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Home » The 2020 election is still in the news

The 2020 election is still in the news

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember Maricopa County, Arizona, site of recounts and audits after Biden’s razor-thin win in that state? Here’s the latest from the ever-so-slowly grinding wheels of justice:

“We have reached the conclusion that the 2020 election in Maricopa County revealed serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raises questions about the 2020 election in Arizona,” said an “interim report” issued today by [Arizona] Attorney General Mark Brnovich…

The 12-page report, reviewed by Secrets, did not condemn the county’s handling of the election outright but raised enough questions about voter identification, ballot handling, and counting to prompt Brnovich to call for a vast tightening of the rules.

It also revealed that he is readying criminal and civil fraud charges against some individuals the attorney general’s Election Integrity Unit has probed…

Among the key findings in his report…:

–Maricopa officials were not cooperative with his demands for information.

–In many cases, election officials were given less than five seconds to verify voter signatures on file with ballots filed early.

–The number of ballots nullified because of problems dropped even though those filed nearly doubled in 2020.

–There were “multiple violations” in how about 20% of ballots in drop boxes were handled and delivered to election offices.

–Some $8 million in outside funds and grants were used in the vote count, now illegal under a recently passed law. Notably, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife funded more than half of that.

Speaking of Zuckerberg, please take a look at this report on Pennsylvania in the 2020 election [emphasis mine]:

With a series of PowerPoint slides, Shepherd revealed to lawmakers that beginning in July 2020, consultants working for leftist organizations coordinated with local election officials and Democrat Gov.Tom Wolf’s office to lobby five blue counties to apply for these private grants. While the grants originated with the nominally non-partisan Center for Tech and Civic Life—an organization that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s private foundation later infused with some $350 million in cash—emails reveal that a main consultant involved in targeting select counties, Marc Solomon, worked for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, or the CSME…

While the right-to-know requests revealed the targeted lobbying of blue counties, there were no emails showing any outreach to core Republican counties until after September 1, 2020. That proves significant, according to Shepherd’s testimony, because when the summer-time targeting of Democratic strongholds took place, the Zuckbucks cash infusion to the CTCL had not yet been announced. Without that cash, there may never have been a chance for the red counties to obtain any funds. (Shepherd also questioned where the earlier CTCL funding came from—something apparently still unknown.)

But even after the new funds came in, the Democrat counties still received a substantially higher cut of the $22.5 million in grants spread across 23 counties…

Far from being an outlier, Pennsylvania’s experience matches the growing evidence seen in other states that the Zuckbucks and other leftist money funded state-run get-out-the-vote efforts for Biden. What makes Pennsylvania different, however, is that the emails connect the grant process to government actors and show the state’s collaboration with left-wing political activists to lobby Democrat-only counties. This evidence raises constitutional concerns under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

There are many ways to illegally influence an election, apparently. Trust the left to know about all of them and to be willing to employ them.

Then there’s this general summary of many of the important and suspect irregularities in the 2020 election. It’s long, but here’s an excerpt:

COVID-19 and Mail-in Ballots: When the pandemic struck early in 2020, democracy assistance providers in the United States and other Western nations responded almost immediately. By April of 2020 USAID had produced a paper highlighting how authoritarian leaders and other malign influences might use the pandemic to undermine democracy and human rights, and provided advice on how civil society groups overseas might protect against or mitigate these abuses. Subsequent papers by the foreign policy establishment focused on how election processes could be modified to protect voters while ensuring integrity during the pandemic. During 2020, USAID provided substantial assistance to many countries to facilitate COVID adaptation, ensuring in-person voting could be conducted safely and more or less on schedule.

Within the United States, however, the immediate electoral response to the pandemic was a push by one party for mail-in rather than in-person voting. It is well known among election specialists that mail-based voting is much more susceptible to fraud and abuse than in-person voting, but it was argued that the pandemic made mail-in voting necessary (despite the examples of safe in-person voting from other countries). The new mass mail-in voting processes were conflated with existing systems for absentee voting, but the new systems lacked the checks and security features developed over generations for absentee voting. In the event, the public-health fears proved unfounded, as much of the country did vote in person without appreciably affecting the overall incidence of the disease.

In many parts of the country, matching a signature on a voter list with that on an absentee ballot was the only way to verify the identity of the voter. To handle the huge number of mail-in ballots compared to previous elections, signature matching processes were changed or eliminated without proper transparency or consideration, shortcuts were taken and safeguards dropped, which weakened security and diminished confidence in the validity of millions of ballots in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Mail-in or absentee ballots lacking an outer security envelope would normally be ruled invalid, but in Pennsylvania they were accepted, contrary to international practice and norms.

In most elections worldwide, mail-in ballots must be postmarked by a specified date (usually Election Day) to be counted, but in Wisconsin and Michigan employees of the United States Postal Service were instructed to backdate late arriving ballots so they could still be counted.

Mail-in ballots also facilitated a practice called “ballot harvesting,” in which political operatives go door to door picking up ballots from homeowners. This undermines the secrecy of the ballot and introduces opportunities for intimidation and vote buying, and in places like senior homes and apartment blocks enables one person to collect, fill in, and submit numerous ballots. Ballot harvesting decreases the security and credibility of election processes and is consequently contrary to international best practices.

Voter Registration and Voter ID: The U.S. government has provided hundreds of millions of dollars through its foreign assistance to support voter registration processes in other countries. An accurate voter list and effective voter ID are seen as essential for deterring malpractice and cheating, and for enhancing voter confidence in the integrity of the process. American foreign policy also promotes the Open Election Data Initiative, which advocates internationally for transparent and publicly accessible election data.
Domestically, again, the picture is quite different. The average accuracy of state-maintained voter lists is far below what would be considered minimally acceptable overseas. The update process is often non-transparent, and some states outsource their list maintenance to a private organization funded by a politically partisan billionaire. Many states restrict public access to some election data, and charge exorbitant fees for data they do release, limiting the public’s ability to verify the process, and violating international norms.

This is stuff we already knew, but it’s a good reminder and summary.

Comments

The 2020 election is still in the news — 27 Comments

  1. “This is stuff we already knew,”

    The gist was known very early, what we are doing now is filling in the details.
    Which was properly the job of the Attorneys General of the United States and the several states.

    https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2020/12/bill-barr-is-dead-to-me.html

    I’ve been a loyal defender, but I can’t abide this:

    AG Barr to AP: DOJ Has No Evidence of Fraud That Would Change Election Outcome (LINK)

    I’ve seen plenty enough evidence of fraud sufficient to change the election outcome. I don’t care that he qualifies his statement with a “so far.”

    “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.
    …
    Barr didn’t name Powell specifically but said: “There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said.

    He said people were confusing the use of the federal criminal justice system with allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits. He said such a remedy for those complaints would be a top-down audit conducted by state or local officials, not the U.S. Justice Department.

    “There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and people don’t like something they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate,’” Barr said.

    He said first of all there must be a basis to believe there is a crime to investigate.

    “Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations and. And those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”

    ADDENDUM: Just to be clear, my judgment won’t change no matter what happens with Durham and the Russia Hoax. I don’t apologize for being pro-Barr and defending him–he has in many ways been an exemplary AG. But this statement runs against against clear evidence and is unjustifiable.
    …
    Again, I want to be clear. I understand–as I say in the comments–that in many cases of election hanky panky DoJ may not have jurisdiction. I’m thinking here especially of the many very questionable decisions made by state and local courts and government officials. Nevertheless, these decisions were highly questionable–both legally and because they tended to strongly encourage fraudulent voting– and they were unquestionably partisan. To make blanket statements about no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome–I paraphrase but, I think, fairly–was reckless and unfair in the circumstances. Statements like that are bound to be misunderstood by non-lawyers, even with Barr’s “so far” caveat. Statements like that are bound to be used and misused by a collusive media. It was very badly done.

  3. AesopFan:

    The problem is that it is virtually impossible to obtain “evidence of fraud that would change election outcome.” Unless Barr adds that little tidbit, he is being disingenuous. How could such evidence emerge? All we can ever know is that there are “x” number of suspect ballots in a state. We have no ability to determine which ballots those are and who received votes in those ballots. Once the ballots are separated from their envelopes it cannot be done.

  4. We’ll never “know”, of course.
    But there’s enough evidence to be comfortable saying “I believe the election was stolen”.

  5. “…to be comfortable…”

    I don’t believe that any thinking person can have any doubt about it.

    (FWIW, my favorite, cute ‘LEGAL’ tactic/trick is the one that goes like this:
    Before the elections: “YOU CAN’T DEMAND THAT KIND OF LEGAL OVERSIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTIONS.
    IF YOU BELIEVE THERE’S A PROBLEM YOU HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTIONS ARE OVER AND THEN BRING IT UP!!

    After the elections: “YOU CAN’T DEMAND THAT KIND OF LEGAL OVERSIGHT AFTER THE ELECTIONS ARE ALREADY OVER.
    YOU SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT IT UP BEFORE THE ELECTIONS WERE HELD!! )

  7. “But there’s enough evidence to be comfortable saying “I believe the election was stolen”.”

    Actually “believe’s” got nothing to do with it. It was stolen flat out and going away. No question about it.

  8. At least as important in the long term is that, at the national level, neither party is interested in effective reforms. Were it otherwise, the GOPe would already be offering bills to implement Voter ID nationally and ensure that states have to comply with Voter ID requirements.

    Simply from a political power POV, what could not be more important than acting to reduce the ability of the other party to effectively and decisively commit electoral fraud?

  9. GvdL: “Actually “believe’s” got nothing to do with it. It was stolen flat out …”

    If a CNN or NYT reporter said “Fine. Prove it.”, you would not be able to do so. There’s stacks of evidence but until someone confesses you wouldn’t be able to prove it in a court of law.
    That’s all I meant.

  10. Having confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the election was stolen, may we move to the question of whether the illegitimate head of the executive branch is a pedophile? I’ve seen opinions – videos, since scrubbed by YouTube (“community standards”) – by psychologists who say his actions are typical grooming behavior. Moreover, has the influence of the Groomer-in-Chief emboldened such behavior among society in general?

  11. “If a CNN or NYT reporter said “Fine. Prove it.”, you would not be able to do so.”

    I don’t want to prove it. I just want to hit them upside the head with a 2×4.

    Plus don’t have to “prove it”:

    Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
    Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
    Everybody knows the war is over
    Everybody knows the good guys lost
    Everybody knows the fight was fixed

  12. Barr and the SE MI Attorney knew that there was significant ballot fraud at TCF. I got that from someone in that office. They had audio evidence of a batch of 5000+ false ballots. Barr ordered the investigation to be stopped. I believe it was November 8th.

    The most significant thing that we all learned is how the establishment Republicans also ignored the fraud and refused to investigate. Many have elected to go on to greener pastures like Upton. This is the warm up to 2024. We are honing our methods, training our workers and candidates. There is grim determination with my fellow patriots. Last week I was at the Trump rally and his two endorsed candidates gave strong performances particularly Kristina Karamo. You should hear her speech. It is a treat. I was at her kick off announcement and knew she was someone special.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/star-born-savage-angel-kristina-karamo-steals-night-president-trumps-massive-michigan-rally-video/

    Trump was in fine form that night. He seems to be getting more energized.

  13. Our tutorial on what it means for something to be “over” is ongoing. In a sense, everything that has ever happened is “over”. Ah, but the consequences. If nothing is done about the 2020 election theft, those will surely fall upon both the perpetrators and those with the power and responsibility to effect a remedy but lack the will to do so.

    So far we have the tanking economy and pedophile plague. Those will likely worsen until the underlying issue is addressed.

  14. Ballot by mail has effectively disenfranchised some voters or at least eliminated the secret ballot in some places. In Chicago, the Democrat machine has joined forces with the drug gangs to get out the vote. See Chicago Mag article.

    When the ballots show up in the mail, the friendly neighborhood gang enforcers show up to collect them. Wouldn’t want anyone making mistakes filling them out or forgetting to mail them back.

  15. This thread is the closest to being relevant, as the election was the culmination of the attacks on President Trump and his supporters, and I think you all should read Doc Zero’s latest essay.
    He describes the taxonomy of conservatives as a prelude to ripping out their throats en masse.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1512412070104424448.html

    There is a part of the conservative sphere that has always felt populism is the ultimate sin, only the Left should be allowed to fight culture wars, and genuine conservative grassroots movements should be immediately run down with rhetorical lawn mowers.

    There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.

    Some remain convinced there is a crucial group of “moderates” and “independents” in the electorate that will abandon Republicans forever if they fight the way left-wingers do. Perpetual fear of offending indy voters explains a great deal of conservative timidity since the 90s.

    Some believe they can win ideological struggles without sullying themselves with filthy politics. If they just hold their principles high and visibly disdain effective political strategy, people will someday realize the Right has been right all along, and rally to its banner.

    Some are quietly fatalist, believing conservatives can never hope to prevail against the absolute media domination of the Left or the vast power it wields through government institutions like schools. Engaging on cultural issues is like challenging Godzilla to a cage match.

    For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.

    The Left must always be regarded as the loyal opposition, good people who want the best for everyone, but are simply mistaken about how to achieve these noble ends. Accusations of malevolence or hidden agendas against the Left are denounced as ugly conspiracy mongering.

    This attitude holds among timid conservatives even as the Left wages all-out war and loudly asserts there are no honest, sincere, good-faith arguments against its agenda. Is there a political argument on the Left that doesn’t begin with denying the good intentions of opponents?

    Run through the list of top issues: [AF:we know them all]
    …

    A great deal of the cancerous growth of the Left in the post-Reagan era was facilitated by this conservative mindset. No matter how blatant the Left was about its agenda, noticing that agenda and questioning its motives was considered rude, improper, and out of the mainstream.

    You don’t want to fight an ugly culture war? Well, guess what? EVERYTHING is culture. Everything either feeds into culture, or is shaped by it. The Left gets that, and deployed legions of paid shock troops to capture institutions and corporations while you kept your hands clean.

    Too much of the conservative commentariat is exactly that: commentators. They were comfortable remarking on the passing scene, not changing it. “Activism” was a dirty word, something the OTHER guys did. Tossing harmless Nerf footballs of theory around op-ed pages was good enough.

    Now we’ve arrived at the final destination, the fatal terrain, the fabled Hill to Die On: political and sexual indoctrination of goddamn FIVE YEAR OLDS using public money and state institutions – and it’s STILL not time to take the gloves off, huh? Still time for tone policing?

    Still out of bounds to ask what the Left’s full agenda looks like, to question the motives of people who do this to children – and those who defend them? They think nothing of denying the very humanity of all who oppose them – and you insist WE must remain polite and respectful?

    It’s as if some conservatives fear the Left’s true agenda is so hideous – as carefully laid out by lefties themselves – that if we expose it and speak honestly about it, the public will turn against US for putting such ugliness into their Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.

    You’ve got a legion of parents out there, a real honest-to-gosh grassroots movement, sickened and disgusted by what they’ve learned about public education, enraged at the way they were treated by the establishment when they raised their voices. They come from every demographic.

    What that grassroots army of parents needs right now is REPRESENTATION. They’re looking for candidates to support at every level. And they need intellectual firepower, ideological support, a movement that understands their concerns and offers a philosophy to illuminate them.

    That’s where you’re supposed to come in, conservatives – from activists to professional pundits. Or do we get another Tea Party debacle where the grassroots gets trashed by the establishment and left to the mercy of grifters because they threatened to rock the boat too hard? /end

  16. Practical advice on redressing the grievance of the stolen election.

    https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/04/07/politics-culture-and-auto-immune/#comment-839244

    accordingtohoyt [Sarah] says:April 8, 2022 at 1:24 pm
    I still say we should put the Junta in shipping containers and send them to China*.
    I believe people should get what they paid for.
    Okay, so Brandon might need to be divided among three countries. But I say send different members of the crime family different places.

    *It’s not like I’m saying it shouldn’t have air holes, or it should be filled with water.
    Okay, I say that sometimes, but I don’t MEAN it.

  17. It would be “nice” if chain-of-custody would be applied to mail-in ballots…this, at least, to make it appear as though there is some supervision and control…
    Similarly, it would be “nice” if signatures on mail-in ballots were not only mandatory but also verified…
    And it would be “nice” if ballots were kept under lock and key for up to two years after the election just to make sure that some kind of post-hoc scrutiny/verification could take place (though without the two previous measures, such verification would be practically impossible…but still, just for the sake of form…)

    In fact, lots of things would be “nice”, alas; but no doubt such measures would be deemed by the usual suspects to be “absolutely unnecessary” at best—otherwise, “racist”.

    Speaking of “racist”…there are certain people one simply cannot criticize….
    “Report: Ballot Harvesters in Georgia Stopped at Democrat Offices In between Runs to Drop Boxes During 2020 Election”—
    https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/06/report-ballot-harvesters-in-georgia-stopped-at-democrat-offices-in-between-runs-to-drop-boxes-during-2020-election/

    But then at least Stacey Abrams has “motive”, having been so blatantly “robbed” of her self-proclaimed “victory” in 2016.

    (For the perennially puzzled, it helps to just think of it all as “reparations”…which is, essentially, the entire rationale for the madness currently engulfing the US….)

  18. Here’s an interesting development:
    “Pakistan ousts Prime Minister for ‘failing’ his country;
    Experts say former cricket player Imran Khan ‘badly failed’ his country, failing to lower inflation and create new jobs.”—
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/325564
    Gosh, if it can happen in Pakistan(!)…maybe there’s a glimmer of hope in other places…
    (Maybe…)

  20. My guess is Khan is the fall guy / scapegoat for the failing Pakistan economy.

    The real challenge is the real power behind the throne that runs the country, the military, can’t be touched.

  21. I still think that the censorship and publishing of propaganda which definitely did happen was more than enough to swing the election even if you discount the idea of election irregularities.

    Actually at this point I think the censorship of the laptop story is worse than I originally though. I was thinking the media didn’t investigate it because they were worried it would hurt Biden and were worried they’d find out it was real if they did. At this point I now think they didn’t investigate because they are already familiar with Biden and knew him to be a corrupt PoS and knew they needed to protect him from everything.(IE A difference of not investigating because you’re worried you’ll find out it’s true vs you figure it’s almost certainly true so doing whatever you can do to defend your guy which is worse.)

  23. We know that enough people believe that the 2020 election was stolen [with plenty of evidence] that it casts the legitimacy of our electoral system both then and in the future in doubt. We know that the so-called “opposition” party that had the election stolen from them actually aided and abetted in the process and has done nothing to try to return said legitimacy. We will know in 7 months if the electoral system will ever have any claim to legitimacy anymore.

    I note that it is a truism that in 1776; 1/3 of Americans were Patriots, 1/3 were Tories, and 1/3 just wanted to be left alone. That was enough for a resort to force of arms and a literal revolution. Now ponder both what percentage of Americans believe in the legitimacy of elections anymore AND have any belief that the equal rule of law has any hope of recovering that legitimacy and punishing those who destroyed it. Compare that with the figures in 1776. A very dangerous game is being played by those who rule us.

    Subotai Bahadur

  24. “A very dangerous game is being played by those who rule us.”
    Not very dangerous so far. And not palpably dangerous if you don’t study history. Do you think these enemies ponder history? Are they long term wise or short term cunning? I’d go with the latter.

  25. “Why would you engage in ANY ballot fraud if it did not affect the election?”
    For practice, perhaps.
    Plus, if there is no penalty, why not?
    Our side keeps saying “Come the Revolution, you’ll be sorry!” Their side yawns.

  26. It doesn’t matter if there was cheating what matters is the process makes cheating too easy. Mail ballots, ballot harvesting, which when there are mail in ballots happens even when it is illegal. The process needs to be in person for 99.9% of people and on a single day for 99%. Ballots that are left sitting uncounted are vulnerable to abuse. Even if abuse doesn’t happen the losers will always wonder and that is bad. We don’t want anyone to wonder if the election was real. When cheating becomes to much of a forgone conclusion then people will consider and perhaps begin voting by other means.

  27. Wisconsin alone was a source of hundreds of thousands of suspect ‘voter registrations’ and ‘indefinitely confined’ ballots. 2018 was a practice run – where Scott Walker’s victory was whittled away mysteriously by last minute ‘discoveries’ of new absentee ballots. The fact that he didn’t challenge such egregious fraud makes him a Messianic RINO cuck.

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