Oklahoma GOP Candidate Claims Incumbent Has Been Replaced by a Robot
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

In the movie Dave, Kevin Kline plays a temp convinced by government officials to stand in for the president in public. Kline fools just about everybody, tricking Americans into believing that he is the president and not a really accomplished impersonator. 

Reality just became much stranger than fiction.

On June 24, a candidate running for Congress failed to unseat incumbent Representative Frank Lucas (R-Okla.). Although the deadline has now passed, the unsuccessful challenger announced he planned to contest the election results (he received about five percent of the vote) because he believes Representative Lucas is not Representative Lucas at all, but a very convincing impostor.

“The election for U.S. House for Oklahoma’s 3rd District will be contested,” Timothy Ray Murray wrote in a statement published on his official campaign website. “I will be stating that his votes are switched with Rep. Lucas votes, because it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike.”

Murray believes, and claims on his website, that “a few other Oklahoma and other States’ Congressional Members,” were murdered while on a trip to southern Ukraine in early 2011. Murray explains:

On television they were depicted as being executed by the hanging about the neck until death on a white stage and in front of witnesses. Other now current Members of Congress have shared those facts on television also. We know that it is possible to use look alike artificial or manmade replacements, however Rep. Lucas was not eligible to serve as a Congressional Member after that time.

Later in the statement, Murray makes it clear he doesn’t believe these congressmen are being impersonated by clever actors. No, he suspects artificial intelligence is behind the masquerade, and he promises to never participate in such a ruse. “I will NEVER use Artificial Intelligence look alike to voice what The Representative’s Office is doing nor own a robot look alike. The World knows the truth, and We must always share the truth,” Murray declares.

Robots. Murray believes, or at least seems to believe, that Representative Lucas is buried in some unmarked Ukrainian grave while his duties in Congress are being performed by an artificially intelligent automaton. 

For his part, Lucas laughed off Murray’s theory. “Many things have been said about me, said to me during course of my campaigns,” Lucas told local TV station KFOR. “This is the first time I’ve ever been accused of being a body double or a robot.”

While Murray’s story is silly, perhaps the Republic would be better off if a robot was voting in place of Lucas. Presumably, a robot could be controlled and could probably be re-programmed to score higher than the 55 percent he earned on The New American’s Freedom Index for 2013. (In fact, if the robot were simply de-programmed so as to vote willy-nilly, the robot could then be expected to vote half the time in support of the Constitution — 50 percent, only five points worse than Murray’s actual voting record last year.)

Since 1999, Lucas has earned that failing grade, based on key votes that indicate his support for limited government.

Of all the unconstitutional votes cast by Lucas, the one cast to oppose a restriction on the global deployment of combat troops under the Authority for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) is among those that are egregious. As the Freedom Index reveals:

During consideration of the defense appropriations bill (H.R. 2397), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) offered an amendment to prohibit funding for military actions after December 31, 2014 that are carried out pursuant to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). As Rep. Schiff noted: “The 2001 AUMF was never intended to authorize a war without end, and it now poorly defines those who pose a threat to our country. That authority and the funding that goes along with it should expire concurrent with the end of our combat role in Afghanistan.”

Schiff also noted: “The Constitution vests the Congress with the power to declare war and the responsibility of appropriating funds to pay for it. It is our most awesome responsibility and central to our military efforts overseas. We owe it to the men and women we send into combat to properly define and authorize their mission, and my amendment will effectively give Congress the next 16 months to do so.”

The House rejected Schiff’s amendment on July 24, 2013 by a vote of 185 to 236 (Roll Call 410). We have assigned pluses to the yeas because only Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war and appropriate funds to pay for it. Authorizing the president to use military force without a declaration of war is a shifting of responsibility from Congress to the executive branch that essentially allows the president to exercise dictator-like powers and should be opposed.

Then, on July 24, 2013, Lucas blocked an attempt to prevent dragnet NSA surveillance under the purported authority of the Patriot Act. Again, from the Freedom Index:

NSA Surveillance of Phone Records.

During consideration of the defense appropriations bill (H.R. 2397), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) offered an amendment to end the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act. Amash’s amendment would also prevent the NSA and other agencies from using provisions of the Patriot Act to collect records, including phone records, from persons who are not subject to an investigation. As Rep. Amash noted during the debate on his amendment, “My amendment … limits the government’s collection of the records to those records that pertain to a person who is the subject of an investigation pursuant to section 215 [of the Patriot Act].”

The House rejected Amash’s amendment on July 24, 2013 by a vote of 205 to 217 (Roll Call 412). We have assigned pluses to the yeas because any effort to limit the collection of Americans’ personal information by the surveillance state is a good thing. Blanket collection of electronic records of citizens who are not under investigation is a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on search and seizure without a warrant.

It goes without saying that The New American does not buy Timothy Ray Murray’s bizarre Dave come-to-life accusation. Furthermore, we are happy that Representative Lucas is alive and well and wish neither him nor anyone else any ill will. We only wish that he wouldn’t so frequently betray the oath of office he swore to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution of the United States.

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected].