A Round-Up on Electoral Fraud
Introduction
Last Friday, I tweeted this little something:
My source for this number was testimony before the Pennsylvania legislature last Wednesday, and my tweet was promptly answered in various ways. One observer said that I should do the white supremacy thing of getting my facts straight before opining, another basically said that Rudy Giuliani says a lot of things doesn’t he?, some countered with very different and contradictory numbers on the mail-in ballots, another said that the original source for my correct number had been scrubbed by the state of Pennsylvania, and so on. Now I had known that the thing was going to be disputed, which is why I said reportedly, and the proffered datum was simply my set up for the white supremacy joke anyhow.
But the way this tweet functioned — like chum in the water — does illustrate the serious nature of the situation we are in, and so I want to talk about what it means for an entire population to question and debate the integrity of their electoral system. In addition, I want to offer some suggestions on how you and I might evaluate an election like this from our seat here in the nosebleeds.
As this is a round-up, allow me to refer you to these additional resources, here, here, and here.
What Should Go Without Saying . . .
For my purposes with this first point, we may divide our political population in two broad groups — and I do not mean Trump supporters and Biden supporters. Rather I would divide them into the “win at all costs” group and the “win by any honest means” group. The former group would define a satisfactory election as one in which their guy won, and the latter group sees the integrity of the process as being far more important than their preferred policies being implemented, or their preferred candidate taking office. Another name for these two groups would be partisans and citizens.
There is a partisanship at all costs contingent out there, on both the Trump side and the Biden side. As I observe this, it seems to me that the Trump partisans will believe anything that promises a win, while the Biden partisans will do anything to get to a win. That is where the evidence points.
If the allegations of electoral fraud have any merit, then obviously the Biden all-costers took some massive initiative in this one, and that is what the debate is about. Did massive fraud, from the Biden side, occur? The answer is yes, but lying is lying, whether it is about the votes or about the fraud. But if you allege fraud, in either direction, you shouldn’t expect anyone to take any action on the basis of the allegation alone. It needs to be proven.
In the meantime, there is a temptation that the honest Biden supporters and the honest Trump supporters both share, and that is to relegate honest and reasonable questions from the other side as simply attempts to steal the election. So let’s get all the evidence out on the table, and let’s sort through it.
Honest Biden supporters should say that they don’t want Biden to win if he did it on the basis of fraud. Honest Trump supporters should say the same. If I had a button in front of me that ensured an election with no cheating in it, would I push the button? Regardless of who would win? I would ask everyone involved in this debate to commit to the same.
And over here among genuine conservatives that I read, I have seen a good deal of that kind of honesty. These are people who would appalled by virtually everything a Biden administration would stand for and/or do. Steven Crowder would be a good example, as he is taking a cautious “wait and see” attitude regarding Sidney Powell’s much ballyhooed kraken. And it was from the good conservative folks at Powerline that I learned that the Trump complaint about many Michigan townships had apparently confused numerous. places in Minnesota for places in Michigan. In charity, let us assume a volunteer flown in from Texas who had trouble distinguishing MN from MI, only one letter different, and it all looked like tundra to him.
In the same way, I believe that a Biden administration would be a royal disaster for our country, and yet I would prefer to see him take office than to have Trump remain in office by falsely alleging a rigged election. If Biden is inaugurated because he won, then we should accept that, and pray that God deliver us in some other way.
This commitment to honesty should be the baseline assumption for every upright participant in the debate. But also be aware that this is a debate over electoral fraud that tens of thousands of people are participating in, and which millions are watching. If someone throws out an argument (about say, the number of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania), to respond to it by alleging gross irresponsibility simply because you read something different somewhere else is a little bit like demanding that the junior high cafeteria food fight you are involved with stop the festivities immediately because someone across from you threw a plastic cup of yogurt that was a week past its expiration date.
I do want the dispute settled honestly, and by the appropriate authorities. If the Pennsylvania legislature re-assumes its prerogative to oversee the appointment of electors, and they are listening to all the arguments, pro and con, I want them to throw out all bogus facts, data, and/or factoids. In such a setting, if Rudy were to say something manifestly false, I think it would be entirely appropriate for him to be answered then and there, and to be regaled with pointed questions about why he said whatever it was. But make sure to listen while he is answering. And don’t say that it was “debunked” because somebody with a different dog in the fight said that it was.
We must always remember Prov. 18:17 in situations like this, but we must also remember that there are sometimes Prov. 18:17 volleys. One side speaks, the other side answers, and then the first side counters.
In the meantime, I do acknowledge that some particular allegations seem more plausible to me because of how I am reading the broader narrative. I am not what they call objective (I don’t think anybody is that), but it is crucial to be honest. For a little bit more on that, see below.
I know that this is the last day of November, and that some might think that I am currently slipping back into my usual practice of qualifying things in my most reasonable manner. But that allegation only works if I am trying to be a Trump hack. If I am a citizen, which I am, then this section is an unqualified attack on the actual hacks from whatever side. If we lose our commitment to the truth, we have lost far more than an election.
In order to track with the points I will make below, you don’t have to be a Pennsylvania poll watcher, peering over somebody’s shoulder in Philly. No. Have a seat, wherever you are, and just consider the following.
You Can Tell the Election was Lopsided Because the Debate About the Election is Lopsided
Let me begin where we are, in the middle of a convoluted debate, and from this place, here is an observation. We can know that there was massive cheating in the election because there is massive cheating in the debate about whether there was cheating in the election. What do I mean? In the massive debate going on about electoral fraud, we are not engaging in this debate on a level playing field, not at all. Let me give you an example involving Erick Erickson, as he weighs in on one side of our ongoing debate.
My point here is not to engage with the content of Erick’s argument. Some of my other points later on will address some of the substance of Erick’s claim, but that is not my point here. What I want to point out here is something that will be glaringly obvious as soon as I point it out. And that is the fact that in sending out that tweet, Erick was running absolutely no risk of his tweet being censored by Twitter. He is not going to wind up in Facebook jail for saying anything like that, is he?
But let us say that someone else, a responsible somebody, wanted to reply to him. They wanted to engage with Erick, in order to argue that Dominion Voting Systems is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and they wanted to cite facts and figures. The chances run from excellent to outstanding that such a person, no matter who they are, would be bound and gagged and summarily dismissed.
So if you want to persuade a large number of conservative people that the fix is in, all you have to do is behave in exactly the way that Big Tech has behaved throughout this entire political season. But you can’t have the fix be in when it comes to discussions of COVID, or lock downs, or China, or Hunter Biden’s laptop, and then all of a sudden have the trust come flooding back just because we are talking about an election. Especially if you are still running your regime of hard core censorship. Conservatives have been debating in this rigged system of debate for years, and so it doesn’t take very much to persuade us that we are also voting in a rigged system.
Right now the Establishment that is currently running our public discourse has about as much credibility with me as does a grease spot on the garage floor. Why should I take their word on anything?
At the same time, I do not mind someone of Erick’s caliber challenging us. Why would I mind that? I want the truth to come out in all of this. I want Erick to be able to make his point. But I also want Erick to recognize that his opponents no longer share his privileges when it comes to such debates, and this has had a dramatic impact on our perceptions of what is going on.
How could it not? It should affect our perceptions of what is going on.
The only thing left is for people to start calling us election deniers. “You know, like Holocaust deniers,” he helpfully added.
The Biden Campaign
Biden campaigned either like he didn’t want to win, or like he knew he had it in the bag. His campaign was the very definition of “dialing it in.” Some of this was obviously a function of his handlers wanting to keep the Gaffe Machine away from microphones, but why did they think they could afford to do that? Why did they nominate somebody that they knew they would have to carry across the finish line? Why did it not seem to matter to them that they would have to carry him across the finish line?
Because they knew they had the wherewithal to carry him across the finish line. They did have it in the bag. Everything was all lined up beforehand.
And So Then . . . the Biden Performance Proved Them Right
So Biden was the most hopelessly duddy candidate that can be imagined, see above, and yet he outperformed Obama’s 2008 performance by 10 million votes. I have commented on this PHEEnom before. If you remember that shining apotheosis of Obama in 2008, he it was who was going to stop the water from rising, he who was the one he had apparently been waiting for, he who was Hope and Change itself, he who accepted the nomination amidst Greek columns like the glorious Caesar he was going to be, and it was he who was the shooting star across our tawdry little firmament.
And that political Obamanaic lightening bolt was nothing compared to Biden from the Basement, the Victor from the Vault, the Winner from the Wine Cellar, the Juggernaut from the Jug.
The way people try to keep me in the dark, and with the way they keep shoveling manure on top of me, I think they must think I am a mushroom.
The Coattail Conundrum
We have ourselves a situation where the purported winning candidate had no coattails at all, and the purported losing candidate had really strong coattails. This is a political anomaly that requires explanation. We were promised a blue wave election, and that didn’t happen anywhere really. The only place the blue wave happened was in the presidential election, that weird zone of one Anomaly after Another.
Trump swept a bunch of new freshmen Republicans into the House, a solid basket full. That wasn’t supposed to happen. And then there is the small matter of the bellweather counties. There are something like 19 counties that have always gone to the presidential winner, like forever, and Trump won 18 of them. Hmmm.
There are anomalies everywhere. Shoot, I think we are standing on one.
Here’s another one. In the state legislatures, house gains by Republicans were significant: Arkansas (+3), California (+1), Florida (+5), Idaho (+2), Illinois (+1), Indiana (+4), Iowa (+6), Kansas (+3), Kentucky (+14), Maine (+7), Minnesota (+5), Montana (+9), Nevada (+3), New Hampshire (+46), New Mexico (+1), New York (+1), North Carolina (+4), North Dakota (+1). Ohio (+3), Oklahoma (+5), Oregon (+2), Rhode Island (+1), South Carolina (+3), South Dakota (+3), Vermont (+3), West Virginia (+18), and Wyoming (+2).
I am not sure what to call this, but it rhymes with. budblath.
The Democrats lost their veto proof majorities in Nevada and Vermont. And Republicans have veto proof majorities in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio,
Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
In short, it was a great night for Republicans everywhere . . . except for the top of the ticket that was making it happen. Things what make you go huh.
Benford’s Law
Here is a sane and judicious look at how Benford’s Law is used in detecting the possibility of fraud.
It turns out that in their natural habitat, raw numbers behave in a remarkable and predictable way, and it is very different than what numbers do when they are cooked. Accountants who are looking for fraud in large corporations, like they did with Enron, look for variations from Benford’s Law. That doesn’t tell them that fraud has in fact occurred, but it does tell them that it is a very real possibility, and it tells them where to look for the required explanation.
And if you look at the short video above, you will see that one of the places to look for electoral fraud is Pennsylvania. Follow the math.
Are You Kidding Me?
So then, we now conduct our voting by means of machines that are capable of being hooked up to the Internet. The state officials who allowed for this, and who also paid millions for these systems, are either wicked predators of the chumps, or they are themselves a cavalcade of said chumps. Hasn’t anybody around here heard of human nature?
Then there was that banana republic move of stopping the vote count right in the middle of things. A water main broke. Halley’s comet got in my eyes. The grass was wet. We couldn’t keep counting under such dire conditions. And we couldn’t resume counting until the pallets of ballots arrived.
See? That’s the kind of thing some people wish we wouldn’t say. Pallets of ballots indeed. They say that it is reckless to talk that way without proof. Okay. Say that I have a photo of the pallets arriving at 3 am. What should I do, friend? Upload it on Twitter?
Now if you are going to allege fraud, it is a serious thing, and you must have proof before any official action is taken. But you don’t require proof in order to raise reasonable questions. And, I hasten to add, these are all reasonable questions. And so I would say that so many anomalies have stacked up that by this point it is incumbent on those who were appointed to maintain election integrity to demonstrate for us, their boss, the people, that they have done so. These anomalies are not a conviction, simply an indictment. “And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward” (Luke 16:2).
Those in charge of elections in these disputed places have not protected our electoral processes, whether from fraud or from irresponsible allegations of fraud.
I am willing to hear good answers, honestly willing. But shut up, they explained is not a good answer. I find it unsatisfying somehow.
In Sum
So I do not accept the hypothesis that I am a lousy Christian because this whole thing seems more than a little fishy to me. If it is bad for our witness to be taken in by a lie, as per Erick’s thesis above, then let us not be taken in by a lie. Are we allowed to check?
And as we check, are we allowed to look at who has their thumb on the scales in the debate about the election? For perhaps such people would also be willing to put their thumb on the election itself. If the debate is rigged, why wouldn’t the rest of it be?
And then Biden campaigned in the most lackluster way imaginable, like he knew everything was all sewn up. He knew he had reinforcements in the bag. And campaigning in the lackadaisical and anemic way that he did, he still blew past Obama, running backwards effortlessly. And then, defying one political convention after another, he won a record-setting blowout with no coattails for the down ballot Democrats at all. Trump, on the other hand, the losing candidate, swept a bunch of new Republicans into the House. Makes you go huh. So then let us turn to the math guys. They apply Benford’s Law to the results in Pennsylvania, and the conclusion from the auditors is that these results are nuttier than squirrel poo. And then, to crown all of it, we find out that the voting machines in use all over the country are invitingly hackable, frontloadable, scootchable, thumbdriveable, and did I mention that they were invitingly so?
One Last Thing
This is really messy, and really obvious. But the fact that it is so obvious is not going to stop the dispute. And that is because we are no longer in a fight over whose preferred policies will be implemented. We are now in a fight over who is going to go to jail. That will tend to draw the dispute out. Trump’s performance was so unexpectedly strong that lots and lots of votes had to be hauled in quickly, in batches of 4800, or multiples of 4800. My, observe how Biden voters arrived in such disciplined regiments. Now that’s political organization.
So look for the dispute to descend to the level of Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch. “This is a deceased parrot.” “No, it isn’t.”