CHAUTAUQUA ­– The theme for the week of July 24-30 at Chautauqua Institution is “The Vote and Democracy.”

The week in effect got a head start on July 19, when Mollie Hemmingway, founder and editor-in-chief of the Federalist, addressed “Election Integrity and Why it Matters” before an Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, audience in the Athenaeum Hotel parlor.

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Before getting to Hemmingway’s points, let’s recall this column’s position on the 2020 presidential-election result.

The 2020 presidential election is over.

There’s no changing the result.

So the point of reviewing 2020 presidential-election illegalities isn’t to change the result but to prevent their recurrence, regardless of whom or which political party they’d benefit.

Some in government or in the press pretend to respond to this by denying such illegalities changed the result. But whether they changed the result is now beyond the point. Any such denial is now, at best, a distraction.

Nevertheless, carefully and fairly restoring the rule of law to American elections requires fully reviewing such illegalities, regardless of whether they changed the result.

And regardless of whether they changed the result, they (1) were extensive and (2) appear to have overwhelmingly benefitted one side.

Denying either (1) or (2) – such as by calling either a “lie,” as some in government or in the press do – is now, at best, another distraction.

Particularly – but not only – when the denials are so frequent and fervent that the deniers, to borrow a phrase, may well “protest too much.”

Hemmingway’s July 19 points before ABC contradict none of this.

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Hemmingway recalled that questioning the results of presidential elections is common.

¯ After the 2000 election, weeks of litigation ensued, including in the U.S. Supreme Court. When Democrat Al Gore lost to Republican George Bush 43, Gore supporters said Bush was not elected but selected. That is, not elected by the Electoral College but selected by the high court.

¯ When Democrat John Kerry lost in 2004 to Bush, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate challenged the results in multiple swing states.

¯ When Democrat Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 to Republican Donald Trump, thereby stunning much of the establishment, riots broke out, and some Democrats tried to keep Electoral College members from voting, or from voting for Trump.

This wasn’t treated as something one may not say, Hemmingway said. The corporate press and Democrats adopted this theory. Democrats supported a special-counsel investigation into the Trump-colluded-with-Russia hoax, and journalists won Pulitzer prizes for repeating it.

But in 2020, after the election between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, questioning the result of an election became – in the eyes of the corporate press and Democrats – “a grave crime,” Hemmingway said. This is “weird.”

Meanwhile, Hemmingway contrasted the corporate press’s coverage of Trump- and Biden-family businesses: After all of the coverage of the Trump-family business, the Biden-family business – with ties to the Chinese Community Party and various oligarchs – hasn’t been “of interest” to the corporate press.

When the New York Post, the country’s oldest newspaper, revealed what the Biden-family business does, the corporate press not only didn’t cover it but “lied” and said it was “Russian disinformation,” Hemmingway said. Organizations, such as the New York Post, and individuals were knocked off of social media for discussing the Biden-family business.

Hemmingway also recalled that 2020 had a great increase in unsupervised voting, which she said Democrats tend to favor because their voters tend to be less enthusiastic on Election Day than Republicans’ voters.

Moreover, unsupervised voting is ripe for fraud, she said. The 2020 problems included curing – that is, fixing defects – in alleged ballots in blue areas of swing states.

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ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

Those wanting another head start on the week of July 24-30 may watch Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21