We’ve got another sorry tale on today’s BradCast of yet another federal “watchdog” agency clearly captured by the industry corporations that it is supposed to be overseeing and/or regulating. This time, democracy itself is at stake. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]
But first up today, we had quite a bit of breaking news just before airtime. For a start, the U.S. Capitol was locked down on Friday after two Capitol Police officers were rammed in a violent attack with a vehicle. One of the officers, an 18-year veteran, was killed. The other was said to be “fighting for his life” as of airtime. After ramming the officer, the assailant is said to have “lunged” at officers with a knife and was subsequently shot and killed. The assault was the most serious threat on the Capitol since the Donald Trump-incited insurrection on January 6th, which killed five, including one U.S. Capitol Police officer. Two more officers took their lives in the ensuing days after that attack by Trump supporters attempting to stop Congressional ratification of Joe Biden’s 2020 Electoral College victory.
That attack — and Trump’s evidence-free Big Lie about his loss being the result of “fraud” — continues to reverberate almost three months since the MAGA Mob’s assault on U.S. democracy. Last week, Georgia’s Republican-dominated state legislature adopted a massive voter suppression bill that will make it more difficult to vote by, among other things, requiring additional forms of ID for mail voting, limiting absentee ballot drop-boxes and early voting hours, and banning the distribution of food or beverages to voters forced to wait hours on line. It would also allow partisan GOP officials to undermine County Boards of Election and even overturn results. The state’s Governor, Brian Kemp (R), signed the sweeping bill almost immediately after it passed both chambers of the state legislature in a matter of hours.
This week, after some 70 Black corporate executives spoke out against the transparent attempt to making voting more difficult for minorities in the state, a cascade of other corporate entities — including Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, both based in Atlanta — finally decided to speak out in favor of democracy and against voter suppression. And then, on Friday, shortly before today’s show, Major League Baseball announced they will be moving the All-Star Game and MLB Draft, previously set for July in Atlanta, to another state in response to the GOP attack on voting.
And, as Georgia Republicans pushed back on Delta Airlines this week for belatedly standing up for the right to vote, Gov. Kemp took his shot at the company by accusing its CEO of “false attacks” by claiming misleadingly in a statement: “The last time I flew Delta I had to show my ID.”
But Kemp, the state’s former Sec. of State, certainly knows that flying is a privilege, where voting is a right. He also likely knows that, no, an ID is not required to fly on Delta or any other airline. As clearly explained on the TSA.gov website…
In the meantime, as to real — versus imagined or opportunistic and partisan — threats of fraud in our elections, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the federal agency tasked with overseeing voting system security standards, is continuing the woeful job it has done since its creation by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Since its inception, as we have documented at The BRAD BLOG for almost 20 years, the EAC has largely been captured by the private voting system vendors whose systems they are supposed to be testing, overseeing, regulating and certifying as meeting minimal standards.
For years, the EAC has consistently helped mislead the public regarding the dangers of modems inside of computer voting and tabulation systems. The EAC’s original Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG), created about 15 years ago, allowed for use of the devices which cybersecurity experts have long warned can be used to introduce malware into systems that could disrupt elections or change results.
In August of 2019, as we detailed on the program at the time with cybsersecurity journalist Kim Zetter, a group of security and voting systems experts discovered “nearly three dozen backend election systems in 10 states connected to the internet over the last year, including some in critical swing states” such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida. In January of 2020, almost six months after Zetter’s exclusive and disturbing report, Cynthia McFadden followed up with her own report at NBC News, in which, despite federal officials repeatedly and falsely declaring that “U.S. voting systems are never connected to the Internet,” the President of the nation’s largest vendor, Elections Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S), conceded that at least 14,000 of the company’s modems were being used in vulnerable voting and tabulation systems across the country, even as the 2020 election cycle was getting under way.
Nonetheless, over the last five years, the EAC has been working with stakeholders — from elections officials to cybersecurity experts to vendors — to develop new minimum security standards for the nation’s voting systems, which they call VVSG 2.0. The good news is that the draft of those final standards for the VVSG 2.0, made available for public comment last Summer, included a ban on modems and other wireless communications devices in computerized voting and tabulation systems.
The bad news: After the public comment period and before the new standards were officially adopted by the EAC Commissioners, they apparently met in secret with several vendors and quietly changed the new standards to once again allow for modems and other wireless communications devices in new voting systems.
After the standards changed and weakened without public notice, the non-partisan government watchdog, Free Speech for People (FSFP), filed public records requests for documentation of the non-public meetings between EAC officials and the voting machine companies. Despite acknowledging hundreds of pages of existing documents responsive to the request, according to our guest today, the EAC failed to turn over any of it to the group. Now, FSFP is suing the EAC for those documents.
We’re joined today by longtime election integrity advocate SUSAN GREENHALGH, Senior Advisor on Election Security at FSFP, to explain the organization’s lawsuit [PDF], and the latest, extraordinary failure to protect our elections by the corporate-captured EAC.
“We have a real lack of leadership from the federal agency that’s supposed to be helping assist election officials run election more efficiently, securely, accessibly and transparently at the EAC,” Greenhalgh explains, charging “they’re letting the vendors help weaken the standards directly.”
“The EAC is way, way too deferential to the vendors,” she says. “They need to either do the right thing and do their job, or they need get out of the lane and come up with some other way. Because there’s an expectation by members of Congress that this is being taken care of, that the EAC is doing their job, they’re developing the standards, they’re testing voting systems. Unless you scratch the surface and find out what’s really going on, you might think on the outside that they’re doing their job, and they’re not. They’re taking up that space, and that makes us all less safe and secure in our elections.”
There is, as you might guess, much more that Greenhalgh has to explain about this ongoing mess and FSFP’s legal efforts to crack open the EAC blockade.
Finally, we close today with a rather hilarious audio message from former, George W. Bush-era Republican House Speaker John Boehner, to Texas’ Trumpy, conspiracy-loving U.S. Senator Ted Cruz…
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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Some questions:
Is it the case that No 2020 voter fraud existed at all, or was it simply not “widespread” enough to affect final win results? Besides being connected to the internet and wifi, did cybersecurity experts find any tabulation malware? [Nevada stated one district had software double counting before they identified the error.] Did that exist elsewhere, with or without being initially identified? Regarding Trump, while he was grasping at logical and mathematical straws, in the hopes of repeating a 2016-like math win, was he idealistically seeing, believing & compounding every reported irregularity? In short, did Trump hear what he wanted to hear and set his belief on those reports, OR did he orchestrate a lie? It seems remotely possible that he could hear reports by a cybersecurity expert about compromisable modems and add that to a quilt of mis-matched irregularities, a type of comfort blanket, if you will.
BobbyB @ 1:
Some answers…
It is always safe to presume that there was some fraud somewhere. Even signing an absentee ballot for your wife (with her permission) would technically be fraud. But there is no evidence of any fraud, to my knowledge, that would have had any effect on any 2020 election, at this time, much less enough to have affected hundreds of thousands of votes as would have been necessary to change the results of the Presidential race.
I am aware of no such findings in 2020. If there had been any found by Team Trump, I am quite certain I would would have become aware of it.
I am not aware of the “software double counting” issue you mention in NV. Got a link to it?
Beyond that, I am not aware of any software double counting anywhere. (Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. But I am unaware of it. If/when that sort of thing does happen it’s usually pretty easily found during the post-election canvass, because you’d have many more votes recorded than the number of voters signed into the poll books, or that had sent in a mail-in ballot.)
Of course, this is largely unknowable, but if you’re asking my opinion, I’d say the answer is “both”. He pretended every reported “irregularity” (most of which were perfectly explainable, and not “irregular” at all), was evidence of massive fraud which, of course, is what he needed to pretend was true in order to orchestrate his lie.
That’s certainly possible. He grasped at any straw he could find, and made up out of whole cloth the straws that he couldn’t find.
Pathetically, concerns about things like modems (legit) and unverifiable Ballot Marking Devices (as used across entire state of Georgia), would have been legitimate points to question. But he didn’t bother citing the stuff that would have been legitimate, either because he didn’t know about them or didn’t understand them, in his panic to come up with something, anything, to pretend he won an election that he absolutely knows that he lost.
35 states are at risk for ‘rigged’ elections because of severe gerrymandering
Help me understand – AFAICT you’ve railed in a supposedly bi-partisan manner against the insecurity of voting machines for many years, as enabled by the establishment. I’ve seen and appreciate your genealogy of Dominion. Then along comes anti-establishment Trump who goes against most of DC (D & R), and suddenly you don’t think the machines could’ve played a major fraud role, despite overwhelming statistical oddities? Suddenly the assertions voiced by Powell, Lin, Byrne, Lindell etc. which essentially echo your observations about Dominion et. al. don’t hold a shred of truth?
To name just a few, to what do you attribute:
* The multiple vote switches seen on live TV?
* The Antrim MI flips and machine SW tampering found during a down-ballot audit?
* The Windham NH flips found during a down-ballot audit?
* The CA weighted single vote?
* The severe resistance (by Republican authorities) to actual ballot & machine forensic audits in AZ and GA (vs. the untrustworthy ballot image recounts, and EAC-backed “audits”)?
From where I stand, you don’t seem intellectually honest.
OlimJ asked @4:
Correct. Though my concerns are as much about lack of public oversight as they are about “insecurity of voting machines”, in that even a 100% secure voting system doesn’t meet the bar for American democracy if everyday Americans can’t know that it’s secure for themselves, without having to rely on the promises of “experts”, etc.
Not sure what that actually means. I don’t know if I’ve reported on the “genealogy of Dominion”.
While this is a separate point that doesn’t actually matter here (though it may be a telling part of this conversation), Trump has not “[gone] against most of DC (D&R)”. He is very much in line with longtime Republican doctrine and ideology.
With that out of the way….When did I ever say that “[I] don’t think the machines could’ve played a major fraud role”? Of course they could. What I have said, repeatedly since November 3rd, is that I have seen exactly zero such evidence to suggest that they did.
As to “overwhelming statistical oddities”, I have seen such “oddities”, overwhelmingly statistical or otherwise. I have seen nothing particularly unusual about any of the Presidential-related election results from any credible sources. None. Zero. Nada. And I’ve looked at lots of such claims since November.
I am always open to information I may not have seen. Of the information I have seen from those people, I have seen ZERO credible assertions (meaning, independently verifiable assertions) that support any of the very real concerns I’ve always had (and still do) about voting systems made by ALL vendors, not just Dominion.
Their “assertions” do not “echo” mine. They do bastardize and completely re-imagine much of my independently verifiable reporting over the years. They opportunistically take my legitimate, well-documented research and reporting and make claims about it that the reporting itself does not. The subsequent claims they have made — at least those I have seen (and I have looked into MANY of them — are absurd and evidence-free.
What “multiple vote switches” are you referring to? Got URL?
There were no “flips” in Antrim. There was a mismatched database, essentially, with different versions of the software on the county and state sides of the upload. A hand-count of hand-marked paper ballots by the Republican election officials in Antrim confirmed that the certified results were accurate, after Republican elections officials discovered the erroneous results derived from the initial upload.
As to “SW tampering found during a down-ballot audit”, I am unaware of any such “tampering”. Got URL?
Got URL?
No idea what you’re even referring to here. Got URL?
There were a number of different audits in both AZ and GA. In fact, in both cases, they were among the most thorough we have ever seen for a Presidential race. And, in all cases, appear to confirm the initial and certified tallies.
I would always prefer MORE oversight, rather than less. And I have no problem with “machine forensic audits”, even if those have long been blocked by officials under the (absurd) premise that the systems use proprietary hardware and software. I have no problem with such forensic audits when/if they are allowed. But I am not aware of any particular blockade in either state that is different from any I’ve ever seen in any state at any time.
If you have counter-indicative information, please feel free to share.
Oh…and I don’t know what an “EAC-backed ‘audit'” is supposed to refer to there.
Okay. From where I stand, you don’t seem particularly well-informed or appropriately skeptical on these matters. But I’ll happily retract that comment when/if you share the evidence I requested above and it bares out any of the assertions you appear to be making.
Either way, I do thank you for sharing the concerns with me, and I’ll look forward to your response with links to the evidence that you failed to provide in your original comment.
Great, we’re in solid agreement on this. If machines are to be used, they must be based on open source code and every transaction auditable, a far cry from where we are today.
Referring to this.
This is central to my point, that I think you’re blinded to what you’re trying to expose due to your leftist bias. While Trump is clearly aligned with right ideology, his popularity is directly due to not being an establishment politician, and thus ruffled R feathers right from the get-go. He was never accepted by the party, rather forced his way in by popularity of the people tired of all talk no action RINOs, who have now been exposed in spades. The mainstream folks who consume primarily leftist legacy media won’t understand the extent of this. Trump supporters are aligned with R talking points, but disgusted by 90% of the party’s inaction, lack of support for the MAGA movement, and outright obstruction against exposing election fraud.
Have you ever heard of “Here is the Evidence”? If so, then I suggest we have different views of “zero evidence”. That the legal system didn’t expose sufficient fraud by Jan. 6 is viewed as reality by many, and a failure of justice by others (whether the fault of lawyers, judges, or “deep state” interference). Ultimately it’s a snapshot in time and subject to change as investigative work continues in earnest. We’ll see – FWIW, Byrne recently said on Telegram you’ll see the indisputable outcome of this work within 6-8 weeks, with a similar drumbeat coming from others working on it.
For one, you might enjoy the post history of this auditor who worked with ASOG in Atrim. I linked starting a few months back, just change the page # in the URL to skip around. For anyone who’s followed the AZ Senate’s attempt to initiate the Maricopa full forensic audit for the past few months, it’s clear he’s the real deal and not just another Q conspiracist.
Can you acknowledge that the obliteration of bellwether counties precedent, and disparity in outcome/behaviors between early vs. late swing states is enough on its own (while not hard evidence of fraud) to be highly suspicious? Sure, most every anomaly has some explanation from some official (and the ones that don’t you never hear about again from the media), but look at the big picture – all “honest mistakes” against Trump. Isn’t the unprecedented censorship here in America to even have the exchange we’re having about the F word (thank you for engaging, BTW) enough to question that something is seriously wrong?
I don’t wish to delve further into politics (I’d like to stick to our common ground of the potential for machine fraud), but if your response is “January 6th, which killed five”, then you need a fact check.
See this.
Windham articles
Maricopa articles – I would hope you agree the resistance by the Republican BoS to getting it done should be absolutely indefensible.
CA single weighted vote
Ironically, your information is the default from legacy media & big tech (post-censorship). Going beyond that requires some effort. That you’re unaware of most of what I’ve shared is telling.
Olimj @6:
Apologies for the slow reply to your response. I’m backed up here, but hope to do so this weekend. In the meantime, you had some broken links in the comment which I have already fixed for ya.
Backatcha when I can. (Also, after I review a link or two that you’ve included that I hadn’t seen previously. Sadly, most of them appear to be from the Hoft boyz at Gateway Pundit. So…sigh. But, will get back to you soon, hopefully. Appreciate the reply, the links and your patience.)
Olimj @6:
Once again, thanks for your tolerance of my slow reply. But I wanted to give you a full one. That you responded at all after your first message is greatly appreciated. Most who leave such notes here rarely return after my initial response. For that alone you earn big points!
For the multitude of “evidence” links at (good lord) Gateway Pundit, of all places, you lose several of those points, since you seem smart enough to know better. But I dunno. Either way, I’ll do my best to respond to the “information” they offer, rather than to the very-long, very-self-discredited website. (If you’re simply unaware, Jim Hoft, et al, have spent YEARS posting easily-debunked falsehood after falsehood after falsehood, with nary a correction in sight when they are so easily and so often proven simply wrong. At best, they will simply delete their bullshit posts without a notice. More often, they just leave them up to continuing disinforming without correction. But…I’ll do my best to respond to the information in them, rather than to the discredited messengers themselves…)
While open source provides somewhat more transparency than proprietary code, that’s a bit of a mirage. Even open source cannot and should not be trusted, as there is no simple way of knowing that the code used on Tuesday is the same as the code examined on Monday. (Yes, there are hash tests that could be run but a) they won’t be. And b) They can also be gamed. See the story and radio show you are commenting on above for more on that.)
In short, open source adds little or anything to public oversight of public elections, and “auditable transactions” is another phrase I’d caution you about. We don’t need post-election “audits” (which are actually just spot-checks, at best), we need fully transparent, hand-counts of hand-marked paper ballots on Election Night, at the precinct, in full view of all parties and observers, with decentralized results posted at each precinct before ballots are moved anywhere. That’s Democracy’s Gold Standard, though one that is slipping quickly away — particularly with the proliferation of Voting Centers and Vote-by-Mail.
Ah. That article is more about the dishonest rise and fall of Sequoia than the bit player Dominion itself. It is, of course, THE article that clowns Powell and Giuliani and Wood et al reimagined as the basis for their silly bastardized, fully evidence-free claims regarding Dominion (and Smartmatic) for which they are justifiable now being sued.
For the record, as noted many times since those clowns bastardized my reporting: I fully stand behind everything in that deep-dive, well-researched, independently verifiable reporting from a decade ago. If you bother to read it (and its links to additional deep-dive investigative reporting), you’ll find it bares absolutely NO resemblance to the evidence-free nonsense and bullshit Team Trump attempted to turn it into (and have rightly be sued for in the bargain.)
I understand your point. And reject it. I have spent years going to bat for some truly odious characters who I would never support politically — “leftist” bias or otherwise. I have supported the election challenges of some pretty terrible folks from Joe Miller in Alaska to Allen West in Florida (before he moved to TX to chair the state’s GOP) to Mike Huckabee to Ron Paul and more.
My coverage of Election Integrity issues is, and will always be, non-partisan. That doesn’t mean I won’t call out liars and con men (of any party), but my coverage is based on independently verifiable facts and sourcing in support of voters (of any political persuasion or none at all), not candidates. Yes, it is important for the survival of democracy that the supporters of losing candidates from any party are able to know that their candidate lost the election legitimately,
The voters of the folks I cite above ALL had reason to be alarmed and to issue challenges to the reported results of elections in question. I often pointed that out before the candidates themselves did — if they did at all. While Donald Trump (and, indeed any candidate) and his voters should always demand public oversight of vote counting, there is (to date) no legitimate questions — above and beyond those in every single election held on computer tabulating devices — about the results. And, indeed, much LESS so here than in virtually every other election, given the scrutiny over these particular results (which I welcome, by the way!) And if they were carried out by legitimate truth seekers — which I am choosing to characterize YOU as — rather than buffoonish, opportunistic partisans and scam artists with zero knowledge of how voting and elections systems actually work, I’d be applauding, rather than laughing at their silly, easily debunked “evidence” of a massive “steal”.
Your suggestion that either establishment Republicans or “mainstream media” are obstructing the exposure of “election fraud” is risible. That said, I am happy to agree that the GOP is now a failed state, and Donald Trump is their warlord.
And I am similarly happy to set aside the politics of this conversation, since I believe that while you may be politically motivated, you are actually concerned about the Election Integrity in question (even as you have been wildly disinformed by some pretty bad characters who know they are playing you for a chump.)
Yes. We do. When I use the word “evidence”, I am referring to material that holds up under independent scrutiny and could possibly have had any actual effect on the ultimate results of the (in this case) Presidential election.
That means, for example, that a) Some poll watcher filing an affidavit to claim that thousands of manufactured ballots were hidden under a table and counted in secret, is not evidence when video-tape proof, multiple witnesses (from both parties) and independently verifiable and countable evidence (in the form of ballots, pollbooks, and multiple, bipartisan post-election canvasses and audits) debunk the “evidence” in question. Or b) Anecdotal evidence that some father in Indiana signed a mail-in ballot for his daughter unlawfully may be true, but, in no way, could have altered the ultimate outcome of the election.
That blizzard of “Here Is the Evidence” stuff is largely a combination of those two types of “evidence”. It is mostly already debunked as nonsense or anecdotal stuff that happens in every election, but can only actually effect the results of a vanishing few of them. (For example, when the GOP candidate for the US House in NC in 2018 violated the law by collecting and changing enough mail-in ballots in a close enough election that it had to be declared void.)
Or the failure to present legitimate, independently verifiable result-changing evidence that could in any substantive way have changed the final result of the Presidential election.
As I have noted since November 3, I have yet to see any evidence that the election was stolen by either fraudulent ballots or computerized chicanery, but that that doesn’t mean we won’t see it in the future. Just that I have seen no such evidence to date. If someone’s got something, I’ll look forward to looking at. As someone who’s been doing this for nearly 20 years, I’d advise you don’t hold your breath for the next 6 to 8 weeks. But that’ll be up to you.
So this “real deal” appears to know very little about voting systems in this country. How they work. Who owns them, etc. For example, on the page you link to, he (presumably “he”?) notes: “Diebold is ES&S who Dominion own..lol”
Yeah…that’s not even close to true. ES&S is the largest voting system vendor in the US and Dominion’s top competitor. They do not own them in any way, shape or form. That was an easy one to get right. That this dude didn’t even bother speaks volumes.
Beyond that, he makes a LOT of claims on that page. I’m not gonna debunk all of it. If you have a specific, narrow concern you’d like me to speak to, please cite it, and I’ll try to do so for you.
You have the right to be “suspicious” (skeptical would be the word I’d use instead) about anything you like. I welcome such skepticism. That said, as you’ll find over nearly 20 years of my reportage here, I don’t put much stock in either statistical analysis or patterns. Particularly, in this case, since there are hand-marked paper ballots that can be examined in virtually every county you are citing. Are you concerned the results were inaccurate? Understood. Go make a public records request and count the fucking ballots.
The “early vs. late” stuff, by the way, is just silly. Trump told voters to vote at the polls, Dems told voters to vote by mail. Polling place results generally came in first, mail-in votes (particularly in the GOP-controlled swingstates where the legislatures didn’t allow validation or tabulation before Election Day) were processed later. None of that is evidence of anything, other than folks like Trump being happy to play his supporters as dupes about it.
Nope. Not even close to true.
Nope. The “censorship” you refer to (which I am not entirely comfortable with) is in response to the unprecedented, verifiable LIES about the 2020 election results. Lies that have led to people dying. I don’t like censorship. But I hate people dying, unnecessarily, to assuage the ego of a psychotic, sociopathic liar who has played them for suckers and chumps (while draining their bank accounts…but that is also a separate issue.)
As noted above, that’s fine by me. Thank you.
See this.
Sigh…Okay. Those are not “vote switches”. The video on that page from one of the dopey Hoft brothers is of unofficial election night totals reported by CNN dropping/being adjusted at various times throughout the night. While that happens pretty much every election night (to candidates of both parties), it is not particularly unusual, and is usually based on typos when those numbers are plugged in by hand, as collected from various non-official sources. That the Hoft’s didn’t bother to tell you about the same thing happening to Democratic candidates should raise your suspicions.
Nonetheless, if those numbers had changed at an official source (for example, the PA Sec. of State website, or at one of their counties) it would be far more alarming and require justification. For example, see what happened with these impossible numbers in Arkansas some years ago, as they were taken from official sites and databases. As usual, the failed systems in question were ES&S’ (which, oddly enough, the Team Trump dupes haven’t bothered to question at all, despite the company’s years of enormously failed elections.)
For the record, while Republicans went out of their way to block YEARS of attempts by Democrats in the Senate to mandate post-election audits and hand-marked paper ballots that would have made checking those numbers in PA much easier, at least the Democratic Governor of the state — to the fury of Repubs in the state — finally mandated “paper ballots” (even if many of the ones he allowed cannot be known to reflect the intent of the voters, because many counties, like Philadelphia, for example, shamefully used unverifiable touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices to create “paper ballots”, rather than allowing voters to create their own, verifiable, hand-marked paper ballots.)
So, if there are questions about the results in PA, where are the public records requests and lawsuits to demand hand-counts of those ballots? Why have none been filed? Your questions/skepticism is fine. But these are answerable questions. Your skepticism has been purposely deflected by some very bad people who know they are playing you. Go count the ballots! Why hasn’t Powell and Giuliani demanded it? For that matter, why hasn’t the GOP-majority PA legislature demanded same? (Those questions, by the way, should answer themselves.)
I am unaware of the details of that particular reported mistally in NH. But I’m glad to see the state legislature is taking action on it! You will find hundreds, if not thousands of pages here on the problems with NH’s optical-scan systems and the criminal background of the company named LHS that is shamefully contracted to run it. Similarly questionable results have come out of NH for years. Just search BradBlog.com for “LHS” and/or “New Hampshire Recount” to get an idea.
Again, nothing different than we’ve seen in many previous elections. And now that it actually appears to have harmed a Republican candidate in the state for a change, its very nice to see the state’s GOP legislature bothering to try and do something about it!
The state legislature was asking the Board of Elections to do something that is in violation of the law. Without a court order, they could not simply hand over the ballots to the state legislature. Once receiving the court order, they did so, and amusingly enough, the GOP legislature complained about that as well. (Moreover, since I suspect the Hoft boys may not have mentioned it — and, seriously dude, get better sources! — the AZ GOP was sanctioned and fined by a state court for its ridiculous “election fraud” suit.)
Sensationlist claims from the Hoft Boyz aside, the state Senate is taking heat because they’ve hired a Q conspiracist to head up their supposed post-election audit. That will accomplish exactly nothing toward their supposed interest in “Election Integrity”. For the record, there are many very good and legitimate Republican voting system experts out there. They are easy to find. You may wish to ask yourself why the GOP state State Senate didn’t bother to hire one of them, instead of the clown that they did.
I have, of course, no problem with any such post-election studies. Unfortunately, the way the state Senate has forced it all to happen, the secure chain of custody for ballots has now largely been broken, so any such audit will now be dubious no matter who carries it out. On the upside, ALL of the various post-election audits overseen by bipartisan observers in Maricopa has confirmed the originally reported results. So, I’m sure that you and the Hoft Boyz are taking at least some comfort in that, right? 🙂
Another great example of bufoonery from the Hofts here, if only by including THIS graphic in their article!…
No…as noted above, Dominion did not “aquire” their competitor, ES&S, the nation’s largest voting machine company. That “Gateway Pundit” would make such an easily avoided own goal there — more than three months after the election! — should leave you running from that site, rather than citing them!
As to the actual substance of that article, ignoring their false information, the concerns about “weighted distribution” of votes (reported broadly as “Fraction Magic” many years ago), has been a concern for some time. Despite that, Republicans, by and large, poo-pooed the concerns and ALL efforts to do anything about it! (One of Andrew Breitbart’s last tweets to me before he died made fun of my long-reported concerns about the now defunct Diebold Election Systems.)
Now that they suddenly pretend to care, that’s great! While the provenance of that graphic used at the top of the article is unknown (it may come from one of the videos embedded in the article which is no longer available), it is also easily investigated. Since it refers to California, we have a very good election law out here that allows ANY voter to simply ask for a hand-count in any precinct or precincts they like. Do you fear that the results in CA were manipulated by computerized weighted distribution? Incredibly easy to find a definitive answer to that concern! Simply file for a recount where ever you like. If the theory bares out, you’ll find the votes from the precinct in question will not match the reported computer-tallied results from that same precinct. Easy-peasy! Bust them please!
But, of course, no Republican voter, to my knowledge, has filed for such a post-election hand count in CA, for some reason. Why do you suppose that is? (Again, this question likely answers itself.)
With the exception of the Windham, NH issue you cited, I was aware of all of them. And, yes, its what was refering to when I previously described “no evidence” or “not unusual stuff that we see in pretty much every election”.
I do believe, however, that your concerns are legitimate, even if disinformed by folks who absolutely should know better (I’d claim they do know better, but in this case, its the Hofts, and they are as stupid as they are dishonest, so it may be a toss up as to whether they know they are disinforming their readers or not.)
And I do wish we had more Republicans legitimately concerned about issues of Election Integrity. So, if that ends up being you in the long run, I’ll be happy to have helped any way that I can!
Thank you for the response.
Agreed. While machines can certainly be made secure, it’s a recipe for disaster with politics building the system. I would also advocate for free voter ID, and an embargo on results reporting until all polls are closed nationwide.
Sure TGP makes mistakes, but they and many other small outlets deserve credit for continued reporting on Windham, Maricopa, Antrim, Missoula (the revelations grow daily) while MSM ignores it. You as a supposed non-partisan election expert should appreciate that. Unlike the propaganda networks, at least they have the excuse of being a low budget operation.
You easily dismiss bellwether precedent and statistical anomalies. You also pretend the affidavits, blocked windows, fake ballots, late night counting halts and ballot deliveries, and so many other shenanigans were just business as usual, to which I say bullshit.
We’ll see how this plays out. In your relentless pursuit of truth, surely you’ve heard about the DePerno case in MI, and Dr. Frank’s work. If not, a few links:
Technical basis
Bigger picture
Curious to hear your thoughts.
You’re either being disingenuous or completely oblivious to the level of obstruction to these requests going on everywhere (some of which Dr. Frank speaks to), particularly where forensics (inspecting the ballots, not counting) and chain of custody are concerned. It’s happened in AZ for months now, and no the BoS’s surprise unrequested loading of ballots on a truck to the detriment of chain of custody and disturbance of a potential crime scene, then subsequently denying access to the MCTEC center, doesn’t count as willful cooperation. The behavior of so many transparent officials with nothing to hide is revealing, and the antithesis of what you purportedly advocate for.
Then there’s GA, and blatant destruction of evidence during the Antrim debacle.
Your election integrity philosophy seems sound (assuming you support voter ID), you lose me at your partisan critique of it.
OlimJ @ 9 said:
Not sure what that even means. Whether machines are made secure or not, if the public can’t know they’re secure, it doesn’t actually make any difference if they are secure. They still lead to loss of confidence by the electorate.
But, no, they can’t be “made secure”, in that insiders will always have access to them, and those same insiders are always the greatest threat to security. Only PUBLIC OVERSIGHT can ensure accurate results and public confidence.
As to “politics building the system”, I have no idea what you’re referring to. If you are suggesting that it’s better to have private companies inside of our public elections, I assure you you are wrong.
Voter ID is already required by federal law in all 50 states when registering to vote. But it’s reasonable ID. Not the very specific type of Photo ID that GOP lawmakers often frequently require in order to prevent certain people from voting. (Example: Allowing a gun license, but not a student ID.) That is a scam meant to prevent some 20 to 30 million Americans who do not posess that type of ID from voting.
“Free voter ID” means nothing, if it costs voters money to obtain supporting documents to get that “free ID” (such as birth certificates which many voters never had or passports which cost more than $100). If it requires time off work and travel, that is also not “free”. It is an illegal poll tax to prevent “fraud” which even states that have implemented such laws admit they have ZERO evidence of.
Nope. Those not “mistakes”. Those are failures and journalistic malpractice. And, in the case of TGP they are more frequently purposeful ones meant to propagandize folks like yourself. We know this because when their “mistakes” are pointed out (as they constantly are), they do NOT correct them, but leave them up their to purposefully misinform their readers.
They are not a news organization. They are a propaganda outlet. And it’s quite sad someone as smart as you has yet to figure that out.
They have no such excuse. I guarantee you that my “operation” has a far smaller budget theirs, and we do not make such “mistakes”. In the very few times over the past 17 years when we have been in error, we have corrected it immediately, and publicly notated the error. The Hofts do no such thing, because they are a propaganda organization, full stop.
It’s quite hilarious that you cite another propaganda organization, O’Keefe’s ironically named “Project Veritas” as evidence that CNN is “propaganda”. It’s also very sad.
If you are unaware of the fact that Jimmy is feeding you manipulated propaganda, you need to read up. A search of BradBlog.com for “O’Keefe” will help you get started. Unless, of course, you prefer to continue to be conned.
I “dismiss” them because they are meaningless. Even if they offer a yellow or even red flag, they are meaningless, even in a court of law. If they offer you reason to be concerned (and sometimes they do), there are actual actions that can be taken to determine if there has been fraud or error — for example, counting actual ballots. If you do that, and find mistalliles, that’s a problem. If you don’t, you are merely engaging in speculative nonsense.
“Affidavits” can be filed by anyone, for any reason. That’s why they are often unadmissable in court. Got a specific one I should look at? Let me know.
“Blocked windows”? Where? When? Let me know and we can speak about it.
“Fake ballots”? Really? That would be bad. Where are they?
“Late night counting halts and ballot deliveries”? Again, let me know what you’re talking about, and I’ll let you know if they are in any way suspicious or unusual. Of the claims I’ve seen to date on that (from 2020), I’ve seen nothing different from any election I’ve covered over the past 20 years. (Though, admittedly, they didn’t have Donald Trump running in them, and lying to his supporters about fraud.)
I’m not going to sit through 2 more hours of nonsense “theories” about what someone “EXPECTS TO FIND”, as the first link asks. The second, at least, includes a card with the guys “General Conclusions”. Immediately, it’s easy to spot an error. He suggests there are more votes than there should be, based on the October voter registration database. However, MI allows Same Day Registration. So, if there are more ballots cast than compared to the database a month before the election, it’s a rookie error I’ve seen time and again.
As to an “algorithm” that changed the results, again, that’s an easy one. Count the ballots. If they match the reported results, no problem. (For example, as the Republican election officials appropriately did after the tabulation system failed in Antrim.) If they do not match the reported results, you know you have a problem. Count the ballots and find out if this theory pans out. Not difficult. I would look forward to those findings.
I am quite familiar with the difficulty of both counting and inspecting actual ballots. This has been a problem since at least the creation of the Help American Vote Act of 2002. There are also reasons to prevent the public from touching ballots. That said, the public has had unprecedented access following 2020 that hasn’t been available in most such cases over the past 20 years. There has never been as much access as I’ve seen this year (which is a good thing, btw!)
By “unrequested” do you mean delievered in response to the specific court-approved subpoenaes which demanded ballots be delivered to “1700 W. Washington” (the address of the Senate)?
Those subpoenaes did not request access to the county elections center (which was in the middle of new elections at the time.) They requested ballot delivery to the address above. Once a court gave approval for that otherwise unlawful delivery, the County did so.
But if you’d like to pretend there is a crime here — as apparently you and the Hofts are interested in doing — you are free to do so.
I have a long history of calling out elections officials (of all political persuasions) for violating the law. Feel free to cite the law and lawbreaker in question, and I’m sure I’ll agree with you, if that is what they have done. Again, as I originally stated, this shit happens all the time, and has for years. I never said nothing went wrong here. I said I have seen no persuasive evidence of anything amiss or anything that is any different from election after election over the past 20 years. (Well, that’s not entirely true. There has been MUCH more transparency, happily, this year.)
Unlike many of my respected colleagues, I am not a fan of digital images. Not when there are hand-marked paper ballots that can be hand-counted. Of course, there are few such ballots in GA, because the Republicans there refused to allow voters to use hand-marked ballots at the polls, even threatening one of the counties that tried to do so (which is legal under the GA code.)
I have no problem supporting my friend Garland Favorito (who I’ve interviewed on the show and the blog many times — you can search for his name here) of VoterGA’s request to review the actual ballots.
What “blatant destruction of evidence”?
Again, it’s a shame you are allowing yourself to be played by some very bad people. But it does seem like you are enjoying it. But, again, prepare to be disappointed when the con-men that are playing you run out of ways to continue extending their for-profit scam.