... the more we learn, the more suspicious it looks. John Solomon, a widely trusted and respected independent journalist, reports:
In a sworn declaration, a respected mathematician says his analysis of election data and phone interviews with Pennsylvania voters raises questions about as many as 100,000 absentee ballots requested in the key battleground state where President Trump and Joe Biden are separated by just about 82,000 votes.
Williams College Professor Steven Miller, a Yale and Princeton trained math expert, said he analyzed Pennsylvania ballot data collected by former Trump campaign data chief Matt Braynard as well as 2,684 voter interviews conducted by a phone bank and found two concerning patterns. One involved possible votes that were not counted, the other ballots that appeared to be requested by someone other than a registered voter.
"I estimate that the number of ballots that were either requested by someone other than the registered Republican or requested and returned but not counted range from 89,397 to 98,801," Miller said in the sworn statement provided to Just the News.
According to Pennsylvania state data for early and absentee ballot requests, there are roughly 165,000 ballots requested in the names of registered GOP voters that had not been counted as of Nov. 16.
Federal Election Commission Chairman Trey Trainor told Just the News that Miller's analysis provides fresh evidence of potential voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
"This data, which is provided by an expert witness, who would be qualified in almost any court in the country, adds to the conclusions that some level of voter fraud took place in this year's election," Trainor said.
"Therefore, the rush to certify results that are this suspicious from places with known election violations would nullify millions of votes that were legally cast by individual voters."
The Pennsylvania Department of State's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday evening.
There's more at the link.
There's a mountain of evidence (substantiated by voter affidavits) that the mail-in ballot process in Pennsylvania was deliberately, systematically and criminally misused. If that evidence is honestly and fairly processed, I expect criminal charges to result. I think there's more than enough to call the outcome of that state's elections - all of them, for every office - into question. Nor are the problems limited to Pennsylvania alone. There are more than enough to go around, in many states.
Ignore the drumbeat of demands in the mainstream media, and from the Democratic Party, that President Trump should concede this election. They don't get to call the winner. That'll happen when all the votes are officially certified and tallied - and we're a long way from that yet. (What's more, if they're so all-fired certain that Joe Biden won this election fair and square, why are they making such a fuss about getting President Trump to officially concede? Might it be they're more nervous than they want us to think?)
This is going to drag on through state and federal courts, probably all the way to the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. The video clip below states the present position entirely accurately, IMHO.
I daresay it'll be December before we know the true winner - and it may take even longer than that, if the votes in some states are disqualified, and the election has to revert to its Constitutional backup processes through state legislatures and/or the US Congress and Senate. That's not what any of us want . . . but it's looking increasingly likely, given the electoral shenanigans that keep raising their ugly heads.
Peter
18 comments:
Hey Peter;
And it will be chaotic, if President Trump is successful in his attempt, the news media will push the narrative that the election is stolen and half of the electorate will view him as "illegitimate". and he will have a lot of problems with his domestic agenda on account of it. If Biden is certified the winner, half of the electorate will view him as illegal and granted we won't riot like the donks do and burn cities down and crap in our back yard like they do, but the possibilities of an insurgency will increase because there will never be a free election again because the donks will legalize millions of illegals and gain another voting block and permanently hold power and we will slide further down the road toward socialism and government overreach.
Sadly, I think that it is too little, too late. The margin of cheat won this time.
The election was RIGGED? But, of course. It's what Dems do.
If the Democrats are so certain that they won, why hasn't Senator Kneepads resigned her seat yet?
So the vote count software company, which we have been assured committed no voter fraud, just did this.
This Seems Important – Dominion REFUSED to Testify Before PA House Committee Today — Lawyered Up Instead.
The PA House GOP leader accused Dominion of “slapping Pennsylvanians in their face” He went on to ask, “If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding from us?”
link
The only answer the Left will accept is "President Biden"... any win by Trump, no matter how strictly Constitutional the win, will be HE'S ILLEGITIMATE.
In which case expect a veritable bucket-brigade handing Article of Impeachment after Article of Impeachment to the Senate. And over time, IMHO, enough RINO squishes will be worn down they'll ask Trump to resign "for the good of the country" not realizing that it means the END of the country.
And then things get... messy. Alas.
As an exercise of their rights, it's fair enough that any allegations of electoral fraud are tested in court so that the population can have confidence in the integrity of the outcomes. So far, with the cases either heard or withdrawn by the plaintiffs, combined with the Georgia recount, it's showing that no proof of these allegations have been sustained.
However, whilst all the current focus is on these so-far, unproven allegations of fraud, much more time needs to be spent on fundamental problems with the US electoral system which have a much bigger effect on the outcomes of both legislature and presidential elections. They include:
Despite this election having the highest number of votes cast, the US has a historically low level of voter participation (at less than 60%) compared to comparable countries many of whom exceed 75%.
In this current election, due to the way the Electoral College is allocated to the states, the votes of 5 million Americans are virtually wasted and they have no real say in the selection of the President.
The voter registration process is so unnecessarily onerous that it either dissuades or makes it virtually impossible for many eligible voters to participate in the process.
Allied to the previous point, the scheduling of the Election Day on a weekday also severely impacts voter participation.
The nonsense that a nationwide vote for federal positions are conducted by 50 different jurisdictions each with their individual (and in many cases anachronistic) systems and rules.
That the lack of both real and perceived independence of the management of the electoral system results in partisan application of the rules by both sides of politics. This means that irrespective of who wins, the supporters of the losing side cry foul and lack confidence in the outcomes.
The reduction of the number of polling places in a number of jurisdictions, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama. This makes it impossible for some citizens to travel the increased distance and then have to wait longer to vote.
Fix these issues, and the USA will find that like the lived experience of most comparable, developed countries it will never have real or perceived issues of fraud again.
@ MrGarabaldi
Quote:
And it will be chaotic, if President Trump is successful in his attempt, the news media will push the narrative that the election is stolen and half of the electorate will view him as "illegitimate". and he will have a lot of problems with his domestic agenda on account of it.
And that would be different from the last 4 years in what way? They've been claiming he was illegitimate since he won in 2016
David Lang
@mark
the number and locations of polling places are set by the local county officials, so blame them for anything related to hurting their local people
voter registration is trivial, by law (since Clinton), when you get a state ID (required to drive, rent a hotel room, get government benefits, open a bank account, and many other things), voter registration is literally a checkbox. And many studies have shown people getting registered to vote through this process when they do NOT check the checkbox and are not legally allowed to vote.
If you think the concerns about fraud are bad now, imagine how bad they would be if there was only one system that needed to be affected, managed by the federal government.
And if you think the existing voting systems are anachronistic, let me point out that the IRS has been trying to modernize their computer systems for decades and are still failing. Imagine if they were in control of voting machines. The biggest problems in this election are not the anachronistic voting systems, it's the new shiny computerized systems.
Obama had it right that it would be very difficult for a foreign country to directly tamper with votes, because there are many (far more than 50) different voting systems that they would have to affect. While there are some concerns about a specific model of machines, most of the problems with this election are around the fact that some areas have ignored the rules that have been in place to prevent fraud.
And the Electoral College is a deal to prevent large states/population centers from running roughshod over the rest of the country (remember, democracy is to wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner), it's a bargain entered into originally to prevent the large Southern (slave) states from dominating the country. Today it prevents New York and California from dominating the country (and as a resident in California, I can say that's a very good thing)
@Unknown
And yet other countries (including federations like the USA) still seem to seamlessly manage all of these aspects without fraud, allegations of foreign interference, rancour or suspicion.
Regarding your last point, the equality of state representation in the Senate should be sufficient in to ensure smaller states aren't run roughshod. Any additional controls are simply disenfranchising a larger proportion of voters.
@mark
The founders did not consider the Senate to be enough to protect the small states from the large ones. That is one of the reasons they created the EC (and the difference between the large and the small states was significantly less than it currently is)
If you think there is no fraud in other countries, then I have Arizona Beachfront property to sell you. Normally the amount of fraud is small enough to not matter that much. In this election it almost seems as if the left is trying to make things as suspicious as they possibly can in this handful of swing states. They are doing things in many, if not all, of these states that are not happening in any of the other states
Also, keep in mind that in many countries, they don't vote for individuals, they vote for a party and the parties determine who gets in office. So in India, there is one choice on the ballot, here in the US there may easily be 20-30 choices. That complicates the counting.
It is very possible to make voting machines that are secure and can be verified. Unfortunantly it's not sexy to do this, and so many systems are not built securely (I was hearing before the election about insecure voting systems running on Windows 7 that were missing large amounts of patches to known vulnerabilities and counties not being willing to pay the large amounts of money for license renewals to get the patches.)
Ventura County, CA (where I live) has scantron-type ballots that you fill out manually and get scanned in. IMHO this is a very nice system as it is cheap to implement, provides good automated counting, but also good manual fallback in case there are any doubts bout the machines. The drawback is that to support multiple languages you have to print a lot of ballots in the different languages.
The new systej that LA county implemented this year seems pretty good (although there were scaling problems as 600 additional polling stations all tried to initialize things at the same time).
They have a two part system:
Part 1 is ipad based and validates your right to vote (checking in with central servers to make sure you didn't already vote), and then prints out a QR code on a ballot (blank piece of special paper)
Part 2 is the Ballot Marking Device, a separate set of machines that have no network access that reads the QR code, presents the ballot to the individual via touchscreen (with all the provisions for disabilities), prints out the results of the selections on the ballot for the person to validate, and then scans the result in to keep the running total per machine. At the end of the data, per machine reports are generated, boxed in with the ballots and transported to the central locations to be read and counted.
This provides the paper trail needed for validation without the security risks of electronic communication (including SD cards/thumb drives) that can be easily altered.
The places that jumped on the 'cutting edge' systems a few years ago where it's all electronic with no paper records are where things are vulnerable to the types of problems that we've seen where thumb drives are overlooked (WI, and GA IIRC)or the system 'miscounted' thousands of Trump votes as Biden votes (at least two counties in MI)
David Lang
Adding on to the LA county voting system They provide ballots in 13 different languages, and around the county they have literally dozens of different base ballots (different congressional districts, many different cities with their local elections and initiatives, I think I heard over 60 base ballot variants * 13 languages)
This year, instead of lots of tiny polling locations (generally the local elementery school) they had ~800 vote center locations around the county (lots in churches and schools, but some in otherwise empty storefronts in strip malls) I don't know how many polling locations they have had in the past
(I am out of work at the moment, so ended up working tech support for the LA county voting locations. it ended up being about 50% more than I would have gotten from unemployment I viewed it as community service) I ended up doing 2nd level support for 10 different locations that spanned at least 8 different cities with only about 10 miles separating the furthest locations (except for 1 that was an additional 15 miles away by freeway, ~5 miles as the crow flies over the mountains)
David Lang
@Unknown
David, thanks for the offer of the Arizona beachfront property, but I've already invested big in a Florida ski resort.
In my country (Australia), we have an independent commission (the AEC) that is totally responsible for the conduct of federal elections. In our system it's a statutory authority and thus outside the normal public service. It reports directly to parliament rather than the government. The government cannot dismiss the head of the AEC, only the Governor General (a non-political position) is empowered to, and would need a very good reason to do so.
The AEC is responsible for the management of the electoral roll of voters. They also:
Determine the electoral divisions (the equivalent of the US congressional districts).
Receive nominations and determine the ballot paper order.
Plan and deliver the voting services (including the number, location, staffing and management of all polling places)
Ensure compliance with electoral and campaign laws by candidates and their parties.
Count the votes, run the national tally room and declare the winner of each seat for federal elections.
The AEC also manage any referenda that occur from time to time to change the constitution.
Whilst electronic voting has been trialed, currently voting is still paper-based. Counting is fairly quick and generally the results in the lower house are known by the night of the election. Due to a different voting method, the Senate elections take a few days to finalise.
Voting can be on the election day at a polling place in your electorate, or as an "absentee voter" at another polling place both within your state, interstate or internationally. You can place a pre-poll vote a selected number of polling places prior to election day and you can also use a postal vote on request.
One major difference with the USA is that voting is compulsory in Australia.
Whilst I would be naïve to say that there has never any issues of fraud, it would be inaccurate to say it's widespread. For instance, in the 2016 elections there were 18,000 instances of records showing people voting multiple times. Further investigations showed that most were clerical errors (people incorrectly being marked off the rolls as they voted etc.) and only 65 matters were pursued by the Federal Police.
Administrative mistakes are rare, although like any clerical system involving large numbers of transactions they can occur. The loss of some ballot papers in the West Australian senate election required a recount several years ago. The important point to note is that the AEC's checks and balances detected and rectified the issue.
As with all elections, there are elated winners and deeply disappointed losers. Sometimes these wins and losses are unexpected (eg last year's federal election was won against all the odds by the incumbent Prime Minister) and yet there has never been an instance of the losing side being able to cry foul and accuse the electoral system of fraud. This results in election outcomes that the population can have confidence in, even if it's not their party.
I'm not in any way suggesting the specifics of our system is applicable, or even possible in the USA, but what it does show is that if a country has a nationwide, credible, non-partisan and independent mechanism to conduct its elections then that goes a long way to ensure that successful candidates have a much clearer mandate and the general population as a whole have more confidence in the outcomes.
perhaps the USA needs internatinal election observers? ... just thinking
@ unknown
when the existing observers are prevented from doing their jobs, international observers won't do any better. It doesn't do any good for observers to report irregularities if the press is going to claim that this election was utterly flawless.
@ Mark
Right no the LAST thing I would want is a federal agency controlling all elections. The behavior of the FBI, CIA, and IRS over the last several years shows how that would fail badly.
But one thing that is very different about the US is that the Federal Government is NOT allowed to control everything. I believe that the 10th amendment to the Constitution says that any powers not explicitly granted to the Federal government are reserved to the states. This concept has taken a beating over the last few decades, but the Texas lawsuit against Obamacare is based on this exact premise. Obama tried to claim that the feds could do it based on the ability of the feds to regulate commerce between states, but the Supreme Court rejected that argument and it was only accepted on the basis that the penalty for not buying insurance was a 'tax' (even though Obama explicitly said it wasn't), not that the 'tax' has been eliminated, the question is what authority does the federal government have to impose the law.
Much of what the federal government does is not actually something it has the power to impose, they get around it by offering tax money to the states with restrictions (no highway funds unless you impose a specific speed limit for example), and that has allowed them to impose a lot of laws nationwide, but they technically aren't federal laws. This is why the President cannot order a lockdown, or a mask mandate. Only states can do that (and in many states, the Governor does not actually have the power to issue the orders that they have been issuing, it requires the legislatures to actually make laws, courts are starting to get over the panic and reject the orders)
The Constitution is very specific on the process to elect the President, and it explicitly says that the State Legislatures are the ones who determine how the Electoral College members are selected. In fact, some of the current lawsuits are over the fact that Courts and non-elected officials have changed (or 'provided guidance to ignore') the rules passed by the State Legislators
David Lang
@david lang
there would be one advantage of international observers - they would be unlikely to be accuesed of favoring one sepcific political party .. to a foreign observer like me there seems way to much partisan finger pointing in the current situation
@Unknown
David, our federal government and states operate in exactly the same way as the USA. Most of the federal leverage is through the use of conditional funding. We do have one mechanism that the USA doesn't have however, it used to be called the Council of Australian Government, more recently rebranded the National Cabinet. This body has no real legislative or constitutional basis, it is a voluntary body of the State Premiers and Prime Minister that regularly meet to develop national approaches to issues. The ultimate powers and responsibilities (such as whether to go into lockdowns, close state borders during covid outbreaks etc ) lie with the states and they regularly exercise these powers independently. However, there is a lot more cooperative and coordinated responses to nationwide issues, irrespective of the governing party in each state.
The states also have their individual electoral commissions for the conduct of state and local government elections (these aren't conducted at the same time as federal elections). They also contract the conduct of union and association elections.
Notes Australia's disarmament, people getting arrested for peacefully protesting the destruction of their livelyhoods, and their government's posture towards Red China.
Pass.
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