- To the extent Dem resources could be expended elsewhere, like paid ballot harvesting or support for ballot drops — why not?
- Were species of paid ballot harvesting and ballot drops incorporated into their grants under guise, prewired so to speak, with the right hiring for funded electoral activities?
- Acts outside of established voting statutes (or unconstitutional acts by legislatures) are a fraud on the integrity of the electoral process
While we wish our betters at The Federalist had said more about outright election illegality being sufficient to deny Trump a second term, we appreciate the limited focus as the article appropriately gives substance to the idea Zuckerberg money through Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) was a vehicle for Democrat partisan purposes. The article does so by way of castigating a Wall Street Journal article and the deeply flawed study it relies on to further the whistling in the dark of never-Trumpers view that election illegalities were minor, inadvertent, insufficient, well-meaning, bipartisan in effect to have provided Biden his alleged margin in key electoral-college states.
Remember, Iowa was considered a bellwether if not battle ground state well into the election year.
We believe that CTCL grants made available to county auditors here in Iowa, whether they were personally oblivious or not, was an effort to foster Democrat designs in key counties toward their congressional district hopes and perhaps even an ill-informed 2020 fantasy of returning Iowa to the Democrat presidential fold.
The failure of Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate to use his platform in 2020 not only to oppose the use of private funds of obvious partisan pedigree to run focused GOTV efforts of partisan design and influence under color of official jurisdiction but to actually encourage it — ought to engender repudiation and a primary challenge. While we welcome and encourage such a development that is not the particular focus of this post.
Here are links to The Federalist article and the article that provoked it at the WSJ along with the libertarian linked Wisconsin think tank study Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, (WILL) which the WSJ pretends is somehow definitive. The Federalist article challenges the methodology of the WILL study (the Federalist also links to other studies that have different conclusions) and the WSJ reliance on it. To better understand our additional comments they should be reviewed.
The Federalist:
The Wall Street Journal Is Wrong About The 2020 Election. (the article contains many relevant links that support the articles criticisms of the WSJ and the WILL paper the WSJ relies on.
Wall Street Journal:
The Best Summary of the 2020 Election
Rules were bent, GOP voters defected, and real fraud hasn’t turned up.
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty:
A REVIEW OF THE 2020 ELECTION.
Something that the WILL authors were not aware of but the WSJ Editorial Board ought to have been because it occurred a week or so before it published its characterization of the Wisconsin vote (we think intending to justify their generalized conclusions as regards all states with voting illegalities) is this Wisconsin judicial ruling:
Wisconsin Judge Rules Ballot Drop Boxes, Ballot Harvesting Violate State Law
A distinction between illegal activities (placing of ballot boxes and ballot harvesting in particular) and other official acts contrary to state law — and what others might differentiate as fraud — we feel is largely a distinction without a difference as to perpetrators’ culpability (good intentions is not an excuse) and the effect on the integrity of elections. The idea that some violations supposedly effect or benefit on a presumed bipartisan basis and can be ignored is ignorant, worse than naive, oblivious to intent of tool users and partisan willingness to exploit them, and violates the proper admonition that all election activity must be by the book as the franchise is too important to local and national unity.
We believe outright illegality was sufficient in key states to deny Trump the election victory under our electoral system, that includes illegal changes to election law. As regard the matter of fraud, we think most people interpret fraud to be synonymous with illegal activity but even if a finer legal definition is appropriate as to prosecution any official enabler of illegal activity, malfeasance, dereliction, what have you, — ought to be punishable and not characterized as something other than a violation of election integrity and not something to challenge the results.
Fraud when narrowed to ineligible voters or nonexistent voters, ignoring official acts, is a distinction we would not make because the integrity of the election is defrauded to give such developments a pass. Further, the officials implementing such illegalities may be using or exploiting circumstances for conscious partisan gain/one-upmanship.
A vote that was illegally cast out of ignorance of voting law by an ineligible voter is not properly counted (if it can be caught) — that is the minimal remedy with prosecution of the voter perhaps properly depending on culpability. Species of illegal voting that cannot be caught before being counted are what organized efforts depend on. They know it is unlikely an election will be pulled back. It is what they depend on — they win. It should not be that way. Any conspiracy to attempt such should be treated as a serious felony.
Wrongful official acts (or lack of action) such as identified by the judge in Wisconsin are of a different category as to culpability (the obligation to have known definitely pertains) and ought not to be ignored as to election correctives. At the very least significant voting using illegal mechanisms because they can be exploited on a partisan basis ought to be cause for holding a new election. It is still a real fraud on the integrity of the election as an even playing field was not available (at least to those believing in law and order and the integrity of the vote) and creates the impression that laws don’t matter and the cynicism that who is in charge determines which votes are counted.
The Wisconsin think tank study was not based on a thorough forensic audit but largely relied on interpreting and interpolating data. Further we believe that supposed trends or claimed insufficient divergence from trends do not prove that there was insufficient fraud unless one assumes that “trends” or previous election dynamics were inevitable, had not changed, or that data points chosen were relevant or not skewed. The election dynamics could well have been outside previous trends even if the previous trends are accurately portrayed.
So called anomalies can be the real result of exploitation by purposeful and opportunistic people to newly discovered or created vulnerabilities including officially but illegally implemented ones and those using technology or boots on the ground activity. The end justifies the means mentality has long predominated the Democrat electioneering apparat and the dominant media is happy to gloss over it.
In closing, here is the mind-boggling stated bottom line in the WILL study as regards its focus on one of the key battleground states Wisconsin — which the Never-Trumpers at the WSJ didn’t mention. (we grant it is rather confusing for reasons we dealt with above) . Bold our emphasis.
Our bottom line is that, while we found little evidence of “fraud,” we did find that a substantial number of votes were not cast in accordance with legal requirements. While we could not find evidence that these votes were “fraudulent” in the sense of being cast by ineligible voters or nonexistent voters—particularly in numbers large enough to change the winner—the total number of votes cast unlawfully could have affected the outcome.
R Mall
