He's talking about "The Left's Attack on the Secret Ballot and on Same Day Voting/Mail in voting over a period of weeks with drop boxes eliminates the secret ballot, and the need for everyone to vote on the same day, with the same headlines in mind, and not over the period of a month" by Steven Calabresi (at Reason).
Bump carps:
This is how Calabresi tries to distance himself from something for which there’s no evidence (election fraud) in favor of something that can’t be proved (the election was illegitimate). His
dubious argument is that so much voting at home meant that voters were subject to influences from nefarious door-knockers or their own family as though Trump supporters were cowed by their relatives into voting for Biden....
At its heart, Calabresi’s argument is a familiar one: that Biden supporters are dull sheep who were not sincere in their support. Since he can’t imagine that Biden could have gotten so many votes, it must be that Biden didn’t get so many votes. So the election was necessarily illegitimate, for reasons that he cobbled together after the fact. For what it’s worth, this is not the public reputation that accompanies Trump supporters, nor is there any evidence this occurred to any significant degree. At its heart, Calabresi’s argument is a familiar one: that Biden supporters are dull sheep who were not sincere in their support.
I want to separate the cows from the sheep! You don't need to believe that Trump voters were weaklings who flipped to the Biden side because they were voting from home. Trump got plenty of votes in 2020 — more votes in Pennsylvania than Barack Obama got, but somehow Biden got even more. The mystery is about all those Biden votes. I think the concern is that there were a lot of extra ballots lying around, and with no one needing to show up in person, they could be filled out by someone other than the voter and mailed in.
From Calabresi's article:
Swarms of Democratic vote canvassers knocked on the doors of thousands of people who had not yet voted "by mail" and offered to "help" them "make their vote count." Ballots were filled in by voters at home[,] possibly with canvassers or family members[] "observing" how each person voted. Canvassers then "offered" to deliver the "harvested ballots" to "drop boxes" saving voters the trouble of turning them in themselves.....
I do believe, however, that the unprecedented use of mail in voting over a period of many weeks, with the loss of the secret ballot, and drop boxes, produced a fundamentally illegitimate Biden victory in 2020 in Pennsylvania and elsewhere....
Some Republicans, including me... acquiesced in Joe Biden taking office because we thought we had to do that to preserve a facade of democracy absent concrete proof of vote fraud. But deep down in our guts we thought that Joe Biden's campaign had probably won with dirty tricks, although that could not proved in a court of law....
The point of Calabresi's article is to call for better — more confidence-inspiring — voting procedures — secret ballots, drop boxes, and no early voting. Bump's answer to that seems to be stop insulting the voters — they're not "dull sheep" who get "cowed."
Posts
87 comments:
How is it the "loss of the secret ballot"?
Our local system is typical paper ballot and they come in a separate inner envelope which is long separated from the mailing envelope by the time it's taken out, flattened and run through the optical scanner.
I fixed about 30 rejects so that they could be read, two people watching me, and we had no fucking idea who the voter was.
And each ballot envelope received has a bar code that ud scanned into the database, only one per voter record.
You can't just scan a bunch of extra ballot envelopes into nowhere. They won't be counted at all.
Again, the favorite tactic of the Liberal/left and MSM is to deny there was any election fraud in 2020, despite all the evidence, and call everyone names. And use the legal system, including the Bar Association, to punish any lawyer who brings it up.
Never concede the opposition has a legitimate point, never give a Goddamn inch. Just attack, attack, and censor, censor.
IRC, anyone who brought up the election fraud was either censored from social media in 2021, or kept off TV. Why? if the election was fair and honest why not AUDIT the votes and prove it?
Instead, the Democrats in Arizona and GA have fought tooth and nail to prevent ANY audit of the votes. Not RECOUNT. An audit. And the Arz State senate audit found massive "Irregularities".
We now know AG Barr didn't want to find any fraud in 2020, and refused to do any investigations. He was telling Trump one week after the election, based on nothing, that the election was honest and fair. Like "Hunters Laptop" and "Russiagate" the uniparty is absolutely deterimined to lie about the 2020 election and censor and attack anyone who doesn't toe the party line.
Of course, the R's have done NOTHING to prevent the Democrats from stealing the election in 2024. But then the R's don't want to win, they want to do favors for their big donors.
I don't believe that Joe Biden won legitimately and never will, and the best proof of that is the fact that his campaign and the Democrats vehemently argued against any kind of transparency or audit of the results. If you are confident that you won fair and square, you would have no objection to showing the proof. And in fact, the absentee ballot system was deliberately utilized in a way to destroy chains of custody and taint the results so that even if an audit took place, it would still count the fraudulent ballots because they had been irreversibly integrated in with legitimate votes.
Three problems:
1) The courts went absolutely insane trying to protect Dominion Voting Systems, so most of the stories about the election are incredibly incomplete. Look at the retraction at American Thinker.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/statement.html
2) Joe Biden might have helped the globalists run out the clock on their old crimes. But as the Trump trials show, we don't actually need viable charges to start imprisoning the opposition. So be it.
3) If Joe Biden had made life better for most Americans, he'd be fine right now. But the regime was firmly stuck in the "loot the treasury" phase of decline, not realizing that their executions would provide such a national renaissance as to limit the spread of collapse.
"The point of Calabresi's article is to call for better — more confidence-inspiring — voting procedures"
Hey progs, don't you want to be like Europe? Like, with real ID, no mail-ins?
The fact that progs want the fraud-prone procedures is a sufficient tell. The confidence that matters is their likelihood of winning.
I don't know about dull sheep; but there a number of dimwits whose bylines appear in the Washington Post.
Hump Bump Gumps Trump Voters…
Bump Humps Sheep…
Phil Still Thrills..
Balls Deep in Sheep
Miles to go before he sleeps…
In any fair and just election system it isn't the job of that system's detractors to specifically prove that there was vote fraud, it is the job of that system's supporters to convincingly prove that vote fraud would have been and is impossible.
He been a baaaad, baaaad boy!
I can understand the complaint about the loss of the secret ballot. If I go in person into the booth to vote, no one is with me. At home, we're three people sitting around the table. We don't look over each other's shoulders or intrude, but we happen to be polite. A family without that restraint could be very intimidating around their table.
But if you really wanted to vote against your family's wishes, you'd probably vote in person and go in the booth.
Arguably the worst COVID impact on our nation was the Democrat-led expansion of mail-in balloting, accompanied by ballot harvesting. We can no longer have faith in the result of an election. That’s just abominable.
There is a well-established debate in the U.S. about whether to make it somewhat difficult or rigorous to vote, or not, without in any way considering a return to Jim Crow. Voter registration I believe is not common in liberal democracies. It's a way of requiring that one show the intention to vote ahead of time, with possibly a time period like a month. According to Wikipedia, one third of states have same day i.e. voting day registration. Otherwise registration per se is not particularly difficult, racist, or whatever.
Only citizens on the one hand, no convicted felons on the other. The latter has become funny with Trump (for now) a convicted felon. (I'll leave it to the lawyers: if all Trump's convictions are vacated, does that mean he's not a convicted felon?). Surely even the most woke people don't want children to vote, but who knows. People with diagnosable mental illness, assuming this can be distinguished from merely disagreeing with me?
Then, yes, chain of custody. A person identifies her/himself, is on a voter's list and/or offers ID. The old mail-in system required that you request a ballot by mail, identifying yourself somehow, possibly stating that your usual residence is in a particular state, perhaps a particular congressional district. Only then do you get exactly one ballot.The ballot comes back with some ID number, not the same as improperly identifying the voter, which would violate the secret ballot. As much as humanly possibly, all ballots are counted on exactly one day. If parties want to have scrutineers present, they can, but there is probably no public funding for that. There is agreement on the count, which ballots are invalid and so on. The count is announced, and, here's a big one, absolutely every counted ballot is destroyed. No mystery bags of ballots showing up later.
Both parties have historically agreed that voters who don't think about voting, and often can't be bothered, and don't inform themselves very much, if they are somehow brought to vote, tend to vote Dem. Not cowed into voting, but at most reminded of what side their bread is buttered on. Dems are more likely to sprinkle cash around, even create government jobs. The left now pretends there is no merit to most or any of the rules, there is no relevant history, nothing to learn from other jurisdictions (remember praising Third World countries for having people ink their fingers so that, drum roll, each person only votes once?). Anything they don't like is racist, an evil attempt (as I think the senile monkey said) to "prevent you from voting." What complete bullshit.
Yarn Best Left in Barn…
WaP00 Writer… Sheep Exciter
Calabresi Story in All its Woolly Glory
Bump Flips… Hip Deep in Sheep Dip
@Wild Chicken
I’m your boss, no paycheck if you din’t show me your ballot and give it to me to mail. Some secret ballot you have there. Alternatively, everyone who shows me their ballot and drops it with me gets a bonus.
WaP00 wanna pull teh Wool With Ewe
“Swarms of Democratic vote canvassers knocked on the doors of thousands of people who had not yet voted "by mail" and offered to "help" them "make their vote count." Ballots were filled in by voters at home[,] possibly with canvassers or family members[] "observing" how each person voted. Canvassers then "offered" to deliver the "harvested ballots" to "drop boxes" saving voters the trouble of turning them in themselves.....”
I can attest to you that this occurred on an industrial scale in NJ as early as 2016.
A “nice young lady” showed up at my elderly parent’s home and did exactly as Calabresi stated above. She told them they were eligible for a mail in ballot because of their age, helped them fill it out, and offered to turn it in for them. They agreed. She was so nice.
I guarantee that if they voted for Obama their ballots made it to the polling place and were counted. Otherwise, they made it as far as the nearest shredder.
My parents never caught on to the scam. I didn’t have the heart to tell them.
Swarms of Democratic vote canvassers knocked on the doors of thousands of people who had not yet voted "by mail" and offered to "help" them "make their vote count." Ballots were filled in by voters at home[,] possibly with canvassers or family members[] "observing" how each person voted. Canvassers then "offered" to deliver the "harvested ballots" to "drop boxes" saving voters the trouble of turning them in themselves...
Why didn't local and state Republicans prevent this in 2020? Because they didn't control state and local governments? Or because they were afraid of Covid?
Why didn't they harvest ballots themselves? Are they planning to harvest ballots in 2024?
Voting season instead of voting day is intended for voter fraud. So is fighting voter ID. Absentee ballots, drop boxes, and ballot harvesting open doors wide open to voter fraud.
2020 was fraudulent. No court even bothered to hear evidence, so I'm not buying the "couldn't be proven" bullshit.
How much of the 2020 "ballot harvesting" were absentee ballots filled out by someone else other than the person who's name was on the ballot. Signature verification was thrown out the window. They did it openly at nursing homes in Racine, WI. The sheriff even called it out.
You've been living under the effects of a President to in unaccountable to voters...because he really doesn't need voters to "win."
Wild chicken said...
I fixed about 30 rejects so that they could be read, two people watching me, and we had no fucking idea who the voter was.
Whey are you "fixing" any ballot? And if "fixing" is allowed, that easily leads to "changing" or even fabricating.
Do you really think all the ballot fixers are clean? In Madison, WI? Milwaukee? Philly? Atlanta? Detroit? Maricopa?
It's also obviously easier to buy votes if canvassers can go door to door, paying cash and watching to make sure that the ballot is filled out the way the canvasser wants.
Lloyd W. Robertson said...
Both parties have historically agreed that voters who don't think about voting, and often can't be bothered, and don't inform themselves very much, if they are somehow brought to vote, tend to vote Dem.
6/11/24, 9:30 AM
A common trick is to offer a car ride to the otherwise elderly or poor, with the understanding that you convince them to vote for the left beforehand. However, if your elderly pal didn't have proper ID and a recognized space on the voter list, you can guarantee they would be turned away. American elections wouldn't count as clean in South Africa, never mind Canada or the UK. But the chuckservatives were fine as long as the scam could perpetuate itself.
But too many people despise Biden, which is why the regime has to resort to Pakistani tactics like arresting the opposition. It's not going to help them, and will justify whatever President Trump does in retaliation.
This is how Calabresi tries to distance himself from something for which there’s no evidence
There is plenty of evidence. It may or may not stand up in court, if one could ever get a court to look at it, but it exists.
There are also hundreds of convictions in various states for election fraud. The response there is "not enough to make a difference"
in favor of something that can’t be proved (the election was illegitimate).
By the same token, it can't be proved that the election was legitimate either. We are asked to take this on faith from a federal and state govts that have proven over and over and over again to be untrustworthy.
John Henry
There is no benign explanation for election and voting reforms instituted since we began early voting. None whatsoever. Just smokescreens.
Secure, encrypted voter ID cards issued by govt and usable for nothing else.
Verification against voter rolls at the polling place
Voting in person on election day. With very few exceptions and those only with valid reason
Paper ballots, marked by hand deposited by voter's hand in ballot box
Hand counting of ballots in polling room after polls close
Second verification count of ballots elsewhere
Lots of witnesses to the entire process
(Optional) Finger inking and checking on entrance to and exit from the poll
Anything less than the above is just kabuki and cannot be trusted.
John Henry
Blogger The Vault Dweller said...
it is the job of that system's supporters to convincingly prove that vote fraud would have been and is impossible.
Amen, amen and amen
John Henry
I always like the retort there was no “widespread” election fraud when it wasn’t needed to tip the election.
Widespread fraud would not only be wasted effort but leave more evidence of the fraud itself.
Is Phillip Bump one of those "service journalists" we heard about last week?
What is his function?
John Henry
If anyone here thinks that the 2024 vote will be cleaner than the 2020 vote, they are crazier than Chuck and dumber than Inga.
When Jimmy Carter would oversee elections in South America, what method of voting was being used?
In person? one day?
Just asking. I think I might want that one.
The election fraud can be proven or disproven, it is just that the evidence required to do so hasn't been examined. The mail-in-vote signatures on the outer envelopes could be examined forensically and compared to the signature on the voter registration cards- this isn't rocket science- such evidence is admitted in court cases all the time.
Mail-in-voting has become so voluminous that signature matching really is no longer done and signature matching is the only security feature such ballots ever had in the first place. There is no place for mail-in-ballots as a default option if you really want a fundamentally non-fraudulent election- the chain of custody and verification system is not effective.
I am ok with voting up to 2 weeks before the election, but it has to be in person with photo ID, and the ballots have to be physical ballots with ink marks, and you get the indelible ink on the finger when you are done. If you cannot physically make it to the voting booth, then you arrange to have your ballot officially delivered in person by paired party representatives who then wait until you have filled it out and sealed it, they then return it to the voting office. This isn't too much to ask for, and that one party continuously opposes it tells me in no uncertain terms that that party is committing vote fraud wherever they are allowed to do so.
Absentee voting should never be more than 5% of the total vote- never. Convenience is not a proper excuse for allowing it.
Wild Chicken,
Where is the voting you are describing? Who keeps the database of the bar codes? Who verifies the signatures? How is the verification done? How many such ballots do you have to deal with in a general election?
Should we trust the Georgia/atlanta election results?
I've been sort of paying attention to Fani Willis other RICO trial of the rapper Young Thug and his YSL gang. This got some attention here a few weeks ago when the DA and the judge got into a shouting match in court.
Yesterday, the judge arrested the lead defense attorney and had him escorted from court to a cell for contempt. The judge, DA and one of the key witnesses had met in judges chambers without the defense present. The defense lawyer wanted to know what was discussed. The judge wanted to know who told him the meeting occurred. When he refused to snitch, the judge had him escorted from the courtroom.
Co-counsel stood up, volunteered that he too knew about the meeting and that he would not snitch either. The judge did nothing to him. I suspect that it really is coincidence that the judge and 2nd defense counsel are black and the lead, who is sentenced to 10 weekends (20 days) in jail, is white. Still not a good look.
Phil Holloway, an Atlanta attorney is doing a good job on X of covering the trial.
This is the kind of govt that we are asked to trust with election results.
John Henry
Fulton county bought signature verification machines and software and then didn't use it during 2020 election.
They only admitted to this last year, 3 years later.
So you really have zero idea if Fulton County was clean or dirty.
Seems weird to buy the machines and then not use them, no?
But it was a perfect election.
GA GOP slow walked this because egg would be on their face.
Media never asked any questions.
Their attorneys finally fessed up in a court case...LOL.
Bump: Unfit to Service Sheep
"You can't just scan a bunch of extra ballot envelopes into nowhere. They won't be counted at all."
Gabriel Sterling said the exact same thing.
Until it was shown that yes, you can run the same ballots through and they would be counted twice. Ooops. Not all software works like its advertised.
Why would workers run the same ballots more than once? (You can see this being done on video in Fulton county)
1) They want to find all the write ins and remove them as they prevent machine counting. So run it over and over to get rid of votes for Mickey Mouse. (This is an obvious thing a worker would do with write ins...)
2) Or you wait until the poll watchers leave to do this and add more to the votes....who knows?
Fulton county recount double counted some weird batches...they did this to "match up" the recount to the original...again, this could be incompetents trying to hide that, or...something else.
Again this county bought machines to read signatures and then NEVER used them.
Who knows what they are doing.
Ballots were filled in by voters at home[,] possibly with canvassers or family members[] "observing" how each person voted. Canvassers then "offered" to deliver the "harvested ballots" to "drop boxes" saving voters the trouble of turning them in themselves
Can you prove every one of those mail in votes was witnessed this way? Talk about baseless claims...
What ewe gnu.
Doesn't the fact that Trump consistently underperformed in polls as opposed to actual (secret) ballots in 2016 demonstrate the point? Significant number of people who were not willing to admit to a pollster that they would vote for Trump did in fact vote for him. I know that ever since Colorado went to mail-in ballots for everyone, we generally fill out the ballots at the dining room table together. I imagine that is pretty common, and of course the ballot harvesting funded by Gates and Zuck is even more intrusive and partisan.
Bump has never been particularly bright. He is certainly not in Calabresi's league. It is simply a Democrat/media myth that there is "no evidence" of election fraud. It also can't be proven that the election was legitimate. Mark Levin might argue that every time local or state election officials illegally ignored legislated voter laws in violation of Art. 1, Sec. 4, with the intention of altering the outcome of the election, it was election fraud.
The legitimacy of the election is an article of faith and part of the TDS. It certainly hasn't been proven that the election was stolen, but three factors loom large for 2024. Democrats always oppose any election reform that enhance the integrity of the process. Democrats are striving to create ways for illegal immigrants to vote. Democrats are desperate, as they were in 2020, to prevent Trump from being elected. Desperate Democrats are even more scurrilous than non-desperate Democrats.
But do carps bump?
John henry said...
...
By the same token, it can't be proved that the election was legitimate either. We are asked to take this on faith from a federal and state govts that have proven over and over and over again to be untrustworthy.
John Henry
Liberals/leftists/democrats desire to put their whole faith in the government - almost like a religion.
Conservatives/the right/republicans have a baseline mistrust of government. As the founding fathers did. Government trust must be earned.
Whenever any doubt is placed in government actions the left and media go absolutely nuts and attack the person who expresses mistrust. This is a good reason to defacto believe the government is wrong, or something underhanded is going on.
At last report, Philip Bump was still maintaining, no doubt basefully, that the laptop did not belong to Hunter Biden. And the WaPo "stood by" his reporting. Although I think "sat by" would be closer to it.
rejahm: "Can you prove every one of those mail in votes was witnessed this way? Talk about baseless claims..."
Perfect example of the logical fallacy of the Excluded Middle. Either every single mail ballot was filled out in front of others, or none were.
The point is that canvassers can "encourage" people (in select areas) who might not otherwise vote and offer to mail their ballots in - or just collect the peoples' ballots and fill them out themselves. Anything they suspect was voted "wrong" never gets submitted. The fraud occurs before the ballots ever get to the openers and counters.
Same day, in person voting; picture ID's, paper ballots, purple fingers. Reasonable controls over who gets an absentee ballot. Maybe a 24-hour national holiday, with the polls closing simultaneously in New York and Honolulu, to eliminate the gee-I-can't-get-off-work excuse (another advantage: the television people would hate it).
“You can't just scan a bunch of extra ballot envelopes into nowhere. They won't be counted at all.”
Actually, you can, and we saw it being done in GA in 2020.
What is supposed to happen is that you have an audit trail by batch, and the entire batch can be validated later, after they are separated from the ballots and the ballots counted. Then, if the provenance of the packets fail, the signatures don’t match, etc, the entire batch isn’t counted. Except that didn’t happen. Apparently, the idea is that if entire batches of ballots are reversed out of the higher level counts, the legitimate voters in those batches are disenfranchised, or some such nonsense. Turns out none of the mail in ballots in Maricopa County, AZ, should have been counted in 2022, because there was no end-to-end audit trail. Moreover, there was evidence that employees at the private firm that collected and counted the ballots there that year didn’t bother to drop their ballots off at drop boxes. Instead, they just inserted them into the stream of uncounted ballots, after they had been separated from their provenance. Of course, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone, since the person in charge of voting in the state, Secretary of State Katy Hobbs, was running, ultimately successfully, for governor, without bothering to campaign. It should also be noted that under AZ law in AZ in 2022, it was (still is) illegal to drop off ballots of anyone outside your immediate household. Yet, phone GPS records show the same drivers doing circuits through the ballot boxes in Maricopa county, day in and day out. Why wasn’t this detected at the time? Because the Dems filed suit against Republicans monitoring ballot drop off boxes, that was mysteriously stipulated to by the same Secretary of State.
Please correct me if I'm mistaken about this, but it's my understanding that, by the time that a ballot is counted, it has been detached from the identity of the voter. That means that, even if you could prove that there were 10 million illegal ballots counted, it would still not show that the fraud affected the outcome.
Your trust in our system would be undermined, but you won't have proven that a different outcome would have occurred in a clean election.
“Actually, you can, and we saw it being done in GA in 2020.”
Should have said GA and AZ in 2020, and AZ at least in 2022. Both states had enough Republicans in their legislatures to audit the voting in their respective states, and the audits ended up showing massive illegalities. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of fraudulently counted ballets in both states, in both 2020 and 2022. Six or seven figures of fraudulently counted ballots, with four figure winning margins. It as truly egregious, and that doesn’t even get into the intentional non counting of in-person (typically Republican) votes in Maricopa County in 2022, when ballots were printed at one size, and attempted to be scanned at another size, a change introduced into the machines after they had been certified as accurate, a couple days before the election.
Understand who is dishing out these thoughts.
Philip Bump- if asked today- will still insist that Hunter's laptop is nothing but a Russian disinformation campaign. Reality notwithstanding, this intrepid reporter will look you in the face and tell you that it is all a hoax. Even as virtually everyone else who was with the 'it's a hoax' thing during the election, have since come to terms with the reality that, as Hunter put it, "Yeah...it's my laptop."
I mean, hell...even the FBI has come clean on this. And that is not something they do often, or willingly.
Given that level of depraved party loyalty, and disregard for the truth and reality, you can then proceed to read Mr. Bump's column. And anything else he manages to vomit up during the upcoming months.
There is no chain of custody on purpose
Same day voting was nullified in Maricopa County AZ by manipulating the voting machines. Democrats have many ways to cheat.
“ Please correct me if I'm mistaken about this, but it's my understanding that, by the time that a ballot is counted, it has been detached from the identity of the voter. That means that, even if you could prove that there were 10 million illegal ballots counted, it would still not show that the fraud affected the outcome.”
The control is supposed to be that the ballots are handled in batches, and a batch not counted if tainted. X number of ballets are received in their sleeves with other provenance, such as ballot number, signature, etc. They are then separated from their provenance, and handled separately thereafter. Then at the end of the process, all X ballots should be accounted for, either in someone’s vote total, or in some other uncounted tally. And there should be X sets of provenance too. And, at every stop along the way, there should be exactly X ballots. That’s the audit trail missing in Maricopa County in 2022 - X ballots were dropped in drop boxes, and Y ballots (Y>X typically) counted (or otherwise accounted for) at the end.
“Same day voting was nullified in Maricopa County AZ by manipulating the voting machines. Democrats have many ways to cheat.”
That was the printing the ballots at one size, and trying to read them at another side, introduced into the machines after the had been certified and sealed. In the old days, you went to your precinct to vote, and they had the proper ballots for that precinct. But Maricopa county (population > 3 million) went to allowing voting at any poll8ng place. This meant that the ballots had to be printed then and there for the individual voters, because the slate of candidates were different (for example, the county probably has 5 or 6 Representatives). In any case, the larger ballets often wouldn’t scan at the smaller size. Adding insult to injury, once you had a ballet printed at a polling place, you were marked as having voted, making trying later, there or elsewhere highly problematic.
@Iman absolutely en fuego today!
Is there a way to work that other great columnist, Charles Blow of the NYT, into these headlines?
"Please correct me if I'm mistaken about this, but it's my understanding that, by the time that a ballot is counted, it has been detached from the identity of the voter. That means that, even if you could prove that there were 10 million illegal ballots counted, it would still not show that the fraud affected the outcome."
If, for example, it could be shown that 10% of the ballots counted in Fulton County, Georgia were illegally counted because of signature mismatch, you can be almost 100% certain that benefitted Joe Biden by enough to overturn the state results with just that county alone. So, I think your assertion is just flat out wrong. Of course, what would need to be done would be to do the same analysis of every county in Georgia, but even if that same 10% applied to every county in Georgia, it would still be certain to have benefitted Biden enough to overturn the result because mail-in-ballots were disproportionately used in counties carried by Biden by healthy margins.
People conveniently forget that Trump was going on about electoral fraud in 2016. He followed through on a pledge to investigate it by getting a special commission going, with the AG from Kansas in a leadership role--he'd been prominent among those claiming lots of fraud happening resulting in Democratic victories.
So there was this effort, under the Trump administration, during a time when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
What was the result? Zilch, nada.
From this I can draw the conclusion either that the Trump administration and Republicans in the House and Senate were incompetent, or there was in fact no electoral fraud worthy of the name.
Take your pick.
One thing that I am surprised that has not yet been mentioned, is that lawprof Rick Hasen jumped on Calabresi's essay before Philip Bump did. Prof. Hasen runs the Election Law Blog and wrote THIS POST after personslly confronting Calabresi about a claim that 2020 was somehow "stolen." Calsabresi responded with a confession that he had misspoken.
It is excellent work that Bump and Hasen are doing, slicing and dicing Calabresi (who has at times in the past been a profundly reluctant Trump supporter, if at all) on the subject of Trump and elections. I think that Calabresi would love to talk about elections apart from Trumpism. I won't have it. Someday, maybe. Someday, former Federalist Society colleagues like Calabresi, and George Conway, and me might once again be all on the same page. But not now. For now, I'm not going to have any part of a conversation without hanging Trump's "stolen election" claim from 2020 around the necks of all of my opponents. I'm not looking for disucssion, or conversation, or debate, or improvement ideas for voting. I don't want to build anything. I'm not looking for comity. All that I will do is to draw a line on "stolen 2020." That is the dividing line for 2024. It's not my marker; it was Trump's marker. And the TrumpWing is stuck with it, no matter how badly smart guys like Steve Calabresi would like to evade it.
Yancey at 1 pm. Thanks for your response.
The argument you are making is that the illegal ballots will necessarily have been cast in close proportion to the legal ballots cast within the precinct at issue. That assumption has no foundation. What's to stop the Dems from claiming that the illegal ballots were just as likely to have been cast for the GOP?
A buddy of mine has been an election observer in places like Bosnia and the Stans. Red flags they look out for are the man of the house trying to cast votes for the entire family or the village big man ensuring that everyone votes the right way. Mail in voting enables both of these, especially when you have a lot of ballots lying around.
I think it's precious that some of you think that the Post Office is honest.
Stealing mailed ballots is easy.
wild chicken said...
How is it the "loss of the secret ballot"?
Calabresi explains in the part Althouse quoted from his article. Canvassers "observed" the vote and then "offered" to deliver the ballot. Prove to us that the Canvasser witnessed a person voting for Biden then actually delivered the ballot to a drop box. Now prove to us that the Canvasser witnessed a person voting for Trump then actually delivered the ballot to a drop box.
If you still don't understand, read this from the DOJ: "Postal Employee Admits Dumping Mail, Including Election Ballots Sent to West Orange Residents". But that's ballots being delivered to be filled out, not ones filled out, right? Now ask any pollster or seasoned politician and can tell you which neighborhoods tend to vote conservative or progressive. Pretty easy at that point to either destroy mail-in ballots going to an opposition neighborhood or destroy them before they get to a drop box.
That doesn't explain Althouse point about more votes for Biden. Here is the LATimes explaining the problem. They spin it as votes being thrown out, but they show three examples of mismatched signatures. If voter signature verification is just accepting a signature whether it matches or not, because we must count every vote, then it is easy to take a stack of mail in ballots, fill them out, sign them, and send them in. Prove to us that is not happening rather than saying it is unfair that unmatched signatures result in discarded votes.
Bottom line, ad hominem arguments about cows and sheep does not address the issues raised.
Blogger Michael K said...
Same day voting was nullified in Maricopa County AZ by manipulating the voting machines. Democrats have many ways to cheat.
Same thing in Harris County TX. Oddly enough, conservative leaning precincts did have enough ballots on election day despite number of voters showing up being with in expectations based on previous elections. Further, Constables used to deliver ballots to make sure they got to voting polls, but the new appointed position of "Election Administrator" (prior the elected County Clerk position ran elections, but Democrats took over and created a position accountable to the Democrat leader) decided to have interns deliver ballots. Unfortunately, some of them got confused on directions and didn't get to the polling places before people waiting in line left.
Another invaluable takedown of Steve Calabresi, this one by Matt Ford at The New Republic. It is particularly valuable for its collection of vintage Calabresi quotes about Trump's unfitness to hold the office of the President. And the fundamentally bizarre way in which Calabresi has seemingly joined the TrumpWing.
It's Saturday night
and Phil’s just hangin' out
Lookin' for a place to party
So he jumps in his ride
and he hits the road
Cause there's only one place to go
Down to the auction
Oo the sheep be righteous and ready and pretty
ready and pretty
Livestock auction
He go bumpty-bumpty bump
(Bump City)
Sittin' by the sales floor
checkin' it out
Watchin' the man with the fast gab
He got the hippest threads
and the bad boogaloo
And a big old bag of tricks
Down to the auction
He can get what he wants
and he knows how to find it
Livestock auction
He be slick-slick-slick
Ooh, and Phil he be bumpin'
(at Bump City)
The floor be jumpin'
(at Bump City)
The sheep be humpin'
(at Bump City)
While the band be pumpin'
the band be pumpin'
the wool be somethin'
h/t Tower of Power
Here's an article from over two decades ago -- situation unchanged -- explaining how ballot harvester prey on the Black communities.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/absentee-minded-6391500 " For less than $12,000 paid to the right people, you can buy the early and absentee ballot vote in eight precincts in Southern Dallas--just enough votes, it turns out, to win ... "
Chuck, what does Calbresi's opinion of Trump's fitness to hold office have to do with his opinion of how legitimate (or not) the 2020 election was? He is apparently not a Dem so I suppose his analysis of whether or not the ballot controls were adequate has no connection to who he thinks should win.
What Yancey said deserves repeating...
Mail-in-voting has become so voluminous that signature matching really is no longer done and signature matching is the only security feature such ballots ever had in the first place. There is no place for mail-in-ballots as a default option if you really want a fundamentally non-fraudulent election- the chain of custody and verification system is not effective.
And signature matching isn't really much of a protection to begin with. How many folks' signatures for credit card receipts actually look like their signature?
What's to stop the Dems from claiming that the illegal ballots were just as likely to have been cast for the GOP?
When was the last (or only) time you saw a Republican candidate steal a victory from the jaws of defeat as a result of illegal ballots.
As someone who witnessed the 2004 Washington state gubernatorial election up close and personal, I find it interesting these late/illegal ballots always go one way.
Well, not interesting as much as predictable.
Can anyone point to any court challenges to the 2020 election reaching the trial phase, IOW the challenges being judged "on the merits"?
I can't find any, nor could ChatGPT. All the cases were tossed due to lack of standing, faulty causes of action, judges claiming they lacked jurisdiction---ANYTHING but reaching discovery and trial.
How can anyone say the allegations are true or false, if the claims were not fully adjudicated?
I agree with those who think the Dems' fighting election audits tooth and nail suggests they are covering up improprieties---and partisan judges are (wink wink) allowing them to do so.
Blow Fo Sho Goes Low
Blow Go Slow, Nearly Strangled by teh Angle of teh Dangle on Charles Rangel (D)
I like Heinlein's solution. You must solve a quadratic equation in order to vote.
In any discussion of vote fraud and election theft, I always like to recall the the AlGore 2000 election challenge. It relied on using the ONLY means of AlGore obtaining more votes in Florida than Bush - selectively recounting just a few cherry picked precincts, and keeping all other vote counts from the entire rest of the state not only not recounted, but the same as the count found on election night, without any additional "spoiled votes" analyzed and counted, without any additional late-found mail-in votes included, without military votes from overseas counted. At least that was the New York Time's opinion after a year-long statistical analysis of the election and review of all ballots cast. In other words, and quite clearly, AlGore tried to steal the election in 2000.
So get used to the tradition of Democrat electoral theft continuing in 2024.
wild chicken said...
How is it the "loss of the secret ballot"?
Really?
Secret ballot: You go someplace by yourself, fill in your ballot, and then put it in a vote counting machine without any other human being able to see how you voted
Not secret ballot: You fill out your ballot any place else, where you can show it to other people / other people can demand to see it before you seal it into an envelope.
What part of that are you too stupid to understand?
We went to a secret ballot to prevent vote fraud, to whit: vote buying
If you fill out a secret ballot, no one can see how you filled it out. So it doesn't matter how much they paid you to vote for their guy, you can still vote for the other guy.
Absentee ballots inherently let you sell your vote. They are a fundamentally bad idea.
Unless,, of course, you like vote fraud
Yancey,
Absentee voting should never be more than 5% of the total vote- never. Convenience is not a proper excuse for allowing it.
Well, when I lived in Marin County, CA thirteen years ago, it was already 75% of the vote. Now that I'm in OR, it's effectively 100%. This is absurd.
I grant that Calebresi might have been a little more temperate in his speech, but he is right. We ought to vote in genuine secret, and we ought to vote on Election Day, so that everyone is on the same page. As it stands, in many states -- like mine -- there's no actual privacy in casting a ballot, no idea whether you voted a month before the election or on the day, and (for that matter) no way to tell whether your local "ballot harvester" has in fact delivered your ballot or just tossed it into the nearest trash bin.
who-knew said...
Chuck, what does Calbresi's opinion of Trump's fitness to hold office have to do with his opinion of how legitimate (or not) the 2020 election was? He is apparently not a Dem so I suppose his analysis of whether or not the ballot controls were adequate has no connection to who he thinks should win.
Simple! Because absolutely every conversation about Trump, or elections, should include mention of Donald Trump’s psychopathological unfitness for office.
And if Steve Calabresi is now apparently going over to the dark side of Trump acceptance, I want to remind all of his readers and everyone who reads about him to be reminded that he has condemned Trump as unfit. They can believe Calabresi, or not. Just be aware of what he has said and written in the past.
As ever, I’m working to drive wedges between the GOP, the Federalist Society, conservatism, etc., and everything “Trump.”
I’m not trying to be fair or balanced or helpful or anything like that. I’m trying to undermine Trump’s campaign. All that other good stuff comes after we have driven a wooden stake through the vampire heart of Trumpism.
“One thing that I am surprised that has not yet been mentioned, is that lawprof Rick Hasen jumped on Calabresi's essay before Philip Bump did. Prof. Hasen runs the Election Law Blog and wrote THIS POST after personslly confronting Calabresi about a claim that 2020 was somehow "stolen." Calsabresi responded with a confession that he had misspoken.”
“ Yesterday I linked to and questioned Steven Calabresi at Volokh, saying among other things: “As a result, many Republicans, myself included, thought that the 2020 presidential election was probably stolen, even though that fact could not be proved in a court of law.”
“Today he says: “I do not think there was fraud in the counting of votes or vote machine error in the 2020 presidential election. I did therefore misspeak in writing that the results of mail in voting in 2020 were fraudulent.””
“Misspeak? How does one “misspeak” that? Not a slip of the tongue.”
As with a lot of Chuck’s poss, they really don’t prove the point that he is trying to make. The election fraud as clear at the time, and for both GA and AZ became blindingly obvious over the next 3 1/2 years, as it was investigated. The point is that it couldn’t be proven in a court of law, in the time available. For the most parts, courts wouldn’t even give challengers a chance. It could be proven easily now, but is much too late to matter.
Absolutely every reply to Chuck should include mention of Chuck’s psychopathological unfitness for commenting here, his Cluster B personality disorders, his under examined dedication to sadism and maleficence.
Chuck said, "All that other good stuff comes after we have driven a wooden stake through the vampire heart of Trumpism."
If you really think that you have ever influenced anyone away from Trump on this site, then you are the most delusional person on the planet. You should seek strong medication.
Blogger Joe Bar said...
I like Heinlein's solution. You must solve a quadratic equation in order to vote.
So… math teachers, members of teacher unions, Silicon Valley techies, university faculties, Manhattan financial market quants, and other and sundry intelligent and educated people. Me likey.
No truck drivers tuning into Mark Levin; no retired sheriffs; no golf cart paraders from The Villages; no 76 year old influencers from Palm Beach; no plumbers from rural Wisconsin; no bartenders from Nevada; no militia members from Michigan; no bricklayers from Pennsylvania.
How soon can we set this up?
You're right, Chuck. The idea of allowing the cognitive elites to manage our affairs is what got us into this mess.
I kind of prefer the arrangement where the people who are best at organizing violence govern. It's called aristocracy. I expect that you would be empowered by that arrangement. Except that you would take a bullet through the liver in a duel.
How can the cheaters keep repeating there is no evidence of fraud when No Court heard a case. Every one of the chicken Courts got No Standing Disease.
"The argument you are making is that the illegal ballots will necessarily have been cast in close proportion to the legal ballots cast within the precinct at issue. That assumption has no foundation. What's to stop the Dems from claiming that the illegal ballots were just as likely to have been cast for the GOP?"
The foundation is statistical- to argue that the illegal ballots were just as likely to be from GOP voters in Fulton County fails every statistical test by huge margins. I am not arguing that this is a foundation for overturning an election, but it is the foundation for getting rid of mail-in-voting as an option so that we don't have to live with the near certain fraud.
The point of Calabresi's article is to call for better — more confidence-inspiring — voting procedures — secret ballots, drop boxes, and no early voting.
The problem is that both sides think they can game the current system better than the other side can, so there's no incentive to change things. A "clean" system may "inspire more confidence", but there's no chance of it being implemented if one side thinks they're gonna wind up with the short end of the stick.
The problem is that one side is trying to stick to having evidence for what they say is happening and the other side is ballot harvesting among the vulnerable and thereby winning elections while the evidence is being gathered.
From this I can draw the conclusion either that the Trump administration and Republicans in the House and Senate were incompetent, or there was in fact no electoral fraud worthy of the name.
You drew the wrong conclusion.
Many states refused to participate and the media/Democrats screamed that the Commission was an attempt at voter suppression.
Thrum disbanded it.
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