Erick, would love your insight and thoughts on the SCOTUS Alito and unconstitutional PA actions, Wisconsin's unrequested absentee voting situation (also unconstitutional from what I've been reading), and our own local Stacy Abrams' group currently under investigation by GBI for seeking dead and out of state voters. That would be great.
Also, any thoughts/insight on the DeKalb County situation on not being able to provide chain of custody records for absentee ballots? Much appreciated! It's so confusing.
It is important that you keep speaking the truth, Erick. And I really admire you for it as I suspect that it does nothing for your pocketbook. Though you will probably continue to be a voice in the wilderness, you're doing important work. What you're doing matters. Both sides of the spectrum should learn from you.
Occam's Razor (oversimplified): The simplest answer is probably the correct one. By all standards Trump lost the election. I HATE it, but that doesn't change the outcome. I read a piece by Patrick Basham about how statistically improbable Biden's win was. The problem I had with the piece was a similar article on the statistical improbability of intelligent life evolving on earth, and we all know how that one turned out.
Erick, in your next article can you please go after former good for nothing Ga. Congressman John Lewis? He continuously said the Donald J Trump was an illegitimate President yet you never called him out like you are your own. I could tell you what I thought of him, but that would only get me banned and in trouble. It’s amazing to me that when we republicans work to find the fraud and look under every stone unturned and turned we get blasted for not accepting the results of the election. When the democrats do the same thing they get the media on their side to help keep the fight going so it stains and tarnished a nominated Judge, the cabinet member, or the President for years. If you want to keep many of your listeners and $7 month Erick Erickson article junkies around may I suggest you help give us some fire power instead of the constant Debbie Downer news. Your article that exposed the incoming Biden administration’s attempt to tax rifles and magazines over 10 rounds at $200 a piece was a great example of why we need to hold the Senate. Please set aside some time and “produce a gospel track if I may,” for us that are going door to door in order to get people to the polls on Jan. the 5th. It would be the perfect text 33777 Christmas item for everyone to have and hand out to those who don’t want their God given rights to disappear.
Let me perhaps save Erick the trouble and, as a Democrat and an admirer of John Lewis, say that he was wrong for that.
At the core of this compact among us (called the Constitution) is the implicit agreement that when the other side wins an election, those of us who lost accept and abide by that result. Then, when our side wins, the other side is obliged to do the same. That is how this democracy has worked for more than 200 years. When we stop doing that, democracy will stop working.
In addition to accepting electoral defeat, it is our way as Americans to accept the role of our courts as the means by which we resolve our disputes. (In John Lewis' defense, when he refused to accept Mr. Trump as a legitimate President, multiple courts - including now the Supreme Court - had not considered and rejected his reasons.) The courts having now spoken. repeatedly and quite clearly on the question of this election's legitimacy, what other stones, within our democratic tradition, remain unturned?
I personally have accepted the loss of the Presidency. We can also agree that the democrats deserve to have everything thrown at them in this heated and contested time. The Democrats have had almost everyone with a microphone and keys to the social media sites on their side. The number 3 helper the Democrats have had is home field advantage with a very liberal bureaucracy in DC. These unelected policy makers have hurt American more than any recent foreign adversary. Without China releasing a deadly virus that has caused a world wide pandemic and killed thousands we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Widespread sit on your ass, sign your name on this line, I’ll fill in the selections for you, and take your ballot to the drop box voting system has tarnished this election. The last 4 years of the Trump Presidency has been a chaotic one due to the media, and liberal bureaucrats near the President’s people who told everything with leaks and lies. Russia, Russia, Russia was a lie. Well now we really know who interfered in this 2020 election. China, China, China. and states who allowed untethered absentee ballots. Joe Biden is compromised and I expect Kamala “Sleep around Joe Brown” Harris to soon take the reigns of our nation. Joe Biden’s lies were 50 times larger and more dangerous the any of Trumps. Now the question is, will the liberal leaning leadership in the DOJ, FBI, and the John Durham investigation do the right thing and tell us the truth about Joe Biden/Ukraine/China and the Obama administration that spied on an incoming and eventual President without any real evidence and lied to a FISA court? We should have had another Trump victory. The deck was staked against us at the start. Nearly 74 million said he did his job and Washington insiders are swamp creatures. China could not afford another 4 years of President Trump and they unleashed COVID-19 on the world to stop him.
Yeah thanks China and W.H.O. That is who’s to blame truly for the 300,000 deaths in American? What would you have done differently had the President said the virus is serious business, and a lot of people are going to die? You would have criticized him for causing a panic. The President did everything Fauci asked him to do. The biggest lies; Obama/Biden administration if you like your insurance you can keep it. Your insurance will decrease not increase. Working Americans all now pay thousands $ more every year for the same or less coverage than before. Our deductibles went up from $500 to $1500 causing more people to not seek medical help due to that cost. Biden said he and Hunter Biden never discussed his son’s business dealings ever. That we now know is a lie. Anyone who believed that was a fool. In the debates Biden lied when he said, “over 50 intelligence officials said the Hunter Biden laptop information was Russian disinformation.” That was a lie. The FBI & DOJ had Hunter and Joe’s brother under investigation. The regular media along with social media covered it up until after the election. Tony Bobilinski is a credible witness and they covered it up. Biden said he was against fossil fuels and specifically fracking in the Democratic debates. It was all on video as plan as day. Then Biden debates Trump and Biden says he never said he was against fracking and in the process blames Trump and said he’s the one lying about what Biden said. That my friend is so pathetic. To tell a lie, be confronted about it and you don’t take responsibility for it, and then turn around and blame your opponent saying he’s the one telling a lie. tBiden lied about unmasking General Michael Flynn also, because Biden said he knew nothing about Flynn. If you know nothing about Flynn then why did you multiple times ask for his unmasking?
Anyone who voted for Biden is a pathetic human being. When the media was truly impartial the media held Biden accountable. That’s why his previous bids to become President failed and this one didn’t. Thanks lying China and lying media for giving us lying Biden.
Any regrets supporting the man who is doing all he can to sow discord on the way out using lies and misinformation? Your comments are going to be full of people who are believing the lies, with “Yeah, but...” He has done and continues to do great damage to our republic all for his own benefit, mostly his immensely fragile ego.
I agree with everything you said, but that last sentence is very confusing. You seem to be saying that relying on experts in statistics is what people are doing instead of listening to lies. Is this what you meant??
There are a lot of false claims of election fraud floating around. But there are also serious issues that are being investigated in all the battleground states. The GBI is now actively working to investigate various issues in GA ( https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/gbi-assisting-secretary-of-state-in-handling-election-investigations ): "Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation will help the secretary of state investigate the hundreds of open cases related to the 2020 election. .. Earlier in the week, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that his office had around 250 open investigations related to the election. These elections included possible double voting, absentee ballot fraud, and other allegations."
In general, it is bad policy to allow an organization to investigate themselves. Raffensperger and the GA SS-officials have been claiming for months that the election is clean and if it is proven not to be, they will either look incompetent or corrupt, which suggests they have a conflict of interest in stopping any effort to find extensive election fraud. Consequently, they have made every effort to avoid signature verification and/or to allow a forensic analysis of voting machines. In a very real sense, if one is not allowed to evaluate the evidence, there is no reason to expect that issues with the evidence will be found.
There were cases in other states that did turn up invalid signatures. For example, in AZ "a handwriting analysis expert [was] retained to look at 1-2 percent of the 1.6 million early ballots submitted in Maricopa County, which would be 16,000 to 32,000 ballots. He also wanted access to all duplicated ballots, a number that Maricopa County election officials pegged at around 20,000.
1) The case filed by Congressmen Kelly and Sean Parnell is headed to the Supreme Court with a deadline of 9 am tomorrow for PA to respond to the claims that no-reason mail-in-ballots violated the PA Constitution. Basically, the PA Constitution does not permit a change like mail-in-ballots to be put into effect until after it passes the legislature on both sides of a general election, which was not done in this case. The PA Supreme Court did not rule on whether this was a constitutional violation, but simply rejected the complaint because of the doctrine of laches, which means that the complaint was filed too late. But Ted Cruz and others have pointed out a Catch-22 issue since if the complaint was filed before the general election, it would have likely been tossed because no injury had yet occured. In other words, the PA Supreme Court found the perfect way to make an unconstitutional law constitutional. Given Altio has set a deadline for PA to submit a defense, it is very possible that SCOTUS will take a dim view of that Catch-22 argument. One of the options SCOTUS has may be to invalidate all the EC votes of PA since if all mail-in-ballots were unconstitutional according to PA law, meaning the PA election was unconstitutional and it should not impact the EC count ( https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/12/06/justice-alito-advances-by-one-day-and-several-hours-the-deadline-for-pennsylvania-to-respond-my-speculation-as-to-why-n290251 ). Another alternative is for SCOTUS to give the election to Trump, since without unconstitutional mail-in ballots, he clearly won. But as SCOTUS rulings are unpredictable, the safest approach is to not try to guess their opinion for what to do (Including nothing) before making dogmatic claims about what the ruling will be.
2) It is pretty clear that PA election law intends to allow meaningful observation of vote counting but that in PHL, this was not permitted. There are a number of issues related to a multitude of votes that fit this category. The issue is not so much that fraud has been proven, but that Trump observers were denied their legal right to observe counting and signature verification for hundreds of thousands of votes, effectively allowing fraud to be hidden behind virtual closed doors. In addition, there were something like 15K voters who showed up to vote and were told that they had voted already, which suggests some kind of fraud was involved. The primary reason these cases seem to have been rejected is for lack of standing, which doesn't mean the claims are invalid, but rather that the claimants have no legal right to present their case before the relevant court. If these types of cases make it to SCOTUS, we will see what the justices have to say about this issue.
To the best of my knowledge, only the Pennsylvania case was decided on laches (unwarranted delay) grounds, and that is the case where the plaintiffs argued that they likely lacked standing prior to the election. In other states, I believe the election challenges were all rejected for lack of evidence.
"Within the allegations of the 64 page Complaint the Trump campaign claims they have witness testimony for the courtroom that will identify “illegal” votes in the following numbers:2,560 felons66,247 underage voters2,423 votes from people not registered1,043 individuals registered at post office boxes4,926 individuals who voted in Georgia after registering in another state395 individuals who voted in two states15,700 votes from people who moved out of state before the election40,279 votes of people who moved without re-registering in their new countyAnother 30,000 to 40,000 absentee ballots lacking proper signature matching and verification"Just because some fraud claims are false, it doesn't mean these fraud claims are false as this data has been accumulated over the course of a month instead of being rushed out. Perhaps these claims are also in error, but court cases that reject hearing evidence based on lack of standing do not evaluate the integrity of evidence. If Shippedwreckcrew of RedState.com is correct (he is a former federal prosecutor), this evidence will evaluated in a court of law, with witness testimony and cross examination:
"Under the Georgia election code, these issues are now subject to a courtroom trial where documentary evidence will be presented, and witnesses will testify and be cross-examined. A Judge will make a determination as to each claim. That outcome can then be appealed through the regular appellate process." My view is that evidence needs to be evaluated before adapting a "nothing to see here, only a small amount of routine election fraud was present in this election. People do get away with murder and just because they are not convicted it doesn't mean the murders didn't take places. The same is true of massive election fraud given the limited time to find it and the ability of election authorities to resist looking at the evidence.
Do you dispute my claim that Raffensperger and the election officials involved have a lot to lose if extensive fraud is found, as at a minimum it would suggest they were incapable of running a fair election. If so, should they not legitimately excuse themselves from evaluating fraud claims to allow an independent investigation? If not, why not? This is not an argument that fraud was present. It is an argument that people responsible for ensuring large-scale fraud was not present should not be investigating (or preventing the investigation) of whether large-scale fraud was present.
Erick appeals to facts; Trump appeals to emotion.
Erick, would love your insight and thoughts on the SCOTUS Alito and unconstitutional PA actions, Wisconsin's unrequested absentee voting situation (also unconstitutional from what I've been reading), and our own local Stacy Abrams' group currently under investigation by GBI for seeking dead and out of state voters. That would be great.
Also, any thoughts/insight on the DeKalb County situation on not being able to provide chain of custody records for absentee ballots? Much appreciated! It's so confusing.
It is important that you keep speaking the truth, Erick. And I really admire you for it as I suspect that it does nothing for your pocketbook. Though you will probably continue to be a voice in the wilderness, you're doing important work. What you're doing matters. Both sides of the spectrum should learn from you.
Occam's Razor (oversimplified): The simplest answer is probably the correct one. By all standards Trump lost the election. I HATE it, but that doesn't change the outcome. I read a piece by Patrick Basham about how statistically improbable Biden's win was. The problem I had with the piece was a similar article on the statistical improbability of intelligent life evolving on earth, and we all know how that one turned out.
No one cares about truth anymore. It's a fact.
Erick, in your next article can you please go after former good for nothing Ga. Congressman John Lewis? He continuously said the Donald J Trump was an illegitimate President yet you never called him out like you are your own. I could tell you what I thought of him, but that would only get me banned and in trouble. It’s amazing to me that when we republicans work to find the fraud and look under every stone unturned and turned we get blasted for not accepting the results of the election. When the democrats do the same thing they get the media on their side to help keep the fight going so it stains and tarnished a nominated Judge, the cabinet member, or the President for years. If you want to keep many of your listeners and $7 month Erick Erickson article junkies around may I suggest you help give us some fire power instead of the constant Debbie Downer news. Your article that exposed the incoming Biden administration’s attempt to tax rifles and magazines over 10 rounds at $200 a piece was a great example of why we need to hold the Senate. Please set aside some time and “produce a gospel track if I may,” for us that are going door to door in order to get people to the polls on Jan. the 5th. It would be the perfect text 33777 Christmas item for everyone to have and hand out to those who don’t want their God given rights to disappear.
Let me perhaps save Erick the trouble and, as a Democrat and an admirer of John Lewis, say that he was wrong for that.
At the core of this compact among us (called the Constitution) is the implicit agreement that when the other side wins an election, those of us who lost accept and abide by that result. Then, when our side wins, the other side is obliged to do the same. That is how this democracy has worked for more than 200 years. When we stop doing that, democracy will stop working.
In addition to accepting electoral defeat, it is our way as Americans to accept the role of our courts as the means by which we resolve our disputes. (In John Lewis' defense, when he refused to accept Mr. Trump as a legitimate President, multiple courts - including now the Supreme Court - had not considered and rejected his reasons.) The courts having now spoken. repeatedly and quite clearly on the question of this election's legitimacy, what other stones, within our democratic tradition, remain unturned?
I personally have accepted the loss of the Presidency. We can also agree that the democrats deserve to have everything thrown at them in this heated and contested time. The Democrats have had almost everyone with a microphone and keys to the social media sites on their side. The number 3 helper the Democrats have had is home field advantage with a very liberal bureaucracy in DC. These unelected policy makers have hurt American more than any recent foreign adversary. Without China releasing a deadly virus that has caused a world wide pandemic and killed thousands we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Widespread sit on your ass, sign your name on this line, I’ll fill in the selections for you, and take your ballot to the drop box voting system has tarnished this election. The last 4 years of the Trump Presidency has been a chaotic one due to the media, and liberal bureaucrats near the President’s people who told everything with leaks and lies. Russia, Russia, Russia was a lie. Well now we really know who interfered in this 2020 election. China, China, China. and states who allowed untethered absentee ballots. Joe Biden is compromised and I expect Kamala “Sleep around Joe Brown” Harris to soon take the reigns of our nation. Joe Biden’s lies were 50 times larger and more dangerous the any of Trumps. Now the question is, will the liberal leaning leadership in the DOJ, FBI, and the John Durham investigation do the right thing and tell us the truth about Joe Biden/Ukraine/China and the Obama administration that spied on an incoming and eventual President without any real evidence and lied to a FISA court? We should have had another Trump victory. The deck was staked against us at the start. Nearly 74 million said he did his job and Washington insiders are swamp creatures. China could not afford another 4 years of President Trump and they unleashed COVID-19 on the world to stop him.
Which of Joe Biden's lies are more dangerous than (admittedly) downplaying a virus that has already killed almost 300,000 Americans?
Yeah thanks China and W.H.O. That is who’s to blame truly for the 300,000 deaths in American? What would you have done differently had the President said the virus is serious business, and a lot of people are going to die? You would have criticized him for causing a panic. The President did everything Fauci asked him to do. The biggest lies; Obama/Biden administration if you like your insurance you can keep it. Your insurance will decrease not increase. Working Americans all now pay thousands $ more every year for the same or less coverage than before. Our deductibles went up from $500 to $1500 causing more people to not seek medical help due to that cost. Biden said he and Hunter Biden never discussed his son’s business dealings ever. That we now know is a lie. Anyone who believed that was a fool. In the debates Biden lied when he said, “over 50 intelligence officials said the Hunter Biden laptop information was Russian disinformation.” That was a lie. The FBI & DOJ had Hunter and Joe’s brother under investigation. The regular media along with social media covered it up until after the election. Tony Bobilinski is a credible witness and they covered it up. Biden said he was against fossil fuels and specifically fracking in the Democratic debates. It was all on video as plan as day. Then Biden debates Trump and Biden says he never said he was against fracking and in the process blames Trump and said he’s the one lying about what Biden said. That my friend is so pathetic. To tell a lie, be confronted about it and you don’t take responsibility for it, and then turn around and blame your opponent saying he’s the one telling a lie. tBiden lied about unmasking General Michael Flynn also, because Biden said he knew nothing about Flynn. If you know nothing about Flynn then why did you multiple times ask for his unmasking?
Anyone who voted for Biden is a pathetic human being. When the media was truly impartial the media held Biden accountable. That’s why his previous bids to become President failed and this one didn’t. Thanks lying China and lying media for giving us lying Biden.
Thanks for this information.
Any regrets supporting the man who is doing all he can to sow discord on the way out using lies and misinformation? Your comments are going to be full of people who are believing the lies, with “Yeah, but...” He has done and continues to do great damage to our republic all for his own benefit, mostly his immensely fragile ego.
I agree with everything you said, but that last sentence is very confusing. You seem to be saying that relying on experts in statistics is what people are doing instead of listening to lies. Is this what you meant??
Uhhhh, yikes. Good catch! fixed.
Thanks for the reality check.
There are a lot of false claims of election fraud floating around. But there are also serious issues that are being investigated in all the battleground states. The GBI is now actively working to investigate various issues in GA ( https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/gbi-assisting-secretary-of-state-in-handling-election-investigations ): "Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation will help the secretary of state investigate the hundreds of open cases related to the 2020 election. .. Earlier in the week, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that his office had around 250 open investigations related to the election. These elections included possible double voting, absentee ballot fraud, and other allegations."
In general, it is bad policy to allow an organization to investigate themselves. Raffensperger and the GA SS-officials have been claiming for months that the election is clean and if it is proven not to be, they will either look incompetent or corrupt, which suggests they have a conflict of interest in stopping any effort to find extensive election fraud. Consequently, they have made every effort to avoid signature verification and/or to allow a forensic analysis of voting machines. In a very real sense, if one is not allowed to evaluate the evidence, there is no reason to expect that issues with the evidence will be found.
There were cases in other states that did turn up invalid signatures. For example, in AZ "a handwriting analysis expert [was] retained to look at 1-2 percent of the 1.6 million early ballots submitted in Maricopa County, which would be 16,000 to 32,000 ballots. He also wanted access to all duplicated ballots, a number that Maricopa County election officials pegged at around 20,000.
Instead, Warner [the judge] agreed to let Ward and Wilenchik’s expert look at 100 envelopes and 100 duplicated ballots." This was later updated to add another 1526 ballots. Of these ballots, the expert found 9 errors (or .5%), of the ballots that were already counted as passing signature checks. This error rate would amount to 8K invalid ballots being counted in AZ, which is far greater than the small amount of election fraud issues that Erick is willing to admit. See these articles for details ( https://www.azmirror.com/2020/11/30/judge-allows-ward-to-examine-handful-of-ballots-in-attempt-to-overturn-election/ and https://www.azmirror.com/2020/12/03/examination-finds-maricopa-ballot-errors-didnt-affect-presidential-outcome/ ).
1) The case filed by Congressmen Kelly and Sean Parnell is headed to the Supreme Court with a deadline of 9 am tomorrow for PA to respond to the claims that no-reason mail-in-ballots violated the PA Constitution. Basically, the PA Constitution does not permit a change like mail-in-ballots to be put into effect until after it passes the legislature on both sides of a general election, which was not done in this case. The PA Supreme Court did not rule on whether this was a constitutional violation, but simply rejected the complaint because of the doctrine of laches, which means that the complaint was filed too late. But Ted Cruz and others have pointed out a Catch-22 issue since if the complaint was filed before the general election, it would have likely been tossed because no injury had yet occured. In other words, the PA Supreme Court found the perfect way to make an unconstitutional law constitutional. Given Altio has set a deadline for PA to submit a defense, it is very possible that SCOTUS will take a dim view of that Catch-22 argument. One of the options SCOTUS has may be to invalidate all the EC votes of PA since if all mail-in-ballots were unconstitutional according to PA law, meaning the PA election was unconstitutional and it should not impact the EC count ( https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/12/06/justice-alito-advances-by-one-day-and-several-hours-the-deadline-for-pennsylvania-to-respond-my-speculation-as-to-why-n290251 ). Another alternative is for SCOTUS to give the election to Trump, since without unconstitutional mail-in ballots, he clearly won. But as SCOTUS rulings are unpredictable, the safest approach is to not try to guess their opinion for what to do (Including nothing) before making dogmatic claims about what the ruling will be.
2) It is pretty clear that PA election law intends to allow meaningful observation of vote counting but that in PHL, this was not permitted. There are a number of issues related to a multitude of votes that fit this category. The issue is not so much that fraud has been proven, but that Trump observers were denied their legal right to observe counting and signature verification for hundreds of thousands of votes, effectively allowing fraud to be hidden behind virtual closed doors. In addition, there were something like 15K voters who showed up to vote and were told that they had voted already, which suggests some kind of fraud was involved. The primary reason these cases seem to have been rejected is for lack of standing, which doesn't mean the claims are invalid, but rather that the claimants have no legal right to present their case before the relevant court. If these types of cases make it to SCOTUS, we will see what the justices have to say about this issue.
To the best of my knowledge, only the Pennsylvania case was decided on laches (unwarranted delay) grounds, and that is the case where the plaintiffs argued that they likely lacked standing prior to the election. In other states, I believe the election challenges were all rejected for lack of evidence.
In Fulton County, GA this is the set of fraud claims filed in a recent Fulton County lawsuit ( https://redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/12/05/trump-campaign-files-georgia-election-contest-right-in-the-belly-of-the-beast-fulton-county-n289861 )
"Within the allegations of the 64 page Complaint the Trump campaign claims they have witness testimony for the courtroom that will identify “illegal” votes in the following numbers:2,560 felons66,247 underage voters2,423 votes from people not registered1,043 individuals registered at post office boxes4,926 individuals who voted in Georgia after registering in another state395 individuals who voted in two states15,700 votes from people who moved out of state before the election40,279 votes of people who moved without re-registering in their new countyAnother 30,000 to 40,000 absentee ballots lacking proper signature matching and verification"Just because some fraud claims are false, it doesn't mean these fraud claims are false as this data has been accumulated over the course of a month instead of being rushed out. Perhaps these claims are also in error, but court cases that reject hearing evidence based on lack of standing do not evaluate the integrity of evidence. If Shippedwreckcrew of RedState.com is correct (he is a former federal prosecutor), this evidence will evaluated in a court of law, with witness testimony and cross examination:
"Under the Georgia election code, these issues are now subject to a courtroom trial where documentary evidence will be presented, and witnesses will testify and be cross-examined. A Judge will make a determination as to each claim. That outcome can then be appealed through the regular appellate process." My view is that evidence needs to be evaluated before adapting a "nothing to see here, only a small amount of routine election fraud was present in this election. People do get away with murder and just because they are not convicted it doesn't mean the murders didn't take places. The same is true of massive election fraud given the limited time to find it and the ability of election authorities to resist looking at the evidence.
Do you dispute my claim that Raffensperger and the election officials involved have a lot to lose if extensive fraud is found, as at a minimum it would suggest they were incapable of running a fair election. If so, should they not legitimately excuse themselves from evaluating fraud claims to allow an independent investigation? If not, why not? This is not an argument that fraud was present. It is an argument that people responsible for ensuring large-scale fraud was not present should not be investigating (or preventing the investigation) of whether large-scale fraud was present.
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