November 2020 Archives

I've seen a lot of evidence of voting irregularities in the 2020 Presidential election -- hundreds of affidavits and dozens of statistical analyses. I don't know what the truth is. But despite all that, the most suspicious thing about the election is that both courts and the media want to pretend that there is no evidence. Courts keep throwing out cases on "technicalities", finding reasons to avoid looking at the submitted evidence. The media just covers its eyes and ears and writes about Biden's dogs and cats. This is super sus.

If there was any wrongdoing, the proof is in the hands of the wrongdoers. A court needs to order testimony under oath for the accused wrongdoers, and needs to seize any evidence in their possession. Only then can we examine the evidence and get past the allegations and rumors. It isn't good enough to stall and prevaricate. If the election was fair, then open the books. Tell us under oath, subject to cross-examination.

It's not enough to say, "Trump's just making everything up! He's blowing smoke!"

I personally hope that the election was completely fair, because the alternative is much worse.

The burden of proof is on Trump's campaign to show evidence of election fraud that will convince courts or state legislatures, and so far they haven't done it.

However, the public is under no obligation to work under the same standards of evidence as a court, and the public has different incentives than legislators. The public sees the smoke of electoral fraud and isn't convinced otherwise by establishment cries of "debunked" or "no evidence", no matter how loudly or frequently proclaimed. If Trump's legal and political challenges fail, the burden of proof will be on the establishment to convince the rest of America that Trump's protests are faulty, and so far they aren't even trying to make that case.

Their rough consensus is that GOP voters who still support the president are either treasonous or stupid, reinforced constantly by a brittle insistence that there was "no fraud" in the presidential election. A totemic front-page declaration by the New York Times, "ELECTION OFFICIALS NATIONWIDE FIND NO FRAUD," has been repeated everywhere, mantra-like. Any claims of voter fraud or ballot-counting irregularities, whether from President Trump or the tens of thousands who marched over the weekend, are "baseless," "unfounded," and have "no evidence" behind them.

There's a palpable nervousness about the media's insistence that the election was as pure as the driven snow. Maybe they seem so nervous because they know what everyone in America knows: there was nothing pure or secure or even ordinary about the election.

How could there be? Under the pretext of ensuring "voter access" during the pandemic, Democrats, leftist nonprofits, and activist judges across the country unleashed a flood of changes to election rules in the months leading up to the vote, including an unprecedented expansion of mail-in voting, an inherently fraught method of casting ballots that removes almost all oversight from the process.

No matter. States pushed ahead, mailing ballots to outdated voter rolls en masse and recklessly loosening oversight for how those ballots could be collected and counted. Chain-of-custody for absentee ballots went out the window, along with whatever meager safeguards usually apply to absentee voting. Ballot harvesting, long a tradition of corrupt Democratic political machines in places like Detroit and Philadelphia, was introduced in some places for the first time. Take together, all these pandemic-inspired reforms presented an ideal opportunity for Democrats to flood absentee ballot-counting centers in major cities and run up the vote-count long after the polls closed on Election Day.

Despite judges dismissing the significance of hundreds of sworn affidavits, this testimony is pretty compelling to most people who are allowed to hear about it.

No wonder scores of Republican poll challengers in Michigan filed sworn affidavits claiming tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots were counted for Biden in Detroit. No wonder that in Philadelphia, poll watchers reported how they were forcibly kept from observing the counting of absentee ballots, as required under state law.

Not all the reports of ballot-counting skullduggery amount to old-fashioned voter fraud, but as my colleague Margot Cleveland has noted, they're just as important because they undermine the integrity of an election just as much as, say, thousands of dead people voting.

Trump didn't cause the division and mistrust in America -- he is a symptom of a larger social trend that won't be extinguished when he leaves office. To paraphrase Princess Leia: The more the establishment tightens its grip, the more the public will slip through its fingers.

Whether or not Trump's various legal challenges are successful one thing is clear: America's election system is garbage. Americans deserve a secure, fair, and transparent election system. I don't personally know enough to propose solutions, but South Carolina Republicans seem to be on the right track.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson discussed plans to introduce a bill that would require voter identification and establish voter fraud hotlines and nationwide cross referencing of voter rolls during a news conference Tuesday at the state Capitol. Wilson was joined by Congressmen Ralph Norman and Jeff Duncan and U.S. Rep.-elect Nancy Mace. ...

"There was a large portion of voters across the country who were worried about their votes being counted, and there was a large segment of voters across the country who were worried about illegal votes being counted," Mace said.

Wilson said ballots must be received by the hour polls close, and ballots received after polls close should not be counted. Additionally, observers should be allowed to watch ballot counting within 2 feet so they can read voter signatures, and there should be laws to prohibit covering of windows to conceal vote counting.

Once counting begins, Wilson said, it must continue until all votes are counted, with no intervals of delay. ...

After the election, ballots should be cross referenced on all forms of voting to reveal those who have voted multiple times and identify co-conspirators who helped facilitate multistate voting. Anyone guilty of voter fraud should be prosecuted, Wilson said.

I'll add: paper ballots only.

Alexander Macris explains how a federal court might consider Trump's election fraud claims based on Donohue v. Board of Elections of State of New York, 435 F. Supp. 957 (E.D.N.Y. 1976). Donohue was a federal district court case in New York that isn't binding on any other district court, much less the Supreme Court, but the decision outlines some pretty logical considerations. In short:

The Donohue court has thus laid out the legal test that the plaintiff must meet. He must plead and prove

1. specific acts of misconduct,

2. involving 'willful or knowing' ballot fraud,

3. by state officials or private persons acting jointly with state officials,

4. that changed the outcome of the election.

This is a heavy burden. The Trump campaign will have to work hard to meet this test. But it is a matter of fact and evidence.

The district court ruled against the plaintiff (President Ford) in Donohue for a few reasons:

First, they didn't show that the irregularities were willful acts of misconduct by state officials. Second, the particular 'irregularity' they showed didn't really prove fraud; there were other inferences that were plausible. Third, they didn't establish that the irregularities actually were irregularities in Carter's favor! They showed a pattern of irregular votes, but didn't show that those irregular votes were for Jimmy. Fourth, they didn't offer any independent evidence to buttress their statistical analysis - no witnesses came forward to allege state officials had acted wrongly, for instance. Finally, they didn't show enough irregularity to change the outcome. So the Ford campaign lost its case on the facts, not on the law. They had a case, but didn't have the evidence.

Trump's lawyers are certainly familiar with the case law, so watch for them to build their case(s) around these four points.

I personally hope that there wasn't widespread election fraud, but if there was then we need to know about it and fix our election system so that it never happens again.

I've been avidly following the numerous statistical analyses that data experts have been performing and posting online. Statistical analysis alone isn't proof, but it's sufficient evidence to justify an investigation. Here are a few sources worth reading -- but some links may eventually be taken down by our tech overlords.

• Election Fuckery Is Afoot; The More Fuckery Update
• A time series analysis of in-person and mail-in vote counting
• Applying Benford's Law to county vote totals -- (background on Benford's Law)

There are many other examples, but those three are representative. All together, these analysis provide a lot more public evidence to justify an investigation than we had in Florida in 2000 or that we had for "Russian interference" in 2016. The stats don't tell us exactly who may have done what, but they give us a good idea of where and when to look. Maybe it's all just statistical noise that doesn't mean anything, but it's worth finding out.

Anyway, the stats adventure has been fun! But even if you don't care about or believe in these statistics, now we've got a sworn affidavit from City of Detroit employee named Jessy Jacob who says that she witnessed and participated in election fraud at the direction of her superiors. I have a feeling we'll see more affidavits like this today.

Matthew Cochran is correct that "America Won't Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated".

In 2020, the body of evidence eclipses that of 2000. Today, the confusion arises from half a dozen states rather than one. The reported incidents indicate outright fraud more than they do simple incompetence, especially since they all just happen to benefit the same candidate. Shouldn't this evidence give us even more reason to investigate the matter than we had two decades ago?

And if your memory doesn't work that far back, you should at least remember 2016. A few Russian dollars spent on Facebook during the election and a highly questionable dossier were all it took to trigger FBI and congressional investigations into President Trump for years. There is far more evidence to justify an investigation into voter fraud in 2020.

So let's see how things play out. We've got plenty of time to investigate, and smart and dedicated people from across the political spectrum who are dedicated to the truth. Right?

I don't have anything intelligent to add to the wildfire election discussion.

Is it super sus that the media "calls" states for Biden instantly, but delays calling anything for Trump until the call won't give him even a temporary electoral vote lead? Yes.

Is it super sus that states where Trump is leading decide to stop counting for a while, and promise to get back to us in a few days? Uh, yes.

Will it be super sus if Biden wins by a handful of votes in the states that stopped counting overnight? Oh fo sho.

Will it be super sus if this election gets decided 5-4 or 6-3 by the Supreme Court? Yep.

These electoral shenanigans are embarrassing.

Pollsters: LOL you are terrible.

Media: LOL you are terrible.

Divided government? If Biden wins but Republicans hold the Senate, that's pretty decent.

Best case scenario: Supreme Court unanimously picks a winner.