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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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On the contrary:
If you, Erickson, or the Atlanta J-C should take it upon yourselves to make an argument purporting to refute one or more claims from VoterGA, it is your responsibility to provide the entire argument.
The premise “Every ballot in GA has a unique barcode,” by itself, provides no support whatsoever for the conclusion “No twice-scanned ballot in GA is counted twice.”
It needs another premise. A premise like “A barcode definitely guarantees that a vote scanned twice will only be counted once” would do the job. But it needs to be stated clearly and explicitly.
Adding to the failure to clearly provide the entire argument, here’s more Erickson:
So it seems that the barcode provides what should be used as a check on error or fraud, but may not be, especially in Fulton Co.
(Well pleased am I that Erickson, in his final paragraph, agrees with Raffensperger and the rest of us that Fulton Co. has serious problems and needs some firing and some major reform.)
I’d put more stock in what you say if you didn’t repeatedly leave out key points of mine: like a hen I mentioned That Erick is a former election law lawyer. In Georgia. That’s one reason I think he knows what hats he talking about.
Here’s a few more: Erick co-founded the website RedState.com, is a very successful talk radio host (started in HA, now syndicated nationally) and is extremely well connected in the state.
I know him personally a bit and find him to be impeccably honest and very detailed in his writing, on the radio, and when he has graciously appeared on the Ricochet Podcast. On the rare occasion he’s gotten something wrong, he’s issued an immediate correction.
If you have a more credible source or if you’re one yourself, I’m all ears. Because I’m not afraid to watch a video or read a piece or listen to someone I disagree with. I’m open to being wrong, but I’m want to be convinced with evidence.
Saying something could happen, is not proof that it did. Proof is proof.
Of course, it is my job to figure this out before I assert fraud. That’s why–if and when I assert that there was fraud involving multiple scanned ballots in GA–I will make every effort to make sure the premises do support the conclusion well.
You do realize I’m not endorsing every single interpretation of every single fraud claim in GA, right?
Huh. So let me make sure I’m understanding this correctly: you’ve been arguing for 7 months that some large number of ballots have been miscounted without actually knowing systems and safeguards are in place used to actually count the ballots.
That’s….interesting.
Unless I’m misunderstanding your very impressive series of posts, your overall contention is that the election was stolen and that Donald Trump should be in the White House right now. Do I have that right?
If so, then it’s not my job to defend the election results, which were certified and accepted by Congress and adjudicated in dozens of court cases around the country.
It’s your job to prove the results were incorrectly counted or stolen or whatever your theory is. You also have to show how this conspiracy was organized and executed across some large number of states simultaneously and an even larger number of voting districts. And why hundreds of election officials —including a lot of Republican election officials who have zero incentive to participate in an coverup— have managed to keep it a secret since then.
Go for it. I’m all ears. Or eyes.
Not at all correct. That is a brutal straw-man fallacy.
You will note that in my detailed analyses of separate issues in Georgia this particular detail–which neither you nor Erickson has yet even been able to tell me is indeed a safeguard rather than a circumstance enabling safeguard measures to be employed if the relevant decision-makers have the wisdom to do so–has not even been relevant.
It’s not like the double-scanning of votes in order to double-count them is the only possible kind of election shenanigan. Davis, Just Facts Daily, chain of custody problems documented by Raffensperger, and a whole slew of other issues in Fulton Co. did not even involve double-scanning.
At best, this is dramatically oversimplified. It demonstrates almost no comprehension of anything I have actually written.
Straw man fallacy. I have specifically said that what I’m talking about does not involve any organized or centralized conspiracy.
What I think, I have also written. You may read it and respond at any time. But please leave me alone if you’re going to straw-man me in the process.
Well, they may be quite relevant depending on who some of the particular actors were. There is video from that day that the NYT didn’t bother to show where Trump supporters were calling out and pointing out agitators and vandals who they believed were Antifa and shouting “They’re not with us!”. In one video a Trump supporter actually pulls back a vandal dressed all in black who is breaking an upper window on the Capitol balcony near an entrance. And in the last few months there have been allegations that the FBI also planted operatives to gin up passions and encourage people to riot and break in. I realize Americans are supposed to implicitly trust the FBI at all times and never harbor any skepticism that certain FBI personnel might actually be corrupt. How has that worked out in the recent past? Were FBI agents also involved in ginning up and helping to steer the alleged Gov. Whitmer kidnapping? What do you think? Definitely not? Of course, your lack of curiosity on the matter seems to indicate that you’re completely satisfied that all of the bad actors on 1/6 were diehard Trump supporters (because, of course, the recommended NYT documentary uses the Trump supporters own videos to prove it I believe you said recently) – but that lack of curiosity says a lot about you. I, for one, would like to know exactly who has been charged, what they have been charged with and why they are being held without an option for bail or in solitary confinement. But then I tend to be curious on occasion. It’s a fault that I have.
Yes, this is typically where we end up in these discussions. I ask for some basic information on how you reach your conclusions (could we get more basic then the mechanisms used to physically count the votes?) and then I’m deploying straw men or I’m a liberal or I’m bad at customer service, etc.
I’m open to reading or watching anything. I approach this stuff open to being convinced that I got it wrong. Haven’t come across a smoking gun yet, but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.
I sincerely wish you success in your search for whatever it is you are looking for.
You should try reading me before you respond to what I wrote. What you say you ask for–I gave it. In extreme detail and at great length and most of it more than once.
The conclusion that most interests me is not “Trump won,” anything involving Dominion machines, or anything involving conspiracies. What I’m interested in is the conclusion “In such-and-such location, votes illegally cast or counted exceeded the Biden margin of victory.”
In the case of Georgia, there are three major lines of evidence for that conclusion of which I am currently aware. None of them involve anything said by VoterGA, any screenshots of ballots, any double-scanning, or any double-counting. Two of three are summarized above–Davis and Just Facts Daily. The third–being chain of custody issues documented under the authority of Raffensperger–may be found in the big post by doing a CTR+F keyboard shortcut for “Raffensperger.”
Correction: In the big document, do a CTR+F for “affecting about 28,900 votes.”
What else you may want I cannot even guess.
I’ll take the impressive work done by St. A over being friends with Eric Erickson.
At the end of the day Scott, you are part of the establishment groups and it seems clear your friendship with those groups informs your judgement, as I would expect for anyone.
Since I in no way trust the establishment, appealing to it’s authority is not a plus.
Thank you.
But I dunno. The TRUTH is hard to find outside of Scripture, but many truths will be found somewhere between Davis and Erickson.
And let’s be fair–if nothing else, Erickson is on the side of the angels in critiquing Fulton Co. So is Raffensperger–and Raffensperger is himself the source of well-documented chain of custody issues affecting about 28,900 votes in Fulton Co.
We start with an admission that there were significant problems in vote counting in a number of areas, for whatever reason. For me, this appears to be a given. I’m OK with the “election was stolen” deniers, but, if you can’t acknowledge the problems, you’re not paying attention. And then we can go from there.
Never said I was friends with him. I said I know him a bit, through email and having him on the podcast. We’ve actually never met in person. But I do admire his work. If that makes me a member of the “establishment” (whatever the heck that means), so be it.
Folks, as always, this has been an educational and stimulating conversation. It’s been a long week and I’m signing off until Monday. I wish you all a restful weekend.
My provisional analysis of recent GA discoveries. Unfortunately, I have to move on to Arizona and Pennsylvania next.
Well, I had to downgrade something in PA from the Still-Standing category to the Didn’t Pan Out category. Details in the big post; search for “More than 100,000 absentee ballots” if you’re interested.
The new additions to the Still-Standing category for Arizona are a big deal, though.
And Stenstrom? Who knows? Inshallah, maybe I can catch up next week.
This is our resident software engineer.
Well, I think I caught up already. Heaven knows how long I’ll take to update the numbers and work it into the other posts. But the foundational post (the big one, linked at the beginning of this post) is updated.
Turns out Stenstrom’s analysis already included the only relevant fact that was supposed to fact-check him. Turns out the only thing clear from the whole situation is that the first wall of defense against fraud–a clear chain of custody–was not in place.
OK.
If chain of custody was not preserved then it call into question the validity of any ballots that were not properly handled. In a criminal trial such evidence would be tossed by a judge and likely no conviction would be possible (if the evidence was critical to the prosecution). If the number of ballots that lacked a proper chain of custody is greater than the margin of the election, then the validity of the election is in question. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong, but that it cannot be asserted to be certain.
The larger, and oft ignored point, is that those ballots (assuming that some are legitimate) represent the will of the voter and any loss of certainty about them violates the Civil rights of the voter. It’s similar to HIPAA where the person holding a patient record is responsible for maintaining its safety and not protecting said records violates the patients rights. If nothing else, our systems need more transparency, more neutral audits, and better controls to protect the rights of the voters that their rights are not being violated either accidentally or on purpose.
All well said.
Stenstrom’s chain of custody issues alone exceed the Biden margin of victory in PA.
And guess what! In Pennsylvania now–as well as Nevada–the claims that have been survived some level of fact-checking or critical scrutiny exceed the Biden margin of victory.
That said, I like to count only 90% as a precaution, in case of overlap among different categories of problematic votes, or other possible limitations.
And that leaves Nevada and Pennsylvania just under the magic number.
That’s actually the governments’ jobs.
That’s a great point. As with any system, the operator of the system has to prove that the system has checks and balances to ensure it operates as designed. This is usually done via audits where external auditors review the systems, it’s documentations, and ask questions about how it handles issues. For example, how do we determine that a ballot is only counted once even if it’s run through a system multiple times? The system owners are then responsible to explain their process and system controls that prevent mistakes and malfeasance. That should be easy to do…if regular external audits are in place. It’s also why late term changes to systems and processes are so dangerous. Because those changes haven’t necessarily been reviewed to ensure that they meet audit controls.
So, in actuality it’s always the system owners that have to prove that things are working correctly if a question arises. Lots of questions, not much proof. But the real problem (as was noted in the infamois Twitter thread) is that we have seen the govt and the media lie to us, so how do we know they are telling the truth now, or ever again?
St. A has done tremendous work that I doubt Yeti has bothered to read.
New numbers up at “Some Evidence that Illegal Actions Flipped Swing States” (available off-Ricochet here in a Microsoft Word version).
New information added (especially in the expanded Appendix, Parts 6 and 7) at the big post here (or, for off-Ricochet, here).
Georgia remains well over 95%, with both Davis and Raffensperger’s people having demonstrated illegally cast or improperly counted votes multiple times the Biden margin of victory.
New and big numbers in Arizona using what looks to me like a pretty reliable methodology–mostly involving a chain of custody issue prior to counting–but still under investigation. I’d estimate the odds for Arizona at about 90%, maybe as low as 80% on a bad day.
I’d estimate the odds for Nevada at something like 80% now, maybe 70% on a bad day.
And Stenstrom’s chain of custody allegations concerning USBs involving about 50,000 votes in Pennsylvania have survived a fact-check from FactCheck.org. In fact, the fact-check, once you filter out the straw-man fallacy, serves to confirm certain relevant facts from Stenstrom.
I’d estimate the odds for Pennsylvania at 70%, maybe 80% on a good day or 60% on a bad day.
One clarification: Many problems involve chain of custody and related issues. These are (and perhaps in some cases are not) illegal according to the relevant state laws, but they may or may not involve any illegally cast votes. Sometimes there may not even be any intention to do anything wrong.
Another clarification:
In the election shenanigans I’ve been trying to understand and keep track of to some extent, what was done improperly, what was done illegally, and what was done with ill intention still seems to have involved little coordination.
In a chaotic election people easily act foolishly, and people with motive and opportunity to cheat with slim chance of being caught sometimes do so–generally on an individual basis or with less conspiring than just a tiny handful of people working together.
Sometimes the only conspiracy is Jack looking the other way while Jill does something not quite right.
Incidentally, I’m still finding reasons to downgrade some claims to “Didn’t pan out.” E.g., in the big post:
Wisconsin, however, is looking better. I found some fact-checks of the 100k backdated ballot claim that look pretty good! (May not update till Thursday.)
It is clear that it is all too sloppy.