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Post by slaytan on Jun 7, 2021 10:15:43 GMT -5
I check this thread once a day or more. Is cyber dead? Does he now believe Joe Biden won legit?
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Post by MMAJim on Jun 7, 2021 12:40:27 GMT -5
I think he might have realized that everyone here already reads the articles he copy/pastes.
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Post by HumanAgent on Jun 7, 2021 15:24:50 GMT -5
I think he might have realized that everyone here already reads the articles he copy/pastes. I actually don't read the articles anywhere else... I do follow The Epoch Times on Telegram but they do a shit load of different stories a day...hard to keep up...
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Post by cybergod on Jun 7, 2021 19:47:44 GMT -5
I check this thread once a day or more. Is cyber dead? No. I'm 69 though. So DON'T RUSH ME.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 7, 2021 19:49:00 GMT -5
Does he now believe Joe Biden won legit? Lay off the bath salts Garth, that shit is bad for you. There's simply little to report; although some welcome news has emerged: Other states are considering forensic audits also. You probably already heard that. IF definite proof of fraud is discovered (likely in my opinion), I expect massive civil unrest and disobedience and riots in response. I pray that Zom-Biden -- or his handlers -- can be shamed into resigning. Otherwise we risk a civil war....although a mid-term ballot-box revolution might occur also. We'll see if our shamefully compromised Justice Department is going to actually PROSECUTE FEDERAL ELECTION FRAUD.....or if the military might step in. Scary, uncharted territory we're heading into.
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Post by HumanAgent on Jun 7, 2021 20:24:33 GMT -5
Glad you're not dead Cyber...just old....
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Post by cybergod on Jun 8, 2021 8:11:41 GMT -5
Glad you're not dead Cyber...just old.... I agree completely.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 8, 2021 11:16:16 GMT -5
From The Gateway Pundit:
BREAKING GEORGIA UPDATE:
RUBY FREEMAN, WHO JAMMED SUSPECT BALLOTS INTO VOTING MACHINES MULTIPLE TIMES ON ELECTION NIGHT IS SUBPOENAED
By Joe Hoft Published June 7, 2021 at 9:43pm
Yesterday we reported that Shaye Moss was subpoenaed in Georgia for her activities in the 2020 election in Fulton County. Now it’s her mother’s turn, Ruby Freeman. Over the weekend it was reported that Ruby Freeman’s daughter Shaye Moss, who was also Ruby’s boss during the election counting process in Fulton County, Georgia, was subpoenaed:
Shaye Moss was famous for kicking everyone out of the room where votes were counted in Fulton County and telling observers to go home. Then Shaye and others including Ralph Jones and her mother Ruby dragged hidden boxes of ballots out from underneath tables and started running them through the machines. Ruby Freeman was caught on tape running the same stack of suspect ballots through the machines multiple times:
Now tonight it’s mama’s turn.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 8, 2021 11:32:57 GMT -5
^^^ Yep. Now, they're naming names. Things are about to get VERY interesting at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
My guess is, they'll see how bad the fraud is....and hand the whole steaming, stinking crime over to the Federal boys. After all, it's a federal crime as well as a state offense.
I'll bet a whole LOT of Georgia election officials are sweating bullets right now.
Just like they are in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. LOL....
Pretty sure the cops know how to handle this. Plea bargains with the foot-soldiers (dangling short sentences & simple firings) so that the "masterminds" can devour each other in frantic fights to avoid life sentences for TREASON.
It's gonna be entertaining.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 8, 2021 12:01:39 GMT -5
Poll Watcher Sounds the Alarm!
When Fulton County, Georgia, poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden—except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.
Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.
In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.
“All of them were strangely pristine,” said Voyles, who said she’d never seen anything like it in her 20 years monitoring elections in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 9, 2021 3:43:04 GMT -5
STATE SENATOR DOUG MASTRIANO CALLS FOR AUDIT OF 2020 ELECTION IN PENNSYLVANIA
HARRISBURG by: Daniel Hamburg
Posted: Jun 5, 2021 / 07:18 PM EDT / Updated: Jun 6, 2021 / 07:39 PM EDT
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — Dozens of people were in Harrisburg Saturday for what organizers called a victory celebration for the passage of two referendums limiting the governor’s emergency powers.
One of the speakers, State Senator Doug Mastriano spoke about wanting an audit of November’s election too.
Mastriano recently returned from a trip to Arizona where Republican lawmakers organized an audit of their election.
UPDATE: Pa. GOP legislators disagree on possible election audits; Mastriano publishes an op-ed based on visit to oversee Arizona’s audit Though there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, he wants the same to happen in Pennsylvania.
It started as a rally to celebrate limiting the governor’s power through two referendums on the ballot.
“You do have a voice and you took the power back from the governor and from his dictatorial power here we had,” Mastriano said.
Mastriano then talked about his trip to Arizona for an audit on the 2020 election, run by a company with no election experience.
“They photograph every ballot and they do microscopic zooms in, you can see if it was copied or if it was filled in by a human,” Mastriano said.
State Rep. Seth Grove, the Republican chairman of the Pennsylvania State House Government Committee, tweeted Thursday morning: “The PA House of Representatives will not be authorizing any further audits on any previous election. We are focused on fixing our broken election law to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
Gov. Tom Wolf on Friday also tweeted saying: “What they’re calling for isn’t an ‘audit.’ It’s a taxpayer-funded disinformation campaign and a disgrace to democracy.”
abc27 tried asking Mastriano for his response to those statements, but he denied us an interview on camera twice, saying he didn’t want his words twisted.
He finally did talk with a CNN reporter.
“I don’t know what’s to be concerned or upset about. Just asking for transparency,” Mastriano said. I know the narrative from several of them over there is about overturning, there’s no extensive claims. How do we know?”
He says he doesn’t want a recount but a forensic audit, saying this isn’t about overturning the results of the 2020 election.
“If they were as good as Governor Wolf and Josh Shapiro says they are, fantastic, and then the people in the state will say I have faith there wasn’t a problem,” Mastriano said.
Mastriano also talked about legislation to require voter ID, stop no excuse mail-in voting, and repeal Act 77.
Expecting the governor to veto the bills, he says lawmakers also have referendum versions for Pennsylvanians to vote on.
Copyright 2021 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 9, 2021 3:54:52 GMT -5
From The Gateway Pundit:
HUGE DEVELOPMENT: THREE DIFFERENT STATES TOUR THE ARIZONA AUDIT FLOOR - MORE ARE EXPECTED EVERY DAY THIS WEEK!
By Jordan Conradson Published June 8, 2021 at 3:11pm
On Tuesday Morning, OAN’s Christina Bobb reported that delegations from Georgia, Alaska, and Colorado are inside of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum for a tour of the historic Arizona audit process.
They are now on the floor for a deep dive into this process and it’s logistics.
The Gateway Pundit reported Monday that Georgia would tour the Veterans Memorial Coliseum and more states were expected to follow.
More states did follow as we have two surprise guests, Colorado and Alaska.
Legislators from these three states received a “classroom style” briefing, and are now on the floor to see firsthand, how this process is run.
These lawmakers are analyzing the audit to make any fixes necessary and implement a similar process at home.
TGP’s Jordan Conradson spoke with Senate Liasion Ken Bennett for another update before the guests arrived on the floor.
Jordan Conradson: I understand Georgia is in the house right now?
Ken Bennett: There’s a couple of legislators from Georgia and one from Alaska that are in the building right now. I’ve heard Virginia, I’ve heard Wisconsin, you’ve now told me, Colorado, Nevada was in a few days ago, Pennsylvania last week. It’s becoming a popular place.
Conradson: Are you expecting to have, over the next few days, more tours?
Bennett: I’m told that every day this week there is some elected official coming in from some state. Today is Tuesday and if that pattern continues well have somebody in Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Conradson: It looks like they’re starting to max out on forensic tables, correct?
Bennett: We are beyond 80% I’m told, as far as counting the ballots, which is the first step. Then, it goes to the paper evaluation and they are well behind the counting levels in paper evaluation. I’m told that we’ll probably be finished with the counting of the ballots by the end of this week or sooner, and then all of the resources will shift to the paper evaluation. You can already see that paper evaluation has been increased significantly. There’s now 32 working tables and another probably 16 positions on the floor awaiting equipment and things like that. Once the counting is over this week at some time, all resources will shift to the paper evaluation.
As the Audit finishes, more states are coming to AZ in order to witness this process and take it home. The Gateway Pundit’s Jordan Conradson will be at the audit every day to provide updates on this strikingly important process.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 9, 2021 4:14:16 GMT -5
The TRUTH always comes out! This is almost FUN to watch.
....Until I reflect upon what Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev boasted to the United Nations in 1960:
He said we'd be taken over WITHOUT A SHOT BEING FIRED. He said we WOULD WELCOME OUR CONQUERERS! One need only to look at OUR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS to see how well their half-century-plus propaganda war against Capitalism has succeeded.
People like Garth/Slaytan have known this for years, and TRIED TO WARN US about communism's threat.
Absolutely frightening to contemplate HOW CLOSE WE ARE to these dire predictions actually happening!
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Post by slaytan on Jun 9, 2021 12:02:51 GMT -5
^^^ Yep. Now, they're naming names. Things are about to get VERY interesting at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. My guess is, they'll see how bad the fraud is....and hand the whole steaming, sinking crime over to the Federal boys. After all, it's a federal crime as well as a state offense. I'll bet a whole LOT of Georgia election officials are sweating bullets right now. Just like they are in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. LOL.... Pretty sure the cops know how to handle this. Plea bargains with the foot-soldiers (dangling short sentences & simple firings) so that the "masterminds" can devour each other in frantic fights to avoid life sentences for TREASON. It's gonna be entertaining. I don’t know what gives you this sense of “justice will be done”/“truth will be revealed.” The only work the FBI is going to do about this is to investigate and attempt to jail/ discredit/ ruin those getting close to the truth. Have you seen the state of law enforcement today? Every police chief/ sherif/ commissioner around is a black leftist, and so are a decisive number of DAs and judges. Any revelation will be broken on the news as “So and so pushes bizarre, debunked conspiracy theory” and then digress into a takedown of whomever advances it. They have their bases covered, is what I’m saying.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 9, 2021 20:41:48 GMT -5
^^^ Then civil war will occur as the only other option, and I would expect it to happen in the face of the doomsday scenario you predict.
But I don't think it's as hopeless as you seem to believe. The US military would, hopefully, follow their oath to defend against ALL enemies, foreign or domestic. Once the White House occupant is exposed as NOT being the true Commander-in-Chief, Pandora's Box opens wide.
I can foresee a scenario where the military arrests traitors under martial law. I may be all wet, but this is virtually uncharted territory; I have no idea if it's even been planned for in legal terms. But I HAVE to believe there are strategic protocols pre-panned for such an emergency. I just have no knowledge of what they might actually be....
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Post by slaytan on Jun 10, 2021 5:22:37 GMT -5
^^^ Then civil war will occur as the only other option, and I would expect it to happen in the face of the doomsday scenario you predict. But I don't think it's as hopeless as you seem to believe. The US military would, hopefully, follow their oath to defend against ALL enemies, foreign or domestic. Once the White House occupant is exposed as NOT being the true Commander-in-Chief, Pandora's Box opens wide. I can foresee a scenario where the military arrests traitors under martial law. I may be all wet, but this is virtually uncharted territory; I have no idea if it's even been planned for in legal terms. But I HAVE to believe there are strategic protocols pre-panned for such an emergency. I just have no knowledge of what they might actually be.... Have you seen fags and black power monkeys Biden’s put in charge of the military? The only traitors the military’s going to roll up are going to be traitors against woke, and we’ll se the first executions for desertion, treason, and espionage in 75 years.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 10, 2021 10:24:22 GMT -5
^^^ "Traitors Against Woke" cannot be taken seriously as a possible (chargeable) military crime.
If you're suggesting the military is infiltrated with traitors, I can only scoff at the idea. That's not to say there MAY NOT be a few homosexuals & soft pacifists in the highest ranks, but to suggest that military leadership is rife with anti-American ideologues is a few bridges too far for me. These people are pretty thoroughly vetted, I believe.
And Treason is what happened on a wide scale last Nov. 3rd, the whole country saw it and it wasn't being committed by military-connected officials. So your pessimistic outlook is simply too bleak in my opinion. At least I hope so....
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Post by cybergod on Jun 12, 2021 17:19:14 GMT -5
This item is dated but also revealing; I got it from another forum. It seems the British aren't fooled by this dog-and-pony show either....
BIDEN LIED SO BADLY DURING PRESSER THAT EVEN LIBERAL FACT CHECKERS ARE CALLING HIM OUT
Just 64 days after Joe Biden took office he finally held a press conference and it was a doozy. For example, not only was Biden a bumbling mess the entire time, but he also needed cue cards so that he could answer questions from the right reporters.
Biden not only had cue cards, but they had pictures of the reporters and numbers so he would know which ones to call on in order. Then there were the copious notes that were in front of him so that he would not go off-topic, but even with all those crutches he still managed to come off like the moron he is.
In the words of Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Thursday’s display was nothing less than “embarrassing.”
“It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Despite weeks of preparation, even fake news CNN admits it, cheat sheets with 14-point font and of course, a compliant media mob lobbing one softball question after another, it still was not enough for Joe Biden, ” Hannity said.
“The frail, the weak, the cognitively struggling, clearly, commander-in-chief, or is he, did not do well today, to say the least,” he continued. During his softball presser, and with all the notes Biden lied, and we are not talking about little white lies, but full-on lies.
The Daily Mail reports:
President Joe Biden misstated the reality at the U.S.-Mexico border and offered a misleading account of who’s getting the most benefits from the Donald Trump tax cuts in his first presidential press conference. …
He was grilled on a number of topics, including the situation at the border, the Senate filibuster, working with Republicans, his 2024 re-election plans and Afghanistan – but received no questions on the coronavirus pandemic or on relations with Russia amid rising tensions with the Kremlin or his stumbles as he climbed the Air Force One stairs.
First things first, Biden was asked a number of softball questions; he was never “grilled,” as the Daily Mail described. But the paper did fact-check the president. Biden claimed “nothing has changed” regarding the number of migrant children crossing illegally into the U.S. since President Trump was in office.
“It happens every single solitary year. There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. It happens every year,” he said.
Verdict: Wrong. “According to statistics published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, authorities encountered 9,457 children without a parent in February, a 61 percent increase from January, not 28 percent. The numbers of unaccompanied children did rise 31 percent between January 2019 and February 2019,” the Daily Mail reported.
Biden claimed his regime is sending away a “majority” of migrant families that show up to the border and cross illegally.
Verdict: Blatantly untrue. “The data shows only 41 percent of immigrant families were turned away under Title 42, which allows the US Border Patrol to immediately expel any migrant to prevent the spread of COVID-19, in February,” the outlet reported, adding that 79 percent of single adults were, in fact, returned.
Biden claimed Trump cut $700 million in funding to Central American nations El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. “What did Trump do? He eliminated that funding. He didn’t use it. He didn’t do it,” Biden said.
Verdict: Uh-uh. Trump threatened to, and then did, withhold funding from those three countries, but only until they agreed to start taking back their own citizens who crossed illegally into the U.S. Funny how money talks and BS walks.
Biden was also dishonest about the number of times the filibuster has been used recently in comparison to historical uses; COVID-19 vaccine figures; economic growth predictions for this year (which is inevitable as more of the country reopen from coronavirus lockdowns); and majority GOP support for his agenda.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 13, 2021 17:47:09 GMT -5
From the Epoch Times:
ELECTION ASSESSMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA UNCOVERS FIVE "ISSUES OF NOTE"
BY ZACHARY STIEBER June 12, 2021 Updated: June 12, 2021
An election assessment conducted in a Pennsylvania county months ago and quietly released to the public in recent weeks uncovered five errors, including three linked to Dominion Voting Systems, whose election management system is used in the county, the assessing firm said.
Wake Technology Services Inc. (Wake TSI), a Pennsylvania-based firm, conducted the assessment in Fulton County. Workers visited the county’s offices late last year and about a month later, on Feb. 9.
The assessment was meant to review the mail-in ballots in the county and explore whether conduct relating to absentee ballot requests, distribution, receipt, and counting were in line with federal and commonwealth guidelines, Wake TSI said in the 93-page report that was quietly published on the county’s website, with no public fanfare, in May.
Wake TSI personnel did not conduct a technology forensic audit of the operating system or election management system (EMS) but did review some system file dates, log files, ballot images, and other files.
Wake TSI said in its report summary that it found that the election “was well run, was conducted in a diligent and effective manner and followed the directions of Pennsylvania.” No anomalies were reported during the election process and expectations were that the assessment would not show any indications of fraud, error, interference, or misconduct.
However, Wake TSI said it found five “issues of note,” including that Dominion failed to meet the commonwealth’s certification standards; that the election management system had Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools installed, despite the software not being part of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s certified configuration; and that changes were made to the management system just three weeks prior to the election.
Assessors said there is “no valid reason” for the software to be installed on the system and that the presence “allows any user with access to change and manipulate the EMS databases without logging [recording] to the Database, EMS, or [operating system] logfiles.”
They also said that Dominion failed to fill out a document that attests that the installed software versions conformed with certified reasons, with Dominion apparently claiming filling out the form was “optional.”
Dominion Voting Systems disputed the report’s findings related to it.
The Microsoft software “is a federally-certified component of Dominion’s system, which meets U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Voluntary Voting System Guidelines,” a spokesperson said in an email, adding: “Only federal and state entities have the authority to certify voting machines. Dominion’s systems have been certified by both the U.S. EAC and the State of Pennsylvania.”
A search of the voluntary guidelines did not turn up any mention of Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools, which can be used to create, debug, maintain, and rewrite the source code of a database.
The Microsoft software in question can help recover from a corrupted database if there’s a crash, such as a crash caused by a power surge, but can also be used for nefarious purposes, according to Greg Miller, chief operating officer of the OSET Institute, a California-based nonprofit that researches, develops, and educates on elections technology reform. The type of assessment Wake TSI conducted would not be able to uncover whether it was used for something malfeasant.
The nonprofit’s policy and technology teams went over the assessment and found cause for concern and spaces where both the county and Dominion could improve, he added.
“No direct evidence of any malfeasance but, boy, people deserve better. There were some fundamental mistakes that were made there and I think Dominion owes some answers,” he told The Epoch Times.
The report showed “a couple of bureaucratic errors that would leave the average voter wondering, and they should, they should wonder,” he said. “It doesn’t look good. It looks awful. Unfortunately, the kind of digital forensic analysis we would want to do to determine if the presence of those toolkits caused any problems is almost impossible now,” he said, adding that election machines that are under suspicion would ideally be sequestered immediately before being audited.
The errors included the county not keeping documentation on whether logic and accuracy testing was done on the machines, which is inconsistent with the Pennsylvania Department of State’s conditions for certification, and Dominion’s stated failure to fill out the attestation form.
Logic and accuracy tests are done on machines before elections to make sure that voting equipment and ballots set to be used in an election can properly tabulate the results.
Wake TSI’s report states that Fulton County apparently “never had a Logic and Accuracy test documented,” adding: “This is not to say whether or not the L&A testing has been completed, but there is nothing documenting that the process was completed.”
Wake TSI explained that the issue is not minor because inaccurate scanning can significantly impact election results, using the example of alignment of a candidate’s voting circle being off by a fraction of an inch, which would render the system unable to properly read the ballot, which would then go through the adjudication process, which is open to interpretation by election workers.
“A simple human error, or a bad actor, could cause huge issues with accurate ballot counting if it is not caught by proper testing both before and after an election, as it is required by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” the firm said, blaming both Dominion and Pennsylvania’s Department of State.
The Department of State did not respond to multiple queries for this article.
According to Fulton County commission meeting minutes, commissioners discussed on Dec. 29, 2020, on a third-party team that wanted to inspect the 2020 election results. Commissioners Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch, both Republicans, supported the inspection but the lone Democrat commissioner, Paula Shives, said she would only be agreeable to an inspection if machines were not removed. She also said that she wanted to be present for the inspection.
Wake TSI visited the county offices two days later, collecting copies of log files, images of scanned ballots, and other materials. Patti Hess, the county’s director of elections and voter registration, or Bunch remained in the room with the ballots during the entire course of the review, according to the minutes and the election assessment.
Ulsh motioned at a Jan. 12 meeting to permit Wake TSI to complete the mail-in ballot portion of the election review. Bunch voted yes. Shives voted no “because she feels anyone wanting to review election materials should go through the legal process and obtain a subpoena,” according to minutes of the meeting.
The commissioners noted participating in the second visit, which they described as an audit, in their Feb. 9 meeting.
No further mention was made of the assessment until May 11, when Ulsh motioned that the Wake TSI’s report would be placed on the county’s website after the firm released it. All three commissioners approved the motion.
The two Republican commissioners in the county did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Shives, the lone Democrat, answered an initial query about the assessment by pointing The Epoch Times to Wake TSI’s report. She did not respond to further questions.
Hess on June 2 declined to comment, saying she was too busy with primary certification. Responding to a followup inquiry a week later, she directed questions about the assessment to the commissioners.
Wake TSI did not return multiple requests for interviews or comment.
Wake TSI also included in its assessment analysis on what it described as ballot-scanning errors, saying the scanning errors identified in two sets of log files exceeded the allowable error rate set by the federal government.
However, Miller said he did not know of the error rate they cited and that the number of errors found was not unusual.
Dominion told The Epoch Times via email: “Claims of ‘scanning errors’ are also incorrect as they do not relate to Dominion’s system. These are benign instances where ballots were not fed into the scanner correctly and were ejected [‘reversed’] for the voter to try again or instances of ballot mistakes such as overvoting or blank ballots.”
Another election expert said he did not think Wake TSI uncovered anything significant.
“Bottom line: Wake TSI didn’t find anything of substance that went wrong. In my analysis of elections over the last ten years, I have found a lot of errors made by tired people under pressure using a complicated computer system. I have never seen anything that looked intentional or that looked like an attempt at fraud. I don’t read anything in the Wake TSI report that would suggest otherwise, and I read a lot in the Wake report that points out how little they knew about analysis of election data,” Duncan Buell, chair emeritus-NCR chair in computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“There are experts who analyze elections. (I believe I am one of them.). I don’t see that Wake was anywhere close to that space until they were called on for the specific purpose of finding evidence that might support The Big Lie. They didn’t find the evidence, so they focus on the nits,” he added.
But Pennsylvania lawmakers said the assessment’s findings motivated recent calls for an audit in the state.
“I’ve only done a preliminary review of the audit, however my first concern is the lack of L&A inspections of the voting system after the changes were made to the system. The non-certified database tools (I have learned of SQL being discovered in machines in other states when it is not a software product permitted under the Election Assistance Commission guidance) are of significant concern as they allow for manipulation of data and facilitate the transmittal and reception of modifications to data from outside of the machines in question,” Pennsylvania Sen. Cris Dush, a Republican, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“Constituents from across the Commonwealth continue to have questions about the 2020 Election. Because responses from the Department of State and other state government officials have not answered these many concerns, Senator Argall believes all options should be considered—including an assessment of the Fulton County audit and how it was conducted,” added Jim Brugger, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Sen. Dave Argall, a Republican who chairs the Senate’s State Government Committee.
The assessment showed blunders by both the county and Dominion but also indicated that the election ran largely correctly, according to Miller of the OSET Institute. Still, the issues identified highlight the need for technology that’s more easily examined by auditors and others, he added.
“The problem here is you’ve got black box technology when we need glass box technology,” he said.
Wake TSI’s assessment was “set” by Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, according to a Dec. 31, 2020 document signed by Wake TSI that was obtained and published (pdf) by the Arizona Mirror and the Washington Post. Mastriano declined to comment. Wake TSI says in its assessment that Mastriano and Pennsylvania Sen. Judy Ward “were aware of our efforts.”
The document also said the Wake TSI was “contracted to Defending the Republic,” a nonprofit founded by lawyer Sidney Powell, who has claimed widespread fraud occurred in last year’s election.
Contact information was not listed on the nonprofit’s website. Powell did not respond to an email.
Hess, Fulton County’s elections director, told acting Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Veronica Degraffenreid last month that “various members” of the state legislature asked for Wake TSI to do an audit in the county.
“Since we believe in transparency, we agreed to let them come in and do the audit,” she wrote in the letter, which was sent last month and obtained by the Post.
Hess said that that Wake had three people in the room where the ballots were stored. Hess would hand a ballot to one, who would write down who was voted for before passing it on to a second person, who also wrote down the ballot result. The third person then took a picture of the ballot.
The team also took backups of “key data on our computers used in the ballot counting process” and used a system imaging tool to “take complete hard drive images” of computers used in the election, she added.
Wake TSI was later subcontracted by Florida-based Cyber Ninjas to help audit ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona. In its statement of work, Cyber Ninjas cited Wake’s experience in Fulton County and said the firm had workers that have been involved in investigating election fraud issues dating back to 1994.
The Maricopa County audit started on April 23. Wake TSI stopped working on the audit as of May 14, choosing not to renew its contract. The ballot review work was taken over by Arizona-based StratTech Solutions. The audit is expected to wrap up by the end of June, with a report on what auditors found expected in July or August.
Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber Follow Zachary on Parler: @zackstieber The Epoch Times Copyright © 2000 - 2021
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Post by cybergod on Jun 14, 2021 12:48:49 GMT -5
From the Star News Network:
FULTON COUNTY ELECTION OFFICIAL ADMITS CHAIN OF CUSTODY DOCUMENTS MISSING FOR ABSENTEE BALLOTS DEPOSITED IN DROP BOXES
June 14, 2021 Laura Baigert
In a stunning admission about the critical chain of custody documents for absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes in the November 3, 2020 election, a Fulton County election official told The Georgia Star News on Wednesday that “a few forms are missing” and that “some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.”
A Star News analysis of drop box ballot transfer forms for absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes provided by Fulton County in response to an Open Records Request showed that 385 transfer forms out of an estimated 1,565 transfer forms Fulton County said should have been provided are missing – a number that is significantly greater than “a few” by any objective standard.
On Sunday, The Star News published a story which included the files containing digital images of the 1,180 transfer forms that Fulton County did provide. Those digital images can be viewed here.
This is the first time that any election official at either the state or county level from a key battleground state has made an admission of significant error in election procedures for the November 3, 2020 election.
The admission of missing chain of custody documents by a Fulton County official is important for several reasons that cut to the very core of public confidence in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election:
President Biden was certified as the winner of Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes in the 2020 election by the narrow margin of less than 12,000 votes over former President Donald Trump out of a total of 5 million votes cast statewide.
The total number of absentee ballots whose chain of custody was purportedly documented in these 385 missing Fulton County absentee ballot transfer forms was 18,901, more than 6,000 votes greater than the less than 12,000 vote margin of Biden’s certified victory in the state.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has taken no action in 156 of Georgia’s 159 counties to secure copies of any absentee ballot drop box transfer forms and review them for accuracy and consistency with reported absentee ballot vote counts. In April his office announced investigations into three small counties that “failed to do their absentee ballot transfer forms” in the November 2020 election in compliance with rules and regulations.
To date, The Star News has obtained absentee ballot drop box forms fromMore than seven months after the November 3 election, 28 Georgia counties have failed to respond at all to The Star News Open Records Requests to produce absentee ballot drop box transfer forms. 59 counties that provide chain of custody documentation for 266,492 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes during the November 3, 2020 election, which means that no chain of custody documentation has been produced for about 333,000 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes out of an estimated 600,000 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes during that election.
As The Star News reported on Sunday, “These absentee ballots are at the center of a lawsuit filed by Garland Favorito and eight other Georgia residents, who have sued Fulton County to produce these ballots for a forensic audit. Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero ruled in May that this audit could proceed, but allowed the plaintiffs to review only the digital images of these 145,000 absentee ballots. . . An estimated 145,000 absentee ballots – between 75,000 and 78,000 of which were originally deposited in drop boxes and between 67,000 and 70,000 of which were sent via the United States Postal Service – were transferred from the centralized counting facility at the State Farm Arena in downtown Atlanta to the EPC [the Election Preparation Center warehouse located at 1365 English St. NW, Atlanta] at some point after the counting of votes for the November 3 election was completed. . . Fulton County subsequently filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and Judge Amero put the audit on hold. Judge Amero has scheduled a hearing later this month to consider Fulton County’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit and stop the audit.”
The admission of missing chain of custody documents came as a response to The Star News follow-up to Fulton County’s incomplete responses to Open Records Requests for the transfer forms that document the chain of custody of absentee ballots placed by voters into 37 drop boxes installed through Fulton County over the 41-day November 2020 presidential election period that began on September 24 and ended on November 3, election day.
“As we review the documents provided to you and our daily log. We noticed that a few forms are missing, it seems when 25 plus core personnel were quarantined due to positive COVID-19 outbreak at the EPC, some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced,” Mariska Bodison (pictured above) of Fulton County Registration & Elections told The Star News in a statement emailed on Wednesday, June 9.
Ms. Bodison is the Board Secretary for the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections. Richard Barron is the Election Director for Fulton County Registration & Elections.
Seven months after the election, Fulton County has failed to provide the transfer forms for approximately 19,000 drop box absentee ballots, The Star News has reported.
The transfer forms are a requirement of the State Election Board Emergency Rule 83-1-14-0.8-.14, promulgated by the State Election Board on July 1, 2020, to document the critical chain of custody of absentee ballots collected from drop boxes and transferred to the county registrar.
The Star News made an initial open records request to Fulton County election officials in December 2020 and subsequent follow-up requests to obtain all of the transfer forms. On two occasions, Fulton County provided numerous documents.
The first time, in February 2021, Fulton County provided two PDF files with labels ending in “BX1” and BX3.”
Not only did it appear that a file with a label ending in “BX2” was missing, the number of ballots represented on the transfer forms fell far short of the estimated number of ballots deposited in the drop boxes.
The Star News followed up with Fulton County, pointing out the incomplete records.
Fulton County responded in early May by opting to provide a thumb drive they said included a re-scan all of the documents from their first attempt plus those that were missing, rather than providing the “BX2” file or just the missing transfer forms.
The thumb drive contained 30 files of drop box transfer forms, and also also included a spreadsheet that Fulton County used to document the number of absentee ballots and the ballot applications collected from the 37 drop boxes over the 41-day voting period. According to that spreadsheet, those 30 files should have contained 1,565 drop box transfer forms.
The Star News’s detailed analysis of the files provided by Fulton County revealed that they included only 1,180 drop box transfer forms provided chain of custody documents for 59,042 absentee ballots placed into drop boxes.
Yet, the Fulton County spreadsheet showed that about 79,000 absentee ballots were collected from drop boxes (When a mathematical error in the Fulton County spreadsheet that double counted a number of votes is corrected, the total number of absentee ballots Fulton County says were collected from drop boxes is about 75,000.)
On May 17, The Star News notified Fulton County via email that transfer forms for about 25 percent of the absentee ballots placed into drop boxes where chain of custody documentation in the form of 385 drop box transfer forms were still missing.
The Star News’ email to Fulton County can be read here:
Dear Fulton County,
We are in receipt of a thumb drive which we picked up in person from your office on May 3, 2021 that contains scans of documents responsive to our Open Records Request Reference No: R002457-040821 for chain of custody ballot transfer forms for absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in Fulton County for the November 3 election.
We have reviewed those documents, and it appears that you provided documentation for about 59,000 ballots. The accompanying spreadsheet you provided – a file named “Copy of Absentee Ballot Drop Box – Daily Count – November 3 2020.xlsx” – said there were about 78,000 ballots cast in the November 3, 2020 election.
Please: (1) Provide us with the “missing” documentation on these 19,000 ballots (2) Explain the discrepancy
Thank you,
Tiffany Morgan The Georgia Star News
After initially replying that they needed more time to review the request, Fulton County responded on June 9, which included the stunning admission of the misplaced paperwork.
As we review the documents provided to you and our daily log. We noticed that a few forms are missing, it seems when 25 plus core personnel were quarantined due to positive COVID-19 outbreak at the EPC, some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.
Please feel free to contact me at if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Mariska Bodison Registration & Elections
On October 15, Fox 5 Atlanta reported on the COVID-19 outbreak at the Fulton County Elections Preparation Center (EPC), located at 1365 English St. NW, Atlanta, where 13 of 60 employees tested positive between October 13 and 15.
People who work in the warehouse are involved with logic and accuracy testing, packing supply boxes and collecting ballot drop boxes, according to the Fox 5 report.
The report, however, appears to contradict what Fulton County election officials are now saying, in terms of the numbers of employees quarantined and the impact to the work.
“Despite the news, county officials reassure there is no disruption to the work,” Fox 5 reported.
In fact, Fulton County Director of Registration and Elections Richard Barron said, “Processing absentee ballots. No there has been no delay. With regard to logic and accuracy testing, the only delay was probably yesterday when they were getting tested.”
On October 21, Barron told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that all of the staff working at the EPC had been moved to work out of the World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Fulton County’s emailed response to The Star News also seems to downplay the importance of the chain of custody documents by referring to the transfer forms as “procedural paperwork.”
Even though Fulton County officials first agreed that forms were missing, they then went on to disagree with the numbers The Star News presented to them.
We do not agree with the 19,000 you referenced in your inquiry. Please advise at how you derived at this number and we will investigate.
As The Star News reported, using the Fulton County spreadsheet as a guide, at least 385 transfer forms providing chain of custody documentation for 18,901 ballots have yet to be provided by Fulton County.
In addition to random absentee ballot collections for which the transfer forms were not provided, there were at least five full days – October 7, 9, 10, 11 and 20 – for which no transfer forms have been provided. Four of those dates were before the COVID-19 quarantine cited by the Fulton County election official as the cause for the “misplaced paperwork.”
This copy of the Fulton County spreadsheet, which The Star News has highlighted in yellow, shows the 385 drop box collections and associated 18,901 absentee ballots for which no transfer forms have been provided by Fulton County.
In April, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that just three small Georgia counties–Coffee, Grady, and Taylor –“failed to do their absentee ballot transfer forms” in compliance with Georgia Rules and Regulations. Raffensperger’s office made no effort to review the manner in which several other much larger counties that The Star News previously reported were in violation of the State Election Board’s Emergency Code Rule; specifically Cobb County, DeKalb County and Fulton County.
Raffensperger’s spokesman, Ari Schaffer, however, admitted to The Star News that the Secretary of State’s office never looked at the chain of custody documents, they merely “confirmed with the relevant counties that they had them.”
Earlier this month, the Georgia GOP convention censured Secretary of State Raffensperger for “dereliction of his Constitutional duty.” That dereliction of duty included, “Undermining the security of our elections by allowing mass mailings of absentee applications by his office and third parties which created opportunities for fraud and overwhelmed election offices; rendering accurate signature matching nearly impossible; allowing ballot drop boxes without proper chain of custody; and ignoring sworn affidavits and disregarding evidence of voter fraud,” (emphasis added).
– – –
Laura Baigert is a senior reporter at The Star News Network, where she covers stories for The Tennessee Star and The Georgia Star News.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 15, 2021 9:47:10 GMT -5
WHY DID BALLOTS SCANNED OFFSITE CONTINUE TO BE DELIVERED TO MARICOPA ELECTIONS CENTER AFTER VOTING ENDED?
BY TEXANS JACK & DODIE ON JUNE 13, 2021
Thousands of mail-in ballots in pristine condition in Fulton County, Georgia suddenly showed up after the 2020 presidential election. The same scenario simultaneously occurred in Maricopa County, Arizona.
They were printed by Runbeck Election Services in Phoenix, Arizona. This is the same company local media reported on regarding Rey Valenzuela, elections director, and Kevin Runbeck, owner of the printing company.
Brian Runbeck, a significant employee, has been a prolific financial contributor to Democratic campaigns and causes, records show.
(Note: The reference by Valenzuela has been taken down from the Runbeck website.)
SWORN TESTIMONY:
When Rudy Giuliani and Arizona state legislatures held public hearings regarding the Maricopa County election fraud of November 2020, among the most compelling sworn testimonies came from elections witness Jan Bryant.
Her testimony coincided with others and may explain Arizona audit director Ken Bennett’s later revelation that Dominion Voting Systems had refused to comply with a subpoena to turn over passwords to its Maricopa County voting machines.
During the hearing on November 30, 2020, Bryant testified under oath that not even county IT staff were allowed access to the machines.
Bryant witnessed Dominion employees with a laptop computer in the counting room during the six days she worked at the Maricopa County Election Center.
During questioning by Republican state Rep. Mark Finchem, Bryant said there were daily election ballot deliveries to the center by Runbeck Election Services. According to witness testimony, these deliveries happened from Nov. 3 to at least Nov. 10.
Repeated explanations by supervisors at that time was that “Runbeck has high speed scanners,” Bryant said. She was told the ballots were scanned offsite by Runbeck and then delivered to the Maricopa County Election Center.
Transcript Quotes from Bryant’s testimony:
Jan Bryant: …ten days before they quit tabulating they thought they were done. And then more truck loads of ballots would come in. And I’m like, how can you not know how many ballots are still out there.
State House Rep. David L. Cook: Mr. Chairman I’m sorry. WOULD YOU REPEAT THAT. They thought they were done, and then there was WHAT?
Jan Bryant: They thought they were done multiple times. Multiple times the people that were running the rooms thought they were done (counting ballots), or almost done. Or were gonna be done Wednesday morning (Nov. 4th), then Thursday morning (Nov. 5th), then Friday morning. Then it went on the whole next week. And I’m like, I asked the question, You don’t know how many ballots are still left to come in? I don’t know who does, again…process…project management, but zero.
AZ Reps: David L. Cook and Mark Finchem State House Rep. Mark Finchem: On that point Ma’am, I’m tracking with you but, what day did the truck show up?
Jan Bryant: Every day, yeah, every day.
Mark Finchem: OK. Just a minute. I want to make sure we capture this properly. So there were trucks that showed up on the 3rd, and then the 4th, and then the 5th, and how long did that go on. How many days?
Jan Bryant: I wasn’t there the whole last week. My last day was the 10th and they were still coming in. They were coming from a company called Runbeck, that does the high speed scanning and printing of duplications, and I think the military ballots. And now I’m getting out of my comfort level here talking about this. I don’t know what they are doing but those ballots are coming in from a high speed scanning company called Runbeck that…. apparently you haven’t heard of Runbeck.
Mark Finchem: No, I’ve heard of Runbeck Ma’am. What I’m trying to figure out is whether they printed them or if they scanned them. And if they scanned them offsite, to what purpose?
Jan Bryant: I can’t tell you.
Mark Finchem: Wasn’t that your job to scan them? I mean, not your job, but the (MCTEC).
Jan Bryant: No, all the high speed scanning happens at Runbeck. So, those ballots go to Runbeck. As far as I know there were no observers there. I don’t know. I never got called to work at Runbeck. That’s all I can tell you.
Mark Finchem: No that’s fine. Your observation is useful here. What you’re telling me is the scanning wasn’t actually done on site at a Maricopa County structure. It was done someplace else.
Jan Bryant: Where they have very high speed scanners.
Mark Finchem: Right now I really don’t care what the speed is. I want to know were they Dominion scanners?
Jan Bryant: No, no, I don’t think it has anything to do with Dominion.
Mark Finchem: I’m trying to understand what was the purpose of scanning them in advance of them being tabulated on the Dominion equipment.
Jan Bryant: They were duplicate, duplications. The ballots that wouldn’t read through the tabulation machines. They were ballots that came in from Military and overseas. But there were more ballots than that. So I don’t know where the rest of them were coming from. Because they kept bringing trays of them in. So I don’t know where they were coming from. That’s a question for the county employees to explain to you, where those ballots came from that whole next week. I don’t know where they came from.
Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Bret Roberts
Rudy Giuliani: So you were there from Nov. 3rd through the 10th. Seven days later (after election) ballots were still coming in.
Jan Bryant: Yes.
Rudy Giuliani: Were those ballots counted?
Jan Bryant: I watched them go through the tabulation machines. And I watched people working on the adjudication of those ballots.
Rudy Giuliani: And how many ballots…
Jan Bryant: Oh, I don’t know.
Rudy Giuliani: What was the largest number you saw in one day. Just a guess. How many cartons?
Jan Bryant: …there was usually 2 or 3 shifts. I wanna say one day they thought 90,000 was a good number, for a shift. And if they were running multiple shifts a day. It was somewhere between the 3rd and the 10th.
State House Rep. Bret Roberts: I am assuming these were not early ballots in any way shape or form. I’m just kind of curious, did anything stand out to you as far as these new ballots, didn’t know where they were coming from, as far as a physical appearance in any way?
Jan Bryant: No. Everything… they just looked like ballots. Just kept coming. They all came in the same bins.
Runbeck: Democrat Financial Contributor
Kevin Runbeck’s brother, Brian, although not listed on the website as an executive with the company, is an employee of Runbeck Election Services. He has also been a regular financial contributor to Democratic organizations, including Biden for President and Act Blue.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 15, 2021 10:02:05 GMT -5
Just wanted to remind everyone.........
NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS. MOVE ALONG.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 22, 2021 20:49:26 GMT -5
EPSHTEYN SAYS CONSTITUTION DOES NOT PROHIBIT TRUMP REINSTATEMENT, MATTER HAS NEVER BEEN RULED UPON
During an interview with Dr. Gina Loudon on Real America's Voice, Epshteyn, a former Trump 2020 strategic advisor, predicted that the matter will land in nation's high court.
By Alex Nitzberg Updated: June 21, 2021 - 10:21pm
Boris Epshteyn said that no one can state for certain that it would be unconstitutional for former President Donald Trump to be reinstated to the presidency since the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit reinstatement and the issue has never been ruled upon.
During an interview with Dr. Gina Loudon on Real America's Voice, Epshteyn, a former Trump 2020 strategic advisor, predicted that the matter will land in the nation's high court.
Epshteyn said that "the interplay of the 10th Amendment" to the U.S. Constitution, the 12th Amendment and Article II, "would suggest that states do have a right to decertify. And from then, it's an open question what happens next."
He said that after information becomes available from state audits, "decertification should happen because that's the correct step from the states. And from then on in terms of deciding what to do about the federal election, well, there's gonna be an open question," he noted, remarking that he believes that the matter will go before the Supreme Court.
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Post by Fasthands25 on Jun 26, 2021 4:45:17 GMT -5
IMMMMM BBBBBAAAAACCCCKKKKKKKK!
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Post by Fasthands25 on Jun 26, 2021 4:45:47 GMT -5
Been trying to get J A C K E D
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Post by Fasthands25 on Jun 26, 2021 4:46:04 GMT -5
So I can get
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Post by Fasthands25 on Jun 26, 2021 4:46:33 GMT -5
Some P U S S Y!
WOOOOOOO!
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Post by cybergod on Jun 27, 2021 16:55:10 GMT -5
^^^ I recommend ANDROGEL. Daily application plus four insanely intense workouts per week is all it takes....for years, of course. I'm speaking from personal experience.... ...Not about the insane workouts. Just the ANDROGEL. I can't say it helps build muscle mass, but it IS a naturally occuring male steroid. All I know is, it helps my dick still get hard at age 69. Now, if I could only remember what to do with it....
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Post by cybergod on Jun 27, 2021 17:01:33 GMT -5
Oh yeah, the Maricopa County forensic election-audit concluded yesterday.
The report is due out in July or August. Rumor has it that there is a vote-count discrepancy of a QUARTER MILLION.
Can't wait to hear what ridiculous spin our Treasonous Mainstream Media attempts to put on THAT.
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Post by cybergod on Jun 27, 2021 19:26:38 GMT -5
From The New York Times (of all places):
IN ARIZONA, GOP LAWMAKERS STRIP POWER FROM A DEMOCRAT Michael Wines Sun, June 27, 2021, 11:37 AM
WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled state Legislature in Arizona voted Thursday to revoke the Democratic secretary of state’s legal authority in election-related lawsuits, handing that power instead to the Republican attorney general.
The move added more discord to the politics of a state already roiled by the widely derided move by Senate Republicans to commission a private firm to recount the vote six months after the November election. And it was the latest in a long series of moves in recent years by Republicans to strip elected Democrats of money and power in states under GOP control.
The measure was part of a grab bag of proposals inserted into major budget legislation, including several actions that appeared to address conspiracy theories alleging manipulated elections that some Republicans lawmakers have promoted. One of the items allotted $500,000 for a study of whether social media sites tried to interfere in state elections by promoting Democrats or censoring Republicans.
The state House approved the legislation late Thursday. It now goes to Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, who has the power to accept or reject individual parts of the measure.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Mark Brnovich have sparred before over election lawsuits, with Brnovich arguing that Hobbs would not adequately defend the state against suits, some of them filed by Democrats, that seek to broaden access to the ballot. Hobbs has denied the charge.
The bill approved Thursday gives Brnovich’s office exclusive control of such lawsuits, but only through Jan. 2, 2023 — when the winners of the next elections for both offices would be about to take power. The aim is to ensure that the authority given to Brnovich would not transfer to any Democrat who won the next race for attorney general.
On Friday, Hobbs called the move “egregious,” saying Republicans were “weaponizing the process to take retribution against my office.”
The move against Hobbs continues a Republican strategy of weakening elected Democrats’ authority that dates at least to 2016, when the GOP-controlled Legislature in North Carolina stripped the state’s executive branch of political appointments and control of state and county election boards just before Roy Cooper, a Democrat, took over as governor.
Lawmakers said then that Democrats had behaved similarly in the past, citing a Democratic governor’s decision in 1976 to oust 169 policymakers hired by Republicans. But similar tactics have since been employed to weaken new Democratic governors in Kansas, Wisconsin and Michigan. Democrats in many states with Republican-controlled legislatures have fought efforts to curb their governors’ emergency powers to deal with the pandemic.
Most recently, Georgia Republicans have been in the forefront of GOP attempts nationwide to exert more control over local election officials. In both Georgia and Kansas, legislators even voted to defang the offices of Republican secretaries of state who had defended the security and fairness of elections.
Most other election provisions in the Arizona budget legislation are billed as safeguards against fraud, almost none of which has been found in the past election. One orders a review of voter registration databases in counties with more than 1 million residents — that is, the counties that are home to the Democrat-leaning cities of Phoenix and Tucson.
A new Election Integrity Fund would dole money to county election officials to toughen security and to finance hand counts of ballots after elections. That would appear to open the door to more fraud investigations like the Republican-ordered review of November election ballots in Maricopa County, which was carried by President Joe Biden and Arizona’s two Democratic senators.
That effort has been mocked by experts for its high-resolution examination of ballots for evidence of fakery, including bamboo fibers and watermarks that, according to a QAnon conspiracy theory, are visible only under ultraviolet light.
But the legislation requires all future ballots to contain at least three anti-fraud countermeasures like holograms, watermarks, ultraviolet-visible numbers or intricate engravings and special inks.
It also appropriates $500,000 to determine whether social media and search engine algorithms are biased for or against “one or more candidates of a political party” and whether candidates’ access to them has been restricted. The legislation suggests that such actions could amount to in-kind contributions to candidates or parties that were not reported under Arizona law.
Republican legislators cast the anti-fraud clauses as common-sense steps to make elections safer. State Sen. Sonny Borrelli, who proposed the changes to ballots, said many of the countermeasures were already used to make it hard to produce counterfeit currency.
“Shouldn’t your ballot have the same protections?” he said.
The bill drew immediate criticism from voting-rights advocates, who called its provisions the stuff of conspiracy theories. “This is legislating based on the big lie,” said Emily Kirkland, the executive director of one group, Progress Arizona. “And it’s a really dangerous way to approach making law.”
County election officials said they were skeptical about whether the ballot countermeasures were either needed or practical. Aside from the cost, it is unclear whether there are enough printing companies that are able to produce such ballots to allow for competitive bidding on printing contracts, said Leslie Hoffman, the recorder in Yavapai County, whose main city is Prescott.
The ballots also would require new equipment to verify their authenticity before being tabulated, and it is unclear whether existing tabulators would even accept them, said Jennifer Marson, the executive director of the Arizona Association of Counties.
“This gives the impression that everyone’s ready to go and all we have to do is opt in” to the new countermeasures, she said. “And everything is not ready to go.”
© 2021 The New York Times Company
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