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Intro to Eight Election Fraud (and Related) Claims
We may as well face facts: You haven’t actually read my 70 or so pages of detailed analysis of election fraud allegations, have you? Well, you could always go here for the big post (or, for off-Ricochet, here) and read it all very slowly, followed by the other parts of the series.
But, again, we may as well face facts: You’re not really going to do that, are you? So here’s something easier: A shorter, manageable introduction to just eight interesting claims. We’ll start with my three favorite claims that didn’t pan out; then we’ll cover four claims I think should be taken seriously (ok, three claims and one set of claims); and then we’ll look at one claim that raises more questions than answers for me.
This is only a short a sample. There’s lots more fun in the original big post, and more details on the eight claims here! (You can just go there and CTR+F for key words.)
The Best Ratio of Entertainment-to-Likelihood: the Hammer and Scorecard!
Some Trumpists, including our illustrious ex-President, ran with every supposed Kraken sighting like it was Mary Magdalene saying “I have seen the Lord” or John saying “These things stand written so that ye may know.”
I think my overall favorite fraud flop–say that five times fast!–is Hammer and Scorecard: a magnificent conspiracy in which the CIA not only has the supercomputer the Hammer, and not only has the election-stealing Scorecard software–but also hacks into the Dominion machines so the Deep State itself can steal the election!
And that’s not even the best part.
The miniature civil war on foreign territory in which the US military has a gunfight with the CIA and liberates one of their servers–yeah, that was the best part.
The best I can say for this theory, beyond its immense entertainment value, is that the evidence for it is somewhat better than I would have expected–among other details, at least one person I deem reliable, Lucretia on the Powerline podcast, seems to think the Hammer at least exists.
Better than I would have EXPECTED, I say–but not good enough! I can’t say it ain’t possible, but I’m pretty sure it ain’t true.
The Second-Best Ratio: the Philly Mob Boss!
A close second for me would be the one about the Philadelphia mafia boss who manufactured hundreds of thousands of fake Biden ballots for money.
As I understand it, the Buffalo Chronicle, which reported this, is not a real newspaper. Even if it were, more evidence would be needed. Such sordid deeds would have put to shame the Michael Corleone of The Godfather II. For something like this, we need better evidence than what amounts to, “Some anonymous criminal told one of our guys that this happened and how amazing it all was!”
A+ for entertainment value, but not even a passing grade as far as evidence is concerned.
It Looked Good at First: 173,000 Votes without Registration in Michigan
I think my third-favorite election fraud allegation that didn’t pan out is the one about 173,000 votes without voter registrations in Michigan.
Much less entertaining than the last two, but what it lacks in entertainment value it made up for in actually looking good at first glance: MI really was reporting all these votes in precincts where no one was registered to vote! (Steven Crowder may have been the first to notice it, but others picked it up, and it was included in the Peter Navarro compilation.)
From what I can gather, MI reported these 173k votes in their Absent Voter Counting Boards–and no wonder that there were no registrations, because an AVCB is an artificial and temporary precinct for counting absentee ballots. They correspond to REAL precincts, which I daresay actually had the corresponding voter registration information.
Blame MI for a lack of clarity if you like, but this doesn’t look like mass election fraud to me.
The Best of the Best Claims: Mark Davis in Georgia
Now what allegations of election fraud or other shenanigans seem to actually hold water? Let’s start with the work of Mark Davis in Georgia, which I would classify as the best of the best. (Also a claim getting a somewhat wider audience now that The Federalist is reporting on it.) Here’s only part of Davis’ work.
In Georgia, if you move to a different county, you can’t vote in your old county. (There’s a grace period of 30 days.) Moving out of state: Same (or very similar) rules. And it turns out some people break that law. You can track them by comparing the GA voter records with the US federal Post Office records—because they filed Change of Address forms.
But what about people who were just moving to college for a bit, or moving temporarily to a military base? No problem; Davis just didn’t count them—not anyone who was moving to a college or military address.
Oh, but he counted alright!
About 15,000 who moved out of state voted absentee in their old county in violation of the law. Another 35,000 who moved in-state did the same. (The Biden margin of victory in GA: about 12,000.)
It gets better. After people change counties within the state, they eventually get around to updating their address for their GA driver’s license, thus confirming their long-term move and confirming that they did indeed vote illegally. When I spoke with Davis in early May, he’d tracked about 10,500 of these confirmations (from the 35,000 group, not from the 15,000 group), with more coming in every day (at a then-average rate of 57 per day).
Evidence that Biden’s team stole the election? No. (I don’t know how many of these illegally cast votes were for Biden. Davis himself made a point of not checking!)
Evidence that we have serious election integrity issues in the USA? Yes. Evidence that the GA results should not have been certified? So I am told–as specified in Georgia law when illegal votes exceed the margin of victory.
The Biggest Numbers, but Dang If It Ain’t Just Sociology!
Now for the Just Facts Daily claim. The idea is pretty simple: Some non-citizens manage to vote illegally in American elections, and you can get an estimate of how that affected the 2020 election using the number of non-citizens in a swing state in 2020 and sociological research on how non-citizens voted in past elections–how many voted, and by what margins they voted for Democrats.
The result: a Biden advantage of illegally cast votes more than double his margin of victory in both Arizona and Georgia!
The major weaknesses of this allegation:
–It’s nothing you could take to court. It’s not criminal forensics. It’s sociology.
–It’s based on past sociological research, of which there is probably not nearly enough and which is, in any case, fallible.
The major strengths of this allegation:
–It’s still a strong inductive argument: Given the premises, the conclusion is probable but not guaranteed.
–If the Biden margin of victory in AZ and GA was actually larger than the number of illegally cast votes in this category, then there would have to be something so dramatically wrong with the research that its estimates were more than double what they should have been! That is possible, but not very likely. (The only alternative I can see is that maybe there is some reason non-citizens were less likely to illegally vote Democrat over Republican in 2020 than in previous elections.)
This is not good evidence that an election should have been overturned—sociology, not forensics. But it is good evidence that America needs to clean up its elections, and that votes cast illegally could plausibly make a real difference in national elections. It also gives some degree of support to the conclusion that votes illegally cast or counted actually did exceed the Biden margin of victory in at least two swing states. (Unlike the Davis research in GA, this argument supports the conclusion that illegally cast Biden votes exceeded the margin of victory in these two states.)
Something To Take Seriously, but I’d Like to See It Verified
One interesting set of claims comes from the work of Jesse Binnall in Nevada. Some of his work uses the same methodology as Mark Davis of Georgia, which impresses me—and that affects about 19,000 Nevada votes. His other investigations affect about 43.5 thousand votes.
That said, I’ve never met Binnall, I know a bit less about him than about Davis, and I have not heard that the error-checks applied by Davis have been applied by Binnall.
Let’s Not Leave Out the Chain of Custody Issues
Here are a few:
–30,000 ballots with chain of custody issues in Michigan,
–about 110,000 ballots with chain of custody issues in Pennsylvania (including 60,000-70,000 that apparently disappeared),
–and about 28,900 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, with chain of custody issues.
The PA 110,000 claim relies on the testimony of Gregory Strensrom. As I recall, he mentioned in his testimony that a Democratic co-observer saw (at least some of) the same things. Obviously, there should be follow-up with this other guy; but I don’t know if anyone ever did follow-up.
The Fulton Co. 28,900 are actually the result of official state investigations.
Similarly, the 30,000 number for Michigan is a low estimate of some ballots which an important report from the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee concluded were not fraud as such. However, instead of announcing “No chain of custody issue here!” the report actually took the case as a reason to strongly emphasize the importance of keeping the chain of custody clean.
In other words, the report does not explicitly confirm that there is a chain of custody issue here, but it does not refute it and may be taken as implying a confirmation.
Would these ballots without a clean chain of custody involve some foul play? Some massive incompetence? Some of both? Hard to say for sure. But this is more evidence that the election was, in many places, a mess and that there were significant numbers of improperly managed ballots.
And What’s Up With All the Zombies?
Finally, a very serious allegation that, I deem, needs some real clarification. I’ve come across some interesting claims about the dead voting:
–as many as 17,327 zombie votes in Michigan based on comparing obituaries to voting records,
–40,000 in Pennsylvania by the same method,
–9,500 in Michigan by comparing Social Security Death Index records to voting records,
–another 1,500 in Nevada,
–and more than 8,000 in Georgia.
On the one hand, comparing voting records to obituaries and SSDI seems like a reliable method to me. You can explain away some of these zombie votes as typos or as genuine voters having the same names as their parents, but it does not seem likely that all 9,500-17,327 in Michigan were such cases.
But, on the other hand, here’s another method that looks pretty reliable: That important report in Michigan “Researched the claims of deceased individuals having a vote cast in their name by reviewing obituaries, various online databases, social media posts, as well as speaking with individuals who made the claims or were the subject of those claims.” Now these guys didn’t check 9,500 or more possible cases, but they did check over 200, and they did not find a single confirmed zombie voter.
0 out of more than 200 is a small sample set, but a heckuva ratio.
Also, Mark Davis in Georgia isn’t worried much about zombie voters.
I honestly have no idea what to make of all this. I suppose it’s possible someone somewhere is lying about something, but, absent dishonesty, I have no explanation for why these seemingly reliable methods would produce such dramatically different results in Michigan.
Do you know more? I’d like to learn if you do.
Now What about That Line I Like from Bible?
That would be Ecclesiastes 12 in the KJV: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.”
Unfortunately, it’s probably still too soon for that! (I used the line myself to title an earlier essay on this topic–silly me!)
But here are some preliminary and very cautious conclusions:
There are several variations of “The election was stolen!” theories that are unproven at best. However, election fraud and related issues should be taken very seriously. There is actually some evidence that votes illegally cast or improperly counted measure up well to the Biden margin of victory in multiple swing states, even exceeding it in some cases. We still need to learn a lot more about what happened in 2020, and we need to do better securing future elections.
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At this point, it appears to be in the QED category.
Biden is forced to go to Philadelphia to defend the legitimacy of his presidency.
Gives a major speech riddled with lies.
Bombshell news over audits in multiple states.
Three of the top four posts on the member feed are about the election fraud.
Conservatives across the internet are sharing the new data.
Ricochet has zero mention about it on the Main Page.
…don’t hold your breath.
Hey @blueyeti you wanted links to SA’s work. This is another example. Plenty of likes…will it get promoted, and if not…why?
Stay tuned…
And Brian’s?
For the record, I read it all.
Thank you, @blueyeti for posting this to the Main Feed. I appreciate that Ricochet.com has been hesitant to post certain threads on this topic to the “main storefront” of the site. I’m gratified this one made the cut.
Senate seats in Georgia and Michigan are also at question.
The latest work out of Georgia seems to indicate that some of this will be vindicated.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/election-integrity-group-analysis-of-ballot-images-in-georgia-county-shows-provable-fraud_3901787.html?utm_source=sharenewsnoe
You have my sympathy.
Or gratitude.
Or stare of amazement.
Or something. Maybe all three.
People will ignore provable fraud in any form, I am afraid.
It is difficult to see what one hasn’t thought first.
[Insert reference to Thomas Kuhn.]
Yeah, he got it.
You just gotta read Ricochet with the right paradigm in mind!
But seriously–I think a good paradigm for thinking through election data is “People with epically historic levels of both motive and opportunity to cheat in an election using traditional methods in an uncoordinated fashion are likely to do so.”
Al Franken elected on illegal felon votes, Johnson getting to the Senate with late-night ballot box work–this sort of thing is downright normal, and it’s shifted elections before. The difference in 2020 was that circumstances were ideal for having more of it.
If all we had was that information, plus a series of swing states with razor-thin margins, I give it 50/50 odds that illegally cast or counted votes exceeded the Biden margin of victory in one or more of them.
But we do have more information. Davis, Raffensperger, Binnall, Strensrom, etc., etc.
I’ve been following your work on the election, and I think you just provided the perfect tl;dr.
I agree. Saint Augustine has been sober-minded through all of this, and not given to conspiracy theories. He has done a good job of weeding out a whole bunch of stuff.
I think that it is likely that there were more votes by people voting in their old precinct that some of the margins of victory by Biden in several states, and maybe by Trump’s margin in North Carolina. But that does not mean that all of those incorrect votes were fraudulent. This does not call for the reversal of the election. It does call for some reforms, starting with adoption of the 87 recommendations of the Carter-Baker Commission.
In 2000, George W. Bush won the State of Florida by 537 votes. Obviously this margin was dwarfed by the number of people who voted in their old precincts, and it less that the number of mistaken votes for Pat Buchanan with the butterfly ballot. But that election was not overturned.
Good job by Saint Augustine.
Good job by Ricochet, for culling out the less researched posts, and promoting this one.
Well, they were literally illegal. I believe “fraud” is also an applicable technical term.
However, they may not have been willfully illegal, they may involve no double-voting, any number may have been for Trump, etc.
Not now. Not on Jan. 6. At some earlier time I believe it did call for the non-certification of an election.
Preach, Brother!
Maybe so! Honestly, I wouldn’t know! (I would have said, “Voter ID, and whatever Florida did after 2000!”)
Had I world enough and time I could track a few more of these numbers and work them into my count. It’s misery, though: An Excel document to update, charts to modify to fit into a Ricochet post, and the same charts to copy into the Microsoft Word copy. No fun, no fun at all.
It probably does call for an asterisk next to Joe Biden’s presidency. We could call him President Asterisk. Or President (Asterisk) Biden.
[Insert clever remark about the unmitigated gall of President Asterisk Biden.]
I moved around a bunch when I was a college student in the early 1970’s and lived in four homes or apartments in four years. All of them were in the same legislative district, AZ-12, they were southeast of campus, 2 miles west of campus, just west of campus and north of campus, all within 5 miles of each. I believe that I voted in an old address once. The ballot in that old precinct was identical to the ballot in my accurate precinct. Of course, I didn’t vote twice. This was before “motor voter.” The ballot that I used was identical to the ballot that I would have used in the new precinct, in that I stayed in the AZ-12, and the same “ward” that Tucson used for city council elections. I don’t see the harm, frankly. I think that a very large percentage of college students don’t update their addresses with motor vehicle each year.
So, let’s go back to 2000, when George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Under your analysis, i would bet that the number of voters who had moved within Florida was far greater than 537 voters. However, what percentage of those voters would have changed their vote?
The Stanford Business College has proved convincingly by several methods that over 2000 of the votes for Pat Buckanan were intended to be for Al Gore. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/butterfly-did-it-aberrant-vote-buchanan-palm-beach-county-florida. Should George W. Bush have been removed due to this obvious error? Should we refer to Al Gore as a rightful former president?
This is the problem you face. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. If the 2020 election should be reversed, certainly the 2000 election should be reversed? How about the 1960 Presidential election? Or the 1876 election. There comes a point for finality, for counting votes under the rules that were established and used repeatedly before the election.
There also comes a point to recognize that during the 2020 election, the nation was still on lock-down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There should be some allowance to accommodate that.
The Daily Signal, a conservative media source, reports that Carter-Baker Commission agreed with that. Their 87 recommendations of the bi-partisan “Commission on Federal Election Reform” with co-chairs Jimmy Carter and James Baker, include:
“They called on states to increase voter ID requirements; to be leery of mail-in voting; to halt ballot harvesting; to maintain voter lists, in part to ensure dead people are promptly removed from them; to allow election observers to monitor ballot counting; and to make sure voting machines are working properly.” https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/11/20/7-ways-the-2005-carter-baker-report-could-have-averted-problems-with-2020-election/
Al Gore is not going to be named as the rightful winner of the 2000 election. He is not going to be called the 43rd or 44th president. Likewise, Trump is not going to be named as the rightful winner of the 2020 election. There is absolutely no mechanism to do either or those.
Saint Augustine, you have spent a great deal of time on this project. May I ask that you consider reviewing the 87 recommendations of the Carter-Baker Commission and see if you can agree with them? https://www.legislationline.org/download/id/1472/file/3b50795b2d0374cbef5c29766256.pdf
The whole idea of the reigning paradigm is true, but it’s a static view of an underlying dynamic. The intellect works, fundamentally, by prediction. The paradigms of the time are what the minds of the time are predicting.
Okay, are you willing to call Al Gore the “rightful former President of the United States” or “Former President Al Gore”?
Did you ever vote in violation of state law? If so, your vote should not have been counted. That’s it, and that’s enough.
The first harm is in the detriment to the rule of law. The second harm is the breakdown of trust in our election systems as long as election law is flouted and flouting is ignored. The third, smaller harm is voting for a Congressman, state Representative, or local ballot measure effecting someone other than you.
See original post. College moves are not even counted in this analysis.
Did they vote in violation of state law? Did Florida law at the time address what to do in this situation?
If people vote in error, they vote in error. The error should probably stick. If they vote illegally, their vote should not stick.
Who’s calling for an election to be reversed? Why don’t you read my “Where Do We Go From Here?” post and get back to me?
Looks good so far!
Are you one of those wacko extremists who thinks the election was stolen?
Gary, am I mistaken, or didn’t you portray yourself as a normal conservative sort of Republican, aside from your totally justifiable and ethical repulsion of DJT, pbuh? You seem to hold more and more umm … unrelated DFL-ish fictions as touchstones. Just observing.
First I googled. Then I laughed.
However poll workers would tell people to go and vote in their old precincts.
I literally did not vote for a Congressman or state legislator who I shouldn’t have. The University of Arizona area was in CD-2 and LD-12 back in the 1970’s. (How do I know this? I have been pouring over redistricting maps since I went to college.)
Back in the 1970’s there was a law against “Open and notorious cohabitation.” This was people of the opposite sex living together in a sexual relationship without being married. However, the last time this law was enforced was when a sheriff or law enforcement person found that their estranged spouse was shacking up back in the 1950’s. That law was repealed a dozen or so years later. Should there have been prosecutions under that law?