Part 2
Ninety-nine sworn affidavits on the wall, take one down, pass it around…
One of the more specific claims, something that looks like evidence, is that many sworn affidavits from e******n watchers allege irregularities. I looked at one account of this from Georgia reported by the right-wing junk news[5] website, Epoch Times. The watcher said that mail b****ts appeared not to be folded, and in fact the bubbles were so perfectly marked that it looked like they were printed by a machine. It’s rather obvious what happened: Georgia’s in person v****g is done with a touch screen that then prints the v**er’s se******n on a paper b****t, and they indeed are perfectly filled bubbles. The e******n watcher just didn’t understand what he was looking at.
Now the Trump campaign in Michigan has presented in court over 100 sworn affidavits. The Detroit Free Press, known for factual reporting,[6] says:
Signed and sworn statements from more than 100 people included in a new lawsuit filed in a Michigan federal court by the campaign of President Donald Trump allege misconduct in the processing and counting of b****ts in Detroit.
Some claimed that they were denied access to watch counting because they were told to stand six feet back due to C****-** precautions. They claimed they were barred from a room, that the Free Press documented already had 134 watchers in it. One swore that some in the room wore Black L***s M****r t-shirts and one watcher allegedly was called a “Karen.” Another said they saw a b****t for Trump opened by a worker who then “rolled his eyes,” I suppose in an obvious attempt to change the mark to Biden through “deep state” necromancy, although the watcher did not say the v**e actually changed. What seems odd is that these watchers didn’t complain at the time when they thought they saw something irregular. Another account said that many of the watchers did not attend a required training session on their role and what to look for. I suggest reading the footnoted Detroit Free Press article for a great deal more detail.
A Michigan state judge “struck down Republican e******n observers’ allegations of impropriety and v***r f***d as ‘incorrect and not credible’ speculation not backed up by evidence.”[7]
The Texas social worker
The Secretary of State of Texas put out a big news story about a social worker at a care facility who has been charged with filling out v***r r**********n applications in the name of some sixty odd people who did not request assistance, some of whom are legally incompetent. This is a real charge, although not yet proven. We do not know whether the social worker is a Democrat or a Republican. While this is a real criminal charge, it doesn’t change any v**es, and for what it’s worth, the social worker maintains her innocence.
V***r F***d
There is one case of v***r f***d for 2020 reported in the press so far where an arrest was made. A Pennsylvania man attempted to v**e in the name of his deceased mother. The man was a registered Republican.
Supercomputer is changing v**es
The current story is, according to Snopes:
A supercomputer called "Hammer" and a software program called "Scorecard" are being used to alter v**e counts in the U.S. p**********l e******n of 2020.[8]
Snopes says it’s false.
[OK, this is getting weird. I was on the Wikipedia article on D******n V****g Systems, and stumbled on a paragraph about this:
In a related h**x, Dennis Montgomery, a software designer with a history of making dubious claims, asserted that a government supercomputer program was used to switch v**es from Trump to Biden on v****g machines.
Dennis Montgomery, aka “The Man Who H**xed the Pentagon,” is someone well known to me as a supplier of “junk” information to birther sheriff Joe Arpaio. Deja vu for sure.
Former U. S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security chief Chris Krebs called the story “nonsense.”[9]
Dead v**ers
V***r f***d has been around since the beginning of the country, and people have v**ed in the name of deceased individuals, but it’s fairly uncommon now. Some may find this report of the investigation into dead v**ers in South Carolina instructive on what errors lead to the mistaken idea that the dead had v**ed. The current fraud claim is that dead v**ers v**ed in Michigan, despite Halloween being 3 days before the e******n. The Michigan case is the same as in South Carolina — a poll worker mistakenly checking in the living son who shares the name of his deceased father.[10] See also from the U. S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency:
Rumor Control | CISA
Mis- and disinformation can undermine public confidence in the e*******l process, as well as in our democracy. E******ns are administered by state and local officials who implement numerous safeguards to protect the security of your v**e pursuant to various state and federal laws and processes. This resource is designed to debunk common misinformation and disinformation narratives and themes that relate broadly to the security of e******n infrastructure and related processes. It is not intended to address jurisdiction-specific claims. Instead, this resource addresses e******n security rumors by describing common and generally applicable protective processes, security measures, and legal requirements designed to protect against or detect large-scale security issues related to e******n infrastructure and processes. You can learn more about mis- and disinformation from CISA’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force . Click an icon below to go directly to that section. New Reality: B****t handling procedures protect against intentional or unintentional b****t destruction. Rumor: B****ts can easily be destroyed without detection, preventing them from being counted. Get the Facts: States have b****t processing and tabulation safeguards designed to ensure each b****t cast in the e******n can be correctly counted. State procedures often include robust chain-of-custody procedures, auditable logging requirements, and canvass processes. E******n officials use these security measure to check that v**es are accurately accounted for during processing and counting. Per federal law, all b****ts, applications, and registrations related to e******ns for federal offices, such as those for President and Vice President, Members of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, must be retained and preserved for 22 months from the date of the e******n. In addition, many states also require specific state and local security protocols for stored b****ts, such as storage in a secure vault featuring double lock systems that can only be opened when authorized representatives from both political parties are present. This requirement is intended to ensure all b****ts and relevant records, such as v***r r**********ns, cannot be discarded, but are available in case they are needed for recounts or audits to resolve any potential issues. E******n officials, based on state and local law, may discard non-relevant materials, such as addressed envelopes or duplicate applications. Taken out of context, images or video of e******n officials discarding papers may appear suspicious , but are likely depicting legal discarding of these non-relevant e******n materials. Useful Sources: Reality: V****g systems undergo testing from state and/or federal v****g system testing programs, which certify v****g system hardware and software. Rumor: V****g system software is not reviewed or tested and can be easily manipulated. Get the Facts: Before use in e******ns, v****g systems undergo hardware and
https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol#rumor21The walking dead
President Trump’s campaign tweeted the names four v**ers in Georgia who they say were long deceased. A local news station found two of them[11] still alive and kicking, and the station is chasing down the other two.
Georgia has more recently reported that they have investigated all of the “dead v**er” cases and found all but two of them to be untrue, and the remaining two are still under investigation. Dead v**ers are usually clerical errors where the poll worker checks in the wrong person.
The glitch that s***e the e******n
Workers in one Michigan county failed to install a software update that resulted in an erroneous preliminary count. E******n officials noticed the problem and it was fixed. The human error was limited to one county in Michigan, not all 83 counties, and not across the country. The fact that it was quickly caught proves that e******n officials in Michigan are checking and cross checking things.[12]
And while we’re glitching, there was a software problem in Georgia that crashed some v****g machines, but it didn’t affect any totals. The internet says, without evidence, there are glitches all over the country. Georgia hired an independent certified v****g security company to audit the D******n machines, and they found them OK.
Benford’s Law
Benford’s Law is a property of large numbers of samples from a normal distribution. It says, for example, that you would expect the leading digit to be “1” about 30% of the time. It has been used to detect fraudulent data. Claims appear on the internet that say v**e counts in various localities in 2020 violate Benford’s Law. The fallacy here is that Benford’s Law only works when the sample is unbiased, which is not the case with e******n data because the size of the precinct limits the possible first digits in v**e totals. For example, my precinct had 822 v**es, and there’s basically no chance that either Trump or Biden would have a count starting with a 1.
A real political scientist looked at the claims and found them not valid.[13]
Comment from David Massie to this Post:
To be accurate the other big reason Benford’s law does not apply because it requires the numbers to spread over several orders of Magnitude to get to that percentage of 1s. Almost every precinct having under total 1000 v**es means it definitely shouldn’t apply.
Anonymous “Data scientist”
And then there is the tweet of someone who received a report from an anonymous person forwarding a report by an anonymous “data scientist” who said the data in several states in 2020 is anomalous.[14] There are charts and graphs galore, along with boldface assertions (do real scientists use boldface?), but there’s no math or science in the report, just “here is a graph, look at it, let me suggest that it’s not right.” It looks totally amateurish to me.
A real statistician might have more to say, but my objection to this presentation is that it ignores the fact that e******n data arrives in clumps from different parts of a state, that there will often be a divide where early results come from counties with one characteristic (urban/rural) and later results from another and that v**es by mail are different in most states from v**es on person. A real scientist doesn’t just argue for a hypothesis, but also examines and argues to exclude alternative explanations, which this report does not. It’s not science.
Anonymous poll worker in Nevada
“Do you, Anonymous, swear to tell the t***h, the whole t***h, and nothing but the t***h?” OK, so this alleged poll worker claims that she saw e******n f***d outside a Nevada polling place all out in the open and labeled, but ignored her duty as an e******n official to report the misconduct, appears anonymously in disguise on a right-wing TV segment, and we’re supposed to believe it? She even claimed to be wearing a “uniform” which poll workers do not do. Was an affidavit really submitted to the Department of Justice? Inquiring minds want to know.[15]
Pennsylvania backdated postmarks
A Pennsylvania postal worker, Richard Hopkins, signed a sworn affidavit saying that a postmaster in Erie, PA, ordered backdated postmarks on b****ts. Mr. Hopkins subsequently took it all back, and recanted his statement. So was he lying then or lying now?
The accused postmaster responded:
The Erie postmaster, Rob Weisenbach, denied the allegations as 100% false and said the claims were made "by an employee that was recently disciplined multiple times."
Top News, Latest headlines, Latest News, World News & U.S News
UPI.com is temporarily unavailable Last Updated: May 12, 2021 4:26pm Please check back at a later time for updates We apologize for the inconvenience
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/11/10/Pennsylvania-postal-worker-recants-allegations-of-b****t-tampering/6511605053437/Not too sharpie
Some claims circulated that v**es marked with a sharpie don’t count in Arizona. It’s not true with a correctly designed b****t, which the ones in Arizona were.
127,000 v**es appear out of the blue (pun intended) for Biden in Michigan.
This was a data entry error when updating a graphic used in e******n night coverage. It wasn’t actually what Michigan tabulated. When the error was noticed, it was fixed.
More v**es than v**ers
This one is all over the Internet, and like rumors, the story changes with each retelling. Originally it was told about Wisconsin, where it was said that about 100,000 more v**es were counted than registered v**ers. This was indeed fraud, fraud on the part of the one telling the story because the registered v**er number they used was f**e, about half a million smaller than the real number of 3,684,726.
The question was resurrected on Quora about Michigan, claiming that 8.1 million v**ed in Michigan but only 7.8 million are registered. In fact, Michigan only had 5,538,212 v**es for President in 2020 and 8,133,273 are registered.
Version 2 of this claim said that some precincts in Michigan had more v**es than registered v**ers. Michigan, and other states, don’t send absentee b****ts back to the precincts where the v**er is registered, but rather to what they call Absent V**er Counting Boards. There are 134 of them in Detroit. None of these have any registered v**ers since all they do is count batches of absentee b****ts from the precincts where the v**ers are actually registered, so all of them will have more v**es counted than registered v**ers.
E******n watchers barred in Pennsylvania
It’s true that many Republican e******n watchers were barred from watching the processing in Pennsylvania, because the processing rooms were already full of Republican e******n watchers.
This type of allegation was repeated in a Trump lawsuit in Michigan that watchers were excluded from a room that already had 134 watchers in it.
Non resident v**ers in Nevada
Sometimes people who have recently moved from a state v**e in their former state. That’s probably not legal. Three thousand of them, allegedly, moved from Nevada. Many of them were military service members, legally entitled to v**e in Nevada. As for the rest, there is no way to know how many or who they v**ed for.[16]I claim, without evidence, that all these illegal v**es were
https://kevinsfavo