In Pennsylvania, the Trump Campaign's Search for Voting Irregularities Turns Increasingly Desperate
No, late-arriving mail-in ballots won't swing the election's outcome. No, Joe Biden's vote totals in suburban Philadelphia aren't suspiciously high.
In the lead-up to last week's election, one of the major points of possible controversy revolved around Pennsylvania's decision to count mail-in ballots that arrived up to three days after Election Day.
That rule—which was imposed by the state's top election officials and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court without the consent of the Republican-controlled state legislature—seemed destined to produce a messy legal battle. Just days before the election, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Pennsylvania to segregate those late-arriving ballots and count them separately. If the state's election was close and Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes proved decisive, keeping those ballots separated from the rest would allow the U.S. Supreme Court to decide later whether they should be counted or not.
Thankfully, it looks like they won't matter at all. Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania's Democratic Secretary of State, announced on Tuesday that about 10,000 mail-in ballots arrived at county election offices after Election Day. President-elect Joe Biden currently holds a 48,000 vote lead in the Keystone State. Those 10,000 or so late-arriving ballots might affect other races in the state, but it seems fairly obvious that they were not responsible for swinging the presidential election towards Biden.
Nevertheless, President Donald Trump is still implying that they did.
Highly Respected Ken Starr: "Pennsylvania's three-day extension of the mail-in ballot deadline is a Constitutional Travesty." Legal scholars agree!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2020
Trump is correct that there are interesting constitutional and legal questions surrounding Pennsylvania's decision to allow those ballots to be counted. But given Biden's lead in the state, those questions are purely academic.
This is, by now, a familiar pattern for Trump, his campaign, and its allies: allege unspecified irregularities or fraud or unfair election rules, then struggle to prove the case. As Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown highlighted this morning, Trump's claims of election fraud (in Pennsylvania and elsewhere) have not panned out.
That doesn't mean there isn't some undiscovered fraud out there, of course, and there's probably no such thing as a perfect election. There are some serious allegations of vote-counting shenanigans in Michigan, but the circumstantial evidence offered by the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania, so far, just doesn't seem to hold up.
Take, for example, another claim that's been bouncing around the internet on Wednesday. Steve Cortes, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, tweeted that Biden's vote totals in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, were improbably high.
The improbability of Biden's outperformance vs. Obama:
"In 2020, Biden won Montgomery County [PA] by a whopping 131,000 votes, more than twice the prior Obama margin.
Biden's 2020 total vote in Montgomery is reported at 313,000, crushing Obama's 233,000 take in 2012"…
1/3
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) November 11, 2020
This isn't evidence of malfeasance, of course, but it's meant to suggest that something—Cortes avoids saying exactly what—isn't on the up and up.
Except, well, Biden's performance in Montgomery County isn't that surprising at all. A quick look at the 2018 midterm election results in Pennsylvania shows that Sen. Bob Casey (D–Pa.) won Montgomery County by 122,000 votes that year, while Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, won the county by 136,000 votes. Both Casey and Wolf exceeded Obama's 2012 vote total—and did it in a midterm election when turnout was lower.
Biden's margin in Montgomery County isn't unusual or surprising. It's the result of an ongoing trend in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) of suburban counties turning deeper shades of blue in recent years.
If the Trump campaign wants to prove that Biden's win in Pennsylvania is the result of voter fraud or malfeasance on the part of election officials, they are going to have to do better than this.
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But all Democrat votes are fraudulent, according to the many who lust after a 1-party State! And Dear Leader cheers them on!
It has been clearly established what constitutes a fair and open election – a Democrat victory. That’s why Stacy Abrams and Hillary Clinton can argue for four years about Russian interference and voter suppression. And why it was OK for Al Gore to hold everything up for 37 days for a Florida recount that his poll watchers were able to actually watch (from inside the room! – and seeing the ballots!) while a week is symptomatic of Trump’s inability to see reason.
STOP
..FOR GODS SAKE STOP! Recounting a state vote with less than a 1000 vote difference is not the same as disputing 5 states whose vote totals range form 10,000 to 150,000. This is just tiring.
Five stets, who, coincidentally decided that legally required vote-count observers were denied, all in the same manner, the ability to see even the most egregious efforts of the counters.
And, just as coincidentally, 5 states that had late-counted, and apparently late-arriving ballots swing the totals in ways that no other states experienced.
And, also coincidentally, those 5 were states that had been part of the “LieCheatSteal party’s “wall” but went, shockingly over to Donald Trump, in the last election.
When solidly Republican states switch to the other party, through demographic changes, it goes unremarked upon. When the LieCheatSteal party’s allegiance moves the other way, it becomes a cause for the newly losing party to bring things back…by whatever means necessary.
Only those who are willing to lie to the American people, or to themselves, won’t admit that there is one party, who believes that cheating is a legitimate way to “win”.
Georgia alone is down to 1600 votes. Just STOP with your dishonesty. How many times did YOU vote?
Oh, I see. If your ‘side’ cheats bigger, it’s all ok. We’ll only go after the smaller stuff. Democrats have been tiring for the past 4 freaking years! So who the heck cares if this is tiring for you?
As someone with a very advanced knowledge of mathematics, I can tell you that the probability of five states independently doing what they did election night is essentially zero. That alone is sufficient to justify a recount.
When you’re debating partisans, not even 2+2 will equal 4 if it means they don’t like the answer.
Al Franken’s vote count difference changed by something like 300% on auto-recount. The media had declared him the loser.
Poor unreason. All mailin ballots are fraudulent because you cannot determine if registered voters sent in ballots.
Add in Article I, sec 4 constitutional requirement that only congress and state legislatures change election laws, like to allow mailin ballots.
Millions of mail-in ballots will be tossed. thousands already have.
In every state, where election laws were changed through methods other than by the legislative process, should have all ballots, received under those rules, declared invalid.
If the Supreme Court does not so rule, their legitimacy is gone.
The Constitution doesn’t have a footnote that says; “All of this is to be ignored, if someone gets sick.”
If SCOTUS does not rule as you describe, they would be implicitly legalizing voter fraud. Then Republicans would have legal precedent to pull the same BS. All future elections would be fraudulent as a matter of course, and both sides would be expected to rampantly cheat.
Millions! He says.
The more likely scenario is trump lost because of factors we don’t fully understand. And it may be years before we do.
Good news is, less people trust the government or each other. Politics has done a good job dividing us, now we are ripe for the conquering.
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Philadelphia didn’t go for Trump! Pruuf of fraud!
Fraud doesn’t exist! The people responsible for rigging the 2016 election said so!
So you’re saying no evidence is needed, just your say so. Got it.
You’re a fucking moron who conflates “evidence” with “hard proof”, and doesn’t understand that sworn affidavits are evidence. Got it.
https://theweek.com/articles/949070/trump-demonic-force-american-politics
Trump is a demonic force in American politics
Trump lusts after the destruction of American democracy! No less than that!
Seriously?
That load of shit completely ignores how HiLIARy, to this day, refuses to accept that she lost, was written books about it, and had her party conduct a evidence-free investigation, through the mid-terms, even tough the stacked-deck team of investigators knew, very quickly, that no “collusion” existed, followed by a completely bogus, partisan impeachment.
If Donald Trump is a demon, then HiLIARy has shown America how it is done.
As someone with a very advanced knowledge of mathematics, I can tell you that the probability of five states independently doing what they did election night is essentially zero. That alone is sufficient to justify a recount.
Sqrsly you useless sack of shit. Fuck your mother for not flushing you.
Your premise is false: there clear mathematical and statistical evidence of fraud. There are also witnesses.
To turn that into legal evidence requires a lot of forensics: recounts, interviews, examining chain of custody, etc. That’s why the elections are being challenged in court.
There is no statistical evidence of fraud, and it’s become exhausting debunking all of your crap.
Yes, Tony, there is statistical evidence of fraud; you can look at the data yourself. Whether it rises to the level of legal proof remains to be seen.
There are 10, 000 late ballots in the whole state…. If it was a complete scam and all of them were for Biden, Trump would still lose the election so what’s your point.
“Trump wouldn’t win any way, according to this number I arbitrarily made up, therefore voter fraud should never bee investigated.”
Oh, okay.
Mailin ballots are ALL fraudulent. Millioms are getting tossed.
No black or white thinking here.
Philadelphia may have generated massive numbers of fraudulent ballots, enough to deprive the rest of PA of their rights
What I’d like to see is the number of single-race ballots (i.e. only Biden/Trump, only the US Senate, etc) compared to other statewide elections. That just screams impropriety, especially for first time or normally apathetic voters and especially for the mail-in subset of those.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/georgia-gop-chairman-citing-biden-only-voters-strikes-optimistic-note-on-senate-run-offs/
Boehm – now do Milwaukee…
No, because that’s racist or something so shut up.
Uh huh….sounds like Boehm is starting to get nervous.
There is no winner yet. The counting is not complete. The recounting is not complete. The litigation has not been adjudicated. The Electoral College has not met.
So fuck you Boehm….nobody is conceding a damned thing. GFY.
The gaslighting will continue until you accept that there are five lights.
You can disagree without being a dick. Have you taken your valium?
It’s not about disagreeing. Its about reacting in anger to the ridiculous gaslighting the authors are doing day in and day out to deceive and perpetuate lefty fantasies when they should be asking for an investigation that provides clear confirmation of voting integrity.
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I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Reason writers are legitimate targets of opportunity for peaceful protest.
Have a nice day.
Doxx ’em as racists. If they’re even half-ass libertarians they’re racist as fuck by current standards:
1. Reduction in pubsec employees? DISPARATE IMPACT
2. “Freedom of association”? DOGWHISTLE 4 ABOLISH TITLE II
3. Equality under the law? ANTI AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
There’s a bunch more too. It’s damn impossible to be libertarian and not be racist
That means you plan to murder them?
In a mostly peaceful fashion
reason seems determined to really trigger the reality deniers today.
Now say, “AntiFa is imaginary”.
Biden is living in denial alright.
Biden think he won the 2000 election against bush.
I love how you claim high 2018 voting turnout for PA Senate and Governor election somehow says that fraud didn’t happen in 2020.
As if the fraud wasn’t ramped up the day Hillary failed to carry PA.
Or to put it another way….do you think that turnout in Montgomery county was actually higher for a midterm then the prior presidential election? If you do, someone is selling a bridge.
Voter fraud in PA has been an open secret for years. Philly has been a fraud hotspot for decades and it expanded outward like a cancer. When the PA dems fought tooth and nail to kill voter ID around 2015, and even then Hillary couldn’t seal the deal, the ramped up their effort in 2018. There was no blue wave…it was a blue fraud. The only thing different in 2020, is that Trump isn’t playing the same-old-politics game.
And the 120% turnout in Wisconsin is just due to them being more civic minded than the other states.
According to the New York Times, mail ballots in PA split roughly 80/20 for Biden. MI was also very lopsided. That is very odd, considering the numbers in other states.
Biden mail ballot advantage by state:
PA 59.1%
MI 37.9%
OH 16.3%
GA 5.8%
MN 4.9%
AZ 4.7%
NC 4.7%
FL 4.3%
https://twitter.com/yinonw/status/1326191622825111553
And whats really interesting, is that if you trim the mail in vote numbers in pa down to a more consistant turnout relative to comparable states, then the huge biden turnout looks a lot like the average dem turnout that we would expect to see from the last four elections. Either the dems managed to enormously bump turnout in just PA, MI and other key states, but nowhere else, or that turn out is due to fraud.
Trumps vote numbers across all states and counties is very consistent with a decent bump over 2016, even where he didnt campaign hard. Bidens vote numbers are consistent across most states and counties, on par with expectations relative to prior elections, but in key ares, show a localized enormous bump in turnout. It beggars belief, especially to those who live in those counties.
More “interesting” stuff: Over 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out—an extraordinary speed, given U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery times, while nearly 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out. Another more than 23,000 have an impossible return date—earlier than the sent date. More than 9,000 have no sent date.
But it was votes, counted after election day that moved Senile Joe into the lead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/11/02/heres-what-the-postal-service-is-doing-to-make-sure-ballots-are-delivered-on-time/?sh=475c63605ba9
“Any ballots sent from a service area outside of where the ballot is being delivered should be expedited as Express Mail, or whatever option would be fastest, while ballots sent locally must be delivered by the same day or the following morning.”
Explains why so many were returned the day after or even the same day. They did not go through the normal mail sort/delivery process.
you are grasping at straws. PA vote fraud has been going on for decades. the dems wholesaled it in 2020.
Unlikely: 51,000 ballots were marked as returned just a day after they were sent out
Highly unlikely: 35,000 were returned on the same day they were mailed out.
Impossible: Another more than 23,000 have an impossible return date—earlier than the sent date.
Obvious fraud: More than 9,000 have no sent date
They did have stricter lockdowns, I believe
But what I found interesting is that someone (shylock holmes on Twitter, I believe) i think analyzed the breakdown of Biden vs Trump mail in votes by district and time and found that the districts the Democrats needed to win on election night had mail in votes much more heavily weighted to Biden (and all came in at the same time) than the other Democrat areas. How oddly convenient
yes, they did have stricter lockdowns….but, those lockdowns ended long before voting started. PA peaked in early spring and has been opening up ever since. When mail-in voting started, people were already back to eating in restaurants, going out, etc, etc.
It doesn’t really explain why PA had astronomically high number for Biden. If people were fearful of going out, that may explain the skew to mail-in for Biden (2/3s of his PA vote is by mail), but it should also be seen in Trump and Jo’s mail in numbers, but those are the reverse of Biden’s. Trump had ~only 1/3 mail in, Jo had ~40%. Nothing in the numbers can be logically explained for how Biden’s vote totals are enormously higher then any candidate has ever received in PA.
Trump lost. What other evidence of fraud to you need?
I wonder why an ostensibly Libertarian publication would so blatantly sacrifice it’s own credibility by dying on a hill of lies in service of a party that has already proven they’ll try everything from fraudulent impeachment (has Reason even accepted that, yet?) to outright Communist insurrection to illegitimately seize power.
*stirs Cosmo*
I wonder:
Turns out the media isn’t running interference for the Democrats, the Democrats are actually frontmen for the media industrial complex.
Big Cocktail is behind it all.
Or maybe Palpatine.
They are cashing out. They got paid big cash money to shill for Biden.
Gidaddaheah! Izzis Republican National Socialist seriously expecting libertarians to get worked up about their getting turned out? The Dems lost, cried, stamped, screamed fraud, begged electors to defect (haha!). Then they finally combed all the prohibitionism out of their platform to make it look libertarian to the kiddies. Guess which party DIDN’T do that back in July… Libertariantranslator
Libertarian principle is never try.
Biden, Wolf, Clinton ran well ahead of Obama. I suppose that shows that there are large number of racist Democrats who refused to vote for a black man for president but find their way back to the party when whites are the candidate.
PA dem vote turnout is historically within a predictable band.
Obama was the high-point in 2008. 2012 was low, and Clinton did poorly in 2016. Clinton did not do better then Obama.
But then we had Trump and the dems went into their power-hungry mode. The numbers Wolf pulled in 2018 were the start of widespread PA vote fraud. There are lots of people looking back now at 2018 numbers in light of what we are seeing now and questioning how much fraud was happening then. The blue wave was a blue fraud, like the Gov race in Kentucky and congressional seats around the country.
in 2018, Gov Wolf managed to increase mid-term Dem turnout by over 30%. prior two midterms had the Dem candidate pull 1.8 mil, then 1.9 mil. in 2018, Wolf pulled in 2.9 mil in a midterm. On par with what Clinton had pulled in the presidential election in 2016.
A farcical level of fraud in 2018 midterms, which was now taken to extremes to try to move the state to Biden, with 3.4 million votes….higher then any prior Dem ever, including Obama. And this in a year when trump raised his own PA turnout. This was not voters switching parties like the media wants you to believe. Trump raised his 2016 numbers bigly in PA. Biden took it to farcical levels.
Though I doubt any of this will make a difference I do like that Barr has released the local US Attorneys to begin Grand Jury investigations into irregularities. The chance that these urban election officials did not commit any crimes are slim to none. They just assumed the local Soros DA would let any crimes slide but they forgot about the Feds.
Just keep repeating the same false narrative over and over again until enough idiots believe it.
focusing on PA and other swing states is ALWAYS just purely legal bullshit. Trying to swing a few votes here and there by legal blustering – where a few votes matters. Same as FL in 2000.
The dynamics of politics however is always national nowadays. Politics is no longer local in most cases. Unfortunate but that is the consequence of top-down politics. Which means that its as easy to understand what happened this year in non-swing districts as it is in ‘swing’ districts/states.
It is all about which of the two parties did a better job of motivating their base – which means repelling the other’s base. D’s did a better job of that this year. And in particular, the part of the R base that is motivated by financial assets (stocks and house prices) or succeeds at work-from-home was quite complacent. When states like GA and TX and AZ and NC move into the ‘swing’ category – along with the Rust Belt states that moved into swing state territory in 2016 – that is evidence that in 2020 at least R’s failed. The R base is more ‘split’ than the D’s in 2020.
Haha. Another incorrect “assessment”.
Trump won AK, NC, GA, and AZ today.
Democrats senators conceded to GOP senators in AK and NC today.
The skew came from mailin ballots. Massive election fraud from ballots where states cannot prove registered voters actually did the voting. Also spoiling mailin ballots when voters ended ip voting in person is getting thousands of mailin ballots tossed.
Add in mailin ballots being tossed because Article I, sec 4 only authorizes state legislatures and congress to change election law. Not democrat governors.
You’re delusional.
1) States control the elections. we do not have a federal election system, so it has to be “focusing on PA and other swing states”.
2) Trump boosted his Republican turnout across the country. I don’t think there is a single state where he didn’t significantly increase his vote count. There was no mass switch to Biden, that’s utterly false. and from exit polling, Trump is up with every single demographic except white college educated men. The R’s didn’t fail, they expanded in a year they were predicted not to. and Trump pulled in more votes than any prior Republican candidate.
The only reason it wasn’t a red landslide is because of the epic levels of Biden fraud in play. This is blatantly obvious in the numbers. Trump is up in every state. Biden is only up in select states and in those states in an enormous increase. It’s farcical.
The national parties define the AGENDA of how/why people vote the way they do. That is what determines the votes of 98% of voters. It is the reason that states put in mechanisms like straight party line voting. Those mechanisms don’t last for partisan reasons. They last because both parties want a top-down driven political system.
Trump boosted his Republican turnout across the country. I don’t think there is a single state where he didn’t significantly increase his vote count. There was no mass switch to Biden, that’s utterly false
No what’s utterly false is your silliness that there is such a thing as an individual voter who switches from D to R to D. That may have happened 30+ years ago but not anymore. Today it is all about:
Did R’s boost turnout in their base and by how much and where?
Did D’s boost turnout in their base and by how much and where?
That’s it. There is NO appeal to voters on the fence or undecided or independent or some such bullshit. Hasn’t been for decades. That is a deliberate lie by both parties. To pretend that they appeal outside their base.
Like it or not – D’s absolutely won that GOTV battle. By enough to swing the election? I don’t know yet and I don’t care – but the hurdle to clear was teeny. A couple hundred thousand votes in Rust Belt – where R’s skew ‘more likely to die from one election to the next’ than D’s and where D’s tend to pull in more of the 18-21 crowd.
You yapping about fraud is just the usual DeRp shit. YOU people are the fucking problem with this country. You are tools and fools.
Trump gained 10 million (at least) votes from 2016.
Your theory fails.
You are a partisan propagandist and apparently know nothing about the political process.
Trump’s success in 2016 was entirely about getting Dems to cross the line. The Rep base didn’t like him….remember? working class whites, unions, police/fire, and minorities as well, both black and hispanic. He did the same in 2020, but this time also fired up the base. Trump pulled in higher minority amounts then any republican in history. The fact that you can’t even see the facts in plain view indicates that your intellectual ability is either utter garbage, or you are so blinding by partisan insanity you should just go grovel in front of Harris, as she is very familair with that.
Fraud is obvious, and the endless gaslighting by fools and propagandists doesn’t change that clear and obvious fact.
Yes, it’s about turnout. And one party seems to have increased its turnout through fraud and manipulation.
More tears, please! I love the sound of communo-fascist looters squealing “we wuz robbed!”
Here in PA, anyone/everyone who cast a mail-in ballot could also walk into their polling place and vote a second time in person.
Although the PA ballots stated (in tiny letters) that it was illegal to vote twice, the only way county and/or state election officials can disqualify a second vote by the same person is to charge and convict a person for voting twice, which can only occur if someone reports this crime to a county or state election official, which almost never happens (as people who commit election crimes rarely inform others of their criminal activities).
That is another reason why Democrats aggressively campaigned to impose and allow mail-in ballots for everyone in PA (under the deceitful guise of protecting voters from covid).
False. More slinging feces at the wall hoping something sticks.
“If you’re wondering whether people would try to vote twice — by mail and in person — the system is set up to prevent that.
When a voter requests a ballot to be mailed to them, that is marked in the poll book for their voting precinct. The line under their name where they normally would sign to vote is removed so they can’t sign in.
Someone still could vote at their precinct, but they would have to use a provisional ballot. Their vote at the precinct would be counted only if they did not return their mail-in or absentee ballot.”
unless one registers under a different name at their own address and votes under two different names.
because there is nothing to prevent that in PA
We are all quietly assured that the Republicans in Congress and the White House are just giving Trump time to work through his feelings. I wonder how much time those losers would give everyone else. Come one Republicans grow a pair and tell President Trump the truth. Tell him it is time to move on and plan his 2024 campaign or his TV network.
By the way Trump and family will not have free room and board for the next four years. Time to start donating to that 2024 campaign. You know Ivanka dresses are not going to buy themselves. Don and Kimberly need a bar tab. Can you help by donating to Trump 2024?
I’m supporting the Dallas County LP. Travis County too, if they ever fix their system.
Some Dominion guy showed up to tinker with the computer. What was that all about?
So it looks like trump is over, which means Covid is over, and everything should go back to normal: routine dissolution of whatever rights we have left, the raping of our social security and Medicare, while destroying the dollar and increasing inflation and taxes and unemployment.
Oh and judges ruling with a straight face about how it’s ok to incentivize the cops to steal from you while also making sure they get additional paid vacation time every time they beat the fuck out of you.
Oh and of course if you’re not in the club, you’re fair game. The less people you know or have your back, the more brazen they’ll be when they come fuck your life up.
And let’s not forget comrades, snitching is the patriotic thing to do! And it might even delay your own ass fucking you’re in denial about the government giving you!
There’s not much to like about our species.
we make beer and cured meats. that’s something.
I’m glad she acknowledged the monstrous premise of this otherwise good comedy. A couple breaks up, so they decide to divide up their infant twins — so each girl will never see the other parent, her sister, or any of her other relatives again? Or even know she has a sister? Just as in the original version of this movie, the real villains a re clearly both parents..by follow detailsHere═❥❥ Read More
The Dems got blindsided by 4 million Gary Johnson spoiler votes and RAN to rip plant leaf prohibition planks outta their lengthy platform. God’s Own Prohibitionists stood pat with the usual demands that First Responders™ shoot kids and bully girls. Looters only learn by losing, and LP spoiler votes WERE a good stressor. But the new “Open Borders” Saracen terrist importation plank and a semiliterate Verminous communist anarchist on Jo’s ticket fixed that. Those changes also cost us 40% of our ballot access!
It’s as if nobody at any media outlet actually read the allegations in the Pennsylvania lawsuit. FIFY.
They’re actively pretending the issue is something else. This is beyond simple ignorance.
Of course they didn’t read it. Journos are hacks. You can’t expect them to read a 105 page brief and even if they did, you can’t expect them to understand it either. I’m reading through it now.
For those who care, look up the full text, but here are the key allegations as well as evidence (yes, evidence) supporting them. I’ll put the evidence in a follow up post:
1. Access was granted to monitor, but was not meaningful access, ie ‘I was there but couldn’t see shit.’ This covers both pre and post canvassing. Here’s the official definition according to the EAC: Compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results by political subdivision.
2. This lack of access applied to approximately 700,000 mail-in and absentee votes.
3. Philadelphia county did not adhere to a previous court order regarding the disputed level of access.
4. The notification and cure process that allowed voters to correct their ballots was illegal.
5. Election workers did not allow voters to spoil their mail-in ballot and vote in person.
6. Election workers did not allow voters to vote provisionally when someone else voted for them by mail.
7. Election boards illegally mailed unsolicited ballots.
So just on the claims alone, we can already tell that this article Boehm wrote doesn’t address…anything. Yeah, some ballots arrived late and may need to be disqualified. But you take thousands off that lead, address the other issues and recount? I don’t have the time nor the patience to be a fact checker, but I would call this article highly partisan. Boehm is trying to demoralize you. Stop looking! It’s pointless!
These are not the droids you are looking for.
They don’t need to read anything. They already know orange man bad.
The crying noises you hear are a republican problem. They sound as delightful to me as the other looters bawling 4 years ago. Ha ha ha… schadenfreude city!
It’s as if the comment section thinks that allegations are proven by the act of filing them.
It’s as if everybody at every media outlet is trying to bury the allegations in the Pennsylvania lawsuit from the public consciousness, along with the Pennsylvania lawsuit itself.
It’s like Brandybuck forgot he was pretending to have voted for Jo, and not Joe.
It’s as if the entire country doesn’t want to know if there was any malfeasance or not. I don’t give a shit about Trump or Biden, but I care deeply about a fair election. I, for one, will be satisfied either way after the investigation.
5 and 6 were voter suppression when Republicans allegedly did them in Georgia…
Now for the facts. Obviously I can’t list every single fact in this brief, but I can list the big ones:
1. Act 77 was passed by the PA General Assembly and created PA’s VBM system, which was first used in the June primaries. Act 77 creates a no-excuse system where a reason does NOT need to be provided to request to vote by mail. This is a substantial departure from the absentee ballot process previously authorized.
2. Hand signature is the ONLY requirement for VBM.
3. PA SCOTUS affirmed that notice and cure is illegal.
4. PA DoS Secretary Boockvar contradicted previous rulings that mail-in ballots not properly placed in secrecy envelopes must be discarded via her Naked Ballot guidance letter that instructed county Board of Elections officials to count such ballots. When PA SCOTUS rules against her, she fails to instruct Board of Elections explicitly to NOT count such ballots.
5. County Election Boards did not segregate and challenge returned absentee/VBM ballots that were not signed by voters.
6. County Election Boards were ordered by Secretary Boockvar not to reject absentee/VBM applications due to signature verification failure, yet the only means of verifying an absentee/VBM vote is signature verification. She has no legal standing to order this and it is in direct violation of PA’s Election Code.
Funny thing about reading primary sources: this is the first time I’ve heard about ANY of this. Our media is derelict and Reason is no exception to the rule. Truly shameful that we have to try and figure out this information for ourselves every single time.
Actually….not 1 of your claims is true…that’s pretty amazing.
Article I, sec 4 prevents PA governor from authorizing mailin ballots when only congress and the state legislature chan change election laws. Millions of PA mailin ballots are getting tossed.
what are democrats gonna do about it? Riot? Learn constitutional and state laws about elections?
It’s voter fraud until Trump wins, then it’s the will of the people, right?
Ah, but you forget this is all undone if some ignorant pissant on the internet makes a sarcastic quip.
And it’s all Trumps fault, not the people who changed the rules in the middle of the game or actually committed fraud. I can see the headlines now:
Trump disenfranchises voters again as over a hundred thousand improper or fraudulent ballots tossed out because of Trump’s lawsuit.
Like Bob said, if an investigation convinces even a few of the half of the nation thinking fraud happened that it didn’t isn’t it worth it? Or should we just let them think that because Biden won so who cares…
The courts forced the mailin ballot issue to be resolved AFTER the vote counts.
Millions of mailons ballots are gonna be tossed.
Clarify what you mean by “your claims.” I am not claiming such things occurred. I haven’t made any claims of my own. I am merely summarizing that the Trump campaign has made such claims in their lawsuit. This is factually correct and you will see they made these accusations in their suit if you read it.
Or did you mean that the evidence they cited is not true? Unless you’re working for Boockvar, I would love to know how you know this considering this is ongoing litigation. Their suit has hundreds of citations and, assuming you have access to lexisnexis, you can view every single document and the letter of the law for all their claims.
My concern is what the remedy is supposed to be to malfeasance on the part of electors and not voters. I suspect that PA’s election boards rushed to have these ballots counted and to destroy any evidence that would enable investigators to identify improper voting procedures. PA has already destroyed all its secrecy envelopes, so there’s no way to prove malfeasance on the Naked Ballot issue any more.
I just don’t understand why we play dumb with voter fraud. People who have not committed crimes do not destroy evidence. If a restaurant burns down and they’re sparse on details, you suspect them of insurance fraud. If a bank didn’t have security cameras or bill marking, they would be found criminally negligent. If an election board destroys the only evidence that can be used to directly prove wrongdoing…nothing happens? Win or lose for Trump, this is a loss for all of America if we once again ignore blatant, in-your-face fraud.
If SCOTUS determines there was fraud, is the solution to throw out the votes? Personally, I’m confident that most of the fraudulently counted ballots were cast by real people, but whether they are real or not does not matter. What matters is that we don’t have tiered systems where some votes matter more than others. If real people procedurally shouldn’t have been counted, then that standard must be uniformly applied to all elections. I don’t like to think about what happens next.
There should be a mechanism in place to ensure that Trump can feel confident upon leaving office that Biden must continue an investigation in good faith. This ongoing litigation is real and the underlying facts are as well. I do not want Trump to remain in office on the basis of fraud allegations. Would you leave office if your successor’s party committed fraud and they did such a good job of it that it’s difficult to prove? I wouldn’t, but we all know just how bad things are going to get if Trump doesn’t leave. It takes two to tango and a truly peaceful transition requires the cooperation of both parties. Everyone should be pressuring Biden to work with Trump with these ongoing lawsuits so we can “heal” as he likes to say.
After all, if we’re all wrong about this, then we’re just making asses of ourselves asking for recounts and legal remedies.
“If SCOTUS determines there was fraud, is the solution to throw out the votes?”
SCOTUS cannot determine if there was fraud. The PA lawsuits raise the question of disparate standards across counties and parties, such that the count is irrevocably tainted. Trump’s camp isn’t trying to show fraud specifically, they are trying to show that there are hints of fraud and the system was so illegally corrupted that there is no way to ascertain an accurate count.
If they make a good case, then SCOTUS may invalidate PA’s election in which case I’m not sure what happens. PA legislature may send elector regardless, but not sure if that works. If they don’t or its invalidate, the 20 EC are off the table. One other state switches away…like AZ, and the loss of those 20EC means Biden doesn’t have 270 and it goes to a house representative vote….which is Republican majority.