A couple simple questions? Why were the suitcases stored under the table (out of sight)? That same table-top was totally unused....why not were the suitcases stored on the table-top? Why were the suitcases (under the table) only removed after most of the observers were "sent" home. These are simple questions. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation but your explanation sounds like it's coming from a person who just wants to sweep this under the rug as fast as possible. But, Erick, it just doesn't smell right. You know Erick, I got a little skeptical of you after I heard that "powder-puff" interview you had with the Sec of State Raffensberger....you gave him a complete pass on that one. "Facts" do matter to me....but I don't think it's quite over yet. We'll see
They have an affidavit from one of the watchers that said they were all told to leave and that she was upset to hear from someone at the venue said they were still working. It was mentioned in the beginning of the hearing.
Thanks Erick for clarifying what was going on that night. Just watching the video freaked me out but your explanation helped calm my fears. As a Georgia voter, I have been begging my friends to NOT watch or listen to any of this election coverage cuz we all need to focus on the runoff election! The thought of the Senate also in Democrat hands scares me. The Democrats are so full of hate for anything and anyone Trump, all the good Trump has done for the country will be trashed and I can't afford more Obama policies! Thanks for keeping me sane!
Enough has been exposed across the nation for me to conclude that Democrat leadership purposefully orchestrated a massive voter fraud campaign in swing states. The video you posted may or may not expose a particular incident of fraud, but in the aggregate across the nation the incidents brought to light are enough to nullify the election. I hold with the "fraud vitiates everything" Supreme Court precedent as applicable to this year's election. No do-over! Trump won by default!
In the video she asked why the ballots were under the table separate from the other ballots and pulled out when most people left. I would like to know. I’m not stuck on the election was stolen, but could you help me understand why the republicans let Stacy Abrahms register 800,000 new voters and not at least do the same thing? Who was asleep at the wheel ? Someone had to notice the newly registered Democrats right?
This is who Trump always was: an immoral man, willing to lie about any and all things to benefit himself, irrespective of the impact on others or the country. The man you supported for president.
I was going to let this go but then I couldn't help myself. Ok let's talk about Fast and Furious, how about politicizing the IRS, FBI , DOJ and the State department. Spying on reporters, running guns to Libya and Ukraine. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. The red line, and the JV team. Hillary's secret server. I could go on and on. Shall we hit on Bill Clinton , I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Hillary who sold tech secrets to China to get Bill re-elected. Bill, who was riding around the world with a convicted pedophile and who was accused of rape. The Clinton foundation pay to play. I could also bring Hunter Biden but I think you get the point. No Trump is not perfect but maybe just maybe you should look in your own closet. Oh wait, last but certainly not least the Iranian nuclear deal.
With all do respect sir, I surly do believe that you are the one being conned. But then again maybe you are looking forward to a socialist country. " First we take Georgia, then we change America".
The Republicans who cannot support Trump for his immorality probably condemned Obama and Clinton for their moral improprieties. They are, at least, showing consistency as opposed to the hypocrisy of those who would support your comment.
Funny. I actually watch Fox News' Special Report everyday, but then, I guess they too are persona non grata in Trump circles these days. I'm more of a financial news junkie so I watch a lot of Bloomberg.
I'll admit, I don't watch One America and Newsmax. They're too unbiased for my taste.
I liked Tucker when he was with The Weekly Standard. He's an intelligent guy. I think he's basically trying to make a buck off of Trump's lemmings while the opportunity is there.
I did watch the interview with Tony Bobulinski. There were some inconsistencies in Mr. Bobulinski's responses that he overlooked because to question them would not support the narrative.
I can't dispute your analysis of the video. This one makes no more sense to me than any of the others floating around. What I do dispute is the notion that too little wrongdoing was perpetrated to change the outcome. You cannot tell me that even if anything wrong happened, it was too little to matter. Wrongdoing is wrong, and it should be identified, punished, and prevented from happening in the future.
My point is that the election process should be known to us all. There should be no secrets about the way the election operates. People whose job is to observe what goes on should be as close to the process as they need to be in order to see what goes on. Everything that happens should be open to observation, and both the processors and the observers to the process should agree on what happened.
The problem is that unless we know that the process is completely visible and honest, we cannot know if some observed wrongdoing is an anomaly or a practice. As voters, we must be able to trust the process to record what voters actually voted. It is all a very complicated, expensive, unfunny joke if nobody can say with confidence, the voters chose this candidate.
I agree that it is possible that too little wrongdoing occurred to change the election outcome. However, any wrongdoing is still wrong, and until we chase it all to ground, we cannot know who was actually elected.
In essence, your argument seems to be that since insufficient signature verification was done (your words: "[the Georgia GOP] could have fought to observe the signature verification process; and they could have demanded to stay and observe that night, but they didn’t.") that is justification for not doing a signature audit now to independently verify its accuracy. That puts your position in opposition to Governor Kemp, Senators Loeffler and Perdue and Congressmen Collins. The purpose of an audit is to verify the truth and if the portion of the GA-GOP that you seem to seek to speak for is against doing that, then that portion of the GA-GOP stands in opposition to what the vast majority of the GOP seek (i.e. the truth). Trump's position is in line with Kemp, Loeffer, Perdue, and Collins, in arguing for all GOP members to vote for Loeffler/Perdue, but also do the signature verification audit: "The best way to insure a @KLoeffler and @sendavidperdue VICTORY is to allow signature checks in the Presidential race, which will insure a Georgia Presidential win (very few votes are needed, many will be found). Spirits will soar and everyone will rush out and VOTE!"
The way you find the truth about such matters is in unbiased courts of law that allow evidence to be presented and witnesses to testify and be cross examined. That is what responsible GOP members advocate for, with this procedure expressed in a set of Kurt Schlichter's tweets regarding the video: "Exactly. Videotape is a great type of evidence, but it is meaningless without getting the context through sworn testimony. We all want the truth. That’s how you find the truth. We shouldn’t be afraid of that. We should celebrate it. .. I want to see more facts about what this actually means, but this demonstrates why it is important to litigate these matters all the way to a final resolution. We must get the evidence out there. ... The same way you try and find the truth in any trial. You cross examine the witness. People lie all the time. I know - I’m a lawyer."
You may be willing to place your trust in Raffensperger, but quite a few people in the GOP would prefer an independent examination of the evidence to verify what the truth is. Isn't that what "Quid ed veritas" seeks? The quest to verify the truth has nothing at all to do with not voting for Loeffler and Perdue, as anybody who is truly a Trump supporter will clearly follow his guidance and vote GOP.
My understanding is that signatures in GA can no longer be verified since GA began processing the mail-in ballots two weeks prior to election day. The ballots were separated from the envelopes containing the signatures so there is now no paper trail to verify the mail-in ballots are valid. I'm not suggesting there was any impropriety. I'm not happy with the outcome of the presidential race, but I do happen to agree with Erick, that while there may be some examples of voter fraud, there's nothing close to the number of votes that would sway the outcome. Trump needs to understand that he lost. This loss is his to own.
My impression is that ballot envelopes contain signatures that can be compared with driver's licenses, voter registration cards, ballot applications and addresses checked against verifiably valid residences. I believe this type of audit can be done without any reference at all to the ballots. One cannot use this type of audit to prove that specific Biden/Trump votes were illegal (due to phone addresses and or signature mis-matches). But one can count the number of illegal votes that may (or may not) have been counted. Erick's contention is that mass amounts of illegal votes do not exist. But an independent audit of the ballots can actually provide reasonable evidence that mass amounts of illegal votes were indeed counted (or not). That is a useful piece of information that could entirely debunk the claims that either no fraud existed or no fraud sufficient to overturn election results existed. And if the audit is done and only a small amount of issues arise, that only serves to validate the claims that this was a clean election. There is no loss to anybody other than the cost to do the audit. And I imagine the bulk of 74M Trump voters would each donate a dollar to help pay for the audit.
As to whether, this audit could overturn an election is debatable. Say for example, 30K illegal ballots were found. If half of them were for each candidate, that would have no effect. But suppose a vast majority of the illegal ballots came from Biden regions garnering 80-90% of the votes. That would mean about 24-27K were possibly Biden ballots and 3-6K were possibly Trump ballots, if the invalid ballots had the same ratio as valid ballots. That would throw the election to Trump, as the difference would be more than the current 12K+ votes. A court might not do that. But if I was a state legislature in GA and say that amount of fraud, I would likely do it without any moral qualms.
There is little point in resisting such an audit. If Raffensperger is right about election integrity, it will only serve to verify his claim. But if people are allowed to investigate and clear themselves, the likely conclusion is they will find themselves innocent of all charges. That is why courts allow evidence from outside parties to be presented and evaluated. Raffensperger has been saying for months that such fraud isn't possible and he has a lot to lose if an audit or a forensic analysis of the voting machines provided evidence that bulk fraud did exist. This suggests Raffensperger should not be in the loop for making a decision about allowing audits or a forensic analysis because the result would have a very negative impact on him if it doesn't verify his claims about the integrity of this election.
I am not implying that Raffensperger is dishonest. But he does seem to want to avoid allowing an independent audit and/or a forensic analysis that could show his claims of election integrity are valid/invalid. I prefer not to take Raffensperger's word, but to have independent parties verify his contention that this was a clean and honest election.
The signatures were checked TWICE, whatever issues found were miniscule. An audit will surely not find enough questionable ballots to change the results.
Then there should be no reason not to verify the signatures and addresses under independent observation and remove all doubts. If you are sure an audit will not find enough questionable ballots to overturn the election, then why object to it? The same reason applies to submitting voting machines to an independent forensic analysis. The media loves to make blanket statements of the form, "nothing to see here, move on." But why not submit to the audits and forensic analysis to calm the doubters who won't take your word, or Erick's word, or Raffensperger's word that there is nothing to see here and we should just move on. There is no legitimate reason anybody should not vote on January 5 if independent audits and a forensic analysis are done, as if there is nothing to see, that only increases the evidence for that claim.
Because this is not about the veracity of the election. This is about attempting to decertify the election to reduce the electoral count on December 14 to push the election into the House where the votes of 26 Republican State Legislatures will vote to make Donald Trump president. It's an attempt to steal the election, to do that which you falsely accuse the other side of doing.
Audits are not political. They are simply an attempt to verify the accuracy of whatever is being audited. If audits of signatures/addresses turned up no significant issues, it would actually lower the risk of state legislatures or the House of Representatives intervening to overthrow state certifications. But on the other hand, if audits did show significant issues with the inaccuracy of signatures/addresses, then it would increase the likelihood of state legislatures or the House of Representatives intervening to elect Trump. But you have already said that audits can't possibly do that: (Your words: "An audit will surely not find enough questionable ballots to change the results"). So why are you so against an audit?
Go back and read the 2nd to last paragraph of Erick's essay above. Never mind here it is:
"By the way, the Georgia GOP could have examined the absentee ballot electors before election day; they could have fought to observe the signature verification process; and they could have demanded to stay and observe that night, but they didn’t. So part of the narrative here that you must understand is that the Georgia GOP did not do the things it could have done to make sure there were no shenanigans and now is obfuscating and misdirecting blame."
The Republican Party and Trump Campaign had an opportunity to do just that. Why didn't you? I prefer to think incompetence. The more disturbing reason could be suspecting the result of that effort, waiting till now was a better strategy to throw the process into chaos and STEAL THE FREAKING ELECTION.
And thanks for validating my theory. You people consider yourselves patriots? You lie to yourselves.
Erick's statements actually reflect American Conservatism's attitude seen in the last 50-75 years - a lack of vigilance. Knowing that there is active evil out there influencing society in education, journalism, politics, everyday entertainment, we all failed to be "watchmen on the wall", calling out untruth as it shows up immediately.
Whether or not there was malfeasance in this particular claim, our representative "watchmen" chose to leave the room. This is not that much different from our own choices - choosing not to attend PTA meetings, town halls, city council meetings, challenging professors clearly teaching falsehoods or opinions contrary to known truth.
The effort of the Trump team needs to result in increased vigilance, lessons learned about how to *not* conduct elections, challenging "status quo" behavior that leaves large gaps for utilitarians to take advantage of in either naive belief that "no one would do that" or the lack of willingness to remain vigilant.
I want to be clear that I am not challenging the integrity of either Raffensperger or Erick. My position is that neither of them know the truth about what a multitude of voters and election officials may have done. God is all knowing, but people are not. Neither are human courts. But public courts that examine evidence and testimony and issue verdicts based on that evidence began with Moses in Exodus 18. They are the prescribed Biblical way for setting disputes. People who believe in justice should always support full investigations to do the best humans can do at finding the truth given our limited knowledge.
What do you think about what's going on in PA right now? I was fine with the first couple court challenges (precisely for the reasons you cite) but am now shaking my head and wondering when the GOP here will give up.
The GOP will give up when it's legal rights to appeals are exhausted. The primary reason cases have been rejected is not because of evidence, but because judges ruling that the claims lack standing. The lack of standing is essentially a ruling that the claimant's do not have the legal right to seek a judgment from the court. The case filed by Congressmen Kelly and Sean Parnell was rejected based on something called "laches," which is a similar argument meaning the claimant's waited too long to file their case. But as Ted Cruz (and others) have pointed out, if the claimant's would have filed their case before the election, it would have likely been rejected for a lack of standing. This creates a clear catch-22 situation where a clear violation of the PA Constitution cannot be evaluated on its merits - and I believe that is an issue that SCOTUS will likely decide. The major issue with the other PA court cases is that PIT/PHL Democrats denied Republican observers access to verify the integrity of the counting process, in an alleged violation of PA law. The goal of Trump's legal team is to get SCOTUS to rule on this issue.
In terms of court battles, I have consistently said that the only true verdict that will allow Trump to win is for a unanimous verdict among 5 SCOTUS justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) who will I believe look at the claims in terms of the letter of the law. In terms of legislative battles, the verdicts of state legislatures as to the impact of alleged fraud is also an option for Trump to win, as state legislatures can choose to exercise their Constitutional authority and send their own electors to the Electoral College. A third option for Trump to win is a vote in the House of Representatives, with each state's delegation having one vote, and the Republicans having about a 26-23 edge if this comes into play.
My personal opinion is that no ballots should have been processed anywhere without volunteer poll watchers being present and given access where they could see the details of what was going on. My personal opinion is that each state should have a rigorous voter-id requirement and that if we are going to allow mail-in-ballots that id's, addresses and signatures have to be checked on election day (or shortly thereafter) with poll watchers being given unrestricted access, with questionable ballots being set apart for future audits. My personal opinion is that voting machines should be submitted to a forensic analysis. I am not God and I didn't see exactly what a multitude of voters and election officials did or didn't do. But the same reasoning applies to all people on both sides of this debate, and I believe nobody should be making dogmatic statements about what did or didn't happen, and the best way to settle this is to audit everything in dispute.
Wow, thank you. There were a lot of aspects of the GOP concerns that I didn't understand and you've laid them out really clearly. (And succinctly). It still feels a bit like scaling a mountain of confusion and assumptions, confusion of terms (people use the same words and mean different things) and me trying to push aside my own assumptions to really pay attention. Plus fatigue is setting in. (Maybe coffee will fix that.)
Thanks again, and I appreciate the time you took to write this.
Glad to help Anne Marie. Since before the election, I have been praying that it would be an honest outcome no matter who won. I think that is still in doubt. I recommend that you pray for the same thing. I am sure that I am not alone in this prayer. But every voice added to that request is one more reason that God will hear the cry of his people and settle the disputes about this election. There is no doubt that there is a major difference of opinion about which direction our country should take. and that no country can go in two opposite directions at once. I believe God supports a free will that entitles us to make our own choices. But if the election was indeed stolen from Trump, I believe God may intervene and prevent the truthful choice of our country's voters from being stolen. But that decision is up to God and God is the only one with complete knowledge about whether the election was stolen.
Yes. No matter who we support, an honest outcome *needs* to happen. We all need to stop fighting each other, but that doesn't mean just saying, "Okay, this is it, done." People need to agree on when that point is.
I will be voting at the Sandy Springs library December 14 at 7am. I urge you to do the same at your polling place. There is no need to vote by paper mail in ballot. No need at all. We have a vaccine, therapeutics can be given if you contract Covid, hospitalizations in Georgia are down, plenty of beds if you need one. Covid is not severe in Georgia. Hell, my friends who contracted Covid, were in the front yard raking leaves. I set their casseroles down in the driveway.
You make good points, but as someone currently living in a plague village, what's on top of my mind is: what casseroles? Looking for something comforting for the sick neighbors.
Erick, thanks for continuing to speak the truth. My wife, her parents and most of my co-workers believe a lot of the conspiracy theories and your posts gives me the information I need to show them that there is no there there. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes not. Fortunately for me, I have a group of guys from my church that I meet with every Friday morning that believe as I do. The thing I try to focus on is that know mattter what happens, GOD is still in control.
A couple simple questions? Why were the suitcases stored under the table (out of sight)? That same table-top was totally unused....why not were the suitcases stored on the table-top? Why were the suitcases (under the table) only removed after most of the observers were "sent" home. These are simple questions. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation but your explanation sounds like it's coming from a person who just wants to sweep this under the rug as fast as possible. But, Erick, it just doesn't smell right. You know Erick, I got a little skeptical of you after I heard that "powder-puff" interview you had with the Sec of State Raffensberger....you gave him a complete pass on that one. "Facts" do matter to me....but I don't think it's quite over yet. We'll see
Thank You!
They have an affidavit from one of the watchers that said they were all told to leave and that she was upset to hear from someone at the venue said they were still working. It was mentioned in the beginning of the hearing.
Thanks Erick for clarifying what was going on that night. Just watching the video freaked me out but your explanation helped calm my fears. As a Georgia voter, I have been begging my friends to NOT watch or listen to any of this election coverage cuz we all need to focus on the runoff election! The thought of the Senate also in Democrat hands scares me. The Democrats are so full of hate for anything and anyone Trump, all the good Trump has done for the country will be trashed and I can't afford more Obama policies! Thanks for keeping me sane!
Enough has been exposed across the nation for me to conclude that Democrat leadership purposefully orchestrated a massive voter fraud campaign in swing states. The video you posted may or may not expose a particular incident of fraud, but in the aggregate across the nation the incidents brought to light are enough to nullify the election. I hold with the "fraud vitiates everything" Supreme Court precedent as applicable to this year's election. No do-over! Trump won by default!
Also, was the water leak part of the fraudulent plan?
If there were nefarious dealings observed by this monitor, why didn't she speak up at the time? Apparently, there were not.
In the video she asked why the ballots were under the table separate from the other ballots and pulled out when most people left. I would like to know. I’m not stuck on the election was stolen, but could you help me understand why the republicans let Stacy Abrahms register 800,000 new voters and not at least do the same thing? Who was asleep at the wheel ? Someone had to notice the newly registered Democrats right?
This is who Trump always was: an immoral man, willing to lie about any and all things to benefit himself, irrespective of the impact on others or the country. The man you supported for president.
I was going to let this go but then I couldn't help myself. Ok let's talk about Fast and Furious, how about politicizing the IRS, FBI , DOJ and the State department. Spying on reporters, running guns to Libya and Ukraine. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. The red line, and the JV team. Hillary's secret server. I could go on and on. Shall we hit on Bill Clinton , I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Hillary who sold tech secrets to China to get Bill re-elected. Bill, who was riding around the world with a convicted pedophile and who was accused of rape. The Clinton foundation pay to play. I could also bring Hunter Biden but I think you get the point. No Trump is not perfect but maybe just maybe you should look in your own closet. Oh wait, last but certainly not least the Iranian nuclear deal.
Well, I hope you’re contributing to him, then. A conman can’t live without his marks, you know.
With all do respect sir, I surly do believe that you are the one being conned. But then again maybe you are looking forward to a socialist country. " First we take Georgia, then we change America".
The Republicans who cannot support Trump for his immorality probably condemned Obama and Clinton for their moral improprieties. They are, at least, showing consistency as opposed to the hypocrisy of those who would support your comment.
Sir, I sincerely think that you need to watch something besides CNN or MSNBC
Funny. I actually watch Fox News' Special Report everyday, but then, I guess they too are persona non grata in Trump circles these days. I'm more of a financial news junkie so I watch a lot of Bloomberg.
I'll admit, I don't watch One America and Newsmax. They're too unbiased for my taste.
I too watch Brett Braier, but Tucker Carlson is my all time favorite. Maybe you should tune in sometime.
I liked Tucker when he was with The Weekly Standard. He's an intelligent guy. I think he's basically trying to make a buck off of Trump's lemmings while the opportunity is there.
I did watch the interview with Tony Bobulinski. There were some inconsistencies in Mr. Bobulinski's responses that he overlooked because to question them would not support the narrative.
I can forgive support for Trump in the 2020 election. I can't forgive anyone supporting him and his actions since November 3.
I really don't believe that anyone is asking for you forgiveness.
True. It was a rhetorical comment.
I can't dispute your analysis of the video. This one makes no more sense to me than any of the others floating around. What I do dispute is the notion that too little wrongdoing was perpetrated to change the outcome. You cannot tell me that even if anything wrong happened, it was too little to matter. Wrongdoing is wrong, and it should be identified, punished, and prevented from happening in the future.
My point is that the election process should be known to us all. There should be no secrets about the way the election operates. People whose job is to observe what goes on should be as close to the process as they need to be in order to see what goes on. Everything that happens should be open to observation, and both the processors and the observers to the process should agree on what happened.
The problem is that unless we know that the process is completely visible and honest, we cannot know if some observed wrongdoing is an anomaly or a practice. As voters, we must be able to trust the process to record what voters actually voted. It is all a very complicated, expensive, unfunny joke if nobody can say with confidence, the voters chose this candidate.
I agree that it is possible that too little wrongdoing occurred to change the election outcome. However, any wrongdoing is still wrong, and until we chase it all to ground, we cannot know who was actually elected.
In essence, your argument seems to be that since insufficient signature verification was done (your words: "[the Georgia GOP] could have fought to observe the signature verification process; and they could have demanded to stay and observe that night, but they didn’t.") that is justification for not doing a signature audit now to independently verify its accuracy. That puts your position in opposition to Governor Kemp, Senators Loeffler and Perdue and Congressmen Collins. The purpose of an audit is to verify the truth and if the portion of the GA-GOP that you seem to seek to speak for is against doing that, then that portion of the GA-GOP stands in opposition to what the vast majority of the GOP seek (i.e. the truth). Trump's position is in line with Kemp, Loeffer, Perdue, and Collins, in arguing for all GOP members to vote for Loeffler/Perdue, but also do the signature verification audit: "The best way to insure a @KLoeffler and @sendavidperdue VICTORY is to allow signature checks in the Presidential race, which will insure a Georgia Presidential win (very few votes are needed, many will be found). Spirits will soar and everyone will rush out and VOTE!"
The way you find the truth about such matters is in unbiased courts of law that allow evidence to be presented and witnesses to testify and be cross examined. That is what responsible GOP members advocate for, with this procedure expressed in a set of Kurt Schlichter's tweets regarding the video: "Exactly. Videotape is a great type of evidence, but it is meaningless without getting the context through sworn testimony. We all want the truth. That’s how you find the truth. We shouldn’t be afraid of that. We should celebrate it. .. I want to see more facts about what this actually means, but this demonstrates why it is important to litigate these matters all the way to a final resolution. We must get the evidence out there. ... The same way you try and find the truth in any trial. You cross examine the witness. People lie all the time. I know - I’m a lawyer."
You may be willing to place your trust in Raffensperger, but quite a few people in the GOP would prefer an independent examination of the evidence to verify what the truth is. Isn't that what "Quid ed veritas" seeks? The quest to verify the truth has nothing at all to do with not voting for Loeffler and Perdue, as anybody who is truly a Trump supporter will clearly follow his guidance and vote GOP.
My understanding is that signatures in GA can no longer be verified since GA began processing the mail-in ballots two weeks prior to election day. The ballots were separated from the envelopes containing the signatures so there is now no paper trail to verify the mail-in ballots are valid. I'm not suggesting there was any impropriety. I'm not happy with the outcome of the presidential race, but I do happen to agree with Erick, that while there may be some examples of voter fraud, there's nothing close to the number of votes that would sway the outcome. Trump needs to understand that he lost. This loss is his to own.
My impression is that ballot envelopes contain signatures that can be compared with driver's licenses, voter registration cards, ballot applications and addresses checked against verifiably valid residences. I believe this type of audit can be done without any reference at all to the ballots. One cannot use this type of audit to prove that specific Biden/Trump votes were illegal (due to phone addresses and or signature mis-matches). But one can count the number of illegal votes that may (or may not) have been counted. Erick's contention is that mass amounts of illegal votes do not exist. But an independent audit of the ballots can actually provide reasonable evidence that mass amounts of illegal votes were indeed counted (or not). That is a useful piece of information that could entirely debunk the claims that either no fraud existed or no fraud sufficient to overturn election results existed. And if the audit is done and only a small amount of issues arise, that only serves to validate the claims that this was a clean election. There is no loss to anybody other than the cost to do the audit. And I imagine the bulk of 74M Trump voters would each donate a dollar to help pay for the audit.
As to whether, this audit could overturn an election is debatable. Say for example, 30K illegal ballots were found. If half of them were for each candidate, that would have no effect. But suppose a vast majority of the illegal ballots came from Biden regions garnering 80-90% of the votes. That would mean about 24-27K were possibly Biden ballots and 3-6K were possibly Trump ballots, if the invalid ballots had the same ratio as valid ballots. That would throw the election to Trump, as the difference would be more than the current 12K+ votes. A court might not do that. But if I was a state legislature in GA and say that amount of fraud, I would likely do it without any moral qualms.
There is little point in resisting such an audit. If Raffensperger is right about election integrity, it will only serve to verify his claim. But if people are allowed to investigate and clear themselves, the likely conclusion is they will find themselves innocent of all charges. That is why courts allow evidence from outside parties to be presented and evaluated. Raffensperger has been saying for months that such fraud isn't possible and he has a lot to lose if an audit or a forensic analysis of the voting machines provided evidence that bulk fraud did exist. This suggests Raffensperger should not be in the loop for making a decision about allowing audits or a forensic analysis because the result would have a very negative impact on him if it doesn't verify his claims about the integrity of this election.
I am not implying that Raffensperger is dishonest. But he does seem to want to avoid allowing an independent audit and/or a forensic analysis that could show his claims of election integrity are valid/invalid. I prefer not to take Raffensperger's word, but to have independent parties verify his contention that this was a clean and honest election.
The signatures were checked TWICE, whatever issues found were miniscule. An audit will surely not find enough questionable ballots to change the results.
Then there should be no reason not to verify the signatures and addresses under independent observation and remove all doubts. If you are sure an audit will not find enough questionable ballots to overturn the election, then why object to it? The same reason applies to submitting voting machines to an independent forensic analysis. The media loves to make blanket statements of the form, "nothing to see here, move on." But why not submit to the audits and forensic analysis to calm the doubters who won't take your word, or Erick's word, or Raffensperger's word that there is nothing to see here and we should just move on. There is no legitimate reason anybody should not vote on January 5 if independent audits and a forensic analysis are done, as if there is nothing to see, that only increases the evidence for that claim.
Because this is not about the veracity of the election. This is about attempting to decertify the election to reduce the electoral count on December 14 to push the election into the House where the votes of 26 Republican State Legislatures will vote to make Donald Trump president. It's an attempt to steal the election, to do that which you falsely accuse the other side of doing.
Audits are not political. They are simply an attempt to verify the accuracy of whatever is being audited. If audits of signatures/addresses turned up no significant issues, it would actually lower the risk of state legislatures or the House of Representatives intervening to overthrow state certifications. But on the other hand, if audits did show significant issues with the inaccuracy of signatures/addresses, then it would increase the likelihood of state legislatures or the House of Representatives intervening to elect Trump. But you have already said that audits can't possibly do that: (Your words: "An audit will surely not find enough questionable ballots to change the results"). So why are you so against an audit?
Go back and read the 2nd to last paragraph of Erick's essay above. Never mind here it is:
"By the way, the Georgia GOP could have examined the absentee ballot electors before election day; they could have fought to observe the signature verification process; and they could have demanded to stay and observe that night, but they didn’t. So part of the narrative here that you must understand is that the Georgia GOP did not do the things it could have done to make sure there were no shenanigans and now is obfuscating and misdirecting blame."
The Republican Party and Trump Campaign had an opportunity to do just that. Why didn't you? I prefer to think incompetence. The more disturbing reason could be suspecting the result of that effort, waiting till now was a better strategy to throw the process into chaos and STEAL THE FREAKING ELECTION.
And thanks for validating my theory. You people consider yourselves patriots? You lie to yourselves.
Erick's statements actually reflect American Conservatism's attitude seen in the last 50-75 years - a lack of vigilance. Knowing that there is active evil out there influencing society in education, journalism, politics, everyday entertainment, we all failed to be "watchmen on the wall", calling out untruth as it shows up immediately.
Whether or not there was malfeasance in this particular claim, our representative "watchmen" chose to leave the room. This is not that much different from our own choices - choosing not to attend PTA meetings, town halls, city council meetings, challenging professors clearly teaching falsehoods or opinions contrary to known truth.
The effort of the Trump team needs to result in increased vigilance, lessons learned about how to *not* conduct elections, challenging "status quo" behavior that leaves large gaps for utilitarians to take advantage of in either naive belief that "no one would do that" or the lack of willingness to remain vigilant.
I want to be clear that I am not challenging the integrity of either Raffensperger or Erick. My position is that neither of them know the truth about what a multitude of voters and election officials may have done. God is all knowing, but people are not. Neither are human courts. But public courts that examine evidence and testimony and issue verdicts based on that evidence began with Moses in Exodus 18. They are the prescribed Biblical way for setting disputes. People who believe in justice should always support full investigations to do the best humans can do at finding the truth given our limited knowledge.
What do you think about what's going on in PA right now? I was fine with the first couple court challenges (precisely for the reasons you cite) but am now shaking my head and wondering when the GOP here will give up.
The GOP will give up when it's legal rights to appeals are exhausted. The primary reason cases have been rejected is not because of evidence, but because judges ruling that the claims lack standing. The lack of standing is essentially a ruling that the claimant's do not have the legal right to seek a judgment from the court. The case filed by Congressmen Kelly and Sean Parnell was rejected based on something called "laches," which is a similar argument meaning the claimant's waited too long to file their case. But as Ted Cruz (and others) have pointed out, if the claimant's would have filed their case before the election, it would have likely been rejected for a lack of standing. This creates a clear catch-22 situation where a clear violation of the PA Constitution cannot be evaluated on its merits - and I believe that is an issue that SCOTUS will likely decide. The major issue with the other PA court cases is that PIT/PHL Democrats denied Republican observers access to verify the integrity of the counting process, in an alleged violation of PA law. The goal of Trump's legal team is to get SCOTUS to rule on this issue.
In terms of court battles, I have consistently said that the only true verdict that will allow Trump to win is for a unanimous verdict among 5 SCOTUS justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett) who will I believe look at the claims in terms of the letter of the law. In terms of legislative battles, the verdicts of state legislatures as to the impact of alleged fraud is also an option for Trump to win, as state legislatures can choose to exercise their Constitutional authority and send their own electors to the Electoral College. A third option for Trump to win is a vote in the House of Representatives, with each state's delegation having one vote, and the Republicans having about a 26-23 edge if this comes into play.
My personal opinion is that no ballots should have been processed anywhere without volunteer poll watchers being present and given access where they could see the details of what was going on. My personal opinion is that each state should have a rigorous voter-id requirement and that if we are going to allow mail-in-ballots that id's, addresses and signatures have to be checked on election day (or shortly thereafter) with poll watchers being given unrestricted access, with questionable ballots being set apart for future audits. My personal opinion is that voting machines should be submitted to a forensic analysis. I am not God and I didn't see exactly what a multitude of voters and election officials did or didn't do. But the same reasoning applies to all people on both sides of this debate, and I believe nobody should be making dogmatic statements about what did or didn't happen, and the best way to settle this is to audit everything in dispute.
Wow, thank you. There were a lot of aspects of the GOP concerns that I didn't understand and you've laid them out really clearly. (And succinctly). It still feels a bit like scaling a mountain of confusion and assumptions, confusion of terms (people use the same words and mean different things) and me trying to push aside my own assumptions to really pay attention. Plus fatigue is setting in. (Maybe coffee will fix that.)
Thanks again, and I appreciate the time you took to write this.
Glad to help Anne Marie. Since before the election, I have been praying that it would be an honest outcome no matter who won. I think that is still in doubt. I recommend that you pray for the same thing. I am sure that I am not alone in this prayer. But every voice added to that request is one more reason that God will hear the cry of his people and settle the disputes about this election. There is no doubt that there is a major difference of opinion about which direction our country should take. and that no country can go in two opposite directions at once. I believe God supports a free will that entitles us to make our own choices. But if the election was indeed stolen from Trump, I believe God may intervene and prevent the truthful choice of our country's voters from being stolen. But that decision is up to God and God is the only one with complete knowledge about whether the election was stolen.
Yes. No matter who we support, an honest outcome *needs* to happen. We all need to stop fighting each other, but that doesn't mean just saying, "Okay, this is it, done." People need to agree on when that point is.
Just trying to stay alive to God's will...
I will be voting at the Sandy Springs library December 14 at 7am. I urge you to do the same at your polling place. There is no need to vote by paper mail in ballot. No need at all. We have a vaccine, therapeutics can be given if you contract Covid, hospitalizations in Georgia are down, plenty of beds if you need one. Covid is not severe in Georgia. Hell, my friends who contracted Covid, were in the front yard raking leaves. I set their casseroles down in the driveway.
You make good points, but as someone currently living in a plague village, what's on top of my mind is: what casseroles? Looking for something comforting for the sick neighbors.
I made chicken verde casserole, macaroni and cheese, and chicken noodle soup!!
Thanks! The soup for the sickest, and casserole and mac-and-cheese for the feeling-better ones. Awesome :D
Erick, thanks for continuing to speak the truth. My wife, her parents and most of my co-workers believe a lot of the conspiracy theories and your posts gives me the information I need to show them that there is no there there. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes not. Fortunately for me, I have a group of guys from my church that I meet with every Friday morning that believe as I do. The thing I try to focus on is that know mattter what happens, GOD is still in control.