, a topic that never fails to generate calm, measured discussions online. Rogan did not mince words. "First of all, the idea of mail-in ballots for anybody other than people who are invalids who can't leave their homes, or military personnel, or people serving overseas, should not be legal," he said. "And the fact that it became ubiquitous during COVID is a giant problem."
Vance then brought up a Pennsylvania court case from 2020 that he admitted he might "butcher a little bit." The case involved a man from a rural part of the state arguing that mail-in ballot operations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh gave urban voters an advantage that rural voters did not have. Vance explained that the court essentially acknowledged the point, agreeing that ballot harvesting disproportionately affected Republicans and left rural voters underrepresented.
But here is the kicker. The court then said, yeah, this is a real problem, but it is not our problem. Go fix it through your legislature. Vance noted that most people saw the headlines and assumed the judge ruled against Republicans entirely. "But no, actually the judge kind of said there is something fishy here. We're just the wrong venue to fix it," Vance said.
So the court acknowledged something was off but told everyone to take it up with their elected officials. Which is a bit like your mechanic telling you the brakes are failing but suggesting you write a letter to the car manufacturer. Technically correct advice, but not exactly reassuring.
Whether you think these are existential threats to democracy or just standard political gripes depends entirely on which cable news channel you left on in the background. Either way, the VP of the United States just laid it all out on the world's biggest podcast, so good luck pretending nobody is talking about it.
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