The biggest surprise from the post-election count and re-count business is how many stories show a lack of effective auditing. You can’t just collect and count votes. You have to have ways to verify that you’re getting the right numbers. Just as we have checks and balances in our government, we need checks and balances in our vote counting.
This story is about a small number of votes, but it illustrates the principle.
Before we do this again, I want an army of accountants to review our voting and vote-counting procedures to be sure we have the means in place to verify the counts are correct and add up. This seems like a perfect job for the council of governors.
As the quote widely attributed to Stalin goes, “It doesn’t matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes.”
Georgia, with it’s Republican controlled legislature, seems to be taking their current audit process seriously and thoroughly. Their election officials are even providing periodic live online updates and allowing questions to help ensure transparency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpljCyzyBsQ
An outstanding example of a Stalinesque approach to counting votes is plainly Trump’s call to stop the counting prematurely and declare him as the winner. For this you don’t need to track down some obscure source. His power-grabbing attempt to manipulate was right out there in public. This goes to my point that the liberal media doesn’t have to make stuff up about him. It is all well-documented.
No, it goes to the point that almost everything you hear about Trump is false.
Some states — like Pennsylvania — were allowing late votes to be counted. As I understand it, the story goes something like this. The PA legislature said mail-in ballots had to be in by election day. The people running the election decided on their own initiative to extend that, and to count ballots that were post-marked by election day, or even after. Trump wanted PA to follow its own law and stop the counting of these late votes.
But of course the media presents that as “Trump wants to stop the vote counting.”
You simply can’t believe anything that’s said about Trump — for or against him.
This goes to the point that Trump supporters cannot say anything substantial in his defense. There is simply too much documentation for us to see to show that he prematurely try to call the election. You can start viewing at 0:50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imaYlHjhzEY
You don’t have to listen to the commentary. Moreover, Giuliani just got demolished trying to make his case in Pennsylvania. (I can’t find the youtube video at the moment, but one can readily track it down). He is going from court to court without a case. The hard evidence is there. Trump doesn’t have a leg to stand on in any legal or rational way. The only direction a Trump supporter can go in at this stage is some bizzare conspiracy theory (where a lot of them already are).
QUOTE: The PA legislature said mail-in ballots had to be in by election day. The people running the election decided on their own initiative to extend that, and to count ballots that were post-marked by election day, or even after. Trump wanted PA to follow its own law and stop the counting of these late votes.
The U.S. Supreme Court said that election officials in Pennsylvania can count absentee ballots received as late as the Friday after Election Day so long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3. In its ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that ballots could be counted if they were received by 5 p.m. Nov. 6, as long as they were mailed by Election Day, Nov. 3. It also said that ballots without a postmark would “be presumed to have been mailed by Election Day” unless there was strong evidence to the contrary.
Given these rulings, any votes falling into this category were “valid” and were permissible to be counted….despite Trump’s desire.
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/922411176/supreme-court-rules-pennsylvania-can-count-ballots-received-after-election-day
PS…these court rulings were made and communicated PRIOR to election day.
This article (dated Nov. 4) called it “ongoing.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/11/04/trump-goes-to-supreme-court-files-lawsuits-to-stop-vote-counting-in-pennsylvania/?sh=46e51fda2a2e
The US Supreme Court and PA Supreme Court made their ruling prior to the election. Since then, Trump’s team tried to appeal. It was defeated in the PA Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court has not taken the case again as of 11/16.
As well, the Supreme Court has ordered Pennsylvania election boards to separately count mail ballots that arrived after Election Day, while rejecting a GOP request to stop counting those votes.
According this article dated 11/6, even if the Supreme Court were to take up the case and rule in favor of the GOP, the actual number of ballots would be approximately 3k or 4k. Given current vote tallies, this wouldn’t be enough to change the election outcome in PA.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/524900-supreme-court-orders-separate-count-of-late-arriving-pa-ballots
The Forbes article characterizes it differently, but the point is that Robin’s caricature — “Trump’s call to stop the counting prematurely and declare him as the winner” — is a simplification with an agenda.
I posted the video in which Trump clearly stated that he won the entire election long before the counting was done. No simplification. No agenda.
Robin was right. On election night, the PA Supreme Court and US Supreme Court rulings were in effect. Therefore, “Trump” didn’t have any legal standing to stop the counting…still doesn’t. There was nothing improper about what PA was doing and it was highly irresponsible for Trump to make such a declaration that he had won and the election was being stolen.
*tried to call the election
You don’t have to rely on what they are a-sayin’. The sumbitch will shoot himself in the foot every time.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State (SOS) indicated they are nearly finished their statewide election audit and found no widespread voter fraud (despite identifying some typical clerical errors in Republican leaning counties). They found ballots that were scanned but not added in totals. They had an independent third-party inspect vote counting machines and they have been found to be accurate. With a few exceptions, the majority of vote totals were the same. As well, even with audit adjustments, the SOS expected Biden would win the state.
So, it appears another one of Trump’s farcical election illusions (aka lies) is about to come crashing down. Ironically, it appears that if Trump hadn’t discouraged Republican voters from using mail-in ballots, he may have won. Even Tucker Carlson had to issue an apology relative to a verified false claim of fraud in Georgia. Imagine the voter’s surprise learning that Tucker Carlson was opining on how a dead person could vote and finding that she’s the dead person…but very much alive.