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Electronic Fraud in the 2020 Election: More Likely than Not
Cheating in elections is as old as–well, as old as elections. Cheating in elections using paper is as old as the use of paper in elections. Are we supposed to just assume that cheating in elections using computers is going to be much younger than the use of computers in elections?
I have now come to believe that it is more likely than not that there was electronic cheating in the 2020 election, but this is a defeasible conclusion — meaning that my reasons for thinking this could easily be refuted.
Despite its eventual inevitability, it still comes as a jarring paradigm shift for me merely to entertain the idea that such a thing might be true. I knew America had problems, but I didn’t think one of them was that our elections are so bad as all that. But there is an argument that it is true.
A very simple argument, but also, once again, defeasible: The electronic side of America’s elections is so terribly insecure that it’s difficult to say concerning a close election whether electronic cheating didn’t nudge the winner over the finish line; in this terrible state, it only takes a little evidence to render it more likely than not that this is just what happened; and, unfortunately, we do have a little evidence.
Before Going into Detail, Let’s Outline that Argument Again
The place to begin is not a pleasant one: We have to recognize that we know next to nothing about our elections. It’s not that we know there was electronic cheating. The tragedy is that we don’t know that there wasn’t.
Ockham’s Razor does not apply here. There’s no default setting here that says, “It didn’t happen.” The default setting is: We’re blind and in the dark with little or nothing to go on. Odds start at about 50/50. And in this situation, even a little bit of comparatively weak evidence nudges things one way or the other.
We may only have a little evidence. But we do have it. So it’s more likely than not that it happened.
So Why Do We Know Nothing?
Read my recent post, “The Voting Machines Need To Go,” for a more detailed commentary on the backstory. Briefly, there are three things wrong with the voting machines that destroy trust by destroying trustworthiness. But that’s only the rotten fruit of the problem. The poisoned root is that we don’t know what’s going on in these machines.
They count votes using ratios–56% Trump to 44% Biden with 100 votes . . . or maybe with 113 votes.
They use secret code.
They have online connectivity.
Let’s zoom in on that last one.
A report from a Michigan Senate committee clarifies (see page 22). Many–but not all–of the voting machines do connect to the internet. It’s for reporting results fast, and the modems are supposed to be switched off during the vote count.
Seems safe enough, except for a point made by Father Brown in the writings of G. K. Chesterton: A reliable electronic system needs to be used by an unreliable system–a human being, the most unreliable of all systems.
This, of course, is why we’re supposed to have processes to make unreliable people into reliable people. Courtroom rules and processes. Ways of fact-checking used in history and science and journalism. In elections, witnesses and transparency and clean, documented chains of custody.
So are there rules in 50 states specifying that the vote count cannot begin until a Republican observer, a Democrat observer, and a government official have all signed on a dotted line specifying that they checked to confirm that the dang modem was switched the heck off?
If there were, would we not have heard about it in every goshdarn fact check since November 2020?
Instead, we heard the myth that the machines don’t connect to the internet at all.
Without those processes, we know nothing. We begin as Socrates. We stand in a windowless room with the lights off. We have no evidence that none of the machines were hacked. There are neither rules nor processes to make the system trustworthy. Our elites and officials tend to be untrustworthy people, but that doesn’t mean they’re lying–they don’t know anything either! Hardly anyone has even a glimmer of clarity except for the ignored bureaucrats at the Election Assistance Commission advising us to get rid of these machines and some people in Michigan who added a footnote on page 22 of a Senate Oversight Committee report explaining the purpose of the modems in the voting machines.
The long and short of it is this: Trusting the electronic vote count means assuming, with no evidence, that no razor-thin margin in a swing state could have been affected because someone, whether through fraud or incompetence, simply left a modem on. That’s a weak assumption. Just as if it were the morning after a one-party machine in Philadelphia announces that ballot boxes opened at 3 AM handed an election to the Democrats with no Republicans or cameras present, Ockham’s Razor tells us nothing.
The odds of an electronically stolen election start at about 50/50, not because we can calculate them to that number but because in this ridiculous state of affairs we just know basically nothing.
So What Evidence Is There?
There are at least two lines of evidence which, as far as I know, are still standing. You can look up the details in Chapter 9 of the big post here (or, for off-Ricochet, here). The gist is, simply, this:
There are (at least) still claims from nerds that the computer data show disappearing Trump votes and that statistically impossible vote ratios occurred in the vote updates.
(Hey, you want some citations? The part about disappearing Trump votes is from computer nerds who looked at some information in some computer logs and presented it to the Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections. This Epoch Times piece introduces the topic. A briefer intro here. Scott Adams has some interesting commentary here. Here is a June 2021 video on Gab going over a number of such incidents in multiple states. This guy comments on other candidates than Trump who also had some disappearing votes. For the part about the statistically impossible vote ratios, see a Rumble video called “Unmasked: The Truth About The 2020 Election”. A blog post from Just a Mom here introduces the same sort of material, focusing on data pertaining to North Dakota. Or . . . click on the big post linked above, and spend some time in Chapter 9!)
I am incapable of classifying this evidence as decisive in and of itself because I lack the ability even to understand the computer talk and/or to check the data. So this evidence, at least as far as I know, carries only a little bit of weight in and of itself—maybe just enough to tip the scales.
What carries more weight, and what has for the present persuaded me, is this: Apparently no one has refuted these claims; but if these claims are wrong, then someone probably would have by now.
Accordingly, my working opinion on this topic is: Until such time as someone should refute the claims of the nerds about these phenomena or present some explanation for these phenomena other than electronic election fraud, it is likelier than not that electronic election fraud occurred in the 2020 election, and that it, in coordination with other shenanigans documented elsewhere, flipped swing states.
As I said, very defeasible: Show me the refutation, and I reckon I’ll go back to thinking all that happened was all the other election corruption and folly–rather a lot of it, unfortunately.
This line of reasoning does have one other notable vulnerability. It relies on the premise that someone probably would have refuted these claims by now if they were not true. That seems likely to me–not least because there are many who are eager to refute such claims, who often try, and who sometimes (as far as I can tell) succeed.
But it might not be true. It might be that the people who are responsible for finding the refutations of these guys are just too unintelligent, uninterested, or lazy to do so. Given the dismal quality of our journalists, government officials, and experts these days, this certainly seems possible. Looking past the journalists at the whole country, it’s the same problem. Too many of us are strung out on porn, drugs, internet rage, and video games. Too few of us can read sentences with an advanced grammatical construction, fit a premise to a conclusion, or recognize reality when it stares us in the face–which reminds me, what is a woman?
So I could be wrong. But the logic has changed my views to what they are now, and they can’t change back without better logic or new evidence.
So consider yourself invited to change my mind: Do you know of a refutation I don’t know of?
Published in Elections
Part of a long, long series of trying to figure things out. Here’s some more of it:
Electronic Fraud in the 2020 Election: More Likely than Not
The last line in your comment refers back to this post, probably not necessary.
Yes, but it’s funny that way. And it’s easier to copy and paste the whole list later if I want to.
I’m with you on this
As I said in another post, anyone selling such software and equipment should have a record of each and every security audit they have passed. Their reticence in doing so makes one wonder why that should be. This should be child’s play.
Certainly any future customers should be insistent on knowing that the sensitive systems are disconnected from any outside interference, and that the code currently running in any system is secure from modifications.
“After all you’ve seen today, this seems weird?”
You create electronic voting machines. You only call it “Dominion” when you know your customers and you want to signal them the underlying reality.
Have I yet posted the video re: Nov 2020 vote count of the top Republican election official in the top county in or outside of Detroit who was demanding that the Dem election officials let in the Republican election observers? (Right now I’m not sure what website I originally viewed it at.)
Why was that Republican having to demand that these observers be let in?
Why, the Dems’ officials were stating that they held concerns that the Republicans had COVID. (Something that did not concern them as being something their own party members could possibly be harboring, I guess.)
It is, if memory serves, absolutely illegal to refuse to allow in the election observers who have been vetted by either party’s officials as having standing to come in an observe an election.
Here is the problem: there is no way to get local police to intervene when the infraction occurs. The police don’t want to bother. The Republican official in this case would have to wait until the District Attorney speaks with him in a day or two and then he will most likely be told “We cannot handle it locally. You have to go to the FBI and file a complaint with them.”
But where in the FBI? FBI agents answering the phone don’t know who in the bureau handles such matters.
Plus even if after the 48 hour wait the Republican official does get ahold of the mystery agent in the mysterious division inside the FBI that looks into voting matters, by then the cheating that may have been going on has been concluded!
This all needs to be handled so that when it is suspected that there is a serious infraction of the election law, then as it is occurring, is immediately handled by police. Then they report it to the DA and then the DA makes the report to the FBI. No more run arounds.
This situation has been on going since at least 2004. Yet if citizens cannot see those people who are violating election laws being indicted, cheating will always go on.
I think you posted it somewhere somewhat recently. I think I saw that video in 2020, and it’s probably referenced somewhere in the big post.
Depressing!
Thanks, SA. I’ll check it out by late tonight to find it.
Something confuses me. If the Republican observers have the legal right to be present, how about they just push their way in? If the police don’t care, they still shouldn’t care. And presumably the observers have some authorizing paperwork to show if challenged.
It sounds like another situation where Republicans just have to stop being so damn polite.
The big post? It’s become more of a reference work. The idea of looking for something specific in there scares even me. I just checked and couldn’t find it. Dang.
I have two rescue dogs with super powers, so that might help me get thru it. (We shall see.)
If not, then there is no steak in their midnight snack bowl for them, I tell ya!
Augie, JFK was elected by election fraud in 1960.
One doesn’t need to assume that every person of the left will cheat, although I do. It is enough to assume that there are always a significant slice of people of the left who are ready to cheat, and that every person of the left will cover for and excuse the cheating even if they aren’t ready to do it themselves. I conclude that the left as a whole will always cheat to the extent that opportunities are available.
There were a lot of opportunities in 2020.
Sometimes I overlook the obvious.
Yeah. Since we know LBJ’s people managed to steal Texas while he was running for Senate, it’s very likely they repeated it while he was running for VP in a close election. And then I believe there was . . . a little something about Illinois.
Yeah.
What’s weird is we’re trained to imitate Donald Sutherland while screaming “CONSPIRACY THEORIST!” at anyone who thinks these dramatically insecure computer systems might actually be manipulated by the corruptocrats who manipulate everything else.
There is a corollary that states “when there is not proof to the contrary, assume that dishonest people have cheated”.
They should…and Texas does a decent job of ensuring that level of auditing. Each election cycle the Secretary of State selects four counties to do a full audit on. One county selected was Harris County (site of massive issues in the ’20 election, and another was Guadalupe, where I reside and worked both the ’20 and ’22 elections. In the ’22 election, an auditor from the Secretary of State’s office showed up at my polling location. She thoroughly reviewed our paperwork, processes, and procedures to ensure compliance with the law. It was not pleasant, but having run a Vote center for 7 election cycles (14 elections as I worked the primaries and the general) we handled it as best as we could.
Some of the ways that Texas tries and secure the elections are detailed here: 2020 Texas Election Security Update
The report on Harris County and the ’20 election can be found here: Executive Summary Audit 2020 General Election in Texas
The Audit program (linked from the Election Security Update page is: Election Audit Program (texas.gov)
It’s not perfect, but many of the issues that have plagued other states are dealt with in Texas and cannot happen. I would be much more confident in our elections if every state made the effort that Texas does. I suspect that some do, but many do not.
If I remember correctly it was either in Detroit or Philly where the poll observers were forced to stand 6′ away from the election workers who were processing absentee ballots and validating signatures, etc. The observers (well the GOP ones) complained that they could not see what the worker was doing from that far away and had no way to actually observe but were told that COVID protocols made it impossible for them to be allowed any closer.
I might engage in the search for defeasibility were it not for the abundant evidence, unveiled over and over again, that IT controls and concerns for privacy, process, and data integrity are only applied to others, but are never taken seriously by the government at either the federal or the state level, where shockingly ignorant ignorami (but I repeat myself) play fast and loose with any semblance of responsibility, fact, or ethics, and don’t seem to care if any of their malfeasance is exposed. (At my township level, at least the folks in the office have the sense to ask their more responsible and experienced citizens about such things before committing. But a few decades in healthcare IT, and an increasingly jaundiced observation of the shenanigans in the public sphere has taught me that this is the exception rather than the rule.)
Had my hospital CEO used a private email account and a server located in his (or another’s) bathroom to communicate hospital business and patient information far and wide, we’d all be in jail right now. And I’d probably have been marked for the severest penalty. Ditto, had my hospital allowed itself to be hacked over and over again, to the tune of almost all its private data being published online. Yet this sort of stuff happens regularly with data that I’m forced to provide to the government, and–as far as I can see–no-one ever pays a penalty for this betrayal and, in most cases, no-one even seems remotely interested in how such a thing might have happened.
So is the outcome posited in the OP more likely than not? Probably.
They don’t count votes using ratios, they report them using ratios (a percentage is a ratio with respect to 100), and because nobody is interested in reading results accurate to the nth decimal place and because some decimal fractions repeat endlessly and cannot be represented without rounding or truncation, this is a perfectly acceptable way of doing it.
And if the 2020 election was ripe with fraud, how come the fraudsters had such limited ambitions? Why ensure the Democrat candidate won the presidential vote in a multitude of jurisdictions but leave the Senate split exactly 50/50 (that ratio counts the two independents as Democrats), a result that with the vote of VP Harris gave the D’s a one-vote advantage in that chamber. Why didn’t the fraudsters also fix the election results for the Senate, the House, the governorships, and the state legislative chambers and give the Ds a victory of historic proportions? I mean, the fraudsters are evil computer geniuses and all, so presumably their capabilities are pretty much unlimited. A one-vote majority in the Senate? Why not 10 or 15?
Another reason not to credit the claims of 2020 election deniers is that in the more than three years since then, and despite all the money and fame that would come their way for doing so (perhaps with some time in a cozy federal facility for white-collar criminals), not a single person has come forward to blow the whistle on the conspiracy, or even got drunk in a bar and spilled the beans to a stranger who then excused himself to take a leak and called the New York Times from the bathroom. A conspiracy so extensive as to involve several states and more than one manufacturer of voting machines would involve at least tens if not hundreds of people. Where are they? Doesn’t a single one wish his name to be added to the list of historical figures who have changed American history?
For the same reason, we know that 9/11 wasn’t an inside job. It would have taken hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the military, the justice system, the FBI, U. S. Customs, the INS, New York City building inspectors, and many other organizations to pull it off, and yet not a single person has confessed to the plot. It’s nonsense, therefore, as is, I believe, the 2020 election conspiracy theory.
It is like you did not read a word of the OP.
You are countering arguments not made by St. A. Instead, you are comparing him to 9/11 Truthers. The reality is, this is a canned response. Cut and paste.
It would be refreshing if you were capable of actually addressing the information laid out. Actually, it would be astonishing.
We won a close one in 2016. We lost a close one in 2020.
St. Augustine has done a massive job of cataloging possible violations and complaints. He’s been careful not to oversell individual cases that aren’t provably reliable. He’s shown that the election, held under unprecedented pandemic conditions, was too patchwork and improvised. His election series is one of Ricochet’s most popular series, and I’m glad that when they go to Main Feed, even outsiders can see the level of hard work he put into it.
What we don’t have is proof that Trump won the election. For me, that’s the bottom line. The 2000 election wasn’t perfect either. I wanted Bush to win, and I’m glad he did. Can I prove that Gore lost? No. So I don’t have much sympathy for the idea that if we can’t prove that the election is flawless, the only alternative is that it’s fraudulent.
The main point is not that somehow Trump “really” won, the main point is that Biden did not win LEGITIMATELY.
For that, it’s enough to show that the number of illegally cast/counted votes in swing states etc, was greater than the supposed margin of victory. It’s not necessary to prove exactly which votes those are, and who they were for.
Correct. And corrected.
Incorrect. It’s a pointless alternative to addition that guarantees some level of inaccuracy and breeds mistrust.
This objection must be considered. So I have. It’s been factored into my analysis since November 2020.
What you have here is one fact that must be considered in an inference-to-the-best-explanation argument. It is a fact which is difficult to reconcile with a theory in which a well-organized conspiracy of specifically Democrats with uniquely Democratic and partisan aims stole an election at all levels and in all locations at the same time.
Please note that I have never argued for such a conclusion.
For so thorough a disbeliever as you, the place to begin is actually something much simpler than anything I consider in this post. What you need is a few minutes looking over my analysis of Teigen v. the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Please do so and get back to me.
https://ricochet.com/1215648/teigen-v-wisconsin-elections-commission-2/
Bryan is correct. This is a straw man fallacy.
Good to know. Thank you. I will probably need to save some of these urls and consult them later. I would however, feel much better about Texas if we would also ban all voting machines with online connectivity.
Remember that USB isn’t above suspicion either.
And many confirmed.
Start with the basics. There were enough probable illegalities to flip five swing states, enough confirmed illegalities to flip three. And that’s before we even say anything about voting machines, or even about the Twitter Files.
Agreed.