Boldly Wading Into the Voter Fraud Narrative
What do you expect from me? I’m an ENTP and Type 8!
It’s true. My Twitter is thriving at the moment. Polarization is no joke — look no further than The Social Dilemma. Millions of people watched that documentary, and yet they don’t seem to have internalized its central lesson. Inspired by a conversation I had with a close friend on this subject just this week, we need to apply these lessons now and set aside partisan talking points.
The Data
As a good citizen, I tend to not listen to the media outlets regarding matters such as these, electing instead to pull down the raw data and visualize it myself.
For the denominator, I chose to use the World Population Review data that provides Registered Voters by state. Given the false claims that more people voted in Wisconsin than were registered to vote, I double-checked the data to make sure the data matched Wisconsin’s Election Commission’s number at 3,684,726 registered voters (which it did).
For the numerator, I could not find any data source where I could directly download raw voter data by state. This was not only incredibly frustrating, but it turned out to be fairly time-consuming as well. Where do the news organizations get their data from so easily?! I was relegated to manually entering the votes by Presidential ticket by state. I chose to use USA Today.
The resulting analysis, shown below, leads off with Wyoming at 102%, followed by Minnesota (91%) and Wisconsin (88%) as the highest voter turnout as a function of registered voters. Notably, New York is the low-man on the totem pole at 42%.
Source: USA Today, 2020 Census, Hefner Energy LLC
Ironically, it is a Republican state (Wyoming) that has had more people vote than those registered (not Wisconsin as falsely claimed). I’m sure Wyoming authorities have a great explanation for this, but I have yet to see one.
LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE!
It needs to be acknowledged that there are numerous (real) sites that use different numbers than I chose to use above, including Politifact and Bloomberg.
In these instances and countless others, there is a difference. That difference lies with the denominator. These sites choose to use Eligible Voters as their denominator rather than Registered Voters. Let’s focus on the Politifact article to make a point here.
“Voter turnout in a same-day registration state is based on the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot.”
When dealing with statistics — I deal with an insane amount of them in my line of work forecasting incredibly complex data (example below) — you have to make sure you have quality, consistent data feeding the models. As the popular saying goes, garbage-in, garbage-out. No matter how good your model is, if your data is bad, you’ll end up with poor results (look at FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver which the famous anon account, Mrs. Skilling, made fun of in their #NewBitFriday on Nove 6th).
Source: Insight Petroleum ComboCurve, Hefner Energy LLC
It’s odd then that some states are supposed to use Eligible Voters as the denominator while other states are supposed to use Registered Voters. In the world of Geology and Geophysics, for example, if you have two PhD professionals pick tops they will inevitably come up with different values. How then would a data scientist be able to apply machine learning when those values are not consistent or uniformly picked?
Pulling from the United States Census, Wisconsin grew their population by 2.4% from 2010–2019 (from 5,822,434 to 5,687,285). Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s growth in Registered Voters (Wisconsin Election Commission) grew from 3,382,115 to 3,684,726. That is 8% Registered Voter growth by comparison to the 2.4% Population Growth. The fact is these growth rates are asymmetric.
Why then should we accept Politifact’s assertion that Percentage of Voting Population is a better metric than Percentage of Registered Voters? Why should we use different denominators depending on whether states allow same-day registration or not?
In short, it is important to understand the difference regardless of which methodology you choose. While one person is using one methodology the other is using the other, and it leads to a partisan divide when those discussing do not acknowledge the obvious.
Precincts Reporting
This one puzzles me and I don’t know what’s going on with it.
What was done manually (painfully) by me on November 5th was to capture USA Today’s voting totals by state. That included the estimated percentage of votes by state, among the rest. At the time, not all votes had been counted like those in Alaska (50%), Nevada (75%), Pennsylvania (88%), and so on.
When I came back to update the voting totals (today, November 12th), I noticed something odd. The gains in percentages did not translate to the expected number of total votes.
To elaborate, I’ll use North Carolina as an example. N.C. was reporting a total of 5,453,915 votes on November 5th, with 86% of precincts reporting. Today (November 12th), N.C. is reporting 5,468,755 votes tallied with 99% of precincts reporting. That is a gain of only 14,223 total votes when it should represent hundreds of thousands of votes (as a percentage gain).
Source: USA Today, Hefner Energy
I truly have no clue what’s going on here, and just thought I’d notate it.
Claims of Voter Fraud Are “Baseless”
There is no shortage of news organizations claiming anyone suggesting voter fraud exists in this election is doing so without merit. Even well-respected organizations like Reuters pulled out this stop just this morning.
Source: @reuters
However, this is not at all accurate. Voter fraud has existed for decades, and it’s been perpetuated on numerous levels.
There are 1,071 documented cases of convicted voter fraud cases, resulting in 938 criminal convictions and 43 civil penalties. These documented cases include False Registrations, Duplicate Voting, Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots, Buying Votes, Illegal “Assistance” at the Polls, Ineligible Voting, and Altering the Vote Count.
In May of this year, a former Philadelphia Judge pleads guilty to accepting bribes, casting fraudulent ballots, and certifying false results during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 elections.
It’s easier to cast fraudulent votes via mail than it is in-person, academics say, and
Confessions of a Voter Fraud: I was a Master at Fixing mail-in ballots.
Moreover, the 2020 election has already found dead people to have voted and sworn affidavits have been signed by real people alleging they have personally witnessed voter fraud as well. It’s important to note that this information is not for me to investigate, and the burden of evidence is upon them; the courts will sort that all out and we should have full faith in that process.
To suggest that the claim of voter fraud is “baseless” is an insult to the general public. Those who assert it are not interested in the truth, and possibly worse. BEWARE!
“Widespread” Voter Fraud
While we acknowledge herein that voter fraud exists, and that those who are currently claiming voter fraud are doing so WITH MERIT, it’s an entirely other assertion that this happened with any Degree or Significance.
My first question to everyone who begins discussing “widespread” voter fraud is, What is the numeric value associated with “widespread”? I’ve yet to have someone give me an absolute answer. For the purposes of this article, we will define it as enough votes to change the outcome of a state’s election. This means, according to the current count totals, they would need the following number of fraudulent votes at a minimum:
Georgia — 14,765 votes
Arizona — 11,635 votes
Wisconsin — 20,528 votes
Nevada — 36,870 votes
Pennsylvania — 53,978 votes
Michigan — 149,388 votes
While it is acknowledged that voter fraud exists, it only has historically existed in handfuls. The likelihood that 11,635 votes (AZ) were fabricated by people, as in the case of Philly’s Judge, is highly unlikely. It can be deduced that the only way to fabricate tens-of-thousands of votes (i.e. scale voter fraud) is through software. Absent “glitches” in these programs altering votes from one candidate to another or counting the same vote multiple times, it’s just too hard to believe. Moreover, there is not a single proven case that this has occurred!
Someone sent me a picture from Parler of what appeared to be FoxNews’ Maria Bartiromo for example. This is part of the problem. She clearly has no clue how computers work, yet she is saying things like this. Hardware is not software. Sure, the Chinese manufacture components, but I’m quite certain they are not also loading Chinese software onto them — particularly for the United States Election Commission. Even the AMD-China deal doesn’t provide Intellectual Property to China.
Absent some serious proof coming from the DOJ or another qualified institution, this is kind of a fairy tale. Until then, people like Maria Baritomo and others need to keep quiet until they can provide something concrete. Put up or shut up!
Republicans & Democrats
Democrats: stop discrediting your fellow Americans by calling their claims of voter fraud “baseless.”
Republicans: your hopes of “widespread” voter fraud that can change the outcome of the election are quite improbable. Don’t put much, if any, faith into the idea that this election was “stolen.”
Can we all ask one question, though? WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON IN ALASKA AND NEW YORK?! 82% of precincts are reporting in Alaska and only 80% are reporting New York as of this writing.
New York and Alaska should get married; opposites attract, right?
The Joke States: Alaska (82% reporting) and New York (80% reporting) at the time of publishing (days later)
The Joke States: Alaska (82% reporting) and New York (80% reporting) at the time of publishing (days later)
September 24, 2021: Since this article was published, Dominion sued Newsmax and OAN for $1.6 billion each in a defamation suit. The resulting evidence from that lawsuit has produced an internal memo from the Trump campaign (read the full memo here). “The memo produced by the Trump campaign shows that, at least internally, the Trump campaign found there was no evidence to support the conspiracy theories regarding Dominion,” said Coomer’s attorneys.
Moreover, the Republican-led Arizona election audit has been concluded. A mix of taxpayer and private money funded the audit. Arizona’s Senate will pay Cyber Ninjas $150,000, plus other costs, including roughly $60,000 for security and $50,000 for an analysis of the ballot envelopes. Among its conclusions are that Biden gained votes in Arizona after a hand-recount. Read more on the WSJ.