Magical thinking on the right about fixing the voting rules
First, I want to say something about voting fraud. I have the same opinion about voting fraud in the 2022 election that I had in the 2020 election. It goes more or less like this:
(1) The relaxed voting rules enable fraud. Therefore, whether or not fraud occurs in an election, they foster the strong perception that it has occurred. This is one of many reasons these rules are awful.
(2) They also make it virtually impossible to prove or disprove that fraud has occurred. So you can rail all you want about fraud, but it sounds demented to those who don’t believe it occurred, and it’s intensely frustrating to everyone who does believe it occurred.
(3) It also fosters three things: backlash and contempt from those who think fraud didn’t occur, the right using accusations of fraud as an excuse for not fixing or focusing on other things that are also problems, and a sense of apathy in some voters on the right that can depress turnout (“Why bother? After all, we can’t vote our way out of this). This has the effect of creating a negative feedback loop.
(4) Therefore I think focusing on yelling “Fraud!” is counterproductive. This doesn’t mean fraud didn’t occur. It means that we can’t know and can’t prove it and therefore it’s not to our advantage to concentrate on whether or not it did occur.
(5) What IS to our advantage is to focus on (a) tightening up the rules wherever possible; and (b) where it’s not possible (that is, in blue states) making full use of the rules rather than telling voters on the right to pretend it’s the olden days and to vote only in person and on Election Day.
What do I see, though, around the blogosphere? Statement after statement to the effect of: the GOP could have changed these rules and they didn’t even try because they don’t want to win. This is said by bloggers, opinion writers in publications on the right, and commenters galore. But I believe it’s a case of magical thinking, for the most part.
Compared to the volume of comments like that, I see very little realism about just how that should be done in states that are either blue or purple. I’m not even sure most people understand the formidable obstacles in the way, and I see very little acknowledgement of the many efforts the GOP actually has made to change things. The following isn’t an exhaustive list, but it discusses some of them. And no, this isn’t to say the GOP is blameless; hardly so. But facts are facts and it’s important to understand them.
Please read this post of mine from 2020, as well as this one. It is very important to understand things such as the left’s clever practice of collusive lawsuits, for example. If you don’t understand some of these details, you’ll be unable to even think of possible solutions and you will not understand what’s been going on to tie the hands of those on the right who do want to change this.
Here’s a comment from “Kate,” describing how some of these practices were tried in North Carolina and the court managed to stop them. However, that can’t happen if the court is filled with judges from the left.
Here’s the sad story of what happened in Minnesota.
And do you remember this lawsuit by Texas? SCOTUS dismissed it for lack of standing, which you can read about here.
And federal court review is often not allowed: see this comment by “Bauxite”.
Here’s the depressing situation in New Mexico, a very blue state. I can’t even imagine how this could be changed by any remaining Republicans there.
Here’s some information about how voting works in Washington state. I challenge anyone to tell me how this could be changed by the GOP at this point.
I think some people seem to believe that the GOP could pass some kind of law to control all of this everywhere by setting the standards for voting, a kind of Republican reverse-HR1. But to do that Republicans would have to gain control of Congress and the presidency, plus SCOTUS would have to approve it. I don’t think the conservative justices would give it a green light, however, because except for a few very minimal requirements, voting rules are supposed to be set on a state-by-state level.
On the state level, ordinarily there are three or even four requirements that need to be in place before it can be done: control of the legislature, to pass laws; control of the governorship, so such laws aren’t vetoed; a majority of conservative judges on the state appeals court, so that the new restrictions won’t be ruled to be discriminatory or otherwise unacceptable, and even a GOP secretary of state to avoid the collusive lawsuit approach by Democrats. But if a state has all of those already, it’s very unlikely to have a voter fraud or voter rules problem in the first place. It’s a kind of Catch-22.
[NOTE: I think the most serious failures that really do seem to be the fault of the GOP are located in Arizona. It is a particularly bleak and important failure, because there the GOP didn’t seem to try much if at all and yet they did have quite a bit of power. I suggest you read this article with many details about what happened there. I also wrote this piece in 2018 about the problems in Arizona. And of course, this year Arizona has been a good example of what not to do.
I’d love to compose a state-by-state analysis of what was tried and what succeeded and what failed. But that would be a large book, and I’m not going to be writing it. Obviously, Florida was a major success, but that was in part because it had GOP leadership in DeSantis but also the other elements were in place, including a Republican-controlled legislature.]
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy
[Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]”
That “relaxed voting rules enable fraud” is undeniably true; those on the right naturally favor a system which minimizes the possibility of cheating. One of the strongest arguments that chicanery from the Democrats has probably occurred (not just in AZ) is the outcome in FL, in which DeSantis won not only because he has governed so well (and merited re-election), but also because it (unlike other states, some run by Republicans) took the necessary steps to ensure that any possible fraud would be kept to a minimum. However, the dreadful decision by “Cocaine Mitch” to waste millions on an unimpressive candidate in CO and on Murkowski in AK (rather than on the admirable Masters in AZ) certainly played a part in the woeful performance from the elephants, now being falsely attributed by much of GOPe to the presence of Trump.
j e:
The relaxed rules don’t just favor fraud. They also favor non-fraudulent Democrat victories for various reasons. So the difference in Florida could reflect that, rather than pointing to fraud in other states.
From a Lincoln Project article in 2020: “…But Democrats and Republicans have historically shared concerns about how absentee balloting collection rules can encourage ballot harvesting, voter intimidation, and disenfranchisement.”
I guess this was from a time in a galaxy far, far away!
The risks were known for some time. From a “bipartisan” election reform commission in 2005:
“The Commission on Federal Election Reform (chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker) discussed these risks in its 2005 report:
“Absentee balloting is vulnerable to abuse in several ways: Blank ballots mailed to the wrong address or to large residential buildings might get intercepted. Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation. Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.”
In 2006, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission issued a report in 2006 on election crimes and identified similar risks. The Commission found:
“One point of agreement is that absentee voting and voter registration by nongovernmental groups create opportunities for fraud. For example, a number of studies cited circumstances in which voter registration drives have falsified voter registration applications or have destroyed voter registration applications of persons affiliated with a certain political party. Others conclude that paying persons per voter registration application creates the opportunity and perhaps the incentive for fraud.”
The Carter-Baker Commission recommended laws to address the risks of ballot harvesting:
“State and local jurisdictions should prohibit a person from handling absentee ballots other than the voter, an acknowledged family member, the U.S. Postal Service or other legitimate shipper, or election officials. The practice in some states of allowing candidates or party workers to pick up and deliver absentee ballots should be eliminated.””
https://lincolnpolicy.org/2020/understanding-the-risk-of-ballot-harvesting-across-the-united-states/
Conservatives don’t need to fix the blue states for them. Conservatives need to govern their red states well. The Federal government does not run everything, and cannot if state governments are strong and well-run.
States can and do change political alignment. If the red states run well then purple states will become redder and people in blue states who are fed up will migrate.
Conservatives I think should focus on this, as well as on cleaning up the national GOP. Do this and the national elections will eventually follow. It is more or less how the Dems got to where they are, but they’ve lost sight of what’s important and hence their focus on electoral chicanery and misuse of the Federal executive to stay on top.
I have no magical thinking on elections.
It is a slam dunk that the next president of the USA will be a demokrat.
This has already been decided.
It will go like this; as the votes are being counted across the USA, about 5 or 6 states will be identified as determining the outcome of the election .
These five or six states – and only these states- will by some incredible coincidence ALL bring the vote counting into super slow motion or just suspend vote counting from, say, 1 AM to about 6AM.
Also, these states, by some incredible coincidence, before the slow down / cessation of vote counting, will have the republican candidate ahead; by a lot.
When the vote counting once again resumes, by some incredible coincidence, the demokrat is now ahead in all these states, even though there was NO VOTE counting for several hours. By some miracle, during the interval when there was no vote counting, a few hundred thousand votes were counted and they were ALL for the demokrat candidate.
Of course, their is a higher probability of a meteor smashing thru the roof of your house than all these “random” voting coincidences converging to produce a desired, pre-determined outcome.
And there you have it folks.
neo: I don’t think the conservative justices would give it a green light, however, because except for a few very minimal requirements, voting rules are supposed to be set on a state-by-state level.
While the Constitution allows states to regulate elections, Article 1 Section 4 Clause 1 grants the power to the federal government to alter nearly all such regulations.
neo: Here’s a comment from “Kate,” describing how some of these practices were tried in North Carolina and the court managed to stop them.
Kate doesn’t mention the court case, but in Holmes v. Moore, a North Carolina ID law was found to discourage voting by Black voters with “almost surgical precision”.
neo: Here’s some information about how voting works in Washington state. . . “There is a live stream of the employees checking signatures, but there is no way you can actually see the signatures and whether or not they actually match.”
Signature matching is subject to audit. The Office of the Washington State Auditor found that signature matching is too strict, not too lax. It’s much more likely that a valid voter will have their ballot rejected than an invalid ballot will be approved.
how can see people see the dumpsterfire of the last two years and think anything will be different, we are suffering the death of a thousand cuts, to our energy infrastructure, to law enforcement, to the bodies and minds of children, the drawing down of our arsenals,
Well then, if our elections are clean and above board then we have a degenerate thieving corrupt government elected by a degenerate thieving corrupt society that is utterly unfit for self-rule. I prefer the election was stolen by a bunch of Bolsheviks thank you.
Chases Eagles:
That’s a false dichotomy. Those are not the only 2 possibilities, not by a longshot. I have a plan for a post explaining all the possibilities.
Nor does your point of view point to a viable solution, unfortunately. It also has the effect of potentially depressing turnout on the right, which escalates the negative feedback loop leading to more leftist domination.
JohnTyler has identified the pattern of vote “counting” that is now in effect. It worked quite well in 2020, and now has been shown to work equally well in NV and AZ. Give them 2 more years, and I’m certain the system will be refined even further. Soon we will enter Soviet territory where someone like Brandon get 98% of the vote over the course of a few days post election.
Zachriel, we’re working on it in NC. The “surgical precision” Appeals Court ruling was preposterous. A large majority of all voters in NC, including black voters, approved the constitutional amendment requiring voter ID. Last week, we secured a veto-proof majority in the NC Senate, and we’re one vote short in the House. We also secured a Supreme Court majority that will last until 2028, and a majority on the Appeals Court. I don’t know the precise path that voter ID will take, but it will be approved here.
miguel cervantes:
Giving up makes that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Kate:
That’s good news. But it highlights how long and hard the fight is, and all the pieces that need to be put into place.
The RNC was actually quite aggressive in this election cycle on filing lawsuits to stop states from breaking election laws. Unfortunately, PA decided to cheat anyhow, and on the Left Coast, in NV, and in AZ, laws as they exist invite fraud.
Zachriel:
I have written a post dealing with all of that, although I am in a hurry and can’t locate it now. But see this and also this. Those sort of arguments are the type of thing I think the conservative judges would find convincing.
“The Office of the Washington State Auditor found that signature matching is too strict, not too lax. It’s much more likely that a valid voter will have their ballot rejected than an invalid ballot will be approved.” -Zach group
If you’re referring to audit report 1029711, it didn’t find that at all.
Here’s what it found:
“…after reviewing a random sample of more than 7,200 signatures on ballot envelopes, we found that ballots appear to have been accepted or rejected appropriately, but counties with lower rejection rates appeared more willing to accept less conclusive signatures.”
This was an audit looking for the rate of rejections. We don’t know how many signatures that didn’t match were accepted, since that’s not what they were looking for. Specifically, they were looking for bias in voter rejection, based on ethnicity. They found the rejection rate varied by county, but found no bias.
It’s important to remember that a lot of the blue states that have rampant fraud don’t actually need it to stay blue. Washington is the one I know best; the three largest counties are a political monoculture and have almost 60% of the state’s population. Likewise Oregon and California.
If you think the people Washington sends to DC are bad, you should see the ones we elect to govern us at home…
Fraud in national elections only matters in the states that have the possibility to go either way. In some of these states the local and state governments are much more red and if these states clean it up, that goes a long way to fixing it nationally.
@Brian E:Specifically, they were looking for bias in voter rejection, based on ethnicity. They found the rejection rate varied by county, but found no bias.
Nice work on the fact check. Since they only looked at ethnicity, well you can’t find bias you don’t question, and if they didn’t check to see if the bias went against R votes then they don’t know it’s “unbiased”.
Frederick,
They actually looked for sex, age, predicted race/ethnicity/name complexity/census demographics (income, etc), voter history, location, education.
They don’t know the race/ethnicity, but the rest can be found from the voter registration.
“Our logistic regression results showed the county where the ballot was cast and certain voter characteristics were correlated with the likelihood of ballot rejection independent of related characteristics”
“Because other studies found a statistically significant relationship between race and ballot rejection, we wanted to include the variable in our analysis. As noted earlier, because Washington elections officials do not collect race and ethnicity information on voters, we used a predictive method – the Bayesian
Improved Surname Geocoding method – to predict a voter’s race and ethnicity”
I would say this confirms the bias of the people devising this report, though.
Here’s an idea. Pass a federal law that unless the states follow certain standards, then their Electoral College electors won’t be accepted. Disenfranchise the cheating states.
I know. It would require a GOP Congress and GOP President to enact this law.
We know the Dems cheat, but we don’t call them out on it. The Dems will continue to cheat until they are stopped and the federal government is the only entity that can stop the states. PA, IL, MN, MI, RI, MA, NV, CA and maybe WI will never stop cheating.
I’ve been following the reformers who tried to fix things in arizona, on telegram, the top men, kept suppressing their finding like the audit by arizona ninjas the leg did not get the reforms out of committee,
@Cornhead:It would require a GOP Congress and GOP President to enact this law.
Not to mention an amendment to the US Constitution, since there is no mechanism for “accepting” or “rejecting” Electoral College votes: they are simply opened and counted publicly.
While you run with that, in the meantime, we should clean up the places where we live, work from the bottom up and not the top down.
Fredrick:
You might be wrong. There is an Electoral Count Act which, if I understand correctly, is an enabling law to the Constitution.
This Dem cheating must be stopped.
they ‘amended’ the electoral count act, I don’t recall how,
@Cornhead:You might be wrong.
Possibly, since there is a lot of controversy about what the Electoral Count Act even does. It seems to set up a system for verifying that a state’s electoral college votes are the genuine ones it selected, and to make the two houses of Congress the final arbiter of what the genuine votes are, which at least has a basis in the Constitution’s text. But there’s nothing in there I could find about rejecting a state’s single and undisputed slate of votes.
And given the history of what Dems have done with the Civil Rights Act and other emanations and penumbras, do you really want to make a law that says when a state is allowed to vote based on how “clean” its elections are? That’s what they do now with consent decrees.
This Dem cheating must be stopped.
It won’t be stopped that way. You’re asking the fox to watch the henhouse. Since the states are the fundamental units of Congress and the Electoral College, let the blue states cheat all they want, and make it impossible in the red states. The blue states are disenfranchising only their own people. The purple states will eventually fall into one camp or another, and if our way of living is so superior it will be ours they emulate.
Let me spell that out. If Illinois allows dishonest elections, that cannot hurt me if I don’t live there. I never got to vote for any of those people anyway. Same for Illinois’ Electoral College votes.
well theres the matter, that blue states like illinois ny and massachussetts lost population and thereby districts, but the census miscounted,
I don’t think this is going to stop. I think we are on a road, the destination of, is very bad.
Dirty voter rolls seems to be a bipartisan project.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/when_a_states_secretary_of_state_is_in_on_voter_fraud.html
In Ca my parents again got a ballot for a person in Federal Prison.
Some hope:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/how_wisconsin_streetfighters_disrupted_a_democrat_ballotgathering_system.html
I wholeheartedly agree with everything Neo posted. We have to be realistic about fixing what we can where we can.
I disagree with the idea that “we can’t know” if fraud occurred. While you might not have the evidence to prove in a court of law that enough fraud occurred to change the outcome of a particular election, there is plenty of evidence that fraudulent ballots were collected and submitted by ballot harvesters. When this evidence is combined with anomalous results and an opaque counting procedure, it is logical to assume that an election was stolen.
It is not necessary to yell “Fraud!” at every election that does not turn out the way you wanted but it is necessary to explain how election fraud works and how the mail-in ballot procedures facilitate this fraud. The Republican establishment has not done nearly enough to educate people on how the combination of dirty voter registration rolls, mass mail-in ballots and lax oversite almost guarantees voter fraud.
There has not been nearly enough pushback on the “election denier” charge that is hurled at anyone with legitimate questions about an election. The GOP should be raising hell about what happened in Nevada and Arizona but most of the establishment has been relatively quiet.
I agree that it is a waste of time to whine about the unfairness of the new voting rules used by many states. Republicans should be looking for ways to aggressively exploit the new rules as the Dems have been doing for years.
This has the effect of creating a negative feedback loop.
Picayune alert:
OK. This is a very minute complaint, but a pet peeve of mine. In the science world, negative and positive feedback loops are well known and important terms and concepts. And the meaning there is the opposite of the way Neo used it.
Ben Bernake used the term often when he was the Fed chairman, but in his version the phrase was “an adverse feedback loop.” “Adverse” implies “bad” but the actual feedback process is additive which in the scientific world is a “positive feedback loop.”
Positive feedback loops lead to instability which is bad. Negative feedback loops describe a subtractive process which leads to stability which is good.
on a lighter note, sort of,
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/lets-harvest-some-midterm-memes
sure, remember when they tried to demotivate some prog voters in new hampshire back in 2020
There is a lot of discussion about the Florida rapid results. But, other states do a good job.
In OK, polls closed at 7 pm, the state election board website posted the results of mail-ins and early voting (4 days) by 7:15ish. The results by precincts were posted throughout the evening and by 11pm, the results were in. The late county was Oklahoma (the most populated county in OK).
Here are links to OK Election Board info –
https://oklahoma.gov/elections/security-integrity/election-security.html
https://oklahoma.gov/elections/security-integrity/voting-devices.html
I would list all the details, but based on what I read and experienced, I am sure that we have good security in OK. We all use the same machines, process, id options and so on.
We also have close to 2,000 precincts in OK with a voting population of slightly over 2,000,000. So, the lines at the voting booth is not long. And many precincts are at the local churches – large parking lots with free parking, a meeting room with a separate entrance so easy in and out to vote. In previous years, I voted at a school (too disruptive so changed) and a local National Guard armory (nixed after 9/11). The churches are better locations for voting.
We also have closed primaries – you can only vote for the party you are registered for. There are limits on when you can change parties.
Frederick:
You don’t think that Illinois’ dishonest elections would hurt you? If Illinois were really not as strongly a Democrat state as it seems, couldn’t that hurt you? What if sometimes it could go Republican for certain national election? What if the fraud is that massive? Couldn’t it potentially affect the makeup of both houses of Congress, as well as the total in the Electoral College and therefore the presidential elections?
“The relaxed voting rules enable fraud.” neo
Knowing the left as we do, upon what basis can we assume that they are not engaged in fraud to the maximum of which they are capable?
“the right using accusations of fraud as an excuse for not fixing or focusing on other things that are also problems” neo
Even if the right focuses upon and fixes the other things that are also problems… will not the fraud remain? And since it is “virtually impossible to prove or disprove that fraud has occurred” how other than willful blindness can the resulting intense frustration not lead to a sense of apathy?
Willful blindness because you can’t win, when ‘The House’ has rigged the game.
The lefties have done a masterful job of virtue signaling per mail in, drop boxes, and ballot harvesting. They own the argument and if we come back and say that people should show up, it will be defined as disenfranchising voters and all that goes with it, including racism.
@neo:What if the fraud is that massive?
Let’s put it this way: what goes on in Illinois is evidently what the people who live there are used to. And it’s been that way a very long time. It’s been D+10 to D+25 since 1992.
25%-30% fraud, really? Fraud of that magnitude would have so many people in on it that they could win elections just by voting the normal way. I don’t deny they have fraud, they are famous for it, but it’s more like 5% – 10% in a state that overall doesn’t need 10% fraud and hasn’t in decades. The fraud is not primarily there to influence the national elections.
At any rate, as you pointed out many times, and I agree with, we can’t clean up the blue states against their will. But by cleaning up the states that aren’t hopeless, control of Congress and the Presidency could stop being a joke in a few years without cleaning up the blue states against their will.
Unless we want to get distracted by the all the squirrels instead. The Dems and the GOPe would much prefer we chase the squirrels. As I’ve said before, the Congresscritters’ real and primary activity is appropriations and the establishment Republicans do just fine in a minority. The concerns of their voters don’t, but that doesn’t bother them too much since we still send them back to Washington reasoning that half a loaf is better than none…
I’d like to see more credit given to Brian Kemp, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and some of the other southern states that buttoned up their voting procedures after COVID. They created a winning political message – “Easy to vote and hard to cheat.” They stood up in the face of ridiculous political and economic pressure (especially Kemp). And Abbott, DeSantis, and Kemp were all just comfortably reelected.
Compare and contrast with the record of “stop the steal” officials and candidates.
We ought to be looking at what was possible for those governors did and figure out how to reproduce it elsewhere.
Another note – in most of the states where MAGA “stop the steal” candidates crashed and burned at the top of the ticket, other Republicans won statewide, even in states with some of the most ridiculous progressive voting rules (i.e., NV and AZ).
First, this should be an indication that Republicans can win even with the craziest voting rules. It’s also a suggestion that it might be worthwhile to try running “easy to vote and hard to cheat” candidates in these states instead of MAGA “stop the steal” candidates. The results certainly wouldn’t be any worse.
Geoffrey Britain:
Grownups should know how to handle frustration and work to eliminate the problems that cause it, and not to give up because of being overwhelmed by emotion. That’s easier to say than do, but it’s still the case.
As for your first question, “on what basis can we assume that they are not engaged in fraud to the maximum of which they are capable?”, the answer is that of course they might be engaged in that and anyone is welcome to assume it. However, they might not be able to engage in as much as you think. Or perhaps even without fraud, those races would have been lost to the GOP. Or it may be that what they did was not actually fraudulent but was merely maximizing the loopholes in the newer rules regarding ballot harvesting. Perhaps they knew that would do the trick, so why commit fraud and risk getting caught?
Assumptions are assumptions, they are not facts. Plus, as I said, the assumptions can end up harming the right in various ways by giving them an excuse not to look at other problems that might be able to change things for the better if they were solved. The assumptions can also create demoralization that leads to lower turnout, which makes the losses even more likely.
Bauxite,
I’m leaning toward the conclusion that voters want conservative/sensible (whatever you want to call it) and more liberal policies at the national level. We’re fully embracing the more government is the solution– even conservatives. When polling indicates 70% of Americans think America is on the wrong track about half of them want more left policy, half want more conservative policy but nearly everybody thinks the federal government should “fix it”.
It’s the only reason I can see for the ticket splitting in swing states. I would say that Pennsylvania suffered from a bad candidate while Dixon was battling an abortion bill that probably swung the election. Lake has a mathematical chance of still winning, but it’s looking grim.
Brian E – I suspect it has something to do with consequences. The consequences of poor local government are immediate and noticable. The consequences of poor national government are delayed and often plausibly deniable (e.g., inflation is blamed on greedy businesses).
Yeah, national Covid policies, national energy policies, national Title IX policies; economic destruction, economic destruction, societal destruction (tyranny tyrany). And of course the national racist policies are their own kind of special, to DIE for, or are they DEI?
Yep local idiocy has local effects, national idiotic policies; everybody gets to participate. You will be made to care. Any more brilliant analyses?
Kari Lake has lost in Arizona. This is a blow to any 2024. Arizona is a critical state to any Republican path to the presidency.
At this point, Lake is trailing by 21,000 votes with about 50,000 left to count around the state. She would need around 70% of the remaining vote.
Before claiming it was fraud that cost her the election, she did alienate McCain Republicans. In a state that was going to be close, you don’t tell potential voters to get lost.
The mess of counting in Arizona is the blame of the Arizona legislature. Nothing is likely to be done without a Republican governor.
I think Lake misjudged those hand delivered mail-in ballots on election day. That appears to be the perfect time to bring in harvested ballots. This could be legitimate ballots– probably not cast by the legal voters. By counting these last, it gives some flexibility.
I do think McConnell needs to go. McCarthy is an uninspiring leader, and his rollout of a revised Contract with America was a dud. I think the Freedom Caucus is pushing return to regular order in exchange for their vote. I would take that deal.
That would be a start to decentralizing power in Congress.
Frederick:
Oh, I agree that in Illinois and in particular in Chicago, there’s been lots of fraud for a long time, but that the state itself is strongly Democratic by a large margin. The question is: how large a margin? For example, in 2004 Kerry got 54% and Bush 44%. That’s a decisive margin indeed, but how much did fraud impact it? A 5% swing to Bush would have tied it, for example.
There also could be an effect in a state like Illinois whereby people on the right know their vote basically doesn’t count, and so they stay home because they are discouraged about voting. How many are there? And if they did vote, would it matter? You take all of this and add it up, and you might get a surprising result.
Or, there could be a future GOP candidate so compelling that this person would shift the balance somewhat in Illinois, and if there was no fraud that person might actually win.
But yes, Illinois would be one of the last states to focus on trying to change, for many reasons.
LMAO!! Good try, Zachriel! When the fox is doing the auditing, the henhouse is always found to be to well guarded.
@ Ray SoCa > “Dirty voter rolls seems to be a bipartisan project.”
So says Dan Gelernter, a numbers-geek who analyzed the 2020 election “anomalies” and pointed out the fraudsters and enablers. (h/t stan on the open thread)
https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/13/this-wasnt-an-election/
Which leads to this meme from the Emerald Robinson link by miguel.
(sorry about the atrocious URL, but I like to let people know what they are clicking on)
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6c3d7f97-d6bb-4ec8-99db-9a2c95a3be3f_622x781.png
Also @ Ray – the post about the Wisconsin fraud streetfighters was a great example of what Republicans should be doing (and honest Democrats who aren’t down with the Woke Left should help).
Here are a couple of other posts I rounded up that cast some light on the depth and breadth of the systemic election manipulation, from the Right in this case, as has been alluded to many times.
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/11/11/majewski-i-am-a-republican-who-lost-on-tuesday-it-wasnt-trumps-fault-it-was-the-cowards-in-d-c-s-mcleadership/
And how the two parties approach influencing voters (as opposed to just collecting ballots).
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/what-i-learned-making-calls-democrats-and-republicans/
I remember the Florida vaudeville of 2000 (that was before having an internet connection) and thinking that what was happening and how it was happening was just insane.
Also, from being interested in your history I know about Tammany Hall politics and such like. So democrat political corruption has been there for a long time.
What has always puzzled me is why the Republicans (and I suppose the Whigs before them) have always accepted this. I you tolerate a Chicago, a Detroit or a Baltimore then what you get is more Chicagos, Detroits, Baltimores. It’s suicidal.
Now your election system in the 19th century was probably as good as anyone else’s (*) but at some point people must have noticed that it should be reformed. The presidential elections of 1960 decided by the Chicago ‘voting dead’ might be such a point. But it didn’t happen. Why not?
Is it a case of ‘why change since it’s good enough’ morphing into ‘it’s a disaster but it’s too late to change it’ (probably the same as can be said about ‘public education’)?
(*) our election system, Flemish here, wasn’t that good either and only a part of our male population were entitled to vote. But the thing is it was able to grow and grow into something pretty watertight already before WW1. The USA’s election system(s) seem to completely miss a foundation to build upon.
Ps. The Russian invasion of Ukraine turned Biden in some kind of ‘war president’ (no doubt very reluctantly at first) and the Ukrainian resistance and subsequent successes in August, September and October into a kind of successful one.
In a normal world I would have expected overwhelming support of Ukraine by the Republicans and so and so support by the democrats. Instead a substantial part of the Right has outed itself to be as morally defunct as the Left while the democrats themselves have supported Ukraine through and through.
Maybe the Russia hoaxes can explain this (though not justify it, nothing justifies supporting Putin) but even if the ‘Putinistas’ on the Right are but a small but very vocal minority democrat propaganda will have ensured that the whole Republican party has been tainted as losers, bad Americans and a kind of quislings.
So my question is can this be one of the reasons there was no ‘red wave’? Have the Ukrainian counter-offensives sunk the Republican party for now (to be clear, a disaster in my opinion because even the worse Republican is better then a democrat). I would love to see an analysis on this.
From my time in industry. If there is any challenge and you don’t have documentary “proof” that you did something right and according to spec., then everything goes in the trash. More votes than “receipts”? The election is all trash. More votes than voters? Trash. Videos of machines adding “voters”? Trash it all. The GOP is too gutless to interfere in the fraud or to challenge the outcome. Obviously the RINOs have got their cut already and would rather a profitable loss than a hard struggle. The GOP has died.
I notice this morning after seeing the Lake loss, a number of columns again preaching “how to fix this’. Derek Hunter talking about GOP doing ballot harvesting just as well as the Ds; AT columns already saying 2024 is now crucial and how the GOP/right must now up their game. Hmmm…. I’ve now heard that about the 2018, 2020, and now the 2022 elections, and all with the same damn result: the D’s win.
I’m now convinced there’s no way to vote ourselves out of this situation. There’s just too much corruption, fraud, and malfeasance for the entire D machine (including the media and academia), as well as complicity with the GOPe.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution. Divorce looks nice, but dividing up the country ignores the fact that others like China would look at that as the great opportunity to march in and take everything. CW2 would probably yield the same result. For the time being I’m just grateful I now live in a state that actually seems to care about the individual and freedom. But I fear it won’t be too long before even that collapses from the pressure of the rest of what remains of this country.
We can’t vote our way out of this. The next election is meaningless.
Well that is encouraging! And the Sun is going to burn out in 1B (?) years.
Kate: The “surgical precision” Appeals Court ruling was preposterous.
The courts have also found that North Carolina gerrymandered state districts were “tainted by illegal racial bias.” There’s little doubt that many Republicans have used race as a proxy for partisan advantage. In any case, it wasn’t the referendum for voter ID that was in question, but the implementing legislation.
Brian E: If you’re referring to audit report 1029711
That report found all Washington State counties “met state requirements related to signature verification,” contrary to the claim that there was no way know that signatures matched. In addition, most rejected signatures were cured by voters. In other words, this was not an avenue for widespread fraud as suggested above.
Georgia also conducted a signature audit, overseen by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, confirming the result. All states have audit procedures to protect the integrity of the process.
Brian E: They found the rejection rate varied by county, but found no bias.
They “did not find evidence of bias in the decisions made by elections workers,” but there was a finding of bias against minorities in the result.
neo: Those sort of arguments are the type of thing I think the conservative judges would find convincing.
One can never know for sure how the Supreme Court will rule, but the federal government has long passed laws regulating presidential elections, including based on provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. But Congress does have the explicit power to regulate Senate and House elections. Even granting wide latitude to the states, if they hold the presidential and congressional elections on the same day and on the same ballot, then most federal regulations would, in practice, encompass both.
Maybe we need to find the actual cases. Then back a Civil rights case, fronted by a person of color would probably be best. Make it clear that someone erased said persons vote in court.
Use the courts and civil rights law to effect change in procedures.
You get the rules changed back to honest elections by confronting the few Democrat voters left who care about honest elections. Make it impossible to ignore.
Neo keeps telling us that her liberal voting friends and family are really good people who just aren’t aware of the reality they support. Fine. You make it impossible for them to ignore the evidence of rampant fraud, cheating, lying and slander that is everything Democrats do. Republicans, en masse, make the case. Not just Trump. Not just DeSantis. Everyone. They don’t get to pretend to be ignorant. Make them make a choice. We have the worst election integrity in the world. The rest of the world laughs at us. “Are you good with deliberately, intentionally enabling election fraud?”
You point out that it’s okay to disagree about regulation, tax rates, abortion, etc. It’s not okay to lie, steal, slander and cheat. It’s not okay to deliberately enable fraud. The rest of the world is watching.
Embarrass them for supporting immorality and even evil. And then we will find out if these “basically good people” are really good people. If they aren’t, nothing matters. The nation is done. We lost the war without even putting up a fight. If they are, we win in getting back election integrity. At least somewhat.
You cannot fix the election integrity problems by doubling down on cheating better yourself. First, it doesn’t work. That is a surefire way to banana republic despotism. Second, you can’t cheat better than a veteran cheater. Republicans have no hope to out-cheat Democrats.
No bandaids for cancer. Cut out the cancer.
“I disagree with the idea that “we can’t know” if fraud occurred. While you might not have the evidence to prove in a court of law that enough fraud occurred to change the outcome of a particular election, there is plenty of evidence that fraudulent ballots were collected and submitted by ballot harvesters. When this evidence is combined with anomalous results and an opaque counting procedure, it is logical to assume that an election was stolen.”
We do know that the election was stolen in 2020 here in AZ. Maybe not at the 99% level, but far beyond the preponderance of the evidence, likely well beyond the clear and convincing level. How do we know? Because it was investigated. The state senate investigation, combined with the canvas, showed roughly a 3/4 million questionable ballots, with FJB winning by 10k votes, and Kelly by 20k. Oh, and Abortion Mouse herself, Katy Hobbs, certified the election, as she no doubt will this time in her “election” as governor (having refused to recuse herself – which was, for me, her signal that she had already stolen the election). All sorts of shenanigans were disclosed, ranging from unsigned ballots, ballots by dead people, ballots by people not on the voter rolls, ballots printed on the wrong paper, using the wrong paper, lack of a proper audit trail, etc.
It’s still early this time, but so far, one of the keys appears to be that the calibration of the scanners appears to have been readjusted the night before the election, in the reddest precincts in Maricopa County. It had been tested and verified the day before to be working perfectly. All of a sudden, that day, in those precincts, they started rejecting a large percentage of the ballots being scanned. They would rescan, and rescan, those ballots, until they gave up, and put them in Door 3 to be scanned and counted later at the central facility. This had two deleterious effects. First, lines quickly extended out the door, with many voters standing in lines for hours. A number of people gave up and didn’t vote, and very possibly, were prevented from doing it by a court order. And secondly, those ballets put through Door 3 were not scanned then, but were instead, opened up to mischief. There have been statements by poll judges that claim to have seen Door 3 ballots thrown away, as well as other ballots thrown in to that pile. The numbers just aren’t adding up. According to the polls, The Republicans should have won the county by at least several hundred thousand votes, in Maricopa county alone. Absentee ballots seemed to be running 80% Dem, but actual live voting only showed a small edge for the Republicans, and the reddest precincts were the ones underperforming the most.
Whenever you hear that the claims of election fraud or stolen elections in 2020 has been debunked or discredited, know that you are hearing deliberate mis, dis, and mal information. The evidence is there that there were massive irregularities in esp the 6 swing states that determined the election, and esp in AZ and GA. We are talking maybe 20% or so questionable ballots in AZ, with a winning margin by FJB of less than .2%. This is no different really, than the CDC and DEA telling us that the COVID-19 shots were safe and effective in preventing the spread of the virus, or that there was Russian interference in favor of Trump in 2006, etc. It is deliberate, and it is false. I saw an article in Bloomberg a couple days ago, and they included this disinformation in the first line of the story. It is blatant. They wouldn’t be pushing this this hard, if they didn’t know that it is fairly accurate.
You may be bored with this discussion. Many are. Yes, if we don’t talk about it, the populace isn’t going to doubt the integrity of our elections. But if we don’t, they will accept the legitimacy of fraudulently conducted elections, and not enough will be done to clean up our elections, that keep electing Democrats, despite the will of the people, making cleaning them up in the future impossible. If Katy Hobbs’ apparent election (that she is overseeing) isn’t overturned, nothing will be done here in AZ over the next 4 years here in AZ to clean up the system that “elected” her. And that means that regardless of the political alignment of the legislature and the courts, nothing will be done to, for example, prevent kids from being mandated injections of the very dangerous experimental gene therapy “vaccines”, or prevent sterilizing troubled kids claiming to be going through gender confusion, through puberty blockers and reassignment surgeries. The state will switch from opposing to accepting the influx of hundreds of thousands of unvetted migrants from all over the world, many of them criminals, across our southern border, along with the fentanyl and machine guns coming across at the same time. This is what we are going to see, if election fraud is not vigorously exposed and fought.
“ Neo keeps telling us that her liberal voting friends and family are really good people who just aren’t aware of the reality they support. Fine.”
I am as worried by the Republicans who call this “crazy talk”. I heard this first from a 99 (now 101) year old lifetime Republican friend of mine the day after the 2020 election. She doesn’t get out anymore, except for doctors’ visits, so can be excused, because she didn’t see the massive disparity in enthusiasm for Trump, and none whatsoever, for Biden in Maricopa County the weeks before that election. I did, and it was palpable. MAGA hats, oceans of yard signs everywhere, as well as corner demonstrations, with signs sayin “Honk For Trump”, and many doing so. Now I hear it from more and more independents and erstwhile Republicans.
Thanks much for that comment, Bruce (10:48 am).
Another “tell” of massive hanky-panky is the claim by that Fox broadcaster ridiculously early on on election day (2020) that AZ had “gone for Biden”.
Had to walk that back a bit, ultimately, but the fix was clearly in.
Thanks AesopFan – great reads!
The voter fraud seems to be a bipartisan project, unfortunately. My guess is the GOP national and state party are all about keeping control, so some fraud helps keep the wrong people from being elected. Cui Bono – who benefits?
The Nationalpulse article on how the gop party controls candidates validated the guesses I had.
Interesting comment in one of the articles you linked the only state that did meaningful efforts to reduce fraud was Florida.
Many are counseling more emphasis on (legally) exploiting mail-in balloting/ballot harvesting/early voting, the way the Dems have.
The problem is that the first two approaches involve significant breaks in the chain-of-custody of secret (as opposed to “assisted” by political operatives) ballots, eroding the integrity and accuracy of the vote to the point that we might as well pull out the Lotto-ball machine, assign a ball-slot to each candidate, and let the highest number determine the winner.
As for the third, as the Fetterman/Oz race illustrates, casting one’s ballot early – before any debate! – is like signing the closing papers on a house purchase before the inspection.
The real problem is that we are an unserious people …
… people who put more emphasis on personality and appearances than how a candidate will work to secure our rights, because we have been led to devalue those rights in favor of the Cool Kids solving our problems FOR us as we SUBMIT to their rule, right/wrong/in-between …
… who elect leaders from among the Cool Kids who – in the light of the above – treat us as “infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals” who are incapable of making the effort to cast a secure, responsible and informed vote and therefore must be coddled to produce a facade of “turnout”.
Right now, I consider DC occupied territory by those who favor technocracy over liberty. The front lines of societal conflict are now in the states and cities/towns, where the busybodies are not entrenched, and we can still exercise federalism to push back on the Federal busybodies,
“They “did not find evidence of bias in the decisions made by elections workers,” but there was a finding of bias against minorities in the result.” -The Zach Hive
No evidence of bias, but the process if biased? The idiot Democrats in Olympia designed the system. The solution is to make the election less secure? Of course, says the Leftist.
“…counties “met state requirements related to signature verification,” contrary to the claim that there was no way know that signatures matched. In addition, most rejected signatures were cured by voters” – The Zach Hive
What the study found was there was less signature rejection where the standards for verification were loosened. Of course, if a signature didn’t match and was allowed through, there would be no need for curing. Once that signature ballot is opened the ballot becomes a vote.
There is no way to know how many unmatched ballots were let through. The distribution wouldn’t be even across the county, so the sample wouldn’t pick up these uneven distributions.
@neo:There also could be an effect in a state like Illinois whereby people on the right know their vote basically doesn’t count, and so they stay home because they are discouraged about voting. How many are there? And if they did vote, would it matter? You take all of this and add it up, and you might get a surprising result.
Bear in mind that the state legislatures have the power to select their Electors in any way they please. Illinois has chosen to do this by fake elections, but if they wanted to set it up so they can write in their no-account brothers-in-law, Democrats to a man, they could do that if they wished. And Electors of course cannot be bound to vote for “their” party no matter who selects them or for what reason.
So no, no one outside of Illinois is harmed by their election cheating. Because we’ve superadded a two party system to the Constitution it feels wrong to let “the Democrats” cheat in their own states if it might prevent “the Republicans” from having “their” President. But I’m not a citizen of a party, I’m a citizen of a state and of the United States. How another state selects its Electoral College vote is between that state’s legislature and its people, what they are willing to put up with, and if I expect my state not to be interfered with then I should extend that courtesy to other states.
And how a state elects its Senators and Congressmen is between the voters of that state, that state’s government, and Congress. And if the people in Congress for a state are sent there by a corrupt elections system that their voters are not making real efforts to change, I don’t think you can see positive change from that quarter.
We have federalism for a reason and we can make good use of it; I think in the long run the best chance of fixing the problems is for conservatives to run their home states fairly and well. Strong and functional state governments are the intended check on the Federal government, and those yahoos in DC are not going to get better at governing…
Brian E: No evidence of bias, but the process if biased?
There’s no evidence of bias by election workers, but the evidence shows there is bias in the final result. Systemic bias is not that hard a concept. They did not determine a cause.
Brian E: Of course, if a signature didn’t match and was allowed through, there would be no need for curing.
If the election workers determined the signature didn’t match, the ballot was not counted, unless and until it was cured by the voter.
Brian E: There is no way to know how many unmatched ballots were let through.
The audit found discrepancies between what the election workers determined and what the auditers determined were very small in number. That contradicts your claim and the original claim above.
Frederick: Illinois has chosen to do this by fake elections
Once having decided on an election, that would be precluded by the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause.
Frederick:
Illinois isn’t about to choose electors that way, although it technically could.
And I certainly think a Democrat-controlled Congress impacts all of us.
I find Frederick’s logic interesting. If the Dem controlled states of CA, OR, and WA decide to outlaw internal combustion engines in automobiles what difference does it make to anyone in Idaho or Nevada? Funny that CA’s historical nationwide impact on automobile emmission controls, a corrupt tail wagging the national dog.
Duh.
@om, neo: I’m not saying that nothing anyone does can ever impact anyone else in some possible way, obviously. Everything everyone does affects everyone in some way, no matter how clean or dirty elections are or what system of government we live under, free or tyranny. Since it’s trivially true that everyone affects everybody it doesn’t help guide action to point that out.
Our laws and Constitution are not a flaming sword that creates justice, cannot be and are not intended to be. They are a set of procedures for living together in a civilized society.
If California jumps off a cliff and other states follow suit, the primary responsibility lies with the voters of those states, who are idiots. It will suck for those idiots until they change things in their states, or move to states where idiocy is less rife.
If car manufacturers choose to leave billions of dollars on the sidewalk because they want to jump through California’s hoops, that’s primarily on them. It will suck to be in the market for a gasoline car until someone who DOES want to make money decides to offer one. If it’s illegal in your state to buy one, see my paragraph above.
And if blue states disenfranchise their own voters, that’s on their voters for putting up with it. Yes, there will be effects on us the rest of us don’t like, but it’s not productive and won’t change anything to focus on that first–the people who live there mostly like it the way it is or it would not be that way.
Our responsibility lies in cleaning up and making strong our own states first. Or moving to one that isn’t hopeless if you don’t like living under your state’s system. That is going to be the most effective thing to do in the long run, if living as conservatives is so wonderful then people will flock to join or emulate, won’t they, as the blue states degrade and die.
If conservatism is something to force on people who don’t want it in order for it to work, because we’re “affected” by what people who aren’t practicing it do, then it’s wrong and evil like Leftism is. I do not believe this to be the case.
California does not have occupying troops in the other states holding their citizens hostage and forcing them to get gay married and drive electric cars. Since this is not the case, we have moral agency, and let’s focus on strengthening ourselves, if we believe we are in the right.
The thing about democratic republics is that the voters are allowed to choose wrong and stupid things. The beauty of federalism is that we can create alternatives.
Note that not one state that legalized marijuana has been invaded and occupied by Federal troops until they recriminalized it. The states are an alternative source of power which we can use effectively if we focus.
On the bright side, looks like the Republicans in Congress have reelected their party leadership in both houses. Clearly they think there’s no reason to change anything, so all must be well as far as they are concerned.
Being in the minority, or having a razor-thin majority guaranteed to advance no conservative policy or idea thanks to the RINOs, suits them just fine apparently. There’s tax money to appropriate after all and all the Congresscritters agree on how important that is.
At some point some of us ask just how many more times we plan to be fooled. What Democrats do with ethnic minorities, Republicans do with conservatives. Except that Democrats occasionally deliver for ethnic minorities–conservatives are much cheaper dates.
It’s a two party system. Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Frederick:
Three or four paragraphs of truisms followed by I’m an island?
So clean up the Sound political machine and then talk to me ( I live in your own home town). You don’t need any voters from east of the Cascaded I guess. Or are you moving to FL or TX?
Regarding cars and CA, IIRC the feds had something to say about CA establishing more stringent requirements (wink, wink, nod, nod).
Regulatory capture (look it up).
“The audit found discrepancies between what the election workers determined and what the auditers determined were very small in number. That contradicts your claim and the original claim above.” – The Zach Hive
Actually, the overall statewide rejection rate was 0.72%. From the sample size of 7,200 the audit team found 542 inconclusive mismatches, using automated signature matching software. That would be a rejection rate of 7.5%. After repeated auditors compared the signatures, they found 201 they found didn’t match. That would be a rejection rate of 2.7%, well above what was actually rejected by the counties. That’s a difference between 2% to 6.8% that would have been rejected using the automated signature matching software. After a third round of inspection, they ultimately disagreed on 158 signatures. That’s at best a difference of 1.5%.
What that indicates is that out of a vote of 3.6 million, there were at best 54,000 votes that should have been rejected, and possibly something between 72,000 and 244,000 votes that would have been rejected had we been using automated signature verification software.
Also the auditor’s found this tidbit: “County election officials were sometimes inconsistent in how they counted late ballots and entered them into the database. For instance, we found one larger county that had no late ballots in the data when such ballots usually account for a significant portion of rejected ballots.”
Here’s the methodology the auditors used to compare rejection rates to automated signature verification software:
“This sample was drawn from 16 counties that use envelope sorters, which take images of the ballot signature and store them in VoteWA. (The remaining counties do not keep images of ballot signatures.)
The ballots from these 16 counties made up 86.8 percent of the total ballots cast during the 2020 general election. We used a stratified random sample to obtain signatures belonging to particular minority groups and a mix of urban and rural voters.
After obtaining the signature images from the Secretary of State, we ran the image sets of ballot signatures and the signatures on file through automatic signature verification software called SignatureXpert, created by Parascript. We manually reviewed all signatures where SignatureXpert made a determination that differed from that made by the counties, as well as all signatures that it warned could be a forgery. Parascript recommends manually reviewing all signatures the software deems forgeries.
The audit team members then used information from the signature verification training provided by the Washington State Patrol (the same training county signature reviewers take) to conclude on whether a signature was accepted or rejected appropriately on a sample of 7,257 signature pairs out of a population of 3,602,353. Each signature pair was comprised of the signature on the ballot envelope and another signature on file (or multiple) from VoteWA.
First, we identified ballots that were inconclusive or where a trained reviewer would need to use more judgment when deciding if the signature on the ballot envelope matched the signature on file in VoteWA. These inconclusive signatures are where we considered it was possible that unconscious bias could affect whether the reviewer accepted or rejected the ballot.
To do this, two or more audit team members reviewed each signature pair. If at least one audit team member made a decision that conflicted with the county’s decision we determined that the signature pair was inconclusive. We identified 542 inconclusive signature pairs.
Second, we determined the signature pairs we ultimately disagreed with. If two audit team members disagreed with the county’s decision, we forwarded the signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office for review. When two auditors disagreed with each other, a third auditor reviewed the signature and made the determining decision. Using this process, auditors disagreed with the decision made by counties on 201 ballots. Two employees with experience in reviewing signatures also reviewed the signature pairs.
They ultimately disagreed with the counties’ decisions on 158 signatures.
Brian E: Actually, the overall statewide rejection rate was 0.72%.
That’s right, and we can reasonably presume that these were the worst matches. Yet, most of these ballots were cured, meaning they were actually valid voters. Nor does this imply that the uncured ballots were not valid voters. It’s not always convenient for many voters to find the time to cure their ballots. (ETA: Georgia actually investigated voters with mismatched signatures and found they were all valid voters.)
In addition, people’s signatures evolve over time, and illness specifically can often cause a signature to change significantly. So, more than likely, many or most of the remaining ballots were valid voters, even if they were rejected due to the signature match.
Zach, you confused. Let me try and make it clear.
Ballots were rejected for “three main reasons: the ballot was received or postmarked after the election closed, it was missing a signature, or the signature on the ballot did not match the voter’s signature on file. State law requires these ballots be rejected; the latter two reasons may be cured by the voter.”
The average rejection rate for all Washington counties was 0.72%. The sample size the auditors used was 7,257.
7257 x 0.72%=52
But after running the ballots through automatic signature verification software the number was 542, after review was 201, and after more review was 158. That’s the number that should have been rejected for mismatched signatures.
The conclusion is more signatures should have been rejected for mismatch than were– something between 2.12% and 7.5%.
This has nothing to do with curing. What this shows is that an additional number of ballots– between 52,000 and 244,000 should have been rejected than were.
Brian E: after more review was 158. That’s the number that should have been rejected for mismatched signatures.
The 52 rejected by the election workers were probably the worst matches. Of those, most were cured. But just because they weren’t cured doesn’t mean they weren’t valid votes. The other 106 that the auditors thought should have been rejected were probably closer matches, and there is no reason to believe that the vast majority weren’t also valid votes. Georgia went the extra step in 2020 and actually contacted the voters. They found all the mismatched signatures were by valid voters.
Brian E: This has nothing to do with curing.
It has everything to do with curing. If ballots were rejected for mismatched signatures, but most of them were cured, and many of the rest were probably curable because they were valid voters, it means that there is no evidence of significant fraud.
Probablly and maybe doesn’t mean are or were.
Talk about magical thinking.
“Nothing to see. Nothing to see. Move along. Move along!”
Zach, I’ll just end this by saying you’re being willfully obtuse and should actually read the report.
Brian E:
Zach is basically a troll, but a fairly interesting one in his approach and worth engaging with now and then. But the obtuseness is willed, I believe.