The two companion bills—HF 590 and SF 413—would shorten the state’s early vote period by nine days, shorten Election Day hours and would limit each Iowa county to one ballot drop box. The bill would also prohibit counties from mailing voters absentee ballot request forms unless they are explicitly requested and requires mail ballots be received by Election Day. Currently, ballots mailed before Election Day can be counted if they are received by the following Monday.
This is being framed as “voter suppression” because these measures ensure that the only voters on election day are actual human beings who are entitled to vote in Iowa.
I’m very much a traditionalist when it comes to voting. If voting is not important enough to you to show up at your designated polling place on Election Day, with picture identification you probably shouldn’t have a say in who gets elected. If you know you won’t be able to make it to the polling place, you need to request, in writing, with a verified signature, an absentee ballot.
My personal view is that “early voting” is a travesty that serves no real purpose but to destroy the impact of Election Day as a civic duty and tell fraudsters how many absentee votes they need to harvest. //
Justice Thomas correctly observed:
One wonders what this court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us. //
My suspicion is that on the eve of the next election an activist judge will rewrite the rules making this bill an exercise in futility. No higher court will intervene. Another election will be corrupted. And all because that the message that elections are just too damned important to be left to the voters must be hammered home at every opportunity.
Constitutionally, while federal courts only have the power to hear a “case or controversy,” meaning the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to hear “moot” cases, here there is a well-established exception to the mootness doctrine: the capable-of-repetition-but-evading-review exception.
This exception to the mootness doctrine provides that federal courts hold authority to resolve cases where “the challenged action is in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to cessation or expiration” and where “there is a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party will be subject to the same action again.”
Both criteria exist here, Justice Thomas wrote, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision came a mere six weeks before the election, and the petitioners in the cases—the state Republican party and state legislators—are likely to “again confront nonlegislative officials altering election rules.”
In his separate dissent, Justice Alito also concluded that certiorari should be granted because the cases “present an important and recurring constitutional question.” His dissent, joined by Justice Gorsuch, focused mainly on the mootness question. //
Maybe the six justices who voted against certiorari believe the country will be better off without relitigating the election. The denial, however, will not heal a country that witnessed state officials and courts change the rules mid-vote—not just in Pennsylvania, but in Wisconsin and Michigan too. Then her citizens saw the Supreme Court seemingly ignore those violations of the Electors Clause when Texas sought relief in the Supreme Court.
Worse yet will be the damage done to our republic when the bending and breaking of election laws repeats in the future. For now, as Justice Thomas concluded, “by doing nothing,” the Supreme Court invites “erosion of voter confidence.” We “citizens deserve better and expect more.”
First of all, the headline itself is completely misleading, as there was nothing “skewed” whatsoever in the Droz team spreadsheet. Indeed, the AP article completely failed to prove that the data was skewed or that their assessment was correct.
Second, the fact-checker included ad hominem against Droz by imputing that his long-time activism “rejecting the science of climate change” somehow discredits his team’s analysis of 2020 election lawsuits. That’s yellow journalism – and, by the way, there is no proven “science of climate change” in any event. Indeed, the fact-checker’s inclusion of that phrase is additional confirmation of leftwing bias.
Third, the ad hominem attack used the phrase “self-described physicist” as a kind of grammatical pejorative. One would have thought that the fact-checker could have discovered that Droz holds physics degrees from Boston College and Syracuse University.
Fourth, the article concludes that information in the spreadsheet has been “misinterpreted” by readers of at least one blogsite (LifeSiteNews) to conclude that President Trump “could still overturn the election results.” This is a classic strawman argument, as the lawsuit list in the Droz team spreadsheet has nothing to do with that claim.
Fifth, the AP article identified a single database as the source for the Droz team spreadsheet and analysis. This is misleading, as the spreadsheet itself lists eight (8) separate sources for the information compiled.
Sixth, the AP article uses a cited example (Ritchie v. Polis) to “prove” that “some of the cases in the report are also wrongly coded as wins for Trump when they didn’t directly deal with the presidential election.” In fact, Ritchie v. Polis was not just about “petition-signing,” as the AP article states, but rather addressed the much broader situation of whether a governor has the authority to override a state legislature concerning election laws and regulations (the court ruled that the governor does NOT have that authority). Droz has subsequently confirmed that the fact-checker knew the truth about this lawsuit she cited, but chose to ignore it to maintain the false narrative of the article.
Tim Pool
@Timcast
·
Feb 5, 2021
This tweet may be snarky but its factually true Time said this
Twitter has published a false statement of fact
Tim Pool
@Timcast
I don't think this even matters at this point. Time magazine just came out said that a cabal of elites rigged the election
I'm sorry they said they didn't rig the election they "fortified" it, by changing the rules and laws as well as manipulating the flow of information https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/1357708988482269189
This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence
Tim Pool
@Timcast
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
time.com
This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.
TIME
@TIME
The secret history of the shadow campaign that saved the 2020 election
https://ti.me/2NZBUbg
TIME wrote a very interesting piece making some very alarming claims. Namely, that a secret cabal banded together across the country to stop Donald Trump from winning re-election. This included everything from manipulating media coverage to getting election laws changed, at least according to TIME’s account. //
Tim Pool
@Timcast
I just want to say that it is the opposite of Democracy when a secret cabal of wealthy and politically connected elites conspire to manipulate the rules and laws of an election in order to win
But s**, not like this is a new story
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
time.com //
No matter, this secret cabal isn’t made up of imaginary Russians so it’s all good. The left truly only care about election interference and manipulation when they deem it a threat to their own preferred outcomes. Otherwise, they are all for it. You won’t see the mainstream media decry this. You won’t see a tearful lament from Nancy Pelosi about the dangers it poses to our republic. Rather, this will all be ignored. Heck, it’ll be celebrated as a brilliant political strategy.
And while I’m sure some fact-checker will have qualms with me describing what this group did as manipulation, I believe the objective definition of that word more than applies here. When you seek to stop people from having information that could affect their vote, that’s manipulation. When you go and lobby to get certain laws changed specifically to help your side, that’s manipulation. It is what it is. //
deornwulf
5 minutes ago
This is the spin to make the truth, when it comes out, to be that the fraud was done to preserve Democracy.
The election fraud drum needs to be banged until every American is aware of the MASSIVE election fraud during the 2020 elections. The implications are profound for future elections, and indeed, for every future action by federal and state governments, for if elections can be stolen with impunity, then we are no longer living in a constitutional Republic subject to the will of the people. Rather, we are living in a government-corporate oligarchy, as aptly described in a wonderful commentary by Angelo Codevilla. And the only way to resurrect our Republic is to slay the election fraud dragon! //
The Left’s message to the public is that there were no consequential 2020 Presidential election malfeasance, irregularities or illegalities — supposedly because the courts objectively and thoroughly investigated those claims, and ruled them to be unfounded.
Neither element of that assertion is even remotely true.
The Virginia Board of Elections rule allowing officials to count ballots that arrived without a postmark up to three days after the election was illegal, a state judge ruled.
Virginia Circuit Court Judge William Eldridge ruled the state’s late mail-in ballot law violated state statute and permanently banned the law in future Virginia elections, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) announced Monday. PILF sued the state’s board of elections in October on behalf of Thomas Reed, a Frederick County, Virginia election official. //
The board of elections proposed the rule during an Aug. 4 meeting and related guidance was sent to election officials statewide on Aug. 13 informing them of the change. PILF sued on behalf of Reed on Oct. 9, according to a news release.
On Oct. 28, one week before the Nov. 3 federal elections, Eldridge blocked the law due to the PILF lawsuit. Virginia was therefore prevented from counting late ballots without postmarks, PILF spokesperson Logan Churchwell told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
2020 Presidential Election Lawsuits Related to Election Integrity (Public Version 1-28-21)
Trump as Plaintiff:
Case Name and Number Date Filed Topic * Decided on Merits ** State Issue(s) Disposition Ruling Favored Date of Last Order Status
Billionaire Jeff Bezos claims that mail-in voting is safe and secure and that its results are valid and unquestionable when it suits his business interests (at The Washington Post and Amazon Web Services), but says that only an in-person election can be “valid, fair and successful” when it comes to his Amazon employees voting on whether to unionize or not.
Nancy Pelosi
@SpeakerPelosi
·
May 16, 2017
Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts
Trump didn’t cause what happened yesterday…a “long train of usurpations” did. We finally got tired of being called bitter clingers, deplorables who live in flyover countries. We got tired of being called rubes. When we finally find a Paladin who will fight for us (as flawed as he is) the other side made up a bunch of crap…long since debunked now…and put the country through a two year investigation and impeachment.
The political destruction of a decorated General Officer’s reputation and net worth, over something he didn’t do. When DOJ, finally forced to cough up exculpatory evidence, decided to drop the charges, a corrupt judge appointed another counsel to argue against that.
The press, helped the DNC and the Biden team openly and notoriously steal an election in broad freeking daylight. then the court system refused to hear evidence and grant discovery (except in one case)…and thus the left was able to destroy evidence….ballot envelopes, signature verification…ballots…memory cards.
These folks are telling me, this isn’t about Trump. This is about denying 74 million voters a voice. This is about pushing back on leftist gaslighting…and sadly, some of the same by putative allies.
The November election (and Tuesday’s Georgia curtain call) wasn't won and lost by the tactics, spending, individual players and messaging in the weeks before Nov. 3, according to interviews conducted with more than three dozen frontline players.
Rather, its outcome was cemented long before Labor Day 2020 by a Democratic machinery of former Barack Obama proteges, like David Plouffe, John Podesta, David Axelrod and Stacey Abrams, who worried far less about the tactics of ads, travel (Joe Biden hardly did!) and fundraising and far more about the strategy of how to control the narrative and the rules that would shape the outcome.
They even told the Republicans and the public what they planned to do. Just read Plouffe's book, "A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump." They even boastfully predicted days before how the vote count would roll out on election night and for several days later. Trump would lead early, and Biden would surpass late, they said.
They were right. Why?
First and foremost, they usurped the powers of GOP-controlled state legislatures in the five battleground states and rewrote the rules of how votes would be cast and counted, using the pandemic as an excuse.
Mail ballots could be sent to everyone, even if they didn't ask for one, and wide swaths of Americans could vote by mail. Voter ID requirements could be suspended for those who felt homebound by COVID's wrath. Mobile ballot boxes could be deployed. Spoiled ballots that legally were supposed to be discarded could be "cured" by election clerks. Legally required voter roll purges could be skipped. And a single billionaire could donate $350 million directly to the election clerks, judges and vote counters in the states, requiring them in some cases to register voters, and create more poll locations in Democratic strongholds.
And Republicans — who controlled the legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona and the constitutional right to set the rules — hardly put up a fight. Instead, they urged their voters not to take advantage of the loosened rules and to vote the old-fashioned way. They, in the words of the Trump-loving Georgia Democrat Vernon Jones, simply unilaterally disarmed. //
In other words, the liberal brain trust engaged in cutting-edge warfare, while Republicans tossed their comfortable set of horseshoes from the 1980s, hoping the good old recipe of evangelical GOTV, direct mail, talk radio and Fox News would deliver yet another election win as it had done for decades.
It didn't.
To be fair, Donald Trump mustered — by a mile — the largest national vote ever assembled by a Republican at 75 million-plus voters and barnstormed the country, risking COVID and criticism without fear. Kevin McCarthy picked an all-star slate of candidates and picked up seats. Mitch McConnell raised a ton of money, and Ronna McDaniel put together one of the most impressive get-out-the-vote efforts ever assembled.
But all that could not overcome the advantage of a rewired electoral system in the five battlegrounds, as the Georgia runoffs showed Tuesday, said Tom Price, a former congressman and Trump Cabinet secretary. //
Secondly, liberals spent two decades building an alliance with the mainstream media, the social giants and the search giants and the permanent government bureaucracy until they could control the narrative, even when it wasn't true. They had it perfected by the time Donald Trump took office.
Those who objected were canceled and shamed. Intelligence and law enforcement and private investigators were misused to create false realities. True facts and legally protected speech were outright censored long enough to create the narrative needed to win.
Trump colluded with Russia, and bribed Ukraine to investigate his political opponents … though he didn't. The Hunter Biden corruption story was Russian-fed conspiracy theory …. though it is really true, and he was under criminal investigation the last two years ... American towns could be burned to the ground and police defunded because a Kenosha, Wisc., officer shot an unarmed man … who turned out to be wanted by police and armed with a knife.
Owning the information superhighway of the 21st century, like the rules of the election, was far more powerful than choosing where to run ads, campaign in person or spend money.
Finally, the liberal oligarchs club — George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Bloomberg et al — spent more than ever to win. But they also transformed the way political donations were spent by imposing corporate governance and specific returns on investment.
Every recipient had to deliver very specific outcomes to keep getting money, governed by lengthy contract-like documents. And the outcomes and deliverables were mapped to the two larger goals of controlling the narrative and the rules of the election. //
Phill Kline, the former Kansas attorney general, led the Amistad Project's efforts to challenge some of the Democrats rule changes. He said the the GOP legislatures in the key battlegrounds must reassert their constitutional right to set the rules of election.
Universal mail ballots can be ended, limited only to those who absolutely need it. Voter IDs can be mandated. Exemptions and legal settlements could, by law, be required to be approved by the legislature. Setting the rules of the election are easy if there is a will, Kline added.
"I think the discipline of the party should be all about de-powering Washington and empowering the states, especially the state legislatures," Kline told Just the News.
If you watch the Reuters YouTube, it literally flips with Perdue numbers at 1:31:31 going backwards from 774,723 to 742,323, taking 32,000 from Perdue.
The difference now in the “official count” is Ossoff up 17,000 as of this writing.
I mention the weirdness not to stoke conspiracies but to ask what’s going on in these instances? If it were one network, perhaps it’s a weird input error on their part. But multiple networks, seeing it live, the question would seem to to be at the origin of the feed. So why is it jumping around like that? What gives, Georgia?
In the weeks and months before Election Day, Heritage experts made sure Americans understood the importance of election integrity and the vulnerabilities of mail-in voting. And in the days after Nov. 3, as Americans awaited election results,Heritage became an even more important resource to understand what’s at stake.
The 2020 presidential race brought these concerns to the forefront in multiple states and exposed Heritage’s research to millions of Americans.
Heritage’s Election Fraud Database, a thoroughly sourced list of proven instances of election fraud, showcases 1,298 instances of voter fraud from 47 states. Heritage added over 50 cases to the database in 2020 and will continue to update it.
The database presents a sampling of election fraud cases from across the country. It is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list, but it is intended to demonstrate the vulnerabilities in the election system and the many ways in which fraud is committed.
Heritage’s database saw a huge surge in online traffic—more than 1,000%—in the days after Nov. 3 as the American people searched for factual information on the impact of fraud on elections.
The Election Fraud Database is backed up by detailed references to government documents and media reports. It is systematic, accurate, and based on verifiable information. For this reason, the database is regularly cited by academics, the news media, and government leaders across the ideological spectrum. //
The Federal Elections Commission, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, USA Today, The Washington Post, CBS, NPR, Yahoo News, Epoch Times, The Hill, Roll Call, and Newsweek are just some of the organizations to cite the database.
Heritage’s election integrity work is led by Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow and manager of Heritage’s Election Law Reform Initiative. He and his Meese Center colleagues regularly work with state secretaries of state, brief lawmakers and testified before Congress, produce scholarly research, and conduct hundreds of media interviews.
Heritage scholars have published 49 articles on various issues related to election integrity, especially pushing back on universal mail-voting. This included eight major scholarly papers (list below).
The year 2020 has been most unusual.
It started with an unprecedented global pandemic caused by the CCP virus, and it’s concluding with the U.S. presidential election, which has captivated the world.
On election night, on Nov. 3, an assortment of anomalies were observed, followed by a large number of specific allegations of election fraud. As the integrity of the election continued to be questioned and evidence continued to emerge, most mainstream media stuck to a one-sided narrative by calling the 2020 election the most secure in American history, and sought to silence opposing voices.
The results of the 2020 election will not only decide the future of the United States, but also determine the future of the world.
Following election night, The Epoch Times’ investigative team quickly went to work. In an attempt to uncover the issues behind the election, investigative reporter Joshua Phillip traveled across the country to swing states to interview whistleblowers, big data experts, and election experts.
This is the first investigative documentary published on election integrity in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Why was the vote count halted in key swing states on election night? What are the problems and potential fraud associated with mail-in ballots? Is Dominion Voting Systems secure or not? What lies behind the $400 million received by the parent company of Dominion Voting Systems less than a month before the election? Who is trying to manipulate the U.S. election behind the scenes? Who is the benefactor of an increasingly divided American society? What will become of America at this historical juncture?
What choice should you, I, and every American patriot make? The Epoch Times’ investigative team presents to you a detailed investigative report.
Under Georgia law, if the losing party prevails as the plaintiff in an election contest, the remedy is to conduct a new election. Georgia law does not allow for changing the outcome of an election — it only invalidates the results of the prior election.
Today is the 30th day since the Trump campaign followed all the provisions of Georgia law which set forth a clear procedure for Pres. Trump to prove with evidence in a court the claims that invalid votes were cast and counted in Georgia for Joe Biden in sufficient numbers to have determined the outcome of the election. If the Campaign can’t prove with competent evidence that was the case, then he will lose the election contest. But, as of now, that hasn’t happened. In fact, nothing has happened.
According to their analysis on time series election data which was published online as early as Dec. 24, Trump’s votes were decrementing in various counties instead of increasing as they do normally. //
A “clear example of vote switching” happened in DeKalb county, they said.
At 9:11 p.m. local time, Trump received 29,391 votes as Biden simultaneously received 17,218. However, in the next reported time update, Trump’s votes became 17,218 while Biden’s changed to 29,391.
In this single event, 12,173 votes were switched, the data scientists believe.
“I want to make that very, very clear that at no point in an incremental process, should you decrement it,” Lobue said.
State-certified election results show Trump lost Georgia by 12,670 votes. The Trump campaign is still challenging the results in various courts.
As we saw played out in a number of lawsuits filed in the aftermath of the election, the Trump campaign was not able to marshall that kind of specific, ballot-level evidentiary record to invalidate a discrete set of cast ballots that would reverse the numerical result. They had significant anecdotal evidence of irregular and highly suspicious behavior, as well as some expert testimony regard insecure and vulnerable voting processes, but that expert testimony did not provide an answer to the question “Which specific ballots cast by which identified voters were invalid and why?”
And that is what the Democrats have always counted on when shoving through invalid votes by any means necessary. The vote for President is unique because of the extraordinarily compressed timeframe regarding the vote of the Electoral College, making the procedural hurdles of a meaningful election contest insurmountable.
In a case dealing with a dispute regarding just about anything other than an election contest, the type of analysis done by Dr. Lott would be admissible and compelling because it would allow Dr. Lott to offer an expert opinion in the form of something like “But for the impact of fraudulent conduct, there is no other explanation for the outcome of the voting as reflected by the pattern analysis. In the absence of fraudulent influences, barring the existence of evidence of some other contributing factor, the outcome of the election would have been different.” //
What Dr. Lott did instead was to look at precinct-level voting data for those precincts on the county’s borders, and compare the data to contiguous precincts in the next county over.
Democrats are condemning Republican Sen. Josh Hawley for objecting to certifying the 2020 election results, even though they are guilty of doing the same thing for purely political reasons. //
In 2016, multiple House Democrats attempted to object to the electoral votes from multiples states in Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. Many cited concerns over the now-disproved Russia hoax and potentially “hacked” voting machines.
“The electors were not lawfully certified, especially given the confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said. //
Even before that in 2005, Democrats in Congress objected to the certification of Ohio’s 20 electoral votes for George W. Bush on the grounds that “they wanted to draw attention to the need for aggressive election reform in the wake of what they said were widespread voter problems.” The objection was overturned but continued to be highlighted by some on the left.