An Evidence Based Faith

By faith, a lot of Republicans believe, just as Democrats did in 2016, that the 2020 election has been stolen through vote fraud.

I guarantee you that there will be vote fraud and the media discredits itself by denying any fraud. There is always fraud. The question is not if there was fraud, but was it enough to alter the outcome of the election. We are starting to get a sense of it in Pennsylvania.

Over 680,000 illegal votes were cast there, according to Rudy Giuliani and the President’s legal team. This morning the President’s lawyers have abandoned that claim. The claim was premised on Republican observers being unable to witness the counting of the ballots. The President’s lawyers are dropping that claim now because it turns out the witnesses could observe. While they could not be within six feet, it turns out there were cameras with the counters so observation via closed-circuit television could still be made. The President’s lawyers are abandoning that claim.

The more substantive claim from the President revolves around an equal protection argument. That argument is that voters in Democrat counties could cure their absentee ballots, i.e go put their signature on the ballots after the absentee ballots were sent back. Republicans were not given that opportunity.

Pennsylvania allows counties to do this. Republican counties in Pennsylvania for some reason did not aggressively contact voters to cure their votes. Democrat-led counties did. The GOP remedy is to toss all the votes. However, under well-established precedent, judges are not going to toss lawfully cast ballots and there is now no way to tell whose ballot goes with whose envelope. The more appropriate remedy would be to allow Republicans to cure their ballots that have not been counted. If so, there are not enough ballots to offset Joe Biden’s lead.

In Michigan, the 234 pages of affidavits from over 100 people have been considered by a court. The judge determined the complaints are mostly based on Republican poll watchers not having gone through their training. According to the judge, if they had, many of the things they flagged would have been understood as legitimately trying to get ballots to scan. Others, under oath, acknowledged they were not sure if ballots were being duplicated. Still others walked back their affidavit claims while under oath in court.

Also in Michigan, it turns out 10,000 dead people did not vote. Both the Republicans and Democrats in Michigan agree that the coded birthdates of 1900 on voter registration files were done to add records into an electronic database when printed voter registration files lacked a birthday. The computer system required one, so local elections officials used a birth date in 1900 as a common code to flag they were missing the real birthday.

Less than 50 people have been confirmed to have cast ballots nationwide despite being dead. In each case, it was someone who voted absentee and then died, but boards of elections were not notified. One person in Nevada is confirmed to have had a ballot cast in her name, though she was dead, and that is under investigation.

In Arizona, the President’s team has withdrawn much of their complaint and now only want a court to focus on 191 ballots out of an 11,000 vote margin.

In Georgia, a hand recount is thus far showing that Dominion Voter Systems did not rig the election. The hand count is aligning with the machines. President Trump is complaining about signature verifications on absentee ballots. The problem is the GOP already participated in that process, which occurred before the election.

In Georgia, the absentee ballots began their verification process the week before the election. Once the signatures were verified, the ballots were removed from the signed envelopes. There is now no way to reconnect a ballot to an envelope because there is no way to identify each voter’s ballot.

The President’s legal team has won only one case. It was in Pennsylvania and applied to too few ballots to offset Joe Biden’s victory.

As to the Dominion Voter Systems conspiracy about the CIA, seized data from Germany, etc. no one has provided any evidence so far of the legitimacy of the claims. No lawyer has thus far been willing to make those claims under oath in court. Consequently, their validity cannot be determined. Without an effort to put forward the evidence in court, they shouldn’t be considered any more legitimate than the Christopher Steele dossier.

You can believe by faith that the election was stolen, but there needs to be some evidence for it. Thus far, the GOP hasn’t found any that holds up under scrutiny. I continue to believe there is voter fraud, but I also continue to believe it won’t be enough to alter the election. The President’s lawyers keep withdrawing claims while his surrogates on television make even more sensational claims with no evidence. This is not helpful or good.