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Should We Move On from 2020?
Some of us are still talking about the 2020 election. Some people dare to think–brace yourselves, now–that the election was not entirely ok. Some of them might even dare to think that certain illegalities might have flipped swing states. (Gasp!) Some people even think that the election was rigged or stolen. (Double gasp!)
But why don’t we just move on? Why are so many Republicans voting for candidates who think the 2020 election was stolen? Why do we keep trying to relitigate 2020? Allow me to explain.
No one I know of is trying to relitigate 2020. Maybe I’ve missed something, but this looks to me like a misunderstanding–perhaps a cavil, a canard, or a straw man. All we’re trying to do is: (1) know what happened and (2) reform, as needed, our elections.
Knowing what happened is a good reason to keep talking about it at least until we do know. Knowing is reason enough.
Reform is a better reason. Can knowledge ever be complete if it is not put into action?
But, you ask, why don’t we just move on? Why don’t we just fix the problems we have now, and forget about 2020? Why talk about our problems with the election instead of just talking about inflation, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and everything else?
What Does It Mean To Move On?
Suppose a couple of college roommates start doing a lot of drugs together. One day they both take too much and go into comas. Someone finds them in time, and they get rushed to the hospital, where they barely survive.
Afterward, one guy flushes all his drugs and joins a 12-step program. The other guy goes back to doing the same drugs, about as much as before. His friends and family remind him what happened, but, as he reminds them in turn, his hospital adventure is in the past. He just wants to move on, he says.
Now I ask you: Which of the two really wanted to move on?
If something bad happened in the past, if the problem that caused it is still there, and if you aren’t addressing that problem, then you aren’t really moving on.
I think that’s where most people are who are worried about the security of American elections and are still talking about what happened in 2020. We’re not saying Biden isn’t the President. But moving on doesn’t mean not talking about 2020 or ignoring the fact that we have recently had at least one very insecure, very consequential national election in the United States of America.
And We Do Have a Problem
Since the week of the election, I’ve been keeping a list of claims made about election cheating. (Below, in the first comment on this post, are some links to my work.) I’ve been trying to sort the claims by category, by whether they’ve been critically scrutinized, and by whether they’ve survived critical scrutiny. I’ve been evaluating claims where I can. Claims that have survived some critical scrutiny and which are, as far as I can tell, more likely than not indicate illegally cast or counted votes numbering more than double the Biden margin of victory in five swing states. Some of the relevant claims have actually been verified–affecting three swing states. In two of those states, the claims have been verified in court.
Not every category of votes illegally cast or counted is a category of fraudulent votes, and not every category is a category of specifically Biden votes. But some are Biden votes, some are fraudulent, and the non-fraudulent ones tend to enable fraud. It’s much more likely than not that these illegalities flipped most or all of these five swing states, but the mere fact that illegalities occurred at this level is, all by itself, a national disgrace five times over.
So we have a real problem with election integrity in America.
That’s all without even looking at the fancier allegation–the ones about electronic illegality. We’re not ok on the electronic side of things either. Three words: “VVSG 2.0 standards.”
Yes, Let’s Move On!
Moving on from the 2020 election means learning what actually happened in that election as much as we can; and, above all, it means fixing the problem. That means cutting back on Big Tech’s ability to shift elections; it means more state prosecution of election lawbreaking; it means a lot less mail-in voting; it means more voter ID laws; it means updating the voter rolls; and it means VVSG 2.0 standards in 50 states.
The Biden administration is dreadful, the problems of 2022 are screaming to be fixed, and I have a limited supply of time and brain cells. Yes, let’s move on from the 2020 election. Please. But let’s do it properly.
Published in General
I am looking at Wisconsin, where apologists are claiming, “Yes, there are tens of thousands of voter registrations with identical birthdates and phone numbers, but that’s only because our computer program put in default birthdates and phone numbers when the voter didn’t provide one.”
W.T.A.F.
Sorry, having a legitimate birth date and phone number should be things almost everyone has and can provide. Maybe a few extreme off-the-grid outliers don’t, but not tens of thousands of people. And I don’t think off-the-grid people vote anyway.
You know who doesn’t have a phone number or birthdate? People who don’t really exist.
We can’t just leave 2020 alone and hope for the best because the machine vulnerability is so manifest that only a few people can control the entire election system across the country. The steal is in the machines, and has been for decades. All of the ballot stuffing is just a way of muddying the water to make the machine fraud that much harder to uncover, unless we have full access to the machines and the ballots.
We’ve only got a few more weeks before every district across the country is allowed to destroy every piece of evidence of this massive crime. We’ve got until September 3rd to get access to the source code of the machines and the actual paper ballots, both of which they’ve been hiding for two years.
We have three weeks left before they destroy everything. That’s why we can’t just let it go.
Here’s some of the latest information of the fight against the machines.
Aren’t there court orders to preserve evidence even if normal time limits might expire?
Ask Hillary what she thinks of court orders to preserve evidence. She’s had a lot of experience ignoring them.
If they ignore court orders they might as well ignore the statutory requirements too (and in some states at least, they have) so why worry about a few more weeks?
I’ve never seen a fact-check site ever really check any facts. They usually say something nuanced, like: the intention was different so what they did was something else, and so the accusation is frankly wrong.
Maybe ten years ago? I was introduced to Snopes by a highly educated acquaintance who wanted to fact check my assertion that the federal government was buying up millions of rounds of ammo to use on citizens. He pulled up Snopes and said, “Ah, see here? They asked the federal government, and they said that the US government had no intention of using that ammo on citizens. So there, you’re wrong.”
It didn’t prove the government wasn’t lying of course, but it did begin to prove that Snopes is a crackpot site.
As I recall, Snopes originally existed to explore the origins of urban legends, like the hook man who leaves his hook on the car door. Or the baby train. Or the vanishing hitchhiker. Or the rat in the coke bottle.
It was a poor competitor to the much better “urbanlegends.com” which was a gold mine of information on such things, but it disappeared a long time ago and right now seems to redirect to Universal Music.
Snopes continued, however, slowly transforming itself into the garbage site it is now.
It always was garbage, though.
Earlier this week, DeSantis just announced on how there are 20 individuals being indicted for election fraud in his state.
We know laws were ignored or improperly set aside in a manner that did not follow the state’s constitution. It is impossible to verify fraudulent votes once all the votes are collected and put together. The only thing we have is that we know fraud occurs with faked signatures, double registering under fake or stolen identities, or filling out a ballot entrusted to you by another .
The rules are in place to make those things harder to successfully accomplish BECAUSE you can’t figure it out after the ballot is cast.
So we can say that a lot of ballots were cast under illegal circumstances – weak signature verifications, multiple ballots being delivered by one person, no ID checking to verify who voted, etc. But we can’t identify any actually fraudulent ballots beyond a printer-copy of an official ballot.
Yeah… they actually are pretty good on the write up side, but their declaratory judgement rarely lines up with the write up. Misleading indeed.
There are, but it didn’t stop manifests from being deleted from maricopa county’s servers
Because for now it’s still a felony to destroy the evidence. After the 22 months expires they’re legally allowed to dispose of the body.
I still think the best way is to keep precincts as separate batches, and keep those separate from mail-ins county wide.
If it’s determined a precinct had illegalities, then that batch gets removed. If not precinct, go county level. Regardless, an improperly run election should invalidate those votes and those votes only.
This follows the conservative axiom to encourage proper action. If the voters are angry about having votes invalidated, they can vote in a different election supervisor that runs a cleaner ship.
That might be impressive if anyone had ever been prosecuted for the felony. I don’t remember ever hearing of such a case.
One explanation that seems ok to me is that these are computerized records based off of paper records from decades ago when birthdays were not even required, and the same default birthday is added.
Even if that is so, there are other issues with the records in Wisconsin. It’s somewhere in the big document. A CTR-F for “phone number” would probably find it.
Yes.
Except there are still some ways to track some of the ensuing fraud. I think True the Vote did so successfully.
The normal use of the word “disenfranchised” has it all backwards: Election cheating is what disenfranchises all of us.
Yes. Everyone who showed up to 1/6 (and many who did not) felt disenfranchised in a far more real way than anyone who has ever been turned away for failure to provide a picture ID.
Yes, and even those who voted properly within a precinct or whatever. Do they really think their vote has to be counted lest they be “disenfranchised,” even though they might be outvoted 2 to 1 or more by fraudsters? That’s just silly.
Well said. I’d rather the law be supported at the cost of my vote, especially if the alternative is to possibly have my vote disenfranchised by cheaters.
A dismaying number of people have become fixated on “My Vote Must Be Counted, No Matter What!” I’m not sure if that’s just a natural result of their other ignorances, or if it’s been done deliberately to also help enable cheating.
I should also mention that not being able to get an ID isn’t a bar to voting in Texas. You simply sign an affidavit that you have a reasonable impediment (we aren’t allowed d to challenge that) then produce two items that show your name with the address on file and you get to vote.
Once again, in person voting isn’t the problem, it’s the mail in ballots where…at its heart, you cannot even confirm that the person the ballot was sent to actually voted that ballot.
That is most of it, yes. Which is one reason why the “I was a poll worker!” testimonials are unimpressive.
Hi S.A,
Has any state tightened up voting by mail to your satisfaction? One idea I heard is that to vote by mail, you need (A) to include your driver’s license number, (B) turn the ballot in before the election at the County Recorder and have your ID confirmed, or (C) turn the ballot in at a polling place on Election Day and have your ID confirmed.
If people come to vote on Election Day, but lack sufficient ID, they can cast a “provisional” or “conditional” ballot, but must come in within five days to the County Recorder with proper ID to have their vote be counted.
These are solvable problems. Let’s solve them!
Gary
Then kedavis, why don’t you seek a job with the County Recorder to confirm signatures and count mail-in ballots?
In Arizona, they can cast a “provisional” or “conditional” ballot without sufficient ID, but they must come in to the County Recorders Office within five days with sufficient ID. (An Arizona Driver’s License or MVD ID card is per se sufficient ID.)
How would that be “voting by mail?”
Because I’m medically disabled and mostly house-bound.
And there were few mail-in ballots for my county. Apparently people here take voting seriously enough to do it in person.
I thought there weren’t any problems and 2020 was the most securest bestest most fraud-free election ever?
You don’t want to be seen as (gasp!) one of those deplorables, do you?