https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-return-of-american-co...

There are a lot of irregularities and several states have already forced hand recounts because the margins are so close.

In PA and NV, they kicked out GOP observers. Why? Even if there is no foul play, that is a terrible thing to do. It. Looks. Bad. And it's illegal. Votes need to be tallied in front of both parties. They may have invalided hundreds of thousands of votes depending on a lawsuit.

Election fraud and voter fraud are very difficult to prove. America is no stranger to it (Remember Bush v Gore and Diabold voting machines?) But I think people had some hope the system was that corrupt. They were wrong, and America is.

That is what happened here. The GOP poll monitors kept on breaking the rules and acting like asses. And they were eventually kicked out, totally legally and according to the rules they signed up for. And the Democratic poll watchers clapped, which may be 'unseemly' but isn't proof of "elections irregularities".

The president, with the 1/4 billion he raised, the full support of the GOP and their allies and supporters _at every level of every government_ and with the backing of the federal government were unable to raise a lawsuit that could convince even judges appointed by Trump. If there was evidence of fraud that could sway the election they would have found it, period. They didn't, ergo it doesn't exist.

The reason people didn't have confidence in the most basic aspect of democracy is because they have been lied to endlessly. Without ANY knowledge of how the system works, they took these lies at their face value. Many things were done to assuage those concerns, and they dismissed the evidence out of hand.

For example, Georgia.... does paper ballots counted by optical tabulators. They did a by-hand recount. The hand-counted totals matched the machine tabulation. This totally rules out any computer or machine problems. But people STILL bring up the 'dominion changed the votes' lies.

And you are encouraging it with your irresponsible comment. You're feeding the lies, by encouraging a sense of 'uncertantity' when there is NOT uncertantity. The GOP Secretary of State in Georgia just presided over 2 elections which delivered major Democratic wins. Suggesting that he is 'on the take' just illustrates the sheer desperation of the losers of this election will take to cast any shadow of doubt on anyone if it comforts the sting of their loss, even as they know that their wild accusations will never have an end, and now resembles a literal witch hunt. When your cast of enemies has to grow to include the GOP leaders in the Senate, and the VP, both of who have endlessly protected Trump, then you really don't have reality on your side.

Why dismiss everyone and then tell some people to go back to work with the process half broken? It's bad optics and it's a blatant ethical problem.

We're at an impasse because we're literally seeing the same thing and also seeing two totally different things. It's kinda amazing, and tragic. I'm sure you feel the same.

"Furthermore, in an election conducted in the midst of a pandemic, each of the 159 counties was required to balance the close presence of poll watchers to election workers against the requirements for social distancing essential for the protection of public health."

"As Trump-appointed federal district court Judge Grimberg found, there is no legal “authority providing for a right to unrestrained observation or monitoring of vote counting, recounting, or auditing.”

"Second, there is no right under federal or state law for observers to stand at a particular distance or have a particular view of ballots. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Third Circuit have rejected such claims. As the Third Circuit noted: “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the Election Code requires only that poll watchers be in the room, not that they be within any specific distance of the ballots.” Id. (citing In re Canvassing Observation, No. 30 EAP 2020, 2020 WL 6737895, at *8-9 (Pa. Nov. 17, 2020)). Similarly, there is no federal right protecting the location or view of observers. Id. (noting that the Campaign “cites no federal authority regulating poll watchers or notice and cure.”). As long as observers were allowed in the room, which they were, complaints about minor deviations in the location and view of observers are legally insufficient.66"

In other words, the restrictions that were placed on observers were consistent with the law, and that is what the courts have ruled. I am willing to accept for the sake of argument that the restrictions were legal, but that's not the point. The point is that no one disputes that there were such restrictions. Nor do I see anyone disputing that the restrictions would have made it harder or impossible for election observers to detect fraud. The defense they put up is just that no fraud was detected, and that the restrictions were legal.

See: "The Trump Campaign and its surrogates have tried, unsuccessfully, to equate an alleged lack of observer access with fraudulent results. There has been no credible evidence of significant voter fraud presented in any form. The suggestion that the Trump Campaign and its surrogates were prevented from detecting fraud, and that is tantamount to evidence that there must have been fraud, is absurd."

I don't think that suggestion is absurd at all, and neither do tens of millions of other Americans. Members of the Democrat party viciously, bitterly hate Trump, and everyone knows it. Why would we not suspect them of cheating, if they made it difficult or impossible for anyone to tell?

Again, this is based on the dozens of testimony/affidavits I've heard & read. If there is evidence to the contrary for the above claims, I haven't seen it.

> That's just not how it works. Even _granting_ the premise, it's not "You couldn't see well enough? Well let's disenfrancise a few hundred thousand people." That's not a reasonable remedy by any stretch of either common sense or law.

How should it work? It's not a fair system either to kick out all of the observers, and then claim that "no fraud happened" after kicking out everyone who was there to detect fraud.

The election laws exist for a reason and these laws were basically outright ignored.

Keep in mind, that even with the limited observation, there is testimony that points to specific cases of fraud. For example, during the duplication process, when both Biden and Trump are filled in, the vote (according to testimony) went to Biden. When a challenge was raised, the challenge was ignored. This is one example of many where challenges were raised and ignored.

> You don't think it's more likely that the witnesses and affidavits they're using are subpar because that's the best they have?

I don't know why they chose to select those witnesses to depose, and not the others. Perhaps Binnall personally felt those were his strongest witnesses. Maybe the other witnesses were not available to testify (or did not want to seek out the harassment).

I don't know. Judges are fallible, as are laywers, and people.

I can only tell you what I personally believe based on the evidence/testimony I have heard & read, is that there is compelling evidence and its a legitimate case worth hearing, and should not be dismissed so casually as it has often been by the judges so far.

(Please be considerate with the downvotes. I'm a new user, and I'm trying to be constructive with my posts, yet getting rate-limited due to negative karma.)

The lawsuits in PA regarding kicking out GOP observers have been thrown out repeatedly, at this point the Trump campaign had to drop the claims about GOP observers not being allowed in from their lawsuits. Because there is zero basis to any of it.

The margins are close enough to recount, and nobody is arguing against a legal recount. But any reasonable person also recognizes that historically recounts don't change totals by tens of thousands of votes, so it is very unlikely to matter. The Florida results in the 2000 election you mention were much much closer than any state is in 2020.

Voter fraud is not at all difficult to prove. Many studies ballots have been analyzed in excruciating detail after elections, and surely will be done again this election. Voter fraud in the US is always extraordinarily rare. So far this election, one single case has been found in PA, and it was from a Trump supporter submitting a mail in ballot for his dead mother.

Not only are your claims untrue, they are so unfounded that there is hardly anything at all there to even refute https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/11/13/trump-vote...

>> No one told observers they had to leave, and both an independent monitor and an investigator oversaw the vote count, according to state and county officials.

The observers dispute this, and reaffirm their claim that they were asked to leave.

>> Confusion arose when election workers thought they were done for the night, but then were instructed to continue scanning ballots.

Yes, everyone was aware that vote counting was supposed to stop at 11pm but after they got rid of everyone else, this one team continued to count ballots that had been prepped and hidden.

> But investigators who reviewed the entire surveillance tape confirmed it showed “normal ballot processing,” according to Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the secretary of state’s office.

It's normal to do this? Perhaps the problem here is that the actual activities are not in dispute, but one party considers them normal and one party is unhappy that fraud is considered normal.

>> After a short period when observers weren’t present, an independent state election board monitor arrived to oversee the scanning at 11:52 p.m., Barron said. A state investigator arrived at 12:15 a.m. Both individuals remained at the facility until the count concluded for the night, he said. The Georgia secretary of state’s office said it was aware of the late-night counting, and confirmed that both its investigator and an independent monitor observed scanning “until it was halted for the night.” The office said it had launched an investigation into why partisan poll observers left before scanning ended.

Sounds like we really need to get that investigative report.

Your whole argument boils down to "there's no need for observers because I trust the process". The whole point of observers is that it shouldn't be necessary to just trust the process. Right now what you and the media and HN are telling me, on pain of cancellation, is that 100% of the essentially self-selected people involved in the election are honest. That all of the dishonest people decided it was too much bother to do a day's work to influence the outcome of the election, because The Process is infallible. I guess I should be thankful that all the dishonest people didn't bother voting either, right?

"Or the baseless claim that Republican observers were not present for the counting of ballots in Michigan or Pennsylvania - they were." - It's not baseless, there's a video of the republicans being barred from watching the vote. Are you really that naïve as to not even question why one party would insist on counting the votes unilaterally in secret and are you that much of a simpleton to think that people wouldn't cheat for a hell of a lot less?

There's also that whole constitution thing that says election rules are set by the state legislature, not the Governor nor the Supreme Court. The will of the commonwealth never intended to need interpreting because it's the literal republic representation that this country is founded on. Democracies always fail when people learn they can vote themselves more money by going into unlimited debt until its no longer unlimited one day.

This is what CBS says:

> Claim: "In Philadelphia, observers have been kept far away — so far that people are using binoculars to try and see — and there's been tremendous problems caused. They put paper on all of the windows so you can't see in."

> Rating: Somewhat true

> The Philadelphia Inquirer did photograph an unidentified poll watcher using binoculars while workers can be seen in the background counting ballots inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center. But it's unclear how far away the observer was from the vote-counters, and the photo is dated November 3, Election Day.

By the way CBS, great job on your fact-checks. It's not "unclear", there is literally a video of it where it's crystal clear how far away the observers were. "Somewhat" true, jesus christ.

With the whole thing being on camera and knowing that no secret ballot suitcases were smuggled in, are we to believe that in the absence of observers they somehow rigged the counting machines to mis-scan these ballots, even though the hand recount for Fulton only differed from the initial count by 0.07%?

Their State courts also rules to extend the voting deadline for mail-in, which goes against their own laws and may end up going against the constitution.

PA has not been confirmed on some media sites; and been switched back to grey. It will likely make it to the Supreme Cort.

Please stop spreading misinformation. There is a lot of credible voter irregularities. Due process violations occurred in PA and NV (observers not allowed access) and in Detroit (observers were told to go home when 120k votes came in at 4am .. and then those votes changed to 12k).

There are a lot of questionable aspects to this election and they all need to be investigated. Please at least realize that investigation needs to happen. If there are no issues, investigations should not be a big deal. So far every state in question has been actively hindering transparency.

This could turn into one of the most disputed elections of our time and the media is trying to dismiss all the irregularities. This is incredibly dangerous, as we could potentially see riots that would make May look like a Canadian hockey game after party.

In the video you linked no one is thrown out, they are kept out.

Of course fraud happens, but plenty of studies show that it so rare that races need to be very tight for it to affect the outcome.

I agree that transparency is an issue, but ballot counting are state and county or township run operations. You can expect a lot of inconsistencies and mistakes. I'm sure you've heard Hanlon's razor.

Political divide is the problem, which is why I have issue with your post. You're repeating a lot of the baseless claims that are furthering the divide.

A large problem is you've seen everyone else as the other group, and your group as persecuted, so to me, it looks like you are accepting right wing talking points without critical thought. I promise you I don't think every single GOP/Republican is a nazi, but some of them are feeding you misinformation.

For example, there were no observers kicked out in PA. This claim famously went to court where the Trump's lawyers were forced to admit that they had the same number of observers as democrats before having their case thrown out [1].

Likewise in GA, where you have a completely Republican controlled voter apparatus, you have come to believe that the governor, secretary of state and many of the republican workers for the state have decided to sloppily tilt the state in Biden's favor, for seemingly no reason.

Also consider, that in many of these cases, they are being presided over by Republican judges (or judges appointed by Republican presidents), as is the case with the majority of our judicial system. McConnell famously prevented Obama from making many court appointments, while Trump has made hundreds. The further you look into this, the voter fraud story would have required co-ordination between not only the democratic party across the country, but also with several Republican staffers and judges. Voter Fraud of this magnitude would require an incredible grand conspiracy but somehow that is more believable to many than the fact Trump lost.

Again, I don't believe every single GOP/Republican is a Nazi, but the media wing seems to be working incredibly hard to make you believe that there is something nefarious going on in this election when there hasn't been any credible proof there is. Maybe that's not what a Nazi would do, but I implore that you take an unbaised look at what is being said, and what is actually happening on the ground.

[1] https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1324485343274557443

> Media and observers left as employees packed up. But Fulton’s election director called a supervisor at State Farm a few minutes later, telling them to keep counting after the Secretary of State’s office called and said they shouldn’t stop counting for the night so early.

So the sources you listed literally confirm that they kept counting after they sent observers home. You seriously don't see that as a problem? I do. There are tons of volunteers who would gladly stay up all night to help observe. Over and over and over again, observers were sent home and counting continued.

All these articles that start with "debunked" go on to say this exact same thing happened, and then dismiss it as normal counting behavior. Do you understand why myself, and millions of Americans, have trouble with these stories? The headline frames the article, and then the article contracts the headline.

Did you ... did you actually read the stories, or just past random links based on the headlines?

Every time we criticize Georgia, we should remember that the President's party is the one in charge of elections there, and the one in charge of auditing and assuring security of those elections. There is every incentive for the state election commission to cry foul if there was foul to cry; the fact they have not is extremely telling, and one really has to widen the conspiracy net to come up with an explanation that puts the state election commission of Georgia in on a conspiracy to defraud the electoral process.

> there is not institutional effort to investigate the irregularities

I don't know what you would consider "institutional effort," but there are absolutely processes for investigating irregularities and multiple investigations are currently in progress. Georgia just concluded one such audit today. https://www.ajc.com/politics/no-fraud-georgia-audit-confirms... - they don't get reported on in detail because, to be honest, the details are boring and therefore don't make for very good news; they have about as much fun as a tax audit with even fewer exciting variables. and to really get a big picture of what's going on, one has to track the news from multiple states, since every state manages its own balloting system.

A full and exhaustive audit takes time. The President commissioned such an audit at the federal level for the 2016 election, and it resolved in 2018, finding an absolute handful of actionable cases. I would expect the audits that are going on now to continue, as multiple parties are interested in pursuing them. But they take time; the one for 2016 took two years.

You are mostly referring to actual nonsense which was discussed and debunked in great detail in the over 100 post-election lawsuits that these doofuses lost. States (red and blue) and state officials responded to all of the criticisms in clear and convincing detail. Most of these boil down to the Republican party encouraging unqualified people to serve as poll watchers without training, and then whenever they didn't understand routine election processes they jumped to the conclusion there was a vast conspiracy against them. You obviously were able to internalize the criticisms via osmosis or via your choice of media diet, but somehow were able to avoid either being able to refute the criticisms from first principles or actually seeking evidence for them.

One special note: Most of the observers removed were violating obvious and reasonable rules -- many of them were COVID deniers who felt if they couldn't breathe maskless on poll workers their first amendment rights were being suppressed. At the time, many were yelling "STOP THE COUNT", because the message of the night from the president on down was that it was illegal to count votes after polls closed.

I used ZERO hyperbole in my original comment. I didn't even add any new information. All the stuff I said is documented in great detail in the lawsuit itself. It's not hyperbole to say the people being sued believe any of this. If there is something you believe is not literally true, let me know and I'll provide a source, but again the vast majority of this is directly documented in the suit that is the subject of this thread.

There's no need to believe the suitcases were smuggled in, although you yourself appear to have doubts in that direction. For example, they could be perfectly authentic ballots with some flawed provenance. A priori this seems the most plausible explanation.

> rather than simply having left.

Leaving a semi-public place such as an arena or an office building for the night has the result of not being permitted back in until the next public opening. Your arguments have turned to disingenuity and open trolling.

Their effects are that, obviously, the observers cannot watch nearly as many poll workers, and cannot watch them as clearly.

Observers in past cycles have had no problems approaching poll workers and inspecting the very materials they are working with, asking them to see a signature or an entry on the computer or whatever. In this election, at least in the polling locations where election fraud is alleged, observers (at least Republican ones) were prohibited from coming within 6 feet of workers, unless they already had an objection, which makes it impossible to see many of the things you might object to.

It by no means requires conspiracy by hundreds. It requires action by hundreds, but they don't have to be acting together by any means. And keep in mind that these people are lifelong committed Democrats, who hate Trump viciously - no one could possibly deny how Democrats feel about Trump.

No one trusted the polls this time since they were so wrong in 2016. Trump certainly didn't, and that's who you suggested knew he was going to lose.

It's absolutely possible Trump tried to steal wisconsin and failed, possibly due to Democrats stealing it better. In either case, there is no basis upon which to claim Trump knew he was going to lose.

The facts I present are clear and undisputed by anyone vaguely familiar with the political situation in this country. Democrats viciously hate Trump. Democrats run the election facilities in the major cities in the 6 contested states. Observers were obstructed from carrying out their duties in a meaningful capacity in those locations.

They wanted to get Trump out by any means. They had the means to steal it. There is no publicly known smoking gun, but all publicly available facts point clearly and loudly to them having done it.