As a commander and operations planner, one of the things you learn in the military is how to reduce the options of your enemy. In the military we have a tool, an acronym, called the OODA Loop. OODA stands for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act and the loop is the cycle in which these principles come together. We often had drills designed to “get inside the enemy’s OODA Loop.” That means to beat your adversary to their decisive moment or action and reduce potential options. I learned in the military that a good battlefield commander does not spend time developing a 100 percent plan. The exceptional battlefield commander develops a 70 percent plan that can be executed to 100 percent perfection. As Mike Tyson once noted, “everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.” In other words, the enemy always has a vote and you must be the commander who is flexible, can adapt, improvise, and overcome — act decisively.

Now, there are those of you saying, “Colonel, what the heck does that have to do with election integrity?” My response: everything!

On April 14, 2020, former Obama Attorney General and Chairman of the National Democratic Party Redistricting Committee, Eric Holder, penned an op-ed piece in Time magazine titled, “How Coronavirus Should Change Elections for Good.” Now, anyone with any political sense should have read this article several times. That is what I did to ascertain the progressive socialist left’s strategy for the 2020 election cycle. Remember the adage of former Obama Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel was, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” In the piece, Holder presented just how to use COVID as a means to alter the election process. At the crux of the plan? Unsolicited mail-in ballots. After all, it was too dangerous to go vote in person, so the leftists advocated to just mail out ballots.

Now, unsolicited mail-in ballots were quite different from absentee balloting, which is a controlled process. One must submit a form requesting an absentee ballot. What Holder wanted was to mail out ballots against an un-scrubbed voter list, and we all know the rest of that story. The left had done everything to make a review of voter rolls toxic, referring to it as racist. Even their John Lewis voter reform legislation, a federal government takeover of elections, would have made review of voter rolls in America illegal . . . at the same time when the Biden administration would open our borders to millions of illegal immigrants.

In the 2020 election cycle, we watched governors, Secretaries of State, and judges change election law, all under the guise of emergency declarations and powers. No emergency overrules the rule of law. The only people who can constitutionally change laws — election or otherwise — are the members of the legislative branch.

The problem was that all of this was occurring and we failed to observe-orient-decide-act (OODA). We never got inside the leftist OODA loop, but instead, we found ourselves reacting.

We are one week away from this critical midterm election cycle, and we still have time to get inside the left’s OODA loop. We need to have our scouts out and reduce the opportunities for nefarious and illegal actions. Remember, in 2008, pictures of the New Black Panthers with night sticks deployed at polling stations? All with no consequences whatsoever.

The American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU) will have a webinar this evening on the subject of election integrity. The focus will be heavily on protecting our vulnerable voters, seniors. What we gleaned from the 2020 election in senior living centers and memory care centers is rather disturbing. We want to share with you the lessons learned and best practices to preclude this from happening once again.

What I want everyone to embrace is that this does not end with one election or election cycle. This is what we in the military call a priority target upon which we must maintain focus and vigilance in order to ensure it is easy to vote, but harder to conduct fraudulent activities. Never forget, the first “o” in OODA stands for “observe!” Then we “orient” our assets and resources. We then “decide” on the best course of action to rectify the situation. Then we “act.”

In this final week of early voting, let’s be predictive in thinking about where the issues will be and proactively resolving them. In that way, we reduce the opposition’s options and opportunities and enhance the probability of election integrity.

Steadfast and Loyal.