I would have absolutely bet the farm that when retired Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Joseph Bleich, serving as a judge ad hoc in the case of the contested Caddo sheriff election, ruled Tuesday afternoon that a new election must be held in March, all hell would have broken loose.

After all, Bleich threw out Democrat Henry Whitehorn’s one-vote-margin victory over Republican John Nickelson. When judges invalidate Democrat electoral success, something which never seems to happen, what usually follows are riots and worse.

In this case? We didn’t even get adverse news coverage of the ruling.

Oh, sure – Whitehorn blew a gasket over the ruling. His statement comes off as a call to arms…

Of course, I am disappointed about the court’s decision to overturn the will of the people of Caddo Parish.I was always taught that the person with the most votes wins, even if that’s by a thousand votes or by one vote. I was also taught that when we go to school and get an education, gain experience in our chosen field, and become qualified in what we do, we will have the best opportunity to be successful.

But it seems as though the rules of the game are different depending on who the players are.

I won the Sheriff’s race, not once but twice. My opponent conveniently chose to question the integrity of the election only after he lost, not once but twice. In elections, you should not be given a redo simply because you are unhappy with the results.

The significance of a single vote cannot be underestimated. Overturning an election because the winner won by one vote is essentially saying, “every vote matters, except if the win is by one.”

Despite this decision, I still believe in the constitution, democracy, the rule of law, and the notion that every vote does matter.I am pursuing an appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeal, and if necessary, to the Louisiana Supreme Court. But, if we are unsuccessful at getting a reversal of the district court’s decision and forced to have a special election, my faith in God and my belief in the great people of Caddo Parish assures me that, for a third time, I will win the Sheriff’s race.

Whitehorn’s caterwauling notwithstanding, it’s been awfully quiet out there.

All we found was Gary Chambers screaming about the judge’s ruling, but this, honestly, is pretty tame for Chambers…

People don’t steal things from you that have no value. People steal something because it’s worth something to someone. The work to steal the Black vote and Black power is as old as America, just new tricks, playing the same game.

Henry Whitehorn will appeal the ruling of the… pic.twitter.com/Tt2gaBnPG4

— Gary Chambers (@GaryChambersJr) December 5, 2023

And the state Democrat Party didn’t even put out a press release about it. The Caddo sheriff race was the one contest in all of Louisiana where a Democrat beat a Republican in a competitive race, a judge voided that victory and they’ve got nothing to say about it?

Hmmmm.

My theory is this: the Whitehorn race is problematic for the state’s Democrats, because they got a little exposed by Nickelson’s suit.

The evidence is pretty clear that there were fraudulent votes among those mail-in ballots – eleven, to be specific, which made for a good bit more fraud than the one-vote margin of victory by Whitehorn.

And so the dilemma this causes is a real one: do you throw a fit over Bleich’s ruling and bring public attention to why it was made, meaning that people will then see that there was a problem of fraudulent votes getting harvested and run through the mail, and run the risk of some significant blowback, or do you just muster your forces for the March 23 re-run of the race?

Because if they can just turn out enough vote that Whitehorn wins, then all that’s lost is a couple of months’ worth of Whitehorn’s tenure as sheriff.

And not the scrutiny on mail-in ballots that they really, really don’t want to have to endure.

Not just in Louisiana.

A race like this, decided by one vote out of 45,000 or so cast, is a scary thing, because it proves that sloppy or corrupt administration of elections such as it’s clear the local officials (and as Jeff Sadow notes, the registrar of voters and the local election board are run by Democrats) are guilty of actually does make a difference.

And that’s a big deal, because people promoting election integrity measures usually run into opposition from Democrats who call them conspiracy theorists and screech that whatever vote fraud is being committed is nominal and doesn’t rise to a level that would affect the result of an election. That’s a pretty facile argument in the best of cases; in this one, it’s utterly unworkable.

Which is why the Left has gone awfully quiet over Henry Whitehorn’s win coming off the board this week.

I’d say the Right ought to take the opposite approach, and the fact a major local election in one of Louisiana’s three largest cities has to undergo a do-over because of election fraud ought to be reason enough to undergo a major tightening of the rules on mail-in ballots in this state. Ideally, we’d do away with them in all but the hardest cases, but at the very minimum we should be sure to exclude any harvesting of those ballots in the future.