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mariacallous · 4 months

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The man charged with administering Arizona’s elections isn’t concerned about the state’s ability to securely hold elections. But he’s going to have to persuade millions of other people to feel the same way.

Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, was elected Arizona’s secretary of state in 2022. A lawyer who previously worked as a prosecutor in Colorado and Arizona, and served as the Maricopa County Recorder before taking office, Fontes must now take on the role of convincing the state’s voters that its elections are legitimate.

Arizona is possibly the market leader in ridiculous election conspiracies and deniers. After former president Donald Trump falsely claimed fraud following the 2020 election, a sham audit to investigate claims of election fraud was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity firm hired by the Arizona state Senate. Cyber Ninjas falsely claimed that 300 dead people voted; the firm shut down after refusing to release public records to comply with a court order.

In 2022, Arizona election workers faced violent threats, and Trump used technical glitches to stoke fear about the legitimacy of election results. Kari Lake, a prominent election denier who received Trump’s endorsement for governor, refused to concede after losing the election, and made multiple attempts to get the courts to overturn the result. (Lake is now running for Senate.)

Fontes already has his hands full in the lead-up to the 2024 election. In November, two Republican Arizona county officials, Peggy Judd and Terry Crosby, were indicted by the Arizona attorney general on felony charges of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. The charges stemmed from their alleged efforts to delay the certification of votes in the 2022 general election, citing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. (An attorney for Crosby told Reuters there was no crime and that his client will be vindicated. Judd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

In an interview with WIRED, Fontes spoke about his plans to protect election workers in 2024, his thoughts on generative AI and deepfakes, and what he thinks of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk’s knowledge of Arizona’s elections.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

WIRED: What is keeping you up at night?

Fontes: Well, the most critical things that are keeping me up at night don't have anything to do with the technology. It has to do with a lot of the unknowns out there. Human error being blown up by election denialists, by social media.

That's what's bothering me more than anything else. Our systems are quite good, we've got lots of checks and balances, we have a relatively decent grasp on what [threats] AI could pose. We're gonna stick with the basics in our trainings. We're gonna keep it as simple as possible for our voters so they can follow the instructions as easily and cleanly as possible.

At the end of the day, we've got to be ready for just about anything. So there's no one particular thing that's really keeping me up. It's sort of the universe of concerns that are kind of bouncing off of each other.

WIRED: I was at the Turning Point USA event this weekend, and Charlie Kirk [the founder of Turning Point USA] said onstage that elections in Arizona had become less secure. I'm wondering what you'd say to that?

Fontes: Charlie Kirk doesn't know shit about Arizona's election. So I don't know what he's talking about. Our elections are far more secure than they even were in 2020, which were the most secure elections that we've had. I'd like to hear why he thinks that. Where does he get his information from? What facts does he have to support that statement? Who has he actually spoken to in the election administration world? And why does he think that by increasing our security profile, working more closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement and technology officials, how that all makes our elections less secure?

Charlie Kirk is a grifter, who only stirs the pot for his own profit. And what he's doing is eroding the trust that Americans have in one another. That's his MO and he's free to do that under the First Amendment. But he's not paying any of the price and the consequences. He personally is shielded in his privilege, from the erosion of our democracy, from the lack of trust, and the fact that we've lost a lot of people because of the threats that his rhetoric brings to bear. So I think he should reconsider. Maybe potentially just supporting his assertions with some facts, that might be a good start.

WIRED: Can you explain why Arizona in particular attracted so many election conspiracy theories?

Fontes: One of the things that is important [to] realize about Arizona is that we are historically a place where, I will kindly say, free thinking is kind of a normal thing. You know, we don't have generations-long institutions that have really locked themselves into power for long periods of time. We don't have any royal families who made millions and millions of dollars here locally, and then invested locally. We are an amalgam of people from all over the country and all over the world. And when you have this really diverse soup of different ways of thinking and looking at things, folks might gravitate toward one space or another. And that free thinking sometimes becomes, you know, a good breeding ground for some of these conspiracy theories. It can go off the rails a little bit, once in a while. But that's okay. American democracy requires a diversity of thought. And it's our intellectual freedom that is one of our biggest strengths.

Now, we still have to agree on the outcomes of elections. That's the golden thread that holds the entire fabric of our society together. And that's the one piece of our civic culture that is now being attacked. That's different than what we've seen in the past and the conflicts that we've seen issue by issue, whether it's immigration, or abortion, or the economy or gas prices, or whatever.

WIRED: Talk to me about the relationships you have with your peers in the Arizona state government. How cooperative are they with you? And do you have any fear that they may try to undermine the results of the election?

Fontes: We have very good relationships, even with people who find themselves in the election denialism space. There are some things that we very much agree on. For example, Representative Alex Kolodin—one of the biggest election denialists, who has actually sued me several times and who was just recently disciplined by the state bar—he and I have actually worked very closely together on some issues. We disagree on a lot of stuff, but he's going to be sponsoring one of the bills that we're bringing forward to help us better and more frequently train our election officials here in Arizona. But you know, when we're sitting in a conference room behind closed doors, and the lights and cameras are not on us, generally speaking, we can find common ground when it comes to the pragmatic application of skillsets regarding the operation and administration of our elections. It's when the cameras get turned on that people sometimes go astray a little bit.

WIRED: How do you plan to protect election workers? And do you have any fears of violence at the polls or other places?

Fontes: Political violence has become a part of the regular conversation here in America. And I think that's shameful. At the end of the day, if you're threatening violence or committing acts of violence to achieve a political end, that's terrorism. To protect our election workers, we're working very closely with state, local, and federal officials. We've been increasing our security funding. We've been hardening our physical security, personnel security, information technology security, networking security across the board, working closely with CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency].

We are sending folks from that agency to every one of our counties, and they are doing surveys, they're looking at the counties to advise them. We're working with the National Guard day in and day out, to help monitor the circumstances online and in other spaces. We now have four security personnel working in different spaces in the secretary of state's office to monitor and alert when we see activities out there that might be problematic or might need further investigation. At this stage, we're doing everything we can to bring as much information to law enforcement as possible. God willing, the violence and threats of violence will go away soon, so that we can get back to the notion of just running elections as we have done for the past several generations.

WIRED: Are you personally prepared to become a target of Donald Trump and his supporters?

Fontes: Well, I'm already a target. I've already been threatened, my family's already been threatened. We are already struggling to meet my personal security needs and the security needs of my own family. This is already a reality for me, but our democracy is worth it.

When I volunteered to give my life to be a United States Marine, I didn't think that after being honorably discharged, I would continue to have to live under threat. And it's a sad day in America, where civilian officials doing civilian jobs have to suffer these kinds of threats and these kinds of violence. Is this the country that we want to live in? Do we want regular civilian activities to be the target of threats of violence or actual violence? These are Americans who were bringing it here and that's embarrassing.

WIRED: What has it been like to experience the attacks on your family and safety?

Fontes: Well, thankfully, so far, it's just been threats. And we really are grateful to law enforcement, who continue to monitor the internet and other communication channels to make sure that we stay safe. It's not pleasant. And you know, my partner, my children, we're all very cognizant of it. And it's not something that I would wish on anybody else.

WIRED: You ran a tabletop exercise [a simulation of potential scenarios in the upcoming elections] over the past few days. Was there anything that stuck out to you or surprised you?

Fontes: I think the advancing technology and generative AI really was brought home for a lot of folks in the room. One of the deepfakes [at the exercise] was created with only base information from the internet and then some free tools. They created a deepfake of me and of another elected official in Arizona, using that person's permission and some footage that they took. And that one was strikingly better. And they actually had that official speaking German, speaking Chinese, in what appeared to be really, really well-placed lip movements, eye movements, all that stuff. In another six to eight months, those technologies are going to improve.

People have always been able to lie, but the effectiveness of those lies is now augmented and significantly increased. So AI doesn't present new threats. It presents broader and deeper threats that we're already working to deal with.

WIRED: The Colorado Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Trump can't be on the ballot. Can you talk about why you have defended Trump's right to be on the ballot and what you make of the Colorado decision?

Fontes: My position is that Arizona statute obliges me to put Donald Trump on the ballot where he has already qualified for the ballot in two other states. So my position is in defense of Arizona state law and our order under the rule of law, and whether or not I think Mr. Trump ought to be on the ballot is irrelevant. I have a duty to execute the law. As for Colorado, that's a Colorado question. And I have a feeling that the United States Supreme Court will have to step in at some point.

WIRED: What would you say to an average voter who believes that elections in America and elections in Arizona are rigged?

Fontes: I would ask them if they're hearing that from elected officials who were elected in the same system that they're questioning. If you're hearing it from someone who is currently in office, they got there because they got elected, because people voted for them. And those votes actually counted. The burden has been shifted to the defender of the system instead of the person trying to accuse the system of being problematic. I want to know why. I want to see the facts that have allegedly been kept from public view, I want to see the actual evidence that has never surfaced in any state anywhere, to show that there's some kind of widespread fraud or that elections are fickle.

I want to see the facts just like [speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives] Rusty Bowers wanted to see the facts. Just like [Georgia secretary of state] Brad Raffensperger wanted to see the facts. Just like sensible Republicans and Democrats across the country have wanted to see the facts. The burden should rest on the accuser. And if someone is accusing our systems of being corrupted, they need to show us the facts that they're using to come to that conclusion. Otherwise, their accusations are empty.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months

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Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 24, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 25, 2024

The dust is beginning to settle after last night’s New Hampshire primary. Former president Donald Trump won the Republican primary with 54.3% of the vote, netting him 12 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley came in second with 43.3% of the vote, garnering her 9 delegates. Other candidates together took 2.3%, but none of them won any delegates.

There has been a lot of noise today about whether the New Hampshire results spell good news for Trump or bad news. While the result keeps him in the front spot for the Republican nomination, I fall into the category of observers who see bad news: more than 45% of Republican primary voters—those most fervent about the party—chose someone other than Trump.

As David French pointed out in the New York Times today, Trump is running as a virtual incumbent, and any incumbent facing a challenger who can command 43% of the party faithful is in trouble. President Gerald Ford discovered this equation in 1976 when he faced Ronald Reagan’s insurgency; President George H. W. Bush discovered it in 1992 when he faced a similar challenge from right-wing commentator Patrick Buchanan. While both Ford and Bush went on to win the Republican nomination, they lost the general election.

More important than opinions or history to indicate what the primary indicated, though, is Trump’s apparent anger about Haley’s showing. Politico’s Playbook noted that he “rage-posted” about Haley’s speech after her strong finish with posts that lasted far into the night. Ron Filipkowski noted that at 2:19 this morning he was still at it, posting: “NIKKI CAME IN LAST, NOT SECOND!”

In addition to attacking her from the podium, Trump appeared to threaten her when he warned her about “very dishonest people” she would have to fight. He said she was not going to win, “but if she did, she would “be under investigation…in fifteen minutes and I could tell you five reasons why already. Not big reasons, a little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about, but she will be under investigation within minutes, and so would Ron have been, but he decided to get out.”

The tactics Trump might have been suggesting became clear this afternoon, when the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, Jeff DeWit, resigned after a recording that appeared to show him trying to bribe Arizona Senate candidate and fervent Trump supporter Kari Lake to stay out of the Senate race was leaked to the press. The tape itself was clearly contrived to show Lake as if she were in a campaign ad, defending Trump and America, but it includes DeWit’s pleas for her to stand aside for two years, presumably while the Arizona party regroups with less extremist candidates, and his request that she name her price.

This sordid story reflects a problem in the state Republican parties as MAGA supporters have tried to take over from the party establishment. In Arizona, challenging the 2020 presidential election—remember the “Cyber Ninjas” who audited the Maricopa County vote?—ran the finances of the Arizona party into the ground. Lake has continued to insist, without evidence, that the election was stolen, and she and other MAGA activists have called for purging the party of all but the Trump faithful. The recording positions Lake as a Trump loyalist fighting against party operatives.

In his resignation letter, DeWit claimed the recording had been “taken out of context” and said he had been “set up.” He noted that Lake has “a disturbing tendency to exploit private interactions for personal gain,” calling out “her habit of secretly recording personal and private conversations. This is obviously a concern given how much interaction she has with high profile people including President Trump,” he added. “I believe she orchestrated this entire situation to have control over the state party,” he wrote.

DeWit said he had “received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording. I am truly unsure of its contents,” he wrote, “but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk. I am resigning as Lake requested.”

It seems clear the Trump team is eager to consolidate power behind him no matter what it takes, especially in the face of what appears to be his weakness. Rising authoritarians depend on the idea they are invincible, so being perceived as vulnerable—or as a loser—hits them much harder than it does a normal political candidate.

Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel—who was recorded on November 17, 2020, pressuring two Republican officials in Michigan not to certify Joe Biden’s electors in a county he won by 68% and promising the officials to “get you attorneys”—has urged Haley to drop out of the race. Traditionally, party chairs stay neutral in primary contests. Tonight, Trump posted a threat to donors: “Nikki ‘Birdbrain’ Haley is very bad for the Republican Party and, indeed, our Country…. Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them and will not accept them.”

For her part, Haley has vowed to stay in the contest. While observers point out that there is very little chance she could actually overtake Trump, it’s also true that either Trump’s obvious mental lapses or his legal troubles could knock him out of the race, in which case she would be the most viable candidate standing.

Curiously, what happened to Trump in New Hampshire was what, before the election, pundits suggested could and maybe should happen to President Joe Biden: a challenger would show that he was weak going into the 2024 election.

Instead, despite dirty-trickster robocalls in a fake Biden voice telling Democratic voters not to show up vote for Biden, he appears to be on track to win 65% of the vote as a write-in candidate—he wasn’t on the ballot—while Representative Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, who were on the ballot, together appear to have garnered just under 25%..

On Monday, Miranda Nazzaro of The Hill reported that the creator of ChatGPT banned a super PAC backing Phillips for misusing AI for political purposes. Billionaire Bill Ackman, who has been in the news lately for his fight against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, attacks on former Harvard president Claudine Gay, and threats to media outlets that pointed out plagiarism in his wife’s doctoral dissertation, donated $1 million to Phillips’s super PAC.

There was other good news for the Biden camp today, too. Sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have surged by 80% under Biden, with a record 21 million people enrolling this year. Trump has promised to get rid of the program, saying that “Obamacare Sucks!!!” and that he will replace it with something better, but neither now nor in his four years in office did he produce a plan.

Biden also received the enthusiastic endorsement today of the United Auto Workers union, whose president, Shawn Fain, had made it clear that any president must earn that endorsement. Biden stood with the union in its negotiations last year with the big three automakers, not only behind the scenes but also in public when he became the first president to join a picket line. “[Trump] went to a nonunion plant, invited by the boss, and trashed our union,” Fain said, “And, here is what Joe Biden did during our stand up strike. He heard the call. And he stood up and he showed up.” “Donald Trump stands against everything we stand for as a society,” Fain told the crowd.

More news dropped today about the damage MAGA Republicans are doing to the United States. A report published today in JAMA Internal Medicine estimates that in the 14 states that outlawed abortion after the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, 64,565 women became pregnant after being raped, “but few (if any) obtained in-state abortions legally.”

Finally, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News confirmed this evening that although MAGA Republicans have insisted the border is such a crisis that no aid to Ukraine can pass until it is addressed, Trump is preventing congressional action on the border because he wants to run on the issue of immigration. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told a closed meeting of Senate Republicans that “the nominee” wants to run his campaign on immigration, adding, “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.” “We’re in a quandary,” McConnell said.

Jennifer Bendery and Igor Bobic of HuffPost reported that Trump today reached out to Republican senators to kill the bipartisan border deal being finalized, “because he doesn’t want Biden to have a victory,” one source said. “The rational Republicans want the deal because they want Ukraine and Israel and an actual border solution,” Bendery and Bobic quote the source as saying. “But the others are afraid of Trump, or they’re the chaos caucus who never wants to pass anything.”

“They’re having a little crisis in their conference right now,”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Mike Luckovich #Atlanta Journal Constitution #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #do-nothing congress #US House of Representatives #border politics #war in Israel #war in Ukraine #bipartisan border deal

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bighermie · 1 year

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1americanconservative · 3 months

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https://x.com/Real_RobN/status/1749203813763092948?s=20

And here it is, The Arizona Audit CONFIRMS: Katie Hobbs utilized her single greatest crime of 2020 for the 2022 election.

25% of all 2020 mail-in-ballots equaling 420,987 ballots out of 1.9 million CONFIRMED to have NO signature match just in Maricopa County alone.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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This day in history

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

#20yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson on what Martian water means for science fiction https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/books/essay-a-red-planet-forever-in-the-orbit-of-science-and-dreams.html

#10yrsago China Mieville on The Borribles https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/19/china-mieville-borribles-michael-de-larrabeiti

#10yrsago Young Oxford Conservatives leader abuses DMCA to censor reporting of his calling Mandela a “terrorist” https://memex.craphound.com/2014/03/13/young-oxford-conservatives-leader-abuses-dmca-to-censor-reporting-of-his-calling-mandela-a-terrorist/

#10yrsago Samsung Galaxy back-door allows for over-the-air filesystem access https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/SamsungGalaxyBackdoor

#10yrsago UK university admissions service sells applicants’ data to energy drink companies https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/12/ucas-sells-marketing-access-student-data-advertisers

#10yrsago FBI recommended felony counts against Joe Arpaio’s cronies https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/07/report-fbi-had-urged-charges-in-maricopa-county-inquiry/6164437/

#5yrsago Spotify’s antitrust complaint against Apple is a neat parable about Big Tech’s monopoly https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/13/spotifys-antitrust-complaint-against-apple-is-a-neat-parable-about-big-techs-monopoly/

#5yrsago With days to go until the #CopyrightDirective vote, #Article13’s father admits it requires filters and says he’s OK with killing Youtube https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/13/with-days-to-go-until-the-copyrightdirective-vote-article13s-father-admits-it-requires-filters-and-says-hes-ok-with-killing-youtube/

#5yrsago Gimlet staff announce unionization plan following Spotify acquisition https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18263957/gimlet-media-union-spotify-recognition-podcasts

#5yrsago McMansion Hell tours the homes of the “meritocratic” one-percenters who allegedly bought their thickwitted kids’ way into top universities in the college admissions scandal https://mcmansionhell.com/post/183417051691/in-honor-of-the-college-admissions-scandal

#5yrsago A critical flaw in Switzerland’s e-voting system is a microcosm of everything wrong with e-voting, security practice, and auditing firms https://memex.craphound.com/2019/03/13/a-critical-flaw-in-switzerlands-e-voting-system-is-a-microcosm-of-everything-wrong-with-e-voting-security-practice-and-auditing-firms/

#5yrsago Security researcher reveals grotesque vulnerabilities in “Yelp-for-MAGA” app and its snowflake owner calls in the FBI https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/yelp-but-for-maga-turns-red-over-security-disclosure-threatens-researcher/

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

#pluralistic

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reasoningdaily · 7 months

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With Donald Trump facing felony charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the former president is flooding the airwaves and his social media platform with distortions, misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories about his defeat.

It’s part of a multiyear effort to undermine public confidence in the American electoral process as he seeks to chart a return to the White House in 2024. There is evidence that his lies are resonating: New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 57% of Republicans believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as president.

Here are the facts about Trump’s loss in the last presidential election:

REVIEWS AND RECOUNTS CONFIRM BIDEN’S VICTORY

Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was not particularly close. He won the Electoral College with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, and the popular vote by more than 7 million ballots.

Because the Electoral College ultimately determines the presidency, the race was decided by a few battleground states. Many of those states conducted recounts or thorough reviews of the results, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory.

In Arizona, a six-month review of ballots in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, that was commissioned by Republican state legislators not only affirmed Biden’s victory but determined that he should have won by 306 more votes than the officially certified statewide margin of 10,457.

In Georgia, where Trump was recently indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 result there, state officials led by both a Republican governor and secretary of state recertified Biden’s win after conducting three statewide counts. The final official recount narrowed Biden’s victory in the state from just shy of 13,000 votes to just shy of 12,000 votes.

In Michigan, a committee led by Republican state senators concluded there was no widespread or systematic fraud in the state in 2020 after conducting a monthslong investigation. Michigan, where Biden defeated Trump by almost 155,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points, was less competitive compared with other battleground states, although the result in Wayne County, home of Detroit, was targeted by Trump and his supporters with unfounded voter fraud claims, as were key urban jurisdictions across the country.

In Nevada, the then-secretary of state, Republican Barbara Cegavske, and her office reviewed tens of thousands of allegations of possible voter fraud identified by the Nevada Republican Party but found that almost all were based on incomplete information and a lack of understanding of the state’s voting and registration procedures. For example, Cegavske’s investigation found that of 1,506 alleged instances of ballots being cast in the name of deceased individuals, only 10 warranted further investigation by law enforcement. Similarly, 10 out of 1,778 allegations of double-voting called for further investigation. Biden won Nevada by 33,596 votes, or 2.4 percentage points.

In Pennsylvania, the final certified results had Biden with an 80,555-vote margin over Trump, or 1.2 percentage points. Efforts to overturn Pennsylvania’s election failed in state and federal courts, while no prosecutor, judge or election official in Pennsylvania has raised a concern about widespread fraud. State Republicans continue to attempt their own review of the 2020 results, but that effort has been tied up in the courts and Democrats have called it a “partisan fishing expedition.”

In Wisconsin, a recount slightly improved Biden’s victory over Trump by 87 votes, increasing Biden’s statewide lead to 20,682, or 0.6 percentage points. A nonpartisan audit that concluded a year after the election made recommendations on how to improve future elections in Wisconsin but did not uncover evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state, leading the Republican co-chair of the audit committee to declare that “the election was largely safe and secure.” The state’s Assembly speaker, a Republican, ordered a separate review, which a state judge said found “absolutely no evidence of election fraud.”

AP INVESTIGATION FINDS MINIMAL VOTER FRAUD IN SWING STATES

An exhaustive AP investigation in 2021 found fewer than 475 instances of confirmed voter fraud across six battleground states — nowhere near the magnitude required to sway the outcome of the presidential election.

The review of ballots and records from more than 300 local elections offices found that almost every instance of voter fraud was committed by individuals acting alone and not the result of a massive, coordinated conspiracy to rig the election. The cases involved both registered Democrats and Republicans, and the culprits were almost always caught before the fraudulent ballot was counted.

Some of the cases appeared to be intentional attempts to commit fraud, while others seemed to involve either administrative error or voter confusion, including the case of one Wisconsin man who cast a ballot for Trump but said he was unaware that he was ineligible to vote because he was on parole for a felony conviction.

The AP review also produced no evidence to support Trump’s claims that states tabulated more votes than there are registered voters.

Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.

TRUMP’S OWN ADMINISTRATION FOUND NO WIDESPREAD FRAUD

Trump was repeatedly advised by members of his own administration that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

Nine days after the 2020 election, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a statement saying, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” The statement was co-written by the groups representing the top elections officials in every state.

Less than three weeks later, then-Attorney General William Barr declared that a Justice Department investigation had not uncovered evidence of the widespread voter fraud that Trump had claimed was at the center of a massive conspiracy to steal the election. Barr, who had directed U.S. attorneys and FBI agents across the country to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, said, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

The Jan. 6 House committee report details additional instances where administration officials and White House staff refuted Trump’s various allegations of voter fraud.

COURTS HEARD TRUMP’S LEGAL CHALLENGES AND REJECTED THEM

The Trump campaign and its backers pursued numerous legal challenges to the election in court and alleged a variety of voter fraud and misconduct. The cases were heard and roundly rejected by dozens of courts at both state and federal levels, including by judges whom Trump appointed.

One of them, U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, was on a federal panel that declined a request to stop Pennsylvania from certifying its results, saying, “Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”

The U.S. Supreme Court also rejected several efforts in the weeks after Election Day to overturn the election results in various battleground states that Biden won.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES ABOUT VOTING MACHINES WERE UNFOUNDED

Many of the claims Trump and his team advanced about a stolen election dealt with the equipment voters used to cast their ballots.

At various times, Trump and his legal team falsely alleged that voting machines were built in Venezuela at the direction of President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013; that machines were designed to delete or flip votes cast for Trump; and that the U.S. Army had seized a computer server in Germany that held secrets to U.S. voting irregularities.

None of those claims was ever substantiated or corroborated. CISA’s joint statement released after the election said, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

Nonetheless, many of these and other unfounded claims were repeated on Fox News, both by members of the Trump team as well as by some of the network’s on-air personalities. Dominion Voting Systems sued the network for $1.6 billion, claiming the outlet’s airing of these allegations amounted to defamation.

Records of internal communications at Fox News unearthed in the case showed that the network aired the claims even though its biggest stars, including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as well as the company’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, did not believe they were true.

Dominion and Fox News settled out of court for $787.5 million.

CLAIMS INVOLVING SUITCASES AND BALLOT MULES ARE DEBUNKED

Trump and his supporters also have claimed that a number of other factors contributed to a broader effort to steal the presidential election.

One theory advanced by both Trump and one of his lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, is that “suitcases” full of fraudulent ballots in Georgia cost Trump the election there.

Then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen told the Jan. 6 House committee that he personally reviewed the video purported to show the fraud allegation in question. He recounted telling Trump: “It wasn’t a suitcase. It was a bin. That’s what they use when they’re counting ballots. It’s benign.”

State and county officials also had confirmed the containers were regular ballot containers on wheels, which are used in normal ballot processing.

But a week later, Trump publicly repeated the suitcase theory, saying, “There is even security camera footage from Georgia that shows officials telling poll watchers to leave the room before pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables and continuing to count for hours.”

Richard Donoghue, the former acting deputy attorney general, told the Jan. 6 committee that, days later, he told Trump that “these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run through the machine several times, it was not true. … We looked at the video, we interviewed the witnesses.” But Trump continued to repeat the false claim.

Another debunked claim spinning a tale of 2,000 so-called ballot mules was featured in a film that ran in hundreds of theaters last spring. The film alleges that Democrat-aligned individuals were paid to illegally collect and drop ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But the AP determined that the allegations were based on flawed analysis of cellphone location data and drop box surveillance footage.

#trump lies #election lies #2021 election #Trump's drumbeat of lies about the 2020 election keeps getting louder. Here are the fact #election tampering

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