It's on video:
EXCLUSIVE: Sen Ron Johnson blames Trump for losing Wisconsin in 2020 and tells me “there’s nothing obviously skewed about the results.” pic.twitter.com/OeRkVkkVAN
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) August 31, 2021
September 1, 2021
"U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson recently said 'there’s nothing obviously skewed about the results' of the 2020 presidential election..."
"... even as Wisconsin Republican lawmakers this week authorized the expansion of an investigation into the election.
Johnson told a liberal activist posing as a conservative that former President Donald Trump lost the election in Wisconsin because he didn’t do as well as other Wisconsin Republicans on the ballot in November.... 'There’s nothing obviously skewed about the results,' Johnson told the woman. 'There isn’t. Collectively, Republicans got 1.661 million votes, 51,000 votes more than Trump got. Trump lost by 20,000. If Trump got all the Republicans, if all the Republicans voted for Trump the way they voted for the Assembly candidates… he would have won. He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got. And that’s why he lost.'... But.... Johnson also told Windsor that he supports the Wisconsin GOP election investigation and audit, but said investigations should focus on the vote totals produced by the voter machines rather than the integrity of the voter machines themselves.
'The last thing I’d really focus on would be the machines, because we have paper ballots, we have the machine logs, we’ve got the machine totals, we should be focusing on that,' Johnson said."
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43 comments:
Progressive Russian spies are repulsive.
When in history have the people who oppose transparency and participate in censorship been right?
There is a reason they oppose audits.
The Arizona audit found hundreds of thousands of fake votes. Nobody is buying what the uniparty is selling. Ron Johnson is 100% uniparty scum.
The story here might not be any "admission" by Johnson. In fairness to Johnson, he holds to the position that he never believed anything else, just that there are questions that need to be answered about election processes. It's not a terribly credible position for Johnson, but in any event that is his answer. "The election wasn't stolen; we're just asking questions..."
The real story might be the Trumpist reaction to Johnson. Apparently Johnson is catching hell from the Trumpists for this demonstration of weakness on his part. No concession of the 2020 Trump election loss can ever be tolerated by them.
And where better to measure that reaction, than the comments pages of the Althouse blog?
"'The last thing I’d really focus on would be the machines, because we have paper ballots, we have the machine logs, we’ve got the machine totals, we should be focusing on that,' Johnson said."
In Wisconsin, missing absentees spur questions and anger
Hmm.
Nothing to see here.
Totally legit.
You are not smart if you believe Biden legitimately won Wisconsin
You're assuming that republican politicians wanted Trump to win.
The best way to line your pockets in DC is to be the minority party...
I’m not surprised.
The Senate under GOP control did zero recess appointments for Trump. It would have only taken on Senator to break this log jam.
And Johnson would be horribly attacked if he said there was voter fraud.
The establishment gop hates Trump, and is at war with him.
Compare and contrast the Democratic claims of voter fraud when their candidates lose.
The focus should be on the signatures on mail in ballots. I have written until I am blue in the face- the fraud was the saturating the ground with unsolicited mail in ballots in deep blue areas, and gathering them up and filling them out by party operatives on the ground. If the audit can't link signatures with ballots, then it will be of no use. I have always written that the Biden vote ballots physically exist- this wasn't done with ballot counting machines and software- it was good old ballot stuffing- the kind that can only happen with mail in voting where there are necessary breaks in chain of custody outside the view of poll watchers.
Sen. Johnson states what's obvious to anyone, even him.
Once again, let me repeat that the issue with the past election is that many votes lost any semblance of auditable, documented paper trails alloowing their verification after the votes were counted, specifically due to the multiple methods of universal mailing of ballots, unmonitored depositories for those mail-in ballots, potential ballot harvesting, and so on.
Sure, the tally of votes for Trump was 51k less than the tally of votes for other Republican candidates. Now prove those votes were all real, unmodified and performed by the people allowed to vote. That is the hard part here.
He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got. And that’s why he lost.
Trump's coattails carried 51,000 votes for other Republicans, but those votes were not captured by Trump??
That's not how it works. This man is obfuscating, or he's demented like Biden.
If the vote fraud in Wisconsin was done significantly only on the Presidential election -- not on lesser elections -- then Johnson's argument is not compelling.
His logic strikes me as flawed- to be honest I don’t understand the argument he’s making- a few hypotheticals and if/then speculation…It also seems innumerate and dats ignorant…
…and if it was ‘obviously skewed’ we’d all see it, yes. But there’s also evidence of multiple votes cast, illegal votes counted, vote counts larger than registered voters, and other voters anomalies suggestive of fraud. Did we have an investigation and a real audit, like an accounting firm would certify? We did not…
The Democrats set the bar at ‘widespread fraud’ without defining ‘widespread’. Enough to turn the vote in favor of the true loser. In WI that’s not a big number relative to the number of votes…
Lol.
Well, in no time flat I got my answer about how the Trump base will react to even a small modicum of sensible statements from Ron Johnson, who has made fewer sensible 2020 election concessions than almost anybody else in the Senate.
All right there, in the comments above this one.
I must say, to Johnson's credit; he knows you guys. He knows how you react to stuff like this. He and the Republican leadership in the Senate know what a Trumpist whirlwind it is, that they are now reaping.
"The establishment gop hates Trump, and is at war with him." Oh, how I wish that were true. I can only hope that it will be true someday. We're working on it.
It was not clear that there was a state wide Republican candidate who got 51K more votes than Trump. If that happened, it would provide some support for Johnson's statement. However, it does nothing to allay concerns about manipulation of the absentee and mail-in votes. Neither does it address concerns about corrupt vote counters.
I do not know if Trump would have won if the Democrats had not upped their voter fraud game, but I would like assurances that we will have fair elections and my vote will count. Johnson has done nothing to assure me.
I was skeptical about the results. Then I was skeptical about the fraud. Now I don't know what to think. There was a nationwide suburban trend away from Trump. Rural areas stuck with Trump. Urban areas may have seen a trend toward Trump, but it wasn't large enough to offset the large Democratic margins there. For Johnson, and other elected Republicans, that suburban trend was the salient fact and enough to explain Trump's loss.
You are there, though. What accounts for the massive increase in the vote in Dane County? The percentages didn't change much but Biden got far more votes than Clinton or Obama. Mail-in voting and the large transient student population created possibilities for fraud that make people suspicious.
Yancey @ 11.
Agreed. It was good old fashioned ballot stuffing.
Chuck at 11:53 AM
... I got my answer about how the Trump base will react ...
Chuck, thanks for using the expression Trump base rather than Trump cultists and other such obnoxious expressions.
You make good arguments. Making insults is counter-productive.
I look forward to seeing the results of the Arizona audit of the election, which should improve our country's discussion of the election-fraud issue.
In particular, Wisconsin might deal with the perception that voting fraud in Milwaukee significantly affects too many elections.
If Francisco D was a reader of The Bulwark, he would know that Wisconsin native and conservative political expert Charlie Sykes did the examination -- in fact he pointed to three different ways the the calculation could be made -- on how GOP state assembly candidates in Wisconsin, GOP candidates for the US House in Wisconsin and how Joe Biden did overall compared to other Democrats in Wisconsin, and all of it pointed to GOP candidates down-ballot all doing better than Trump did at the top of the ticket. Charlie Sykes is right; Ron Johnson was uncharacteristically, shockingly right. Trump performed really shitty in Wisconsin, like he did in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona just to mention a few. Other Republicans did significantly better than Trump did. Enough swing voters and anti-Trump Republicans voted against Trump, even when they voted for other GOP candidates.
HERE is that Bulwark link. Scroll down to "They Know; They All Know."
In Wisconsin you scan an early voting ballot (the same as an absentee ballot in Wisconsin law) through a machine and a paper record drops into a box in the machine. So unlike most other states there is a paper record of every vote cast. Then they seal your vote in an envelope. So it should be possible to look at all the absentee ballots and it should be possible to compare the machine totals with the paper totals. To some extent Wisconsin's great Senator Ron Johnson was just explaining how to check Wisconsin totals.
Hos other point - that Trump ran behind the other Republicans - is just a statement of the totals. I compared some outlying wards near where I live with their 2016 totals and Trump ran ahead of Hillary Clinton's 2016 totals in most of those wards. It isn't obvious to me where there was huge support for Republicans but not for Trump. On the contrary, I believe that in Wisconsin Biden owes his election to Democratic votes in downtown Milwaukee where 80 to 85% of the registered voters on the unpurged voter rolls are shown as voting and voting for Biden. Far more than 15% of the voters on unpurged voter rolls no longer live at their registered address.
I have to agree with Francisco. I would love to see some history on just how often lower tier statewide races had Republican winners with higher vote totals than the guy at the top of the ticket. I am sure it has happened before....but just exactly how often? Because it is fairly rare in Tennessee. For example, in 2020, Trump got 1,852,475 vs. 1,840,926 for Hagerty for Senate....and Hagerty was running against a nobody Dem who barely campaigned. In 2016, Trump got 1,517,402 and no Senate race. In the off year 2018 election, Blackburn got 1,217,483. Alexander only got 850,087 in his 2014 off year win. Maybe it is different in Wisconsin...but I would sure like for someone in Wisconsin who knows their voting tendencies to verify that they regularly vote in greater numbers for the down ticket guys.
Achilles said "The Arizona audit found hundreds of thousands of fake votes."
I missed that. Cite?
What's the point of soliciting comments on this topic except to remind folks why eliminating comments in the wake of January 6 was largely a good thing?
I think Wisconsin only does statewide offices during off-year or mid-term nationals- the only exception are senate seats which fall in presidential election years in a regular pattern 2/3s of the time. Now Johnson did out poll Trump in 2016, but that is not unusual at all- incumbent Senators regularaly win by larger margins in their states than presidential candidates.
It is possible Democrats were dumb enough to fix vote counts without fixing the actual physical ballots, but I seriously doubt it. We will get some information on this from the Arizona audit results, but their silence on them suggests to me that the physical ballots do exist and the Democrats weren't dumb enough to print out obviously fake paper ballots.
'nothing ... obviously' in a question of fraud is not meaningful. to even say it is deceptive.
While Chuckie tries to gloat, let's all recall that he still believes the Russia Collusion hoax, the Alfa bank hoax, the "fine people" hoax, and any other number of hoaxes perpetrated by his fellow America haters against Trump. To listen to his Hillary like self-satisfaction is to see a modern wonder of self-delusion.
Of course the news here is that - if Johnson's assessment is accurate - the anti-Trump LLRs like Chuck who are registered as Republicans and did not vote for Trump gave us Biden and his failing regime, the blood in Kabul, the stagflation, the violation of individual rights in the name of safetyism, the crony corruption of the Biden regime and its handlers, etc etc.
So let them gloat. Their ilk are the proximate cause for the current malaise, corruption, and violence.
Johnson's statement is a lot like Biden pounding the table that people wanted the war in Afghanistan to end, when that's not what people were upset about.
BTW, will Johnson be running for President in 2024? Because that would tell us a lot about his interest in pursuing or dismissing this issue.
So that’s 51,000 Wisconsin Republicans who have as much blood on their hands from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle as any Wisconsin Democrat.
[Shrug] They’ll figure out some way of lying to themselves that it wasn’t really their fault, and that their conscience is perfectly clear. As if they actually had s conscience.
Yancy is most correct - matching signatures on mail-in ballots with voter registration is the key issue.
Once a fake ballot gets included with real anonymous ballots, there's no way to separate them.
All "recounts" will count the ballots.
I understood previously that there were thousands of Democratic Biden ballots that only voted for him, without voting for the lower down Dems. My quick search showed this Wisconsin Reps total as 1,661k and that Trump got only 1,610k, so that's the 51k Johnson is talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Wisconsin
https://ballotpedia.org/Wisconsin_election_results,_2020
Dems: 1567k, Biden 1630k so Biden got 73k more votes than Dems.
These results remain very suspicious, and should be forensically audited with clear totals of paper ballots.
How many mail-in ballots (total)? with signature verification?
Democrats who want to reduce Trump's discussion of this issue should be favoring full audits. Their objections are also suspicious.
Yancy wrote: " I have written until I am blue in the face- the fraud was the saturating the ground with unsolicited mail in ballots in deep blue areas,"
Here in our Philadelphia home, we got six unsolicited mail-in ballots---3 each for our 2 adult children who no longer live with us.
Unsolicited blanket-issued mail-in ballots are an abomination, but I can see the argument for issuing them In These Difficult Times. But THREE of them per person??
The People's Project Veritas
No one has satisfactorily explained why 5 states suddenly claimed they were stopping the counting in the middle of the night, yet kept counting and overturned the Trump lead in the middle of the night.
If you re-count the existing ballots it is meaningless. There are chain of custody issues and rules that were changed all over the country. Someone said "I could show you 10 apples. From a distance you would agree that I had 10 apples. If you got up close you might discover that 5 apples were real, three were wax and two were plastic."
There seems to be plenty of questions about the voting machines including various features that are readily available on their machines, features that don't make sense. The machines are shipped with modems. That isn't secure, why aren't the Democrats concerned the Russians or Chinese hacked our elections?
There was more enthusiasm for Trump than I have ever witnessed despite the social risk of supporting him. Mile long car parades in numerous states, when Biden had to rent Jeeps to show up at parking lot appearances. It doesn't seem logical Biden could have gotten more votes than Obama. Obama was immensely exciting and popular for Americans, Biden was not.
Washington hated Trump because he was actually trying to look out for the interests of the people. All these big government programs enrich donors and politicians, they seldom help American taxpayers.
Bascially Johnson argument is moronic. He's saying "There is no election fraud because R congressman in total got more votes than Trump". First of all, where is Johnson getting his numbers from? Second, what happened in 2016, did Trump get more less votes then the R congressman. Thirdly, who cares.
The key point is this: the Wisconsin voting population stayed more or less the same. Trump as you would expect with an incumbent POTUS with a country at peace and prosperous increased his vote. Yet, Biden got 250,000 more votes than Hillary. How many of those 250,000 were legitimate? To make it even more suspicious, like Pennyslvannia, Biden did much better with Mail-in votes than he did with actual real life voters who showed up in person.
An audit would put all these issues to rest. Think of all the egg on the R's faces if the D's did an audit and it showed the election was honest. Yet, weirdly, the D's and their RINO don't want an audit. Why would an honest man object to verifying the results? The D's either won fair and square or they didn't. I think we know the answer.
BTW, its interesting that in GA, the trump hating secretary of state refused to do the one thing that would've changed the election: match the signatures on the Absentee ballots or see if they even had a signature. The same is true in NV. A group went into the registration records and proved that 10 of thousands of voters either were CA residents, or didn't exist, or weren't Americans. Enough to change the elction. But the Demcorat Sec of State refused to audit the votes.
The fix was in. And the DC GOP - and that includes Johnson - were delighted to have Biden win. Its amazing that anyone takes them seriously or cares about the DC Republicans. They're happier being a minority.
Synchronized "irregularities" in swing states beyond the margin of victory? Soros attorneys general blocking investigations into same> Every anomaly in one direction only? Screwups in chain of custody? Voting rules changed by fiat, not legislatures? Mister Rod Serling, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Mister Serling...
RigelDog said...
Yancy wrote: " I have written until I am blue in the face- the fraud was the saturating the ground with unsolicited mail in ballots in deep blue areas,"
Here in our Philadelphia home, we got six unsolicited mail-in ballots---3 each for our 2 adult children who no longer live with us.
Unsolicited blanket-issued mail-in ballots are an abomination, but I can see the argument for issuing them In These Difficult Times. But THREE of them per person??
No, that didn't happen. What you got were absentee ballot APPLICATIONS. Not ballots. I don't know you, don't live in your state and I don't practice law there. But thousands of Trump Bumpkins in Michigan made the same claims -- "I got mail-in ballots for all kinds of people who don't live at my address anymore!" -- and they were as untrue in Michigan as is your claim in Pennsylvania. Learn your election basics before you start talking trash.
Here's a handy explainer for PA:
"Unlike some states, Pennsylvania does not send out unsolicited mail-in ballots or ballot applications to voters. Normally, anyone who wants to vote by mail needs to apply online, download the application and mail it in or go to their local elections office and pick up the form. Online voter applications can be found at www.votespa.com.
"However, some organizations such as political parties, political campaigns and voter advocacy groups have mailed application forms to people listed on their contact lists. This is legal under Pennsylvania law, and groups have taken similar steps to get residents registered to vote in the past, said Wanda Murren, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State."
https://www.mcall.com/news/elections/mc-nws-pa-election-unsolicited-ballot-application-20200918-eiunwqpn55ej3hurlub2jkjpoy-story.html
Trump is to blame for losing Wisconsin. Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, etc..
..By his own definition of "losing".
He still seeks counsel of Kevin McCarthey, Ronna Ronmney, and Lindsey Graham-
Loser.
Chuck points out that perhaps the mailings we got for our adult children were not actual ballots, but applications to request mail-in ballots. I appreciate the information about Pennsylvania voting procedures, but I don't understand the illogical leap that he makes about my motivations.
I'm GLAD to get new info and I don't close my mind off to facts and arguments based on political tribalism. It sounds like we got applications, not ballots, but I wouldn't know that for sure because I didn't open them because they were not addressed to me.
So, Rigeldog is just lying, right, Chuck? No one filled out fake applications nowhere, right, Chuck?
Prove he is lying, Chuck.
I mean, really, the Secretary of State of Pennsylvania would know for certain everything was hunky-dory, right, Chuck?
I didn’t say RigelDog was “lying.”
RigelDog has now clarified things; he doesn’t know what the other mailed items were; and now he realizes he may have been mistaken.
I’m gratified that I could be of such assistance in clearing this up.
No thanks to some of you regular commenters.
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