Wall Street Journal (WSJ), January 26, 2022, Opinion Page
Note from Lee…take the time to scan this entire summary - it may change what you believe about the 2020 elections and whether you think we need audits and improvements or it is the safest process the whole country has. Massive fraud is and has been off the table - liberals will keep bringing it up to hide actual data such as this.If curious Republicans want to know what happened in 2020, this is the best summation to date. It was written by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a policy shop with conservative bona fides that supported many of Mr. Trump’s policies. As a reminder, President Biden won Wisconsin by ~20,000 votes.
Extracted from the report: Many people are quoted as saying the 2020 election was “stolen.” There is a second distinct, but also related issue. Were votes cast in a lawful manner? It is almost certain that in Wisconsin’s 2020 election the number of votes that did not comply with existing legal requirements exceeded Joe Biden’s margin of victory. The questions of fraud and unlawful processes are related. The required legal processes for casting a ballot exist for good reasons, including the prevention of fraud and the assurance that the election is even-handed, i.e., that the process does not provide greater or lesser opportunity to vote to supporters of one candidate than that of the others. This does not necessarily mean that Biden did not win a majority of eligible votes. We looked for evidence that failure to follow proper procedures was exploited to commit fraud (in the first sense in which we have used this term). By this measure, there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump.
Lee…This, I believe, captures the 2020 nationwide election results - procedures were changed at the last minute that violated existing laws, but massive widespread fraud was not present. Some may believe these changes were required due to the pandemic but will need to explain to the rest of us why the legislature wasn’t correctly used? What will be the next reason that election processes need to be changed at the last minute…and which party will start it? For example, in Wisconsin this month, a judge declared that drop boxes are illegal under Wisconsin law. I blame Trump for framing the entire controversy around fraud - he should have used the ‘legality’ of it instead.The Republicans also failed to start court cases before the election took place, a critical mistake that the courts considered despite the failure by states to follow existing laws.
Summary of findings include:
We found limited instances (300) in which ineligible persons voted or attempted to cast ballots. This appears to occur every election. However, prosecutors rarely prosecute these cases and, as a result, it gives the impression that the problem is not significant.
We identified 130 voters across the state of Wisconsin who were flagged by Registration List Alerts forbeing a felon but nonetheless cast a ballot in the November election.
We identified 42 ballots cast, statewide, by deceased voters. Nearly all were properly rejected by local clerks. There are two instances where a possibly deceased voter had their ballot counted.
We found no evidence of more than one vote being cast in the name of the same voter. However, we should note our review was limited to the state of Wisconsin, meaning that someone could, theoretically, have voted in another state.
WILL’s review found that jurisdictions that used Dominion voting machines had no effect on the expected vote total. Our analysis found Democrats actually did worse than expected in areas that used Dominion machines.
This widespread adoption of absentee ballot drop boxes, not provided for under Wisconsin law, was correlated with an increase of about 20,000 votes for Joe Biden, while having no significant effect on the vote for Trump. WILL does not claim that the voters who used drop boxes were ineligible voters or should have had their votes rejected. Absentee ballot drop boxes without established rules, parameters, or security presents an election vulnerability and a challenge to state law.
More than 265,000 Wisconsin voters adopted the ‘indefinitely confined’ status, meaning they received an absentee ballot and were exempt from the statewide photo ID requirements. The number of indefinitely confined voters increased from 66,611 in 2016 to 265,979 in 2020. The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously rebuked the Dane County clerk for encouraging voters to adopt this status in March 2020. In November, it confirmed that a person who did not wish to leave home due to the pandemic was not “indefinitely confined.” Only those voters who are indefinitely confined “because of age, physical illness, or infirmity, or is disabled for an indefinite period” qualify. Fear of contracting a disease (such as COVID) does not qualify. It is virtually certain that Wisconsin voters misused this status in 2020.
State and federal law requires Wisconsin to maintain accurate voter rolls. But the Wisconsin Elections Commission and local clerks refused to take the required steps in 2020 to remove outdated and inaccurate voter registrations—resulting in tens of thousands of active voter registrations tied to old addresses. Maintaining accurate voter registrations is a foundation of election administration and a critical bulwark against fraud. Instead, the 2020 election in Wisconsin occurred with tens of thousands of active voter registrations connected to individuals who moved.
Thousands of votes were cast by individuals remaining on the active Mover’s List. 5,329 voters voted in the election from their old address, and 13,757 voted from a new address while in active mover status.
We found that 23,361 Wisconsin voters in 2020 cast ballots despite failing their DMV check this year, meaning their name, address, and/or birthdate doesn’t match what is on file with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Democratic-leaning counties were disproportionately represented among DMV checks.
We found that 31,664 Wisconsin voters were in the National Change of Address Database. Among the subset where a new address was known, 7,151 moved to an address in a different state.
This review identified several practices by local election officials that are not uniform, and raise concerns about fair and equal treatment. While elections are largely decentralized in Wisconsin, every effort should be made to provide voters with equal access and treatment. But in-person absentee voting hours can differ from municipality to municipality, and election officials seem to be rejecting ballots or fixing them (curing) without much consistency. Legislative efforts should be made to ensure these practices are the same in every corner of the state. Legislative efforts should be made to ensure these practices are the same in every corner of the state.
On Election Night, many Republicans in Wisconsin went to bed thinking that Trump was likely to win the state, only to wake up the following morning to find that Joe Biden had taken the state’s electoral votes. Some have attributed this to a so-called “ballot dump” in Milwaukee that occurred in the middle of the night. This turned out to be okay since the Milwaukee area is primarily democratic voters and also were high users of absentee voting. But this “blue shift” still raises concerns. Do we want jurisdictions that are overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican to know how many votes are needed to erase a margin? At the very least, this can create an appearance of impropriety. That appearance was exacerbated by an ill-advised and unprofessional e-mail exchange between the director of the Milwaukee Election Commission and a Democratic party activist “joking” about “delivering just the margin needed at 3 a.m.”
Absentee ballot rejection rates were substantially lower in 2020 than in previous presidential elections. Either voters improved their capacity to avoid mistakes, or, more likely, election officials deliberately made efforts to ensure ballots were not rejected.
State law provides no legal authority for local election officials to fix, or “cure,” defects, mistakes, or missing information on absentee ballots. But the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) said they could—resulting in some municipalities curing ballots while others did not.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission unlawfully suspended the use of Special Voting Deputies for nursing homes and assisted living facilities in 2020—shrugging off standards in state law for the distribution and collection of absentee ballots in those settings. WILL surveyed 35 Wisconsin communities and found just two could provide records for use of Special Voting Deputies in 2020. Lee…what party do senior citizens favor by a large portion?
Private grants for election administration from the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), a non-profit largely funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, resulted in an increase in turnout in five Wisconsin cities—all voting heavily for Democrat Joe Biden. CTCL distributed more than $10 million to Wisconsin cities and municipalities in 2020 to assist with election administration and voter education during the pandemic. 86% of the funds were distributed to five Wisconsin cities: Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine. A statistical analysis finds significant increases in turnout for Democrats, approximately 8,000 votes statewide, as a result of the distribution of CTCL grants. Specifically, Biden’s vote increased by about 41 votes per municipality in cities that received CTCL grants relative to those that did not over 2016. No statistically significant effect was found for Trump.
Our bottom line is that, while we found little evidence of “fraud,” we did find that a substantial number of votes were not cast in accordance with legal requirements. While we could not find evidence that these votes were “fraudulent” in the sense of being cast by ineligible voters or nonexistent voters—particularly in numbers large enough to change the winner—the total number of votes cast unlawfully could have affected the outcome.
Final Statement from the report:
We do not believe the election was “stolen.” But it was not adequately secure. Reform is required. We can do better.
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The Best Summary of the 2020 Election
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Wall Street Journal (WSJ), January 26, 2022, Opinion Page
Note from Lee…take the time to scan this entire summary - it may change what you believe about the 2020 elections and whether you think we need audits and improvements or it is the safest process the whole country has. Massive fraud is and has been off the table - liberals will keep bringing it up to hide actual data such as this.If curious Republicans want to know what happened in 2020, this is the best summation to date. It was written by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a policy shop with conservative bona fides that supported many of Mr. Trump’s policies. As a reminder, President Biden won Wisconsin by ~20,000 votes.
Extracted from the report: Many people are quoted as saying the 2020 election was “stolen.” There is a second distinct, but also related issue. Were votes cast in a lawful manner? It is almost certain that in Wisconsin’s 2020 election the number of votes that did not comply with existing legal requirements exceeded Joe Biden’s margin of victory. The questions of fraud and unlawful processes are related. The required legal processes for casting a ballot exist for good reasons, including the prevention of fraud and the assurance that the election is even-handed, i.e., that the process does not provide greater or lesser opportunity to vote to supporters of one candidate than that of the others. This does not necessarily mean that Biden did not win a majority of eligible votes. We looked for evidence that failure to follow proper procedures was exploited to commit fraud (in the first sense in which we have used this term). By this measure, there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump.
Lee…This, I believe, captures the 2020 nationwide election results - procedures were changed at the last minute that violated existing laws, but massive widespread fraud was not present. Some may believe these changes were required due to the pandemic but will need to explain to the rest of us why the legislature wasn’t correctly used? What will be the next reason that election processes need to be changed at the last minute…and which party will start it? For example, in Wisconsin this month, a judge declared that drop boxes are illegal under Wisconsin law. I blame Trump for framing the entire controversy around fraud - he should have used the ‘legality’ of it instead. The Republicans also failed to start court cases before the election took place, a critical mistake that the courts considered despite the failure by states to follow existing laws.
Summary of findings include:
We found limited instances (300) in which ineligible persons voted or attempted to cast ballots. This appears to occur every election. However, prosecutors rarely prosecute these cases and, as a result, it gives the impression that the problem is not significant.
We identified 130 voters across the state of Wisconsin who were flagged by Registration List Alerts for being a felon but nonetheless cast a ballot in the November election.
We identified 42 ballots cast, statewide, by deceased voters. Nearly all were properly rejected by local clerks. There are two instances where a possibly deceased voter had their ballot counted.
We found no evidence of more than one vote being cast in the name of the same voter. However, we should note our review was limited to the state of Wisconsin, meaning that someone could, theoretically, have voted in another state.
WILL’s review found that jurisdictions that used Dominion voting machines had no effect on the expected vote total. Our analysis found Democrats actually did worse than expected in areas that used Dominion machines.
This widespread adoption of absentee ballot drop boxes, not provided for under Wisconsin law, was correlated with an increase of about 20,000 votes for Joe Biden, while having no significant effect on the vote for Trump. WILL does not claim that the voters who used drop boxes were ineligible voters or should have had their votes rejected. Absentee ballot drop boxes without established rules, parameters, or security presents an election vulnerability and a challenge to state law.
More than 265,000 Wisconsin voters adopted the ‘indefinitely confined’ status, meaning they received an absentee ballot and were exempt from the statewide photo ID requirements. The number of indefinitely confined voters increased from 66,611 in 2016 to 265,979 in 2020. The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously rebuked the Dane County clerk for encouraging voters to adopt this status in March 2020. In November, it confirmed that a person who did not wish to leave home due to the pandemic was not “indefinitely confined.” Only those voters who are indefinitely confined “because of age, physical illness, or infirmity, or is disabled for an indefinite period” qualify. Fear of contracting a disease (such as COVID) does not qualify. It is virtually certain that Wisconsin voters misused this status in 2020.
State and federal law requires Wisconsin to maintain accurate voter rolls. But the Wisconsin Elections Commission and local clerks refused to take the required steps in 2020 to remove outdated and inaccurate voter registrations—resulting in tens of thousands of active voter registrations tied to old addresses. Maintaining accurate voter registrations is a foundation of election administration and a critical bulwark against fraud. Instead, the 2020 election in Wisconsin occurred with tens of thousands of active voter registrations connected to individuals who moved.
Thousands of votes were cast by individuals remaining on the active Mover’s List. 5,329 voters voted in the election from their old address, and 13,757 voted from a new address while in active mover status.
We found that 23,361 Wisconsin voters in 2020 cast ballots despite failing their DMV check this year, meaning their name, address, and/or birthdate doesn’t match what is on file with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Democratic-leaning counties were disproportionately represented among DMV checks.
We found that 31,664 Wisconsin voters were in the National Change of Address Database. Among the subset where a new address was known, 7,151 moved to an address in a different state.
This review identified several practices by local election officials that are not uniform, and raise concerns about fair and equal treatment. While elections are largely decentralized in Wisconsin, every effort should be made to provide voters with equal access and treatment. But in-person absentee voting hours can differ from municipality to municipality, and election officials seem to be rejecting ballots or fixing them (curing) without much consistency. Legislative efforts should be made to ensure these practices are the same in every corner of the state. Legislative efforts should be made to ensure these practices are the same in every corner of the state.
On Election Night, many Republicans in Wisconsin went to bed thinking that Trump was likely to win the state, only to wake up the following morning to find that Joe Biden had taken the state’s electoral votes. Some have attributed this to a so-called “ballot dump” in Milwaukee that occurred in the middle of the night. This turned out to be okay since the Milwaukee area is primarily democratic voters and also were high users of absentee voting. But this “blue shift” still raises concerns. Do we want jurisdictions that are overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican to know how many votes are needed to erase a margin? At the very least, this can create an appearance of impropriety. That appearance was exacerbated by an ill-advised and unprofessional e-mail exchange between the director of the Milwaukee Election Commission and a Democratic party activist “joking” about “delivering just the margin needed at 3 a.m.”
Absentee ballot rejection rates were substantially lower in 2020 than in previous presidential elections. Either voters improved their capacity to avoid mistakes, or, more likely, election officials deliberately made efforts to ensure ballots were not rejected.
State law provides no legal authority for local election officials to fix, or “cure,” defects, mistakes, or missing information on absentee ballots. But the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) said they could—resulting in some municipalities curing ballots while others did not.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission unlawfully suspended the use of Special Voting Deputies for nursing homes and assisted living facilities in 2020—shrugging off standards in state law for the distribution and collection of absentee ballots in those settings. WILL surveyed 35 Wisconsin communities and found just two could provide records for use of Special Voting Deputies in 2020. Lee…what party do senior citizens favor by a large portion?
Private grants for election administration from the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), a non-profit largely funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, resulted in an increase in turnout in five Wisconsin cities—all voting heavily for Democrat Joe Biden. CTCL distributed more than $10 million to Wisconsin cities and municipalities in 2020 to assist with election administration and voter education during the pandemic. 86% of the funds were distributed to five Wisconsin cities: Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine. A statistical analysis finds significant increases in turnout for Democrats, approximately 8,000 votes statewide, as a result of the distribution of CTCL grants. Specifically, Biden’s vote increased by about 41 votes per municipality in cities that received CTCL grants relative to those that did not over 2016. No statistically significant effect was found for Trump.
Our bottom line is that, while we found little evidence of “fraud,” we did find that a substantial number of votes were not cast in accordance with legal requirements. While we could not find evidence that these votes were “fraudulent” in the sense of being cast by ineligible voters or nonexistent voters—particularly in numbers large enough to change the winner—the total number of votes cast unlawfully could have affected the outcome.
Final Statement from the report:
We do not believe the election was “stolen.” But it was not adequately secure. Reform is required. We can do better.
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