Not so secret

[eagle7-31]

Audits, Recounts, and the Secret Ballot

The Big Lie. Just saying these words brings to mind a number of potential meanings, but in today’s America, the most common — and conflicting — uses of the term are the following: The Left asserts that the very idea that fraud...

www.americanthinker.com

not with a DOJ criminalizing political opposition.

 

[eagle7-31]

Audits, Recounts, and the Secret Ballot

The Big Lie. Just saying these words brings to mind a number of potential meanings, but in today’s America, the most common — and conflicting — uses of the term are the following: The Left asserts that the very idea that fraud...

www.americanthinker.com

not with a DOJ criminalizing political opposition.

The Big Lie.

Just saying these words brings to mind a number of potential meanings, but in today’s America, the most common — and conflicting — uses of the term are the following:

The Left asserts that the very idea that fraud occurred in the 2020 election is a dangerous lie, while the Right insists that claiming the 2020 election was squeaky clean is the dangerous lie.

Which position is correct?

Was there massive fraud in 2020, enough to change not only the presidency, but also countless, (and close) down ballot races, or not?

It’s an important question, and the Left has issued a gag order, as if challenging election results is somehow new and evil. There’s probably never been an election year in which at least some races haven’t been subject to allegations of error or fraud. 2020 is the first time in American history that a conscious movement actually sprang up to silence calls for investigation and election integrity.

“You don’t need to change the way we vote,” they tell us. “If you don’t trust the result, just do a recount. Call for an audit, and discover the truth one way or the other.”

Easy, right?

But it’s not so easy. Here’s why:

Americans are familiar with audits. We do them all the time. The FDIC audits our banks; the IRS audits individuals and businesses. The FAA and DOT audit carriers and shippers. The FDA and EPA audit manufacturing plants.

And then there are the private sector audits — ISO9001, UL, and NSF audit plants and offices every day, checking their processes, and testing whether employees are following company procedures. We Americans are great at being audited.

Unfortunately, that process cannot be applied to an election.

In an audit, all the books are open to the auditor. The whole point is to see which employee did what, what records he checked, what steps he performed, or whether he filled out forms correctly.

By contrast, elections have a secret ballot. The most important element of an election — and frankly, the only thing worth checking — is exactly who cast which votes. And there is no way to tell. There cannot be.

A recount, however well-intentioned, just counts the same stack of ballots again and again; it can’t determine if that stack was poisoned with votes that have been changed, swapped out, or outright fabricated.

In our system, when you walk into the voting booth, you must first be proven to be a legitimate, legal voter in that jurisdiction, and then you are given a ballot that cannot possibly be tied back to you, so that you can freely vote your conscience, regarding local politicians and distant national ones, tax referenda, or state constitutional amendments.

Most recounts only change the vote totals by less than a percent, if that, because a recount can only count the votes that were cast. They have absolutely no way of telling whether each voter’s true wishes were recorded, or if they were switched by a corrupt human or a corrupted computer; whether each voter’s actual ballot was even counted on his behalf or if another ballot was substituted; whether in fact the voting pool was padded by the addition of an extra two percent, or five, or ten illegitimate or fictitious voters.

A recount simply cannot tell, because it cannot present John Smith with the ballot that was attributed to him, and ask point blank, “Is this in fact how you voted? You were counted as having voted for Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, and Jane Schakowsky. Did you really?” Now, that would be an audit. But there is no way on earth to do it.

We know how many methods of vote fraud there are. We know — not suspect, know — that many big city political machines direct patronage workers to drive around town casting ballots all day, in the names of registered voters on the rolls. We know that many illegal aliens and green card holders, often automatically registered by the Motor Voter program, cast ballots, sometimes not even knowing it’s illegal to do so. We know that many people with two or more valid addresses vote from both in the same election. We know that many nursing home administrators cast ballots in the name of their disabled patients. We know that many people cast absentee ballots in the name of their deceased relatives, still on the rolls at their addresses. And we know dozens more ways, some like these, some more creative, some even more disturbing.

What we don’t know is how many examples there are of each type. We don’t know if there are a hundred cases, a thousand, or a million of each. It’s incredibly difficult to tell, after the fact, because of the secret ballot.

Even if you prove that a hundred votes in a precinct should be thrown out, you can’t prove which hundred. So, you might be able to put a nursing home manager in jail (and we do), you might be able to get a patronage worker fired (and we do), you might even be able to force a congressional candidate off the ballot for the crime (and we have). But you still can’t change the election as a result, because we can’t prove which ballot should be tossed out.

Why not just give up the secret ballot, if it makes it impossible to properly audit an election?

A quick scan of recent news stories provides our answer:

• Dozens of unknown private citizens languished in jail for over a year, for trespassing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, uncharged because there’s nothing serious enough to charge them for, but kept in jail to “justify” a national political attack on their movement.
• The FBI issued a flurry of subpoenas to forty Trump allies such as businessman Mike Lindell, less than two months before the midterms.
• Donald Trump himself, a former president, had his house raided and documents seized on a sham warrant signed by a judge with a conflict of interest as big as one of Trump’s hotels.
• DoJ whistleblowers revealed to the New York Post that the FBI and Meta colluded to illegally gather and study American civilians’ private ‘facebook messages’ in a broad-based and ultimately fruitless attempt to find conservatives on whom they could stick a “domestic terrorist” label.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

We have the secret ballot for a reason. Individual Americans have the right to be free of risk that the political class might single them out for harassment, denial of government services, or worse. As we’ve seen, such retaliation by a vindictive state can range from refusing your garbage pickup and shutting off your water, to ransacking your home with a politically-motivated search warrant or locking you up.

We simply cannot risk giving up the secret ballot.

And that’s why we can never rely on audits to identify and correct election errors, after the fact.

If audits can’t be our solution — and they simply can’t — the only remaining option to secure our elections is to do it up front. We have to take the firm steps of reducing the many opportunities there are to cheat — because once the cheating occurs, it’s just too late to correct it.

• Ban the six-week election process and month of mail-in voting, and return to a single election day with tightly-controlled absentee ballot options.
• Ban onsite and last minute voter registration (except for challenges of voter roll deletions, which must permanently remain segregable even after the count, for security), to ensure enough time to confirm the address before the election.
• Mandate that real state-issued identification be checked before a vote is cast.
• Put cameras in the polling places, and film everything the poll workers and voters do — everything except the voter’s ballot itself.
• Make every voter sign a statement (in his own language) acknowledging awareness that voting as a noncitizen, voting under someone else’s name, or voting multiple times in the same election, are severe crimes.
• Ensure that every vote at least has a printed version for the voter to confirm before it is cast.

There’s more, but that’s the idea.

To operate a republic, the election process must be so secure that the results can truly be beyond question.

Unfortunately, today, the only question we have is how many races are stolen when the rightful winner’s majority is insufficient to overcome the margin of fraud.

 

[konradv]

Audits, Recounts, and the Secret Ballot

The Big Lie. Just saying these words brings to mind a number of potential meanings, but in today’s America, the most common — and conflicting — uses of the term are the following: The Left asserts that the very idea that fraud...

www.americanthinker.com

not with a DOJ criminalizing political opposition.

Weasel words! Who said the election was squeaky clean, when we’re all aware of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results?

 

[eagle7-31]

Weasel words! Who said the election was squeaky clean, when we’re all aware of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results?

try and sell that one elsewhere.

 

[JackOfNoTrades]

The Big Lie.

Just saying these words brings to mind a number of potential meanings, but in today’s America, the most common — and conflicting — uses of the term are the following:

The Left asserts that the very idea that fraud occurred in the 2020 election is a dangerous lie, while the Right insists that claiming the 2020 election was squeaky clean is the dangerous lie.

Which position is correct?

Was there massive fraud in 2020, enough to change not only the presidency, but also countless, (and close) down ballot races, or not?

It’s an important question, and the Left has issued a gag order, as if challenging election results is somehow new and evil. There’s probably never been an election year in which at least some races haven’t been subject to allegations of error or fraud. 2020 is the first time in American history that a conscious movement actually sprang up to silence calls for investigation and election integrity.

“You don’t need to change the way we vote,” they tell us. “If you don’t trust the result, just do a recount. Call for an audit, and discover the truth one way or the other.”

Easy, right?

But it’s not so easy. Here’s why:

Americans are familiar with audits. We do them all the time. The FDIC audits our banks; the IRS audits individuals and businesses. The FAA and DOT audit carriers and shippers. The FDA and EPA audit manufacturing plants.

And then there are the private sector audits — ISO9001, UL, and NSF audit plants and offices every day, checking their processes, and testing whether employees are following company procedures. We Americans are great at being audited.

Unfortunately, that process cannot be applied to an election.

In an audit, all the books are open to the auditor. The whole point is to see which employee did what, what records he checked, what steps he performed, or whether he filled out forms correctly.

By contrast, elections have a secret ballot. The most important element of an election — and frankly, the only thing worth checking — is exactly who cast which votes. And there is no way to tell. There cannot be.

A recount, however well-intentioned, just counts the same stack of ballots again and again; it can’t determine if that stack was poisoned with votes that have been changed, swapped out, or outright fabricated.

In our system, when you walk into the voting booth, you must first be proven to be a legitimate, legal voter in that jurisdiction, and then you are given a ballot that cannot possibly be tied back to you, so that you can freely vote your conscience, regarding local politicians and distant national ones, tax referenda, or state constitutional amendments.

Most recounts only change the vote totals by less than a percent, if that, because a recount can only count the votes that were cast. They have absolutely no way of telling whether each voter’s true wishes were recorded, or if they were switched by a corrupt human or a corrupted computer; whether each voter’s actual ballot was even counted on his behalf or if another ballot was substituted; whether in fact the voting pool was padded by the addition of an extra two percent, or five, or ten illegitimate or fictitious voters.

A recount simply cannot tell, because it cannot present John Smith with the ballot that was attributed to him, and ask point blank, “Is this in fact how you voted? You were counted as having voted for Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, and Jane Schakowsky. Did you really?” Now, that would be an audit. But there is no way on earth to do it.

We know how many methods of vote fraud there are. We know — not suspect, know — that many big city political machines direct patronage workers to drive around town casting ballots all day, in the names of registered voters on the rolls. We know that many illegal aliens and green card holders, often automatically registered by the Motor Voter program, cast ballots, sometimes not even knowing it’s illegal to do so. We know that many people with two or more valid addresses vote from both in the same election. We know that many nursing home administrators cast ballots in the name of their disabled patients. We know that many people cast absentee ballots in the name of their deceased relatives, still on the rolls at their addresses. And we know dozens more ways, some like these, some more creative, some even more disturbing.

What we don’t know is how many examples there are of each type. We don’t know if there are a hundred cases, a thousand, or a million of each. It’s incredibly difficult to tell, after the fact, because of the secret ballot.

Even if you prove that a hundred votes in a precinct should be thrown out, you can’t prove which hundred. So, you might be able to put a nursing home manager in jail (and we do), you might be able to get a patronage worker fired (and we do), you might even be able to force a congressional candidate off the ballot for the crime (and we have). But you still can’t change the election as a result, because we can’t prove which ballot should be tossed out.

Why not just give up the secret ballot, if it makes it impossible to properly audit an election?

A quick scan of recent news stories provides our answer:

• Dozens of unknown private citizens languished in jail for over a year, for trespassing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, uncharged because there’s nothing serious enough to charge them for, but kept in jail to “justify” a national political attack on their movement.
• The FBI issued a flurry of subpoenas to forty Trump allies such as businessman Mike Lindell, less than two months before the midterms.
• Donald Trump himself, a former president, had his house raided and documents seized on a sham warrant signed by a judge with a conflict of interest as big as one of Trump’s hotels.
• DoJ whistleblowers revealed to the New York Post that the FBI and Meta colluded to illegally gather and study American civilians’ private ‘facebook messages’ in a broad-based and ultimately fruitless attempt to find conservatives on whom they could stick a “domestic terrorist” label.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

We have the secret ballot for a reason. Individual Americans have the right to be free of risk that the political class might single them out for harassment, denial of government services, or worse. As we’ve seen, such retaliation by a vindictive state can range from refusing your garbage pickup and shutting off your water, to ransacking your home with a politically-motivated search warrant or locking you up.

We simply cannot risk giving up the secret ballot.

And that’s why we can never rely on audits to identify and correct election errors, after the fact.

If audits can’t be our solution — and they simply can’t — the only remaining option to secure our elections is to do it up front. We have to take the firm steps of reducing the many opportunities there are to cheat — because once the cheating occurs, it’s just too late to correct it.

• Ban the six-week election process and month of mail-in voting, and return to a single election day with tightly-controlled absentee ballot options.
• Ban onsite and last minute voter registration (except for challenges of voter roll deletions, which must permanently remain segregable even after the count, for security), to ensure enough time to confirm the address before the election.
• Mandate that real state-issued identification be checked before a vote is cast.
• Put cameras in the polling places, and film everything the poll workers and voters do — everything except the voter’s ballot itself.
• Make every voter sign a statement (in his own language) acknowledging awareness that voting as a noncitizen, voting under someone else’s name, or voting multiple times in the same election, are severe crimes.
• Ensure that every vote at least has a printed version for the voter to confirm before it is cast.

There’s more, but that’s the idea.

To operate a republic, the election process must be so secure that the results can truly be beyond question.

Unfortunately, today, the only question we have is how many races are stolen when the rightful winner’s majority is insufficient to overcome the margin of fraud.

LOL. Can't Stop. Won't Stop. Instead of admitting defeat, forsaking your false prophets, and going back to the drawing board to craft policies that appeal to the majority of voters.....you double down on conspiracy and stupid.
You resort to......"FRAUD!!" when the result goes against the dude(et) you back and support.

What about, "you have no policy success stories" is so hard for you to grasp?
You do get that even red states bristle when you make suggestions that their process for conducting their own elections is suspect.
But....it's just those purple and blue states in question..because most white Americans vote for the just and righteous right wing, Christian zealot..because....God guides their hand!!!!

Here's the bottom line. States have been employing mail in/absentee voting for DECADES. With nary a peep and protest from you...until the great Orange Roughy lost his re-election bid...WHY?

 

[Doc7505]

THat is all well and good except for a few facts.

Democrats refuse to have people show they identities at the time of voring;
Democrats favor the use of ballot harvesting;
Democrats are all for mail in voting without the need of identification
Democrats as shown in the 2020 election actually brought their votes to polling places by the suitcase.

Dems caught on camera pulling suitcases of ballots from under tables in Georgia in the dead of night

How Georgia was won (Just more baseless claims of voter fraud for the media to not report.)

www.freedomsphoenix.com

​

Meanwhile lest we forget for four previous years all we heard from the Merry Maoist Democrats was that the 2016 election of Trump was illegitimate and that the Electoral College system of voting had to be changed.

 

[eagle7-31]

LOL. Can't Stop. Won't Stop. Instead of admitting defeat, forsaking your false prophets, and going back to the drawing board to craft policies that appeal to the majority of voters.....you double down on conspiracy and stupid.
You resort to......"FRAUD!!" when the result goes against the dude(et) you back and support.

What about, "you have no policy success stories" is so hard for you to grasp?
You do get that even red states bristle when you make suggestions that their process for conducting their own elections is suspect.
But....it's just those purple and blue states in question..because most white Americans vote for the just and righteous right wing, Christian zealot..because....God guides their hand!!!!

Here's the bottom line. States have been employing mail in/absentee voting for DECADES. With nary a peep and protest from you...until the great Orange Roughy lost his re-election bid...WHY?

Theft is not a loss. And you can keep phony left wing looney tune rants.

 

[JackOfNoTrades]

Theft is not a loss. And you can keep phony left wing looney tune rants.

No evidence of such. 60+ court cases, multiple audits and recounts (that added to the victor's total), and vast numbers of conspiracy theories knocked over like a complex parent constructed domino line in a two year old's rage....

Republicans are on the verge of pissing away the traditional midterm gift to the out of power's party. And here you are, still running down that rabbit hole.

What..is..it..with..this..man? LOL.

 

[Leo123]

Weasel words! Who said the election was squeaky clean, when we’re all aware of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results?

Read the American Thinker link. Trump had nothing to do with changing the way we vote. Why has a virtual gag order been issued by Democrats for asking questions about the integrity of the 2020 election? Why is Biden sicing the FBI on anyone who is even suspected of even being in D.C. on Jan 6th if they are a Trump supporter?

The 2020 elections audits were incomplete: From the OP's link, for those who refuse to actually READ it and just regurgitate Democrat talking points.

"In an audit, all the books are open to the auditor. The whole point is to see which employee did what, what records he checked, what steps he performed, or whether he filled out forms correctly.
By contrast, elections have a secret ballot. The most important element of an election — and frankly, the only thing worth checking — is exactly who cast which votes. And there is no way to tell. There cannot be.
A recount, however well-intentioned, just counts the same stack of ballots again and again; it can’t determine if that stack was poisoned with votes that have been changed, swapped out, or outright fabricated."

Alt-left Democrats have taken sore advantage by resisting voter ID and trying to turn it around to mean 'voter suppression.' This is how Marxists work. They have taken over the Democrat party. Don't vote Democrat even if you are a Democrat. Your party has been cop-opted.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

If audits can’t be our solution — and they simply can’t — the only remaining option to secure our elections is to do it up front. We have to take the firm steps of reducing the many opportunities there are to cheat — because once the cheating occurs, it’s just too late to correct it.

• Ban the six-week election process and month of mail-in voting, and return to a single election day with tightly-controlled absentee ballot options.
• Ban onsite and last minute voter registration (except for challenges of voter roll deletions, which must permanently remain segregable even after the count, for security), to ensure enough time to confirm the address before the election.
• Mandate that real state-issued identification be checked before a vote is cast.
• Put cameras in the polling places, and film everything the poll workers and voters do — everything except the voter’s ballot itself.
• Make every voter sign a statement (in his own language) acknowledging awareness that voting as a noncitizen, voting under someone else’s name, or voting multiple times in the same election, are severe crimes.
• Ensure that every vote at least has a printed version for the voter to confirm before it is cast.

Has your state implemented every one of these changes? If not, why not?

Do you know why Congress has not passed ANY federal election laws such as these? They would be declared unconstitutional as the election process is a state function and a state function only!

In November, every four years, we hold 51 separate Presidential elections in the states and DC. Those elections are governed by state laws as each state chooses. For example, 48 states and DC are winner-take-all when it comes to electoral votes. However, Maine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes by Congressional district, with the state-wide winner getting 2 electoral votes. Maine has 2 Congressional districts , while Nebraska has 3.

Any federal restrictions like you propose would not withstand even the lowest courts ruling because the elections are held by the states and are immune from federal restrictions.

You want these changes made, work on your state's legislature because Congress simply cannot do it.

 

[JackOfNoTrades]

Read the American Thinker link. Trump had nothing to do with changing the way we vote. Why has a virtual gag order been issued by Democrats for asking questions about the integrity of the 2020 election? Why is Biden sicing the FBI on anyone who is even suspected of even being in D.C. on Jan 6th if they are a Trump supporter?

The 2020 elections audits were incomplete: From the OP's link, for those who refuse to actually READ it and just regurgitate Democrat talking points.

"In an audit, all the books are open to the auditor. The whole point is to see which employee did what, what records he checked, what steps he performed, or whether he filled out forms correctly.
By contrast, elections have a secret ballot. The most important element of an election — and frankly, the only thing worth checking — is exactly who cast which votes. And there is no way to tell. There cannot be.
A recount, however well-intentioned, just counts the same stack of ballots again and again; it can’t determine if that stack was poisoned with votes that have been changed, swapped out, or outright fabricated."

Alt-left Democrats have taken sore advantage by resisting voter ID and trying to turn it around to mean 'voter suppression.' This is how Marxists work. They have taken over the Democrat party. Don't vote Democrat even if you are a Democrat. Your party has been cop-opted.

Trump blew the response to and ignored the pandemic. You do understand that Republican led legislatures approved said voting rule changes?...and that states have been using mail in voting for decades without issue...until your savior lost his bid for re-election.
....."Just counts the same stack of ballots again and again"....LOL. Umm...what other ballots would you like to count? Ones that the losing side have fabricated???

 

[konradv]

try and sell that one elsewhere.

You can’t handle the truth?

 

[konradv]

Read the American Thinker link. Trump had nothing to do with changing the way we vote. Why has a virtual gag order been issued by Democrats for asking questions about the integrity of the 2020 election? Why is Biden sicing the FBI on anyone who is even suspected of even being in D.C. on Jan 6th if they are a Trump supporter?

The 2020 elections audits were incomplete: From the OP's link, for those who refuse to actually READ it and just regurgitate Democrat talking points.

"In an audit, all the books are open to the auditor. The whole point is to see which employee did what, what records he checked, what steps he performed, or whether he filled out forms correctly.
By contrast, elections have a secret ballot. The most important element of an election — and frankly, the only thing worth checking — is exactly who cast which votes. And there is no way to tell. There cannot be.
A recount, however well-intentioned, just counts the same stack of ballots again and again; it can’t determine if that stack was poisoned with votes that have been changed, swapped out, or outright fabricated."

Alt-left Democrats have taken sore advantage by resisting voter ID and trying to turn it around to mean 'voter suppression.' This is how Marxists work. They have taken over the Democrat party. Don't vote Democrat even if you are a Democrat. Your party has been cop-opted.

FAKE NEWS!!!

 

[Leo123]

FAKE NEWS!!!

No, I posted REAL NEWS!!!

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Trump blew the response to and ignored the pandemic. You do understand that Republican led legislatures approved said voting rule changes?...and that states have been using mail in voting for decades without issue...until your savior lost his bid for re-election.
....."Just counts the same stack of ballots again and again"....LOL. Umm...what other ballots would you like to count? Ones that the losing side have fabricated???

Why do you make shit up? Are you hoping Republicans are as stupid as you libs?