#vote by mail leads to election fraud

[robertreich]

The Election Deniers on the Ballot: What You Need to Know

Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans allies who tried to overturn the 2020 election results are now just one step away from taking control of the election process itself.

BUT we can stop them if we turn out in full force for November’s midterms.

If we don’t stop them from taking over the election process, we can kiss what’s left of our democracy goodbye.

This fall, 60% of voters will have an election denier on their ballot, including key battleground states that decided the 2020 election and will be pivotal in 2024. Many are running for positions like secretary of state, where they'll have power to determine which votes get counted in future elections — and which don't.

In 37 states, secretaries of state are the chief elections officers — overseeing things like election infrastructure and voter registration. In 2020, they were the last line of defense for our fragile democracy, upholding Joe Biden’s win despite heavy pressure  from proponents of Trump's Big Lie.

But now, Big Lie proponents are vying to hold this key position in important swing states.

In Michigan, the GOP candidate for Secretary of State is Kristina Karamo  — who rose to prominence in conservative circles after claiming to have witnessed election fraud as a pollster. She’s also previously claimed that Trump won the 2020 election and that Antifa was behind the January 6th insurrection.  

In Arizona, Mark Finchem, a QAnon-supporting member of the Oath Keepers militia who participated in the January 6 insurrection cruised to victory in the GOP primary by claiming that “Donald Trump won.”

In Nevada, Jim Marchant won his Republican primary by making Trump's baseless claims of election fraud a cornerstone of his campaign. He also falsely claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud and wants to eliminate it altogether in Nevada, despite the fact that he himself has voted by mail MULTIPLE times over the years.

We simply cannot have MAGA election deniers overseeing any element of our elections.

But it’s not just secretaries of state who will be able to pull trickery in future elections. Governors also play a critical role in certifying votes and upholding the will of the people. Which is precisely why Trump and Steve Bannon have had their eyes on running election deniers in these races.

In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano — who was also at the Capitol on January 6th and has been subpoenaed by Congress for his involvement in the insurrection — helped lead the push to overturn the state’s 2020 results. If he wins, Mastriano would appoint Pennsylvania’s top election official.

In Arizona, GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake has said she does not recognize Joe Biden as the nation’s legitimate president — adding that she would not have certified Arizona’s 2020 election results had she been governor.

In Wisconsin, Tim Michels is the Trump backed candidate for governor who still questions the results of 2020 and won’t say whether he would certify the 2024 presidential election. Right now, elections in Wisconsin are administered by the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission. But if Michels wins, he supports scrapping the commission in favor of a plan that could tilt oversight of the state’s elections into the hands of Wisconsin Republicans.

These extremist gubernatorial candidates also support abortion bans, openly denegrate the LGBTQ community, oppose common sense gun-control measures, and want to chip away at the rights of workers.

Ultimately, if any of these candidates wins their election this fall — governors or secretaries of state —  that could be enough to tip the balance in a tight presidential election.

So how can we fight back?

First, spread the word about the GOP's extremist plans to capture the election process and entrench minority rule. Make sure your friends and family — especially young voters — know what’s at stake in the midterms this fall. It will mean a lot coming from you. Make sure they register AND vote down the entire ballot.

Next, get involved locally. Volunteer to be a poll worker or join a campaign for a candidate running to protect democracy where you live. From school boards to secretaries of state, every position matters.

And of course, vote! Check your registration early and make a plan to cast your ballot.

The future of our country and our basic rights hang in the balance. All progress rests on maintaining our democracy. Let's get to work.

#youtube #video #videos #politics #election #2022 #donald trump #maga

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

After suffering a set of embarrassing defeats in last year’s elections, Michigan Republicans tapped their worst-performing statewide candidate, Kristina Karamo, to lead them back to relevance in 2024 as state party chair.

Unsurprisingly, however, Karamo—who once accused Beyoncé of spreading paganism and believes demonic possession is “real”—is already doubling down on the far-right rhetoric that doomed her own campaign for Secretary of State in 2022.

Speaking at a party function on May 17, Karamo laughed off concerns about a tweet from the Michigan GOP that invoked the Holocaust to condemn gun control measures, according to audio obtained by The Daily Beast.

The tweet amplified the popular right-wing argument that the Nazis’ campaign of systematic mass murder was possible because of gun ownership restrictions. On top of an image of wedding rings left behind by murdered Jews, the Michigan GOP tweet reads: “Before they collected all these wedding rings… they collected all the guns.”

Figures in both parties criticized the tweet as an offensive trivialization of the Holocaust; the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition called it “absolutely inappropriate” and called on the Michigan GOP to take it down “immediately.”

In her remarks at the Lincoln Day dinner in Montcalm County, Karamo made clear she did not care about such concerns—even dismissing the continued anger over the tweet “hilarious, completely hilarious.”

“They’re still going on and on about that,” she continued. “‘Are you going to apologize?’ I’m like really, are you guys still going on about this?”

Referencing her identity as a Black woman, Karamo said, “I get this mail and it’s about how I’m encouraging white supremacy and xenophobia all this… I just laugh so hard.”

In her remarks, however, Karamo may have unintentionally laid bare how she, and a significant portion of the party base, views the role of firearms.

“Us being armed is not about stopping a burglar,” she said. “It’s not about hunting. It’s about stopping a tyrannical government. And if you know a thing or two about history, we know that governments have a tendency to be very abusive to the citizenry.”

Mentioning “basic things like history” on several occasions to defend the Holocaust meme, Karamo also depicted Democratic opposition as “very violent” and “Godless people.”

For Michigan Republicans, if their chair’s fringe style prevails, it’ll likely point to more embarrassing defeats in 2024 for a once-proud party organization. That outcome would have national implications: Michigan is not only a crucial battleground in the 2024 presidential race, but will host an open-seat U.S. Senate contest that could help decide the majority in that chamber.

But as Karamo’s career trajectory shows, in today’s GOP, election blowouts are no impediment to personal success for rising MAGA leaders.

After a failed run for local office in 2018, Karamo rose to prominence after serving as a poll watcher in Michigan during the 2020 election and pushing conspiratorial claims of widespread voter fraud and illegal voting.

With a newfound platform, she would go on to claim the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a “false flag” operation and to speculate that Michigan was the epicenter of “The Great Reset,” a spinoff COVID conspiracy theory positing that the World Economic Forum fabricated the pandemic to install a global government. Wackier still were her repeated claims that modern concepts like evolution are demonic scams, or that abortion is akin to pagan sacrifice.

Such comments helped Karamo win the GOP nomination for Secretary of State in 2022. After a conspiracy-laden campaign, she lost to Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 points, practically a blowout in evenly divided Michigan.

But her ascension to Michigan GOP chair just months later demonstrated that Karamo had figured out the incentive structure of a party reshaped by former President Donald Trump. Pushing all manner of conspiracy theories, she capitalized on the MAGA base’s appetite for more extreme rhetoric and a distrust of institutions above all else—including the imperative to win elections.

As The Daily Beast previously reported, Michigan Democrats have been surprised by the dearth of top-tier Republican recruits in their state. Right-wing media personality Tudor Dixon, the 2022 challenger to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, lost by nearly 11 points after running a campaign focused much more on culture war issues, such as transgender women in sports, than economic ones such as inflation.

A leaked memo from within the Michigan GOP following the 2022 losses lamented that Dixon had “no statewide operation” and called for changes at the top of the party.

“There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters,” the memo stated. “Voters simply didn’t like what Tudor was selling.”

Beyond concerns about Republicans being able to compete statewide, conservatives who have drifted away from the GOP worry the problem runs much deeper.

Once a mighty force and a winning machine, the Michigan GOP is now considered a national bastion of extremism, in a state which was quickly becoming a hotbed of far-right militia activity even before the 2020 election.

“It’s dangerous and it’s concerning, because there’s been some very famous violent actions and threats of violence from some of these militia extremist groups, but we’re seeing not just dotted lines or offshoots, but direct connections between those same groups and the Michigan Republican Party,” said former Michigan GOP chair Jeff Timmer, who’s since become a vehement critic of the party.

Karamo’s rhetoric, Timmer told The Daily Beast, “is becoming very alarming, talking about citizens taking up arms against the government, like we saw on January 6th.”

It’s hardly just the party chair espousing such rhetoric, too—ambitious Michigan GOP hopefuls running elsewhere are, too.

At a June 5 campaign event, Dean Brandt—who lost a bid for the state legislature last year—presented his run for Allegan County Sheriff as a major opportunity for the Michigan Liberty Militia, one of the groups that sent armed members to take over the state capitol in Lansing in 2020 to protest COVID public health restrictions.

Aside from backing the now-mainstream GOP position of arming school teachers, Brandt also said he wants to deputize members of the militia and bring them on to help the sheriff’s office.

When a member of the crowd told Brandt “the sheriff can deputize anybody in his county”—which is not true—the candidate showed his cards.

“That is exactly why I’ve been asked not to use the word militia, because it targets me,” Brandt said, according to audio obtained by The Daily Beast. “Well, guess what? That target [is] standing right here.”

Brandt made it abundantly clear he’s eager to incorporate the militia into formal law enforcement tasks—or tasks well outside their remit—should he get elected to the job.

“I will deputize as many organized militia members as I can. Period,” Brandt said. “As a community watch. That will have a direct line to me. Any unconstitutional shit that hits the fan. Call me.”

The Michigan GOP and the Brandt campaign did not return requests for comment.

“It’s not just lone wolf action,” Timmer said of extremism in Michigan. “It’s becoming part and parcel of what it means to be in the party.”

#us politics #news #the daily beast #republicans #conservatives #gop platform #gop policy #gop #alt right #Kristina Karamo #Michigan GOP #Holocaust #gun rights #gun control #gun violence #Michigan #Jocelyn Benson #Gov. Gretchen Whitmer #tudor dixon #right wing extremism #right wing militias #militias #Jeff Timmer #Dean Brandt #Allegan County Sheriff #Michigan Liberty Militia #2023

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Jaw-Dropping Allegations of Systemic Ballot Harvesting in Black Orlando Neighborhoods Cynthia Harris shares a personal story about ballot harvesting.

BY ATHENA THORNE 2:05 PM ON OCTOBER 27, 2022

Florida’s new Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS) has collected enough evidence of jaw-dropping systemic ballot harvesting in the Orlando area to recommend state law enforcement open a full criminal investigation. Ballot harvesting — the collection and casting of third-party ballots — can lead to fraud and is illegal in Florida.

Investigative news site Just The News obtained a statement from the Florida Department of State, confirming the OECS investigation:

“The Florida Department of State, Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS) was made aware of this issue around September 1, 2022,” the department said. “After further inquiry, OECS received additional information related to the allegation on October 17, 2022, and performed a preliminary investigation.

“Since OECS is an investigative entity and does not [have] authority to make arrests, the office forwarded the complaint to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for possible violation of section 104.0616, Florida Statutes,” it added.

Just The News reports that the OECS investigation was launched after Cynthia Harris, a former candidate for Orange County Commissioner, filed a sworn affidavit with the Florida Secretary of State’s office. In her affidavit, Harris described a long-standing, systemic ballot-harvesting operation in the Orlando area’s African-American communities. On Wednesday night, Harris appeared on Just the News, No Noise to discuss the electoral exploitation of black communities that she says has been going on for years.

“So what happens is, in our community, when absentee ballots are mailed, you, the candidate, or any political party can find out when the absentee ballots are mailed and to whom. What happens is these ballot harvesters, they know which batch has gone out, they go to the door and they ask you for your absentee ballot,” said Harris. “Well, in communities that don’t look like me [aka white communities], no one does this,” noted Harris, who is black. “But in our community, it’s kind of like an accepted practice that the man is coming by to pick up my absentee ballot, or the lady is coming to pick up my absentee ballot.”

Just The News reports that Harris “even recorded a ballot broker coming to her home in 2017 to collect her ballot, and obtained the script that harvester was given by her bosses to make the pitch for a voter to turn over their ballot.” Harris, a Democrat, alleges that the entire operation is funded by progressive organizations:

[Harris] filed a sworn affidavit in late August with the Secretary of State’s office alleging that illegal operations to collect third-party ballots have been going on for years in the Orlando area where voting activists are paid $10 for each ballot they collect.

She described an intricate system funded by liberal leaning organizations that dispatch ballot brokers into black communities to pressure voters to turn over their ballots. The $10 fee per ballot is divvied up among the parties who help complete the harvesting.

There is so much more in the report from Just The News that at this point I’m just going to send you there if you want to keep reading. But suffice it to say that, in her affidavit, Harris served up plenty of what sure sounds like actionable information and evidence.

Harris had long been frustrated with the alleged underhanded system in place in her community, but her motivation to finally come forward and swear out an affidavit likely stems from her own experience with wonky ballot counting last summer. Harris ran in the primary for Orange County Commissioner and came in second place on election night, pleased to have made it to the runoff stage. But during a recount, Harris told Just The News, her tally dropped by 14 votes, and she was declared the third-place winner. Her experience parallels what Republicans across the country have been pointing to for years as evidence of the need for greater election integrity.

[UPDATE] In an email to PJ Media, the Florida Department of State confirmed the OECS complaint to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement with the same statement it gave Just The News.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2022/10/27/in-orlando-jaw-dropping-allegations-of-systemic-ballot-harvesting-in-black-neighborhoods-n1640480?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=725e13580e098cbe4d8ce4e5ebc48ae562fa22cc54e9045ec79b7120a6a543ef&recip=29210398

[mariacallous]

The chances of knowing which party will control the U.S. Senate on election night 2022 is increasingly small, and the chances of knowing who won every single U.S. House and statewide race is zero. As Americans we should not consider that evidence of fraud, instead, we should understand it to be evidence of a careful, successfully administered, functional election. And as citizens, we have an obligation to push back against those who falsely and recklessly paint that scenario as something uncommon, unforeseen, and sinister.

In 2020, election night became “election week” as the counting of absentee ballots across a bevy of close states delayed most networks declaring who won the presidency and certain close House and Senate races. Since 2020, misinformation, disinformation, election-related conspiracy theories, and election denialism has thrived, and they will be a vocal minority once again after the election.

One of the driving factors—beyond dishonest social media environments and political leaders on the right failing to disavow misinformation sufficiently—is the manner in which the design of vote counting provides a false basis to fuel claims of election fraud. On this blog last week, my colleague Elaine Kamarck wrote about “the red mirage” in 2020, in which many voters saw Republicans ahead early on election night as in-person, Election Day votes were counted first in many states, and as the more Democratic-heavy early and absentee votes were counted, Republican candidates’ leads shrunk and, in many cases, reversed. This scenario fit nicely into an already molded political disinformation environment that pre-emptively claimed anti-GOP voter fraud.

Sadly, this election night will be no different.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there are numerous ways in which states are required to process and/or count early and absentee ballots. Some states can process these ballots prior to Election Day, while others cannot even begin processing those ballots until Election Day. The counting of early and absentee ballots varies, too. Some states can begin counting prior to Election Day (although results are not made public). Other states can begin counting prior to polls closing on Election Day, but not prior to that date. Still others cannot begin counting votes until after polls close on Election Day.

As the table below shows, the intersection of the timing of processing and counting of early and absentee votes varies dramatically. In some states, early and absentee ballots cannot be processed until Election Day and cannot be counted until after the polls close on election night.

The timing and processing of mail/absentee ballots (2022)

*Source: [ii] National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) *Connecticut allows processing to begin at the discretion of the local registrar of voters. *Ohio allows processing to begin before counting at a time determined by the board of elections. *Maryland does not permit the processing of absentee/mail ballots until 10 a.m. on Thursday after an election, based on state regulation.

Prior to the 2020 election, few people voted early or absentee. However, because of COVID-19, many state legislatures, governors, and other election officials implemented measures to make voting early or by absentee much easier, in an effort to make voting safer for one’s personal health. This swelled the number of voters using early and absentee methods, to historic levels. According to the New York Times, more than 101 million Americans voted in this way in 2020.

Between 2020 and 2022 many states kept in place numerous changes to their voting procedures, making early and absentee voting much easier. While fewer people will take advantage of these procedures both because fewer votes will be cast in the 2022 midterms, relative to the 2020 presidential, and the share of in-person Election Day voters is expected to be higher this year than two years ago, early and absentee voters are expected to be dramatically higher than in 2018 and all previous elections. This reality puts significant pressure on state, county, and local election administrators to count millions of votes as quickly as possible. It also means in close races the true outcome may not be known for days. This is made more difficult in the many states in which mail-in absentee votes can still be accepted for days or even weeks after Election Day, so long as the ballot is postmarked on or before November 8. (A policy that applies to civilian and especially military ballots.)

Of the 11 states with competitive U.S. Senate and/or governors races, seven can begin processing early and absentee ballots early.[i] Four—Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—can only begin processing and counting ballots on Election Day. New Hampshire cannot even begin counting them until the polls close that night. Three other states—Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas—cannot count their pre-processed ballots until Election Day. It is no coincidence that many of these states were ground zero for 2020 election lawsuits, conspiracy theories and denialism, as Democratic-heavy early and absentee ballots were counted more slowly than in-person Election Day votes.

In 2020, this led to numerous false theories about fake, illegal, and foreign ballots, etc. being “found” after the election which favored Democrats. While election officials in many states have publicly begged for patience from the public in their counting—misinformation and disinformation, compounded by Americans’ expectations that they will know the winners of all races on election night fosters an environment of distrust in elections systems and results. This election will be no different.

So, what are we to do to help Americans gain greater trust in elections, especially as unprecedented numbers of people vote early and by absentee ballot in ways that overwhelm the capacity of state, county, and local election officials, observers, and vote counters? Last week on this blog, my colleague, Elaine Kamarck, argued that we should cancel “election night”—meaning that states should not report any of the vote until all the votes are counted. I agree with Kamarck that this would cut down on voters’ perceptions of the “red mirage” and other similar phenomena. However, I strongly disagree with this recommendation. In a new democracy, such a process could work, but Americans are socialized into hearing (some) vote tabulations on election night, and further driving vote totals into the shadows and into an information vacuum would heighten—not lessen—voter skepticism, conspiracy theories, election disinformation, etc.

Instead, there should be a combined onus on candidates, elections officials, social media platforms, and especially traditional media to inform voters in much more effective ways about what the rules are in certain jurisdictions. Each has utterly failed voters in the last two elections cycles. Disclaimers on Election Day and night and in the days following about vote counting procedures and historical trends in early and absentee voting should be continuous. Editors’ notes and disclaimers atop print media should become the norm. Banners targeted to social media platforms based on user location should be seen as a service to the public and to the health of the democracy. These are not difficult asks, and private firms should see this as a patriotic duty, required of them for the price of doing business in a functional democracy.

[i] The eleven states are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. While other states may be considered close based on a few polls, these states have consistently remained close throughout the cycle or have narrowed significantly in recent weeks based on multiple polls.

[alphaman99]

FRAUDULENT

By Daniel Jupp: a great summary of why 2020 was a fraudulent election, no matter how people try to deny it.

"Amazing to see alleged Republicans still claiming that Biden got 81 million real votes. I suppose this acceptance will increase among the gullible following the Dominion settlement. So it’s time for a reminder.

There were a historic number of red flag fraud indicators for 2020, whilst at the same time the alleged result breaks just about every results indicator used by pollsters.

Commonly accepted red flag indicators of fraud are: 1. Statistically highly unlikely results 2. Statistically highly unlikely turnouts 3. Changes to procedures in the run up to the election 4. Sudden counting suspensions or delays 5. Statistically contradictory results 6. Extended or lengthy voting 7. Eyewitness accounts of fraudulent behaviour. 8. Violence or force to prevent voting or disguise fraud.

2020 had every single one of these. It matched a BBC report checklist on red flag indicators on disputed elections in African dictatorships. That’s how bad it was.

But there’s also very reliable indicators of how an election will go. These indicators have a track record of successfully predicting results going back a century, yet they are shattered by the 2020 result (not one indicator, but EVERY indicator). Prediction by primary performance-shattered. Prediction by share of belweather counties-shattered. Prediction by the winner of three key states-shattered. Prediction by support polling-shattered. All of these normally line up with who has legitimately won.

The only other modern election with these patterns being broken was 1960, now widely acknowledged by many historians as having been determined by fraud (interestingly since 2020 sites like Wikipedia have adjusted descriptions of 1960 to minimise fraud claims. I wonder why?). 1960 only broke some of the indicators, 2020 breaks EVERY established pattern for determining the winner.

Any rational person knows that if an incumbent President adds 12 million votes he wins and that an unpopular candidate does not add 15 million votes over a previous popular candidate of the same party. Obama won his second term having LOST millions of votes. This is fairly normal for second term victories. What has NEVER happened before is a record breaking increase in vote leading to a defeat for the incumbent.

No single honest election sees the greatest ever performance by an incumbent topped by the greatest ever performance by a challenger. Logically, a great performance comes at the cost of a poor performance from the other candidate. Not both being massively record breaking. The numbers for 2020 are both astronomical and ludicrous. Millions of new voters popped into existence overnight, ‘coincidentally’ with the innovations of extensive mail in ballots and lengthy extended voting and lengthy extended vote counting. Biden ‘won’ with the lowest ever share of counties, Trump ‘lost’ with the greatest ever increase of votes. That combination alone is so statistically unlikely as to be in the same order of plausibility as a man successfully balancing an elephant on his nose.

To give another analogy. A thrashing in a sporting contest is unlikely. Two competitors BOTH breaking every existing record there is in the same match is virtually impossible. Imagine a tennis match where both players get more aces than ever seen in a match before, and one has a 100% success rate with their serves but is beaten by a guy who somehow has a 124% success rate with their serves, a statistical impossibility. Trump thrashed all prior records, and Biden thrashed that?

That can only be achieved by fraud.

Anyone who doesn’t have the wit to notice this stuff, the logic to recognise it, or the integrity to admit it, is worthless."FRAUD

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Nov. 7, 2022

National and state-level Republicans are engaged in a coordinated legal effort to disqualify thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots in key battleground states ahead of Election Day, a mass voter suppression campaign that—if successful—could swing the results of close races.

In states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, right-wing organizations and Republican groups animated by former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" have filed lawsuits seeking to toss ballots on technical grounds, potentially disenfranchising thousands of voters for failing to put a date on the outer envelope of a ballot or other small mistakes.

"They've calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats."

Additionally, Republicans in Pennsylvania sued in an unsuccessful attempt to block counties from notifying voters about technical errors on their ballots.

Last week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sided with GOP groups in ruling that mail-in and absentee ballots without a date on the outer envelope cannot be counted. Voting rights organizations are fighting back, and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) said in a statement Sunday that "no voter should be disenfranchised simply because they made a minor error in filling out their ballot."

"This was not a controversial concept in our country or our commonwealth until recently, with the rise of the Big Lie and the efforts to spread mis- and disinformation in the days leading up to the general election," Wolf added. "I urge counties to continue to ensure that every vote counts."

In Georgia, home to a razor-close U.S. Senate race that could decide control of the upper chamber, right-wingers have challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of individual voters, making use of a GOP-crafted law allowing state residents to file an unlimited number of challenges.

Republican groups in several states—including Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada—have also filed lawsuits aimed at requiring the appointment of more Republican poll workers.

Read more.

#republicans cheat #republicans #voter suppression #2022 elections #the big lie #election denial

[factcheckdotorg]

#2022 elections #2022 midterm elections #mail ballots #absentee ballot

[starseedpatriot]

Elon correctly calculated the enemy’s moves and counter moves, and lured Twitter into a trap. They have no choice but to lower the price and cut their losses.

If Elon actually wanted to terminate the deal, he would not threaten to do so, he would just do it. This is a tactic to further expose the enemy and also get Twitter at a discounted price. This move not only saves Elon billions of dollars, but most importantly it solidifies the reality that Twitter not only has a high bot count, but they went great lengths to cover it up and profit off of the falsified user data.

This confirms Twitter was/is intentionally conducting nefarious activity. This will lead to extensive audits and eventually, the exposure of calculated bot usage to sway public opinion.

Slowly but surely, the dark secrets of Big Tech are being put on display. One day, the world will know how political entities brainwashed the masses with bot manipulation.

The Democrat party, who committed treason for years via the Russia hoax in the name of “election interference”, are the ones actually engaged in mass psychological manipulation on social media to alter the outcome of elections.

And that’s just one element of their network to manipulate and control. Now consider all the other lengths the DNC went to alter the 2020 election:

-created an international black-site biological network

-created and released a biological weapon known as C19 to justify implementation of mail-in voting, killing millions in the process and ruining the world economy

-used the flaws of mail-in voting to commit widespread voter fraud via ballot stuffing in swing states due to inflated voter rolls

-used their control of mainstream media to push politicized disinformation and brainwash the public

-used their control of social media to push politicized disinformation and cover up negative true stories about the DNC (Biden Laptop)

Elon is exposing one major element of a greater conspiracy to control the outcome of US elections, and therefore the world. And it seems all of these elements are being brought to light in unison.

A seismic shift is happening.

-Clandestine

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-elon-musks-lawyers-send-letter-to-twitter-threatening-to-terminate-deal-over-inflated-user-data?

[justiceheartwatcher]

Trump Wins Missouri but the Election is NOT Just About Votes

Trump has been declared winner of the Missouri Caucuses. However, this doesn’t feel like news, as we all know Trump is going to win the Primary. The election doesn’t depend on the vote, it depends on election interference and fraud. Will they remove Trump from the ballot? Will they release another pathogen to implement mass mail-in voting, harvest ballots, and dump them at swing states at 3:00AM after they stopped counting? Will they censor accurate information about the Bidens in the week leading up to the election? If the American public are properly informed, the Deep State are unsuccessful in removing Trump from the ballot, and there is no mass mail-in ballots for them to harvest, Trump will win in a landslide. This is not “democracy”. It’s war.

[arpov-blog-blog]

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/georgia-gov-kemp-claps-back-at-trumps-attack-on-his-state

I post videos and articles from the Meidas Touch Network because they do a great job of supporting their opinions with facts. I listened to a couple other news outlets who attempt t make Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Sec'y of State Brad Raffensperger seem like heroes for standing up to Trump after the 2020 election.

The truth is that while both men resisted doing anything illegal on Trump's behalf, they supported and implemented election laws that are intended to suppress voter turnout in 2024. Kemp even states that he will still vote for and support Trump as the 2024 nominee. Those laws now run counter to new Republican national strategies that focus on increasing the use of mail-in ballots.

Prior to the 2020 election day, Raffensperger warned Trump that delegitimizing mail-in ballots would work against the interest of Georgia Republicans since they had been effective for them since 2000. Trump and certain Trump-endorsed candidates lost major elections in 2020 and 2022 by small margins that counted almost exclusively on election-day voting while Democrats garnered big big leads from in-person early voting and mail-in ballots....."

After a late night online barrage of Trump's asinine claims and paranoid delusions following his Fulton County indictment, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp clapped back at Trump's false assertion that he has a large "report on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia."

Kemp responded to Trump's post by stating, once again, that "the 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen" and that anyone with evidence of fraud has "failed to come forward-under oath-and prove anything in a court of law."

Kemp's unrelenting stance that the election in his state was free and fair is admirable. Were it not for Republican Governor's and Secretary of State's with courage like Kemp and Georgia SOS Brian Raffensperger who would not bow to Trump's pressure to "find him" the votes to win, our democracy would not have survived the 2020 Trump coup attempt.

It is difficult to understand why then Kemp is still pledging to back Trump if he is the nominee. Though that loyalty may change with the coming "report" against Georgia that Trump is planning to bring, for the time being we can't help but wonder, if the attempt to steal his state's election and the threats of extortion against him weren't enough to sway Kemp, what will?"

[college-girl199328]

Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade believes there's "good reason" to speculate that former President Donald Trump could face a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charge in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the Peach State.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' sweeping investigation into Trump, which began two years ago after it was discovered that the former president had called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and implored him to "find" more than 11,000 votes needed to win in Georgia, has expanded to include Trump's associates, the fake elector scheme, threats and harassments against election workers, and efforts by unauthorized individuals to access voting machines.

On Thursday, the public got its first look into Willis' probe week with the release of three portions of the special grand jury's final report, including one section about how jurors had concerns about witnesses lying under oath while testifying to the special grand jury.

Jurors spent seven months hearing testimony from 75 witnesses, including Raffensperger, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

While the special grand jury doesn't have the power to issue indictments, it did make recommendations to Willis, who can then impanel a traditional grand jury, which does have the authority to make charges.

One of the charges that McQuade thinks could have a likely outcome in Georgia is a RICO charge, which is used to target organized crime.

Originally created to try mob-related crime, the RICO Act allows prosecutors to take down a whole organization rather than individual members for particular crimes involving gangs, political campaigns, insider trading schemes, and police departments, among other groups.

"The idea, and why it is so useful, is that it allows you to go after the boss," McQuade told MSNBC on Wednesday, referring to the person who doesn't get his hands dirty and allows his underlings to do all the dirty work.

She explained that it allows prosecutors to bring together various schemes under one umbrella RICO charge to prosecute the whole group, otherwise known as "the enterprise."

To prove a RICO case, prosecutors need to show that some members of the group agree that two racketeering activities were completed, suggesting that there was a pattern of criminal activities, including arson, bribery, counterfeiting, distribution of a controlled substance, embezzlement, extortion, gambling, homicide, kidnapping, mail fraud, money laundering, robbery, wire fraud, and witness tampering.

"It's an attractive charge in the case," she said, adding that it is even more likely for Willis to bring a RICO charge against Trump because of her experience prosecuting RICO cases and her reputation for prosecuting gangs in Atlanta using the RICO Act.

In 2014, Willis was the lead prosecutor on a well-known RICO case involving 35 teachers, principals, and other educators in the Atlanta public school system accused of changing answers on standardized tests for financial gain.

Last May, she made headlines after she issued a sweeping RICO indictment to rappers Young Thug, Gunna, and 26 other members of YSL, an alleged gang the district attorney's office says is responsible for more than a decade of violent crime; an indictment against rapper YFN Lucci and 11 other supposed members of the Bloods gang; and an indictment against 26 alleged members of the Drug Rich gang.

"There are some prosecutors who shy away from [RICO charges], who find it to be needlessly complicated, or maybe are fearful of it—you don't want to charge something so complicated that a jury doesn't understand it," McQuade said, showing that she knows how to use it by reaching out to McQuade for additional comment.

[thesheel]

The shrinking lead of Republicans in Texas in the 2020 presidential elections has motivated Texas Republicans to take sweeping voter suppression measures in the state. As the US Supreme Court endorsed Republicans' efforts of voter suppression recently, it has motivated Republicans to extend their struggles in Texas as well. Under Republicans' assault is Harris County, which is the home to more than 4.7 million Americans, the majority of whom support Democrats categorically. How are state Republicans intending to stop Texans' voices in times when the voting laws in the said state were already some of the strictest in the state? Let's see. [caption id="attachment_8235" align="aligncenter" width="1440"] With Republicans efforts the voting rights in the Harris county will face a nosedive, costing Democrats important votes[/caption] Snatching the Right to Vote from Texans: Republicans New Motive Republicans' efforts to suppress voters in Texas are not new. Harris County, a largely Democratic area, witnessed a stranger situation when Texas Republicans made a bid in front of the Texas Supreme Court to invalidate 127,000 mail-in ballots already cast in the 2020 elections.  Although Republicans failed in this effort, however, this was the beginning of the destruction of voting rights. Harris County tried to smash Republicans' ambitions by showing up in great numbers in elections, boasting a 66 percent turnout. Texas Republicans are now up to House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 1 that would curb the voting rights to a great extent.  State Democrats adopted a tactic of fleeing the state, gaining the advantage of the law, which does not allow the legislative section without the presence of two-thirds of the legislators present. By passing the new bills, state Republicans want to introduce new ID requirements for mail-in voting. Not only this, Republicans want that local election officials must not send mail-in voting applications to voters without voters' request. Texas Republicans are trying to kill easy voting methods through various means. They are trying to ban drive-through voting and a 24-hour voting window completely. The mantra of state Republicans is once again beating around the bush of groundless claims of voter fraud. It is pertinent to note here that Greg Abbott is the same governor who led post-election efforts in the US Supreme Court, receiving applause from former President Donald Trump. Voting rights activists claim that the availability of these innovative methods of voting increased Black people and shift workers' participation in the last year's election. So, the efforts are once again directed against minority groups.   State Republicans Trying to Strangle Voters in Every Possible Manner Republicans' ambitions in Texas do not stop here. These efforts are also aiming to curb partisan poll watchers' authority in the polling stations, imposing new penalties on election workers. Republicans' voter suppression provisions are too much to be incorporated by only two bills. Another bill, HB 329, would empower the Texas Secretary of State to suspend voter registration funding in specific counties. This provision is expectedly brewed to curb voters in Harris County and other Democratic majority counties. Another bill, HB 895, will empower partisan poll workers to take photographs of "the entire face of a voter" in case they find the voter’s ID questionable and fraudulent. Not only this, but police will be able to use those photographs in criminal investigations. This will initiate an era of voter harassment where Black people and others belonging to Democratic majority counties are likely to face the music. [caption id="attachment_8238" align="aligncenter" width="496"] Michelle Tremillo, one of the political activists of Texas along with Brianna Brown need to be more proactive in the state, considering the path Republicans are pursuing these days.[/caption] Final Thou

ghts Texas voter suppression is a blatant bid by state Republicans to grab power in the state.  It was already anticipated that Republicans' efforts would not stop in Georgia. Just like Georgia, Texas would not be the last state to face this misery until or unless Democrats become serious for HR1, which aims to federalize the elections. While Georgia suppression has become a law, Democrats must resist to the maximum possible extent to stop the legislative process in Texas. If Democrats win their Georgia lawsuit, they will be in a better position to pursue legal avenues in the rest of the states as well. However, this possibility looks like asking too much from the conservative-led Supreme Court. Republican voting restrictions in Texas are making it harder to vote for Democrats as the winning margin of Donald Trump reduced in the 2020 elections compared to the 2016 win.  The burden on the political activists of Texas, like Michelle Tremillo and Brianna Brown, has also increased manifold, with Republicans going hungry in clinching the power through repressive regimes.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Under the guise of rooting out the fraud that Donald Trump baselessly insists cost him the last election, Republicans have mounted a coordinated legal campaign to throw out mail-in ballots in key battleground states — an effort seemingly aimed at Democratic voters. “[Republicans are] looking for every advantage they can get,” Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at the nonpartisan democracy organization Common Cause, told the Washington Post on Monday. “And they’ve calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats.”

As the Post reports, the GOP is seeking to disqualify some mail-in ballots in at least three states, all of which were key to Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and have been at the center of Trump’s election lies and conspiracies since: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Kristina Karamo, the MAGA Republican running for secretary of state in Michigan, filed a lawsuit in Detroit in October challenging absentee ballots that were not cast in person with an ID, without offering rationale for zeroing in exclusively on the majority-Black, Democratic-leaning city. Karamo has been pushing conspiracy theories about fraud — including some pulled from a widely-debunked Dinesh D'Souza movie. That suit is seen as unlikely to succeed. But in Wisconsin, Republicans won their challenge against the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission to toss absentee ballots with incomplete witness addresses. And in Pennsylvania, the Republican National Committee filed a suit to toss ballots with undated envelopes; the state Supreme Court found the RNC has standing and ordered that election officials “segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes,” putting thousands of already-cast votes at risk of going uncounted. That could prove hugely consequential in the state, home of one of the highest-stakes Senate races: a close contest between Democrat John Fetterman and Trump-backed Republican Mehmet Oz.

“A cornerstone of our democracy is that every ballot should be counted,” Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf wrote Sunday evening. “No voter should be disenfranchised simply because they made a minor error in filling out their ballot.”

Trump and the Republicans have railed hard against mail-in voting since 2020, lying ahead of that election that the method would be rife with fraud. That proved not to be true; the 2020 election, carried out in the middle of a raging pandemic, was “the most transparent, secure, and verified election in American history,” as elections expert David Becker told me in September. That the lies have persisted is no accident: Trump’s attacks on the integrity of mail-in ballots helped form the foundation of his failed campaign to “stop the count” before Biden overtook his Election Night lead. The GOP appears to be continuing those attacks as one component of a broader strategy both to challenge unfavorable outcomes and to limit Democratic participation in the process, including via state-level voting restrictions and intimidation campaigns against both voters and election workers.

It hardly seems accidental that, as they mount legal challenges to absentee ballots, Republicans have also encouraged their own base to vote on Election Day. “If you can eliminate one percent of the votes and they tend to lean Democratic, then that gives you a statistical advantage,” Clifford Levine, a Pittsburgh-based election lawyer for Democrats, told the Post. It remains to be seen what kind of impact the challenges have on this week’s midterms. But the suits underscore the extent to which ongoing lies about the 2020 election are factoring into the 2022 election. “This is not about stopping fraud,” Levine continued. “It’s about discounting mail ballots. There’s just no question.”

#us politics #news #vanity fair #2022 midterms #2022 elections #2022 #republicans #conservatives #GOP #voter disenfranchisement #voting rights #voter rights #2020 election #election laws #the washington post #mail in ballots #absentee ballot #Michigan #Wisconsin #Pennsylvania #gov. tom wolf #kristina karamo

[pashterlengkap]

Republican sues lesbian opponent to be declared the winner even though he’s losing

The Republican candidate for Arizona attorney general has filed a lawsuit contesting the election after a close race against gay Democratic opponent Kris Mayes shows her in the lead. Abe Hamadeh has been joined in his lawsuit by the Republican National Committee (RNC). Together, they are suing county boards of supervisors and recorders, as well as Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who was just elected governor of the state. The election is currently headed for a recount, with Mayes ahead by just 510 votes. AZ Mirror said it is the closest statewide election in Arizona history. The lawsuit not only requests that Hobbs be stopped from certifying Mayes as the winner but also demands that Hamadeh be declared the  winner instead, the New York Times reported. Hamadeh claims there was not any “fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing” but that errors in the election process have led to him trailing Mayes. Hamadeh and the RNC contend that a group of segregated ballots – 146 provisional ballots and 273 mail-in ballots that were removed because the system showed those voters had voted in person – should be counted. He also believes he was negatively impacted by voting issues in Maricopa County, where printer issues made counting votes a challenge. Election officials, however, asserted that every vote would be counted. On Twitter, Hamadeh posted a photo of the complaint and declared, “Arizonans demand answers and deserve transparency about the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the General Election by certain election officials. I will not stop fighting until ALL voters receive justice. See you in court.” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the RNC, added that the GOP “is proud to join in this legal action. Maricopa County’s election failures disenfranchised Arizonans. We’re going to court to get the answers voters deserve.” The @GOP is proud to join in this legal action. Maricopa County’s election failures disenfranchised Arizonans. We’re going to court to get the answers voters deserve. https://t.co/flhZAdLAL6 — Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) November 23, 2022 The Republican Party continues to try to rile up its base with election-denying conspiracy theories, but the midterm elections have proven that voters aren’t buying it. Almost every election denier in a battleground state that was running for a position that oversees elections lost their race. In Arizona, Hamadeh is not the only one who refuses to go quietly. Far-right election denier Kari Lake lost to Katie Hobbs in the gubernatorial race by more than 17,000 votes but refuses to concede and continues to demand the election be redone. http://dlvr.it/SdM4Ht

[mariacallous]

Ten days before Georgia’s Senate runoff election in 2021, Gamaliel Warren Turner Sr., a 69-year-old veteran, found out that someone in his county had challenged his eligibility to vote. Turner, a retired major in the US Army, had requested an absentee ballot, and when it didn’t arrive in the mail, he got nervous and called the Muscogee County registrar’s office to figure out where it was. According to court records, a clerk informed Turner that his name was on a list of thousands of voters in the county whose registrations were under investigation.

“I was beyond irate. I was hollering,” Turner says. “I didn’t know what the hell a voter challenge was. I just wanted to know, am I going to be able to vote or not?”

Turner has lived in Georgia for his entire life and voted there in nearly every election for the past 50 years. He owns a home there and the utility bills are under his name. He has a Georgia driver’s license that he uses to drive his two cars, both registered in Muscogee County. But in 2019, his job required that he temporarily relocate to Camarillo, California. In order to avoid missing packages while away on his temporary work assignment, he did what millions of Americans do every year and notified the United States Postal Service (USPS) that he wanted his mail forwarded to a new address.

What Turner didn’t know at the time was that this simple notification to the USPS would enmesh him in a scheme dreamed up by a right-wing activist group called True the Vote that ended up challenging the voter registrations of 364,000 Georgians.

Best known for its work on the widely debunked film 2,000 Mules, True the Vote had developed an algorithm that matched names in voter rolls with data kept by the USPS about individuals who changed addresses. The group’s goal was to aggressively cull voter rolls, under the suspicion that inaccurate registrations lead to voter fraud, which is extremely rare in the US.

Along with Turner’s, True the Vote sent the names of approximately 4,000 supposedly ineligible voters to the leader of the Republican Party in Muscogee County, Alton Russell, a toilet paper salesman, who in turn submitted them to the county Board of Elections to challenge their voter registrations. But the scheme didn’t work: Most of the counties in Georgia rejected True the Vote’s challenges, and Turner successfully sued the Muscogee County Board of Elections to ensure his ballot would be counted in the 2021 runoff election.

Undeterred, True the Vote has quietly rolled out a web app called IV3 to replicate this process around the country. The browser-based application has led to the challenges of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations, the group claims. Yet little is known about IV3. The app is not active in most states, and to get access, you need to provide True the Vote with a valid form of identification. But by analyzing the code IV3 uses for its frontend, WIRED has been able to piece together how the tool likely functions. Our review found that the app ultimately uses an ineffective and unreliable methodology to determine who should remain on the rolls. Experts say that the app weaponizes public data and is more likely to remove eligible voters from the rolls than it is to catch rampant fraud that doesn’t exist in this country.

True the Vote is a Texas–based nonprofit whose founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has played a crucial role in mainstreaming the voter fraud movement. The organization has set itself apart by using technology to legitimize their dubious claims of massive voter fraud, but it has consistently refused to provide any empirical evidence. IV3 is part of a growing strategy by right-wing activists to leverage state laws that allow a private citizen to dispute a voter's eligibility to toss out tens of thousands of voter registrations and ballots in battleground states. According to The New York Times, activists in Michigan tried to challenge 22,000 voter registrations for the state’s August primary. In Texas, residents challenged the eligibility of more than 6,000 voters in Harris County.

While it’s unclear how many voter challenges were facilitated using True the Vote’s app, Facebook posts from groups organizing some of the country’s largest voter challenges suggest that people are actively using IV3. For instance, in September, a group called VoterGA challenged the registrations of 37,500 voters in Georgia. On its Facebook page, one member encouraged her colleagues to use IV3, claiming that she had used the app to challenge nearly 6,000 people in Georgia’s Fayette County.

According to the True the Votes tax filings obtained by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, True the Vote spent more than $500,000 on app development in 2020, using some of those funds to build a “proprietary organizing web app” that leverages its “national voter roll database” to “notify counties of voter role inaccuracies”. The app, which is not named but whose description mirrors IV3, was likely built by OPSEC Group LLC, whose founder, Gregg Phillips, was a former board member of True the Vote who has worked closely with Engelbrecht for years. OPSEC also performed the debunked data analysis behind 2,000 Mules.

Court marshals arrested Engelbrecht and Phillips last week after they refused a court order to turn over alleged evidence of voter fraud that’s central to a defamation case brought by software company Konnech against True the Vote. Representatives for True the Vote did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Access to IV3 is limited only to verified individuals who reside in one of the seven states where the app is active. However, WIRED was able to analyze the app’s public-facing code to get a better understanding of how it works. This was possible because upon loading the app’s login page, the browser automatically requests all the code needed to render the frontend components of the entire tool, even if a user is unauthenticated. By saving these HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files and running a web mock server, WIRED was able to explore some of the core features of the app, albeit without live data sent from True the Vote’s servers.

In a help page WIRED found bundled in the app’s code, True the Vote claims that IV3 cross-references state databases of voter registrations with the USPS NCOALink database, a dataset of approximately 160 million permanent change-of-address records that can be licensed for a fee. If True the Vote’s algorithm finds a “substantive discrepancy” between the two records, it will flag the registration for manual review by individuals who sign up to use the app. These records then show up in a page on the app called “IV3 Identified Records for Review.” After a volunteer submits a challenge, True the Vote claims to “prepare that challenge for filing based on your state’s specific requirements.” Network requests made by the app suggest that individuals who sign up for IV3 are only able to see and vet registered voters in their own county, as many state laws only allow other voters within the county to submit challenges.

When we rendered the frontend components in IV3, we found that the tool also gives vetted users the ability to look up the registrations of any voter in their county in order to determine whether or not the registration looks suspicious enough to challenge. While this voter registration data is technically public, its distribution by a partisan group can feel intimidating. “I feared that I could—or my family could—become the next target of harassment from True the Vote and their supporters for having voted, especially because my name and address had been published online and I had been publicly identified as a challenged voter,” a woman who had their registration challenged by True the Vote said in court records.

While WIRED was unable to use the app with live data, court records suggest that the way True the Vote matches individuals from voter rolls to those in the USPS database appears broken. Ken Mayer, a political scientist who analyzed a file of challenged voters for a lawsuit that Fair Fight filed against True the Vote, said in an expert report that True the Vote’s file of challenged voters was “riddled with errors” and “almost certainly mismatches voters with NCOA records.” He added, “The results do not come anywhere close to what would be required for valid practices in academic studies of election administration.” True the Vote did not respond to questions about Mayer’s assessment.

Moreover, experts say that the entire premise of using USPS data alone to invalidate voter registrations is flawed. Andrew Garber, a counsel within the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, says that there are dozens of reasons why people might want their mail forwarded and all are insufficient alone to cancel a voter’s registration. “The use of this app is really concerning because it seems to be an effort to automate and take onto a mass scale a process that’s supposed to be local and individualized,” Garber says.

USPS did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request to comment on True the Vote’s use of its address-change data.

The voter challenges facilitated by IV3 have already run into problems. In an email IV3 sent to its users in August that WIRED obtained, True the Vote has run into hurdles in Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The email states that in Pennsylvania, election officials told True the Vote each challenge requires a notarized and signed affidavit, at a cost of $5 to $7 each. “Think about that for those of you who completed 20, or 50, or 100, or several hundred challenges,” the August email reads. “It was never our intent for this process to cost our volunteers any money, much less hundreds to thousands of dollars just to ask your county to check and verify the rolls. We will be talking to election attorneys and Pennsylvania officials about this statute. It needs to be changed.”

While IV3 makes it possible to file a large number of challenges, it’s highly unlikely that any of them would be sufficient to remove anyone from voter rolls. Nevertheless, the challenges are likely to burden election officials as they may have to research and adjudicate each challenge brought. According to Garber, “even if the challenges don’t result in people being removed from the roles, they are gumming up the works and slowing down other vital election processes.”

Turner says he already voted by absentee ballot for the 2022 US midterms, which conclude today. But that doesn’t mean he’s not concerned with what True the Vote has been up to around the country. “It’s dangerous,” he says. “They are just throwing everything up against the wall and seeing what sticks. All of their strategies to disenfranchise voters are just sowing distrust about elections and it’s frustrating. I just don’t know where all of this is heading.”

[myangelgarden]

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Kari Lake Receives 54 Percent of Sunday Night Ballots from Maricopa County, 69 Percent from Pinal County

November 14, 2022 Rachel Alexander

Election officials released updated results Sunday evening showing Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake gained ground on frontrunner Democrat Katie Hobbs in Maricopa County by 54.6 to 45.4 percent. In Pinal County, Lake bested Hobbs 69.5 percent to 30.5 percent.

In all, the votes of little more than 97,000 of the estimated 192,900 remaining ballots from Maricopa County were tabulated – meaning about 94,000 ballots remain. In Pinal County, an estimated 10,000 ballots are untabulated.

In addition to the 94,000 ballots in Maricopa County, an estimated 66,959 uncounted ballots remain across the state, former election official and ABC15 analyst Garrett Archer noted in a tweet Sunday night.

Archer said in a Facebook Live broadcast that although the updated vote totals show that Lake cut Hobbs’ lead by 8,900, the Republican will need roughly 58 percent of all the remaining votes in order to prevail. (The secretary of state website has not updated the new vote count as of press time.)

Meanwhile, Katie Hobbs’ campaign issued a triumphant announcement on social media claiming Hobbs is the “unequivocal favorite to become the next Governor of Arizona.”

The Sunday night announcements by election officials mark the fifth full day of counting, leaving many in Arizona and across the country wonder how it is that Florida — a state with a population three times larger at 22 million — can complete its general election work within 24 hours of the polls closing.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said the delay was due to all the ballots dropped off at the polls on Election Day. Florida counts all ballots on election night within three hours of the polls closing, so voters generally know who won races by the end of the evening. Voters can drop off ballots on Election Day up until the polls close in that state, but they must drop them off at the main tabulation center, not at any polling location in Arizona.

In response to COVID-19, Arizona switched to large “vote centers” instead of numerous polling locations for each precinct beginning in 2018. Voters can go to any vote center in the county to cast their ballot.

Another reason cited is that election officials were not prepared for the large number of ballots that were dropped off at polling locations on Election Day instead of deposited in ballot drop boxes before Election Day. According to Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund who spent a decade working as a Maricopa County election official, normally about 180,000 Maricopa County voters would drop their early ballot off at a polling place on Election Day, but for this election that number increased to 290,000, a 70 percent increase from the 2020 general election. She said she believes it may be due to concerns about harassment at drop boxes and voter fraud.

Many voters who ran into ballot tabulation problems at polling locations gave up trying to get the reader to accept their ballot and turned it into a separate box for “misread” ballots which then required extra time to handle. Others who encountered the problem may have dug up their early ballots and dropped them off instead.

Mark Earley, a supervisor of elections in Leon County, Florida, explained how the state can count the ballots quickly. “By election morning, we have processed roughly 95 percent of our (mail-in ballots), tabulated them, and the results are sitting there waiting to be uploaded into our election management system, and compiled and released promptly after 7 p.m. on election night,” he told Votebeat.

Gates said he does not support changing the law, pointing out the positives to allowing voters to easily turn in their mail-in ballots so late, like skipping lines on Election Day.

Tyler Bowyer tweeted Friday evening, saying, “I realized the reason why Bill Gates doesn’t want to wrap up this election quickly…The sooner this election is over, the sooner his recall begins.”

Robert Canterbury, who unsuccessfully ran against Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman in 2020, is considering starting a recall against Gates. Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward tweeted, “#Recall is in the air! I’d love to see @ShawnnaLMBolick replace this little guy stat!” referencing State Representative Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix), who ran for Arizona secretary of state this year championing election integrity.

Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor is calling for the resignations of all the Maricopa County Supervisors and Richer, and Maricopa County Member-at-Large Brian Ference is demanding the resignations of Gates and Richer.

– – –

Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].

Photo “Kari Lake” by Kari Lake War Room.

Arizona, Battleground State News, Election Integrity, News, port, The West2022 midterm election, Arizona, Election Integrity, Maricopa County, Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates, Stephen Richer, tabulation

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