It was stolen, even if not through ballots—although I think you make a good case. Our security state uses subservient big tech and media (social and corporate) to lie as well as gag freedom of speech, stupefying the electorate. This is the real tragedy in America today, and few care. We are pacified by an appearance of freedom of expression, but that freedom is now a mist and a vapor. Democracies depend upon an informed electorate and, between censorship and the monopoly of the decadent on public and higher ed, ours is not. The best man on this is Glenn Greenwald. The right man for the right time. Anyhow, thanks for this, Eric.
Multiple states, two of them Republican run (GA and AZ), consistent patterns showing Biden improving on Hillary's performance nationwide, Trump improving his margins in very heavily Democratic cities like Philly, Detroit, Los Angeles, NYC. It adds up to an election that was close, with some fraud here and there, but not enough to change the result.
"Republican" doesn't mean "supports Donald Trump", alas.
Yes, Biden did better than Hillary, but that's because of the absentee ballots.
Trump doing better than Hillary in Philly and Detroit is interesting-- do you happen to have the stats at hand? That indeed is relevant evidence against the cheating explanation.
Thank you. I hadn't see that paper, "An Evaluation of Fraud Claims from the 2020 Trump Election Contests," by Justin Grimmer and Abhinav Ramaswam (2024). It looks like it doesn't address squarely the improbabilities I mention here (e.g., bellwether counties, House of Reps, delayed counting), but it does a good job of demolishing many arguments Trump's lawyers made in the 2020 legal challenges.
2. 20% of absentee oters in 2020, in a poll, said they broke the ruels and non-voters filled in a voter's form. "Seventeen percent (17%) of those who cast mail-in ballots in 2020 say they signed a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without their permission. ... nearly equal percentages of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters admitted to fraudulent activities. For example, 19% of Republicans, 16% of Democrats and 17% of unaffiliated voters who cast 2020 mail-in ballots say they signed a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member. On the question of voting in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident. more Republican mail-in voters (24%) than Democrats (17%) or unaffiliated voters (11%) admitted doing so."https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/one_in_five_mail_in_voters_admit_they_cheated_in_2020_election
A Rasmussen Reports poll after the election found that about 18% of absentee voters admitted to signing on behalf of someone else, which would amount to an astounding 12 million votes. We just don’t know who sent in the fraudulent votes.
Someone sent me an email linking to a useful article on the events in Michigan: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/24/michigan-election-trump-voter-fraud-democracy-440475 . That person also noted that there were lots of audits in Michigan-- but they were *counting* audits, not *fraud* audits. Most or all states do counting audits, to make sure the machines are counting ballots correctly. What was needed in 2020 were audits of the absentee ballot signatures. The article talks about there being plenty of Republican pollwatchers in Detroit. I'm sure there were-- but it sounds like they didn't know that what they ought to be looking at was the opening of absentee ballot envelopes, not the count process.
DENVER — The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that included voting system passwords....
On Tuesday morning, Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman shared the hidden tab discovery in a mass email, along with an affidavit from someone who claims they had downloaded the Excel file from the Colorado Secretary of State’s website and discovered the hidden tab by simply clicking “unhide.” The name on the affidavit was blacked out in the Republican Party email.
9NEWS left a voicemail with Scheppelman on Tuesday afternoon.
The passwords that were in the hidden tab are known as BIOS passwords and are one part of the security process for Colorado’s voting machines.
They are passwords needed to configure system settings.
“There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system,” a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said.
"Colorado Secretary of State posted spreadsheet with voting system passwords"
Your belief would be more compelling if Trump hadn't (a) routinely claimed losses were rigged (the Emmy awards were rigged against The Apprentice; Ted Cruz stole the Iowa Caucuses; and Hillary Clinton stole millions of votes in 2016); (b) told everybody beforehand that if he lost it was stolen; (c) pushed dozens of absurd claims (from Sharpies in Arizona to Dominion voting machines controlled by Venezuelans); (d) told us 2024 is going to be stolen; and (e) been a compulsive liar (from John Baron to birtherism to inauguration crowd size). If any crackpot (and Trump is an obvious crackpot even if 2020 were stolen) claiming fraud without evidence can get an audit and delay election results indefinitely, chaos would reign more than it already does.
My point was and is that, if Trump weren't such an obvious crackpot, I'd have been much more willing to support an audit based upon uncertain circumstances but no substantive evidence.
From the Lott paper you link about mail in ballot fraud.
"The United Kingdom, which allows postal voting, has had some notable mail-in ballot fraud
cases. Prior to recent photo ID requirements, six Labour Party councilors in Birmingham won
office after what the judge described as a “massive, systematic and organised" postal voting
fraud campaign.5 The fraud was apparently carried out with the full knowledge and cooperation
of the local Labour party. There was "widespread theft" of postal votes (possibly around 40,000
ballots) in areas with large Muslim populations because Labour members were worried that the
Iraq war would spur these voters to oppose the incumbent government."
The UK authorities have been gradually tightening the rules regarding how to apply for postal ballots and when they can be used ever since that Birmingham scandal came to light. Most recently in 2023 (so after the Lott paper) - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65689431
It was stolen, even if not through ballots—although I think you make a good case. Our security state uses subservient big tech and media (social and corporate) to lie as well as gag freedom of speech, stupefying the electorate. This is the real tragedy in America today, and few care. We are pacified by an appearance of freedom of expression, but that freedom is now a mist and a vapor. Democracies depend upon an informed electorate and, between censorship and the monopoly of the decadent on public and higher ed, ours is not. The best man on this is Glenn Greenwald. The right man for the right time. Anyhow, thanks for this, Eric.
Multiple states, two of them Republican run (GA and AZ), consistent patterns showing Biden improving on Hillary's performance nationwide, Trump improving his margins in very heavily Democratic cities like Philly, Detroit, Los Angeles, NYC. It adds up to an election that was close, with some fraud here and there, but not enough to change the result.
See here: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/15/big-cities-biden-election-436529
Good article. Trump didn't give up on minority voters like Republicans often do.
But absentee voter fraud isn't just a city problem. The most notorious case was in a rural part of Alabama back in the 1990s.
"Republican" doesn't mean "supports Donald Trump", alas.
Yes, Biden did better than Hillary, but that's because of the absentee ballots.
Trump doing better than Hillary in Philly and Detroit is interesting-- do you happen to have the stats at hand? That indeed is relevant evidence against the cheating explanation.
In this paper the authors address several of the points you raised here "An Evaluation of Fraud Claims from the 2020 Trump Election Contests" https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qfvavvua3g6dksnzl9ils/TrumpClaims.pdf?rlkey=rnig91049e5js1hprelig4ij9&e=2&st=fsi9zwbx&dl=0
Thank you. I hadn't see that paper, "An Evaluation of Fraud Claims from the 2020 Trump Election Contests," by Justin Grimmer and Abhinav Ramaswam (2024). It looks like it doesn't address squarely the improbabilities I mention here (e.g., bellwether counties, House of Reps, delayed counting), but it does a good job of demolishing many arguments Trump's lawyers made in the 2020 legal challenges.
For revisions:
1. 55% of voters think Biden stole the 2020 election. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/may_2022/election_integrity_most_voters_still_suspect_cheating
2. 20% of absentee oters in 2020, in a poll, said they broke the ruels and non-voters filled in a voter's form. "Seventeen percent (17%) of those who cast mail-in ballots in 2020 say they signed a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without their permission. ... nearly equal percentages of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters admitted to fraudulent activities. For example, 19% of Republicans, 16% of Democrats and 17% of unaffiliated voters who cast 2020 mail-in ballots say they signed a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member. On the question of voting in a state where they were no longer a permanent resident. more Republican mail-in voters (24%) than Democrats (17%) or unaffiliated voters (11%) admitted doing so."https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/one_in_five_mail_in_voters_admit_they_cheated_in_2020_election
A Rasmussen Reports poll after the election found that about 18% of absentee voters admitted to signing on behalf of someone else, which would amount to an astounding 12 million votes. We just don’t know who sent in the fraudulent votes.
Someone sent me an email linking to a useful article on the events in Michigan: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/24/michigan-election-trump-voter-fraud-democracy-440475 . That person also noted that there were lots of audits in Michigan-- but they were *counting* audits, not *fraud* audits. Most or all states do counting audits, to make sure the machines are counting ballots correctly. What was needed in 2020 were audits of the absentee ballot signatures. The article talks about there being plenty of Republican pollwatchers in Detroit. I'm sure there were-- but it sounds like they didn't know that what they ought to be looking at was the opening of absentee ballot envelopes, not the count process.
4. See https://x.com/ClimateAudit/status/1854639571902120051 for a good proTrumper analysis suggesting Penn was not stolen in 2020.
DENVER — The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that included voting system passwords....
On Tuesday morning, Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman shared the hidden tab discovery in a mass email, along with an affidavit from someone who claims they had downloaded the Excel file from the Colorado Secretary of State’s website and discovered the hidden tab by simply clicking “unhide.” The name on the affidavit was blacked out in the Republican Party email.
9NEWS left a voicemail with Scheppelman on Tuesday afternoon.
The passwords that were in the hidden tab are known as BIOS passwords and are one part of the security process for Colorado’s voting machines.
They are passwords needed to configure system settings.
“There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system,” a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said.
"Colorado Secretary of State posted spreadsheet with voting system passwords"
https://www.9news.com/article/news/politics/elections/colorado-secretary-of-state-posted-voting-system-passwords/73-c9264216-7a0a-4d5b-9f64-60a28eb57e4d
Your belief would be more compelling if Trump hadn't (a) routinely claimed losses were rigged (the Emmy awards were rigged against The Apprentice; Ted Cruz stole the Iowa Caucuses; and Hillary Clinton stole millions of votes in 2016); (b) told everybody beforehand that if he lost it was stolen; (c) pushed dozens of absurd claims (from Sharpies in Arizona to Dominion voting machines controlled by Venezuelans); (d) told us 2024 is going to be stolen; and (e) been a compulsive liar (from John Baron to birtherism to inauguration crowd size). If any crackpot (and Trump is an obvious crackpot even if 2020 were stolen) claiming fraud without evidence can get an audit and delay election results indefinitely, chaos would reign more than it already does.
I didn't say I believed there was fraud because Trump said so, but because of the patterns of votes and the number of absentee ballots.
I didn't say you did.
My point was and is that, if Trump weren't such an obvious crackpot, I'd have been much more willing to support an audit based upon uncertain circumstances but no substantive evidence.
From the Lott paper you link about mail in ballot fraud.
"The United Kingdom, which allows postal voting, has had some notable mail-in ballot fraud
cases. Prior to recent photo ID requirements, six Labour Party councilors in Birmingham won
office after what the judge described as a “massive, systematic and organised" postal voting
fraud campaign.5 The fraud was apparently carried out with the full knowledge and cooperation
of the local Labour party. There was "widespread theft" of postal votes (possibly around 40,000
ballots) in areas with large Muslim populations because Labour members were worried that the
Iraq war would spur these voters to oppose the incumbent government."
The UK authorities have been gradually tightening the rules regarding how to apply for postal ballots and when they can be used ever since that Birmingham scandal came to light. Most recently in 2023 (so after the Lott paper) - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65689431
Just coincidences.......
Like a hamburger cooking itself.