Althouse: "A recount in a political race in Massachusetts has flipped a state house of representatives election from Republican to Democrat by a single vote. "

December 12, 2022

"A recount in a political race in Massachusetts has flipped a state house of representatives election from Republican to Democrat by a single vote. "

"Democrat Kristin Kassner won against her Republican opponent and five-term incumbent Lenny Mirra earlier this week after a recount that shrunk the candidates’ narrow vote deficit to one.... In response to that outcome, Mirra said that he will 'absolutely' challenge the result.... 'Some [ballots] were filled out in pencil, some were filled out with different colored ink, some had stray marks. Some had a name written in the write-in and then an oval filled out.'... Meanwhile, Kassner believes that there was no foul-play in the voting process...."

The Guardian reports.

53 comments:

D.D. Driver said...: Different colored ink?! Do the statues specify the color of ink you must use? You want to throw out someone vote because you don't like the color of ink? Get fucked you don't deserve to win, loser. You have no business representing the public.; 12/12/22, 5:56 AM
rhhardin said...: It's within the margin of fraud so it doesn't matter, representation-wise. It's just a question of finality. That being usually when the Democrat wins.; 12/12/22, 6:08 AM
gilbar said...: in The History of The Earth..
Was there EVER a recount that did NOT increase the democrat count? EVER?

Is gilbar implying that recounts are FRAUD? NO! gilbar is Explicitly Stating it.; 12/12/22, 6:21 AM
Dave Begley said...: Thank you Ann Althouse! This goes into my brief today!; 12/12/22, 6:23 AM
gilbar said...: D.D. Driver said...
throw out someone vote because you don't like the color of ink? Get fucked you don't deserve to win, loser

Let's Play, The WHAT IF game!

What If.. The republican was ahead? Does ANYONE (ANY ONE. at all) think DD would be okay with that?
Or would DD say to that republican...Get fucked you don't deserve to win, loser.; 12/12/22, 6:26 AM
Chris said...: D.D. Driver, different ink on the same ballet ok by you?; 12/12/22, 6:37 AM
tim maguire said...: I've always been interested in an analysis of races in decided by less than 1%. That would necessarily include races that flipped during recount.

Would any patterns emerge? It's possible we'd see none, but we like to talk about margins of fraud--if such a thing exists, you would see an unexpectedly large number of close races going to the party that cheats.; 12/12/22, 6:42 AM
John henry said...: Any time a 5 termer of any party gets replaced, I count it as a win.

I really don't care who the replacement is.

It's time for the 5 termer to get a job

We should always vote against incumbents. No other qualifications matter.

If no incumbent then vote party, hair or whatever.

John Henry; 12/12/22, 6:48 AM
D.D. Driver said...: What If.. The republican was ahead? Does ANYONE (ANY ONE. at all) think DD would be okay with that?

YES! The only people I hate mouth-breathing, book-hating religious fucktwit, I-go-to-a-church-for-stupid-people-at-an-abandoned-mall republican fuck twits are democrats.

You know who I want to win? Whoever the people of Massachusetts elected following the rules the people of Massachusetts have adopted. If someone other than that person takes the office (irrespective of whether that person is a piece of shit democrat or a piece of shit republican) our system has failed.

Throwing away votes because you don't like the color ink?! You support that?; 12/12/22, 6:49 AM
D.D. Driver said...: D.D. Driver, different ink on the same ballet ok by you?

That *could* be evidence of filling in an undervote. If there is a pattern and the different colored ink is in one race and going in one direction, maybe there is something there. Who is the suspect? There are all these crimes but never any specific suspects other then "the democraticals." LOL. It's been more than 2 years since 2020 and do we have the names of a single suspect (out of hundreds or thousands that must have been needed to "steal" the election)? Seem unlikely to me, but you partisans are really good at suspicion of disbelief.

Republicans are always crying about voter fraud that isn't happening while democrats cry about "voter suppressions" that isn't happening. Both sides suck equally hard, just in different ways. It's exhausting.; 12/12/22, 6:59 AM
Temujin said...: At least one of the ballots had to be filled out in crayon. Magenta, I'll bet. Nothing to see here.

Actually- it's possible this is all on the up and up.

Just kidding.; 12/12/22, 7:04 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Sounds like a replay of the Franken-Coleman race in MN.; 12/12/22, 7:06 AM
rwnutjob said...: "Meanwhile, Kassner believes that there was no foul-play in the voting process...."

What an idiot. No wonder Republicans lose.; 12/12/22, 7:08 AM
Humperdink said...: The Massachusetts dems need to up their game. Win by one mere vote? Why they didn't process the truckloads of ballots held in the staging area remains a mystery.; 12/12/22, 7:31 AM
Iman said...: Pulling votes out of their asses is such a Democrat way to roll.

They call him baby driver
Once upon a pair of wheels
He hits a wall and he’s gone.; 12/12/22, 7:38 AM
Achilles said...: It would be trivial to have a system where you could:

1. Know how many people voted.
2. Know how many ballots there are.
3. See a picture of every person that voted.
4. See the address of every person that voted.
5. Be able to systematically visit them and take samples after an election to match vote tallies with winners.
6. Allow a person to use a 3rd party authorization companies and cryptography to see who the state recording your ballot for secretly and securely.

Our election system is absolutely corrupt because the Uniparty wants it to be.; 12/12/22, 7:42 AM
Curious George said...: :rwnutjob said...
"Meanwhile, Kassner believes that there was no foul-play in the voting process...."

What an idiot. No wonder Republicans lose."

Kassner is the Democratic challenger.; 12/12/22, 7:54 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: one vote for the D.

Stop counting!; 12/12/22, 7:59 AM
Big Mike said...: Different colored ink?! Do the statues specify the color of ink you must use?

I can’t speak for Massachusetts, but in Virginia the statutes say blue or black ink only. Also the circle must be filled in — no ‘ax’ in the circle. There are directions in each booth that explain the requirements.; 12/12/22, 8:04 AM
Jay Quenel said...: Are they using electronic tabulators? Then the colour of the ink matters a great deal.; 12/12/22, 8:11 AM
Lurker21 said...: Kassner's the Democrat. Of course she thinks the election was on the up and up. The Republican candidate is contesting the result.

You can see a picture of the Mass State House at the Guardian article. The side entrance (closed since COVID, I think, as was the whole building for a time) was named after a Civil War general and is called the General Hooker Entrance. Jokesters wonder where the Special Hooker Entrance is.; 12/12/22, 8:17 AM
Achilles said...: D.D. Driver said...

Republicans are always crying about voter fraud that isn't happening while democrats cry about "voter suppressions" that isn't happening. Both sides suck equally hard, just in different ways. It's exhausting.

What is exhausting is people who accept obvious corruption at a systemic level and pretend that that makes them smart.; 12/12/22, 8:19 AM
Lurker21 said...: There are always questionable ballots. When the margin is one vote, any ballot contested or ballot "found" makes a difference. Democrats contest Republican ballots based on the same criteria. They just don't get specific about those criteria when talking to the media -- or they manage to "find" some ballots somewhere.

When the margin is one vote, is there any clear "voice of the people"? Clearly voters were divided 50-50. At this point Joe Biden's "What matters is who counts the vote," comes into play.; 12/12/22, 8:26 AM
Michael said...: I presume he means two or more colors of ink on a single ballot; 12/12/22, 8:38 AM
Howard said...: Keep the angst alive, losers. The whole world hates you and is conspiring to poison you with mRNA vaccines and therapies, replace you with darker skinned people and to groom your idiot suspectable spawn into trans preverts and commie sympathizers.; 12/12/22, 8:40 AM
Breezy said...: When we voted in MA we had to use black marker to fill in the circle. The tabulator was not guaranteed to read other colors correctly. I don’t think this ink color thing is an esoteric preference.; 12/12/22, 8:46 AM
Spiros said...: These super close elections are conducive to election fraud. And, we've had tons and tons of these 50-50 contests.; 12/12/22, 8:59 AM
Mark said...: Explain to me please how a recount is supposed to be more accurate than an initial count? What if they did a second recount? Wouldn't that be even more accurate?

Like most things election, the recount process is a complete fraud.; 12/12/22, 9:01 AM
Andrew said...: It's a Festivus miracle!; 12/12/22, 9:21 AM
Andrew said...: It's a Festivus miracle!; 12/12/22, 9:21 AM
hombre said...: "Meanwhile, Kassner believes that there was no foul-play in the voting process...."

Maybe not, but this is an article of faith with Democrats when they win regardless of evidence to the contrary and cannot be taken seriously by rational people.; 12/12/22, 9:33 AM
Jeff Weimer said...: @Big Mike - I'm an election officer in VA, and yes they do tell you to fill it completely in in blue or black ink, but that's just a recommendation. As long as the scanner can read it, it's fine, and they're calibrated so sensitively that it will pick up a single dot from the pen. We had *numerous* overvotes where the voter hesitated like that and we had to spoil that ballot and issue another one.; 12/12/22, 9:36 AM
Achilles said...: Mark said...
Explain to me please how a recount is supposed to be more accurate than an initial count? What if they did a second recount? Wouldn't that be even more accurate?

Like most things election, the recount process is a complete fraud.

It would be trivial to set up a system where if a ballot was unclear as to intent it could be marked and put into a set of ballots for confirmation.

You could then take the SHA keys from the unclear ballots and send them to an independent 3rd party auth token company and generate a list of voters to contact to have them come in and vote again.

You could do this if you had names and addresses on your voter roles and actually maintained your voter rolls.

But we do not have a legitimate election system. We have:

1. No picture ID requirement at any level of the process.
2. No address requirement.
3. "Provisional" same day ballots with no ID or address required.
4. Millions of ballots mailed to random addresses.
5. Electronic voting mixed into random precincts with votes counted in "doubles" that allow fractional counting of votes.
6. Ballot drop boxes with no chain of custody

There is no way that anyone can see we have a legitimate election system. It is a fraud from top to bottom.; 12/12/22, 9:42 AM
Michael K said...: Blogger Mark said...

Explain to me please how a recount is supposed to be more accurate than an initial count? What if they did a second recount? Wouldn't that be even more accurate?

Only if the Democrat wins, lefty Mark.; 12/12/22, 10:15 AM
Michael K said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/12/22, 10:16 AM
Richard Aubrey said...: A minor investigation in East Lansing by an interested citizen found a number of middle aged women purportedly voting from an address which turned out to be a fraternity house closed due to covid. And others from addresses which were not homes but described what the ghost homes' addresses would have been except for the park on that street. And other issues.
That was done without much effort which implies a really weird election mechanism there, really, improbably weird, discovered randomly. Or that it was so easily discovered because you can't hardly miss such arrangements no matter your time zone or state or county or city.; 12/12/22, 10:25 AM
Mark said...: Swing and a miss, MK.

AGAIN.; 12/12/22, 11:14 AM
Achilles said...: Richard Aubrey said...

That was done without much effort which implies a really weird election mechanism there, really, improbably weird, discovered randomly. Or that it was so easily discovered because you can't hardly miss such arrangements no matter your time zone or state or county or city.

I wouldn't call it weird.

If you asked me how to rig an election I would first get the voter rolls and make sure they were never updated and then allow anyone to sign up to vote at any time.

Then I would compile a list of "voters" that never vote. I would mail them ballots.

Then I would send people out to collect those ballots and fill them out and drop them in "drop boxes" that I make it illegal to have a camera on.

It is a rational process.; 12/12/22, 11:22 AM
tommyesq said...: From the article: Before the recount, Mirra led Kassner by 10 votes out of over 23,000 ballots that were cast in that region during the 8 November midterm election.

The 10-vote deficit was within the legal threshold of a recount. On 30 November, the Massachusetts secretary of state, Bill Galvin, ordered hand recounts in a general area where Mirra held a slim advantage.

So the vote was initially determined to be only 10 votes (about .04%), and the hand recount was done only in places that the Democrat had an advantage, and we are supposed to trust that the Democrat was the real and true winner (by 1 vote)?; 12/12/22, 11:43 AM
Rabel said...: Shocking news in the article! New Hampshire has an Atlantic coastline!

I will have to recalculate my geographical conceptions.; 12/12/22, 11:44 AM
Carol said...: Sounds like some foul play in Massachusetts! Someone oughta look into it.

Anyway,; 12/12/22, 12:50 PM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: So I'm having trouble understanding when questioning results becomes election denial given the way this article is presented by The Guardian. The terms is used in a completely neutral fashion, "A recount...has flipped," as if this didn't require some broken protocol, as if the law actually allows for such things. Instead of the usual story, we get "a recount" and "the recount" subjects with no adjectives, followed by verbs like "shrank" and "led" with no dark adverbial clauses to highlight for us why such an extraordinary and democracy-threatening thing as recounting votes was able to happen in true blue Massachusetts. WTF!; 12/12/22, 1:17 PM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Mark said, Explain to me please how a recount is supposed to be more accurate than an initial count? What if they did a second recount? Wouldn't that be even more accurate?

Fuckin' a right it would. We are still counting in CA because we want the most accurate tabulation. Seven or eight is optimal. I understand in Iowa they can go for years recounting primary ballots.; 12/12/22, 1:21 PM
Michael K said...: Lefty Mark doesn't like my comments on his comments. Somebody explain to me when was the last time a Republican won one of these endless recounts.

Her 2004 election opponent, Republican Dino Rossi, had appeared to defeat Gregoire on Election Day and after a first recount conducted by machine. However, following a second hand recount, Gregoire was declared the winner of the election. She became Washington's second female governor.

Nope. Not that time.

Franken was elected to the United States Senate in 2008 as the nominee of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL, an affiliate of the Democratic Party), defeating incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman by 312 votes out of nearly three million cast (a margin of just over 0.01%) in one of the closest elections in the history of the Senate.

Nope. Not Norm Coleman.

Those Democrat votes hide in car trunks until needed.; 12/12/22, 3:09 PM
Jim at said...: Do the statues specify the color of ink you must use?

Don't know about Mass, but black or blue ink is required in Washington state.; 12/12/22, 3:17 PM
Brown Hornet said...: Funny how protracted vote counting continues until the Democrat moves ahead. Just a strange coincidence.; 12/12/22, 4:36 PM
D.D. Driver said...: I wouldn't call it weird.

If you asked me how to rig an election I would first get the voter rolls and make sure they were never updated and then allow anyone to sign up to vote at any time.

Then I would compile a list of "voters" that never vote. I would mail them ballots.

Then I would send people out to collect those ballots and fill them out and drop them in "drop boxes" that I make it illegal to have a camera on

LOL. Republicans live under the constant fear that democrats might be competent at something. Have you ever met a democrat? That's a very labor intensive manner of fraud. LOL.

How do they know when the USPS will deliver the ballot? They just go to everyone's house every day until the ballot arrives? And, no one notices? And, to spin this out further, they must have sophisticated algorithms to know when the mail will arrive. (I don't know when my mailman will arrive on any particular day.) And, how do they know the resident won't be home sick when the democraticals come knocking? Are they doing stakeouts, too? They probably have really good cover stories. Each one a master of disguise and misdirection. They all acquire these skills at the K.R.A.K.E.N. Institute for Voter Fraud. They have an excellent series of training webinars that none of us will ever see because the democraticals are so fucking competent and disciplined that not a single soul out of what must be thousands would ever open their mouths.; 12/12/22, 5:22 PM
Gahrie said...: There is nothing new about Democratic Party vote harvesting. Some day history books will describe this time in a very similar fashion to the old political machines like Tammany Hall.

(It's amazing to me how similar the start of the 21st century is copying the start of the 20th century.); 12/12/22, 6:56 PM
effinayright said...: Rabel said...
Shocking news in the article! New Hampshire has an Atlantic coastline!

I will have to recalculate my geographical conceptions.
*************

Portsmouth, Newcastle, Rye, Hampton, Seabrook....; 12/12/22, 7:24 PM
gpm said...: I've been voting in Mass. for about 45 years. Way back when, I think there were some funky mechanical voting machines. Ever since, however, there have been paper ballots. The polling place provides the pen for marking the paper ballot. The pens all have black ink. I don't understand how there could be different color inks on a completed ballot.

--gpm; 12/12/22, 8:52 PM
Scott said...: Sorry, but only one side steals elections. To them, the ends justify the means.; 12/12/22, 9:43 PM
Achilles said...: D.D. Driver said...

LOL. Republicans live under the constant fear that democrats might be competent at something. Have you ever met a democrat? That's a very labor intensive manner of fraud. LOL.

I appreciate people like DD Driver.

He thinks he is really smart and that he is actually addressing the things that I say in an intelligent manner.

It is important for people to see how dishonest and really quite stupid the regime supporters are.; 12/12/22, 10:20 PM
Joe Bar said...: These things always seem to go in one direction. Hmmm.; 12/13/22, 9:50 AM