By Katie Pavlich |
Townhall.com
Source: (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
UPDATE: After
the glitch was fixed in Antrim County, President Trump was declared the winner
of the county.
The Republican Party of Michigan held a press conference
Friday afternoon and revealed six thousand Republican votes were calculated for
Democrats after a software glitch. That software was used in dozens of counties
around the state.
"In Antrim County, ballots were counted for
Democrats that were meant for Republicans, causing a 6000 vote swing against
our candidates. The county clerk came forward and said, 'tabulating software
glitched and caused a miscalculation of the votes.' Since then, we have now discovered
that 47 counties used this same software in the same capacity," Michigan
GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox said.
Earlier in the day RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Fox
News there are serious voting irregularities in Michigan. She said the same at
the press conference with Cox and said Democrats are refusing to be transparent
about their process.
___________________
RELATED ARTICLE
Call in the Quants
By Jeff Ballabon | Townhall.com
Source: AP Photo/John Bazemore
Fair enough. It’s actually possible to split that
difference. America just held an election featuring many anomalies that
have not yet been proven fraudulent. It thus seems obvious that what
America now needs is a fraud investigation.
Any inquiry into the integrity of Tuesday’s elections
must consider the entire process. Taking things in order, ballots are
produced (i.e., printed), distributed (to voters), completed (by voters),
transported (via a chain of custody), delivered (to an Elections Board),
handled (by a worker), tabulated (by computer or by hand), and reported (as
part of the information revealed to the public).
In the 2020 election, nominally under the duress of
“ballot access during COVID,” jurisdictions across the country introduced new
and untested procedures pushing ballot integrity in precisely the wrong
direction—on each and every step. As anyone with any experience in
systems knows, new and untested procedures heading into a major event guarantee
failure—even if the new procedures are objectively “better” than those they
replace. Too many people need to retrain, coordinate their actions, and
realign their expectations too quickly.
An electoral system with safeguards would introduce
mechanisms designed to protect the integrity of each step. While some of
these safeguards are complicated and technical, others are common sense.
People who show up at a specific time and place offering an ID are less
likely to be acting fraudulently than those who do not. Ballots mailed
only to those who request them are less likely to fall into fraudulent hands
than to those broadcast to a pre-existing list. Advanced registration
using verifiable data reduces votes from ineligible voters.
The 2020 election walked away from each of these
safeguards. In 2020, for the first time, many states mailed ballots to
everyone on their voter rolls—without first cleaning those rolls. They
encouraged people to vote by mail rather than in person. They legalized,
popularized, or promoted insecure distribution networks like dropboxes and
ballot harvesters. They dropped standard requirements for validating
documents, like legible signatures and postmarks and a trusted chain of
custody.
The resultant electoral system lacked safeguards capable
of ensuring either that every tabulated ballot came from an eligible voter, or
that every legal vote placed into the distribution system was tabulated.
Because systems designed to ease fraud typically invite fraud, it was
predictable and predicted that the tabulations would include most but not all
properly cast votes, along with a sizable number of illegal ballots.
Common sense and logic, however, do not constitute
“evidence.” They can’t identify which ballots were fraudulent or what
effect the fraud had on the election. Yet sifting through millions of
ballots looking for indicia of fraud on each one is a painstaking process.
Given the sheer numbers and time constraints, it’s effectively undoable.
Fortunately, modern technology has developed advanced
statistical techniques known as data mining and Artificial Intelligence.
Data scientists have deployed these tools with great success to identify
fraud in a variety of financial markets and elsewhere. They have been utilized
for years to identify and track transactions linked to terrorist and other
criminal activities. Without getting into technical specifics, these data tools
develop a sense of “normal” behavior, then highlight only things that appear
unusual.
Individual ballots voting for only one office or
splitting parties are more interesting than those voting a straight party line.
Precincts that doubled their voter turnout, or shifted
their partisan preferences significantly, are more interesting than those
showing the same voting patterns as they did in recent elections.
Ballots delivered in a batch skewing far more favorably
for one candidate than the balance of the jurisdiction that cast them are
interesting; those that solidify a community’s leanings are not.
These sophisticated quantitative tools alone are still
not enough to “prove” fraud. They are, however, a critical step along the
way. They can eliminate the vast majority of ballots from consideration
and focus the attention of fraud investigators on the anomalies most likely
indicative of fraud. From there, the work remains challenging—but the
task becomes achievable.
We already know that the 2020 electoral system was
designed using new and untested procedures, many of which reduced safeguards
capable of deterring fraud. Record numbers of ballots arrived from many
new sources, delivered in many new ways. Many anecdotes of improprieties
are circulating—at least some of which appear highly credible. Patterns
of tabulation and reporting, particularly since election night, are
statistically improbable.
America deserves to know—quickly—if it has been
defrauded. Without that knowledge, America may send the election’s
legitimate winner packing—and will certainly inaugurate a President operating
beneath a permanent cloud. In other words, there’s only one way forward.
In addition to the phalanx of lawyers already descending upon the most
anomalous states, send in the quants!
https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffballabon/2020/11/07/call-in-the-quants-n2579638
