(Chuck Muth) – Here’s why you can’t simply use database research to level a “voting fraud” allegation against someone…
I was on a Zoom call Wednesday with an experienced, reputable election integrity leader. And he shared a stark example from a midwestern state of two male voters on the voter list with the exact same name and same date of birth.
Voter fraud, right? Natural assumption.
Nope. Once an actual investigation was initiated, it was discovered that “Brian Jones” and “Brian Jones” had gotten married and actually share the same birthday.
What are the odds, right?
But that’s the deal. And if you accused “Brian” – or “Brian,” for that matter – of voting fraud, you’d open yourself up to charges of voter harassment and intimidation no matter how legitimate your suspicions were.
Another example was of a guy, I think in New Jersey, who was on the voter list eight times. It was a clerical error in the system due to multiple automatic registrations at the DMV and other government operations over the years.
This is a classic example of Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” And automatically registering people at the DMV who didn’t ask to register is just plain stupid.
Now, the guy didn’t VOTE eight times – which would have been actual fraud. But sending him eight ballots certainly widens the potential for voting fraud.
All of which is why you can’t simply assume someone is illegally registered to vote or has voted illegally. You need to verify, verify, VERIFY.
Which, apparently, the Trump team and the Nevada Republican Party didn’t do following the 2020 presidential election in Nevada.
A new article by Josh Dawsey references the allegations of “fraud” and points to an internal study commissioned by Trump’s team that failed to confirm their suspicions…
“In a separate failed bid to overturn the results in Nevada, Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing that 1,506 ballots were cast in the names of dead people and 42,284 voted twice. Trump lost the Silver State by about 33,000 votes.
“The researchers paid by Trump’s team had ‘high confidence’ that 12 ballots were cast in the names of deceased people in Clark County, Nev., and believed the ‘high end potential exposure’ was 20 voters statewide — some 1,486 fewer than Trump’s lawyers said.
“According to their research, the ‘low end potential exposure’ of double voters was 45, while the ‘high end potential exposure’ was 9,063. The judge tossed the Nevada case even as Trump continued to claim he won the state.
“The ‘Project 2020’ report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group…shows that Trump’s own campaign paid more than $600,000 for research that undercut many of his most explosive claims. The research was never made public.”
Again, you can’t simply assume someone is illegally registered to vote or has voted illegally. You need to verify, verify, VERIFY.
Because once you lose your credibility by “crying wolf” without being able to prove there’s a wolf, it’s near impossible to get it back.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Ohio and Iowa became the latest Republican-led states to signal they would be pulling out of a bipartisan interstate voter program… They are the sixth and seventh Republican-led states to drop out of the Electronic Registration Information Center — ERIC — over the last year, joining Florida, West Virginia, Missouri, Louisiana and Alabama. Other states could soon be on the way as well.” – Politico, 3/18/23