The Audacity Of Audits And The Dems Disturbing Disdain For Election Integrity

The Arizona audit is now done and past.  Democrats and the media have been crowing that it proves the 2020 election was fair, honest, and true because the auditor’s count of paper ballots closely agreed with the original count.  They even found a few more ballots for Joe Biden, so obviously we have a secure election system.  Horse exhaust!

All that the ballot counts showed was that everyone was capable of elementary school counting and basic arithmetic.  What the rest of the audit really showed was that there was massive fraud, the election was anything but fair, honest, and true, and we have no idea who actually won the Presidential election in Arizona.  Among those pieces of paper that were counted were tens of  thousands of duplicate ballots, of ballots from people who were not legitimate voters because they had moved or weren’t added to the voter rolls until after the election.  All the legitimate and fraudulent ballots had been mingled together, though, so it was impossible to determine which ballots were legitimate and which should not have been counted.

The detected fraud far exceeded the margin of victory.

A Donkey’s Eye View

Of course, the media and Democrat operatives have downplayed those findings, instead reporting how the audit demolished those baseless claims that Trump won the 2020 election, how the audit should restore America’s faith in the integrity of its elections, and how Republicans are spreading lies and using false claims of fraud to enact legislation for voter suppression.  The Democrats are the ones working to preserve our Democracy and it is time to stop listening to all this nonsense about holding unnecessary partisan audits in other states.  After all, MAGA people are domestic terrorists who should all be in prison or shot or something.

I must admit, the visible enthusiasm for audits appears to have waned.  The Arizona results were disappointing for many who expected that they would show Donald Trump was the legitimate winner in Arizona.  What the results showed, though, was even more significant and very frightening.  They showed that the election should never have been certified, that the level of fraud was so massive that it far exceeded the margin of victory, making the outcome indeterminate – we don’t know who actually won.

Excuses, Excuses

Questions were raised before the certification, but they were ignored by election officials, courts, state Attorneys General, and even legislatures in the rush to have Biden declared the winner.  In part, they used the excuse that election fraud has always been present, but only affected a few votes in numbers that could not affect the outcome.  Such fraud was only to be expected and could be ignored.  Arizona has shown that the assumption of minor levels of fraud is wrong.  That brings us back to the question of audits.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Audits

In real life, audits serve at least two purposes.  One is to provide assurance that the results that were audited were correct.  For example, audited financial statements provide shareholders with the assurance that the corporate presentations of profits, losses, and other financial measures can be trusted to be accurate.

A second purpose of an audit is to detect errors, either accidental or that reflect actual attempts to mislead, otherwise known as fraud.  Sometimes you don’t know what the outcome of an audit might be.  It might start out as a routine process to provide assurance that turns out to discover fraud, or it might be initiated as part of a potential fraud investigation that shows innocence.  Either way, the audit is a valuable exercise.

Legitimate Mistrust

Right now, there is great mistrust of our current electoral system.  Reports indicating the possibility of significant fraud in the 2020 election have come from nearly every state.  Affidavits offered under penalty of perjury have been collected, alleging direct observation of significant fraudulent activity.  Numerous private investigations have shown numerous irregularities in the election process, in machine operation, and numerous other areas.

All this information has contributed to a huge mistrust of our electoral process.  We can also include things like ballot harvesting, indiscriminate use of mail-in ballots, outdated voter rolls, motor-voter registration, lack of adequate checks for voter legitimacy, and a host of other issues, and there is little wonder that a majority of voters now question the validity of any of our elections.  This is a dangerous situation in our system which depends on free, fair, and honest elections to reflect the will of the people and in the selection of proper representatives to implement that will.

Compounding the evidence-based mistrust is the response of various authorities to calls for election audits.  Courts have rejected calls for audits, often on the flimsiest of excuses such as standing.  Authorities who should be investigating claims of fraud are instead often investigating those who make the claims.  People who assert that there was massive election fraud have been accused of partisanship, gullible conspiracy theory support, are dismissed as sore losers, and even labeled as domestic terrorists should they persist in their efforts.

All these issues do is reinforce the impression that there is something wrong with the 2020 election results that those in power don’t want discovered.  The more they oppose audits, the greater the suspicion of wrongdoing.

Distract, Deflect, Diffuse

About the time the Arizona audit started, there was great interest in audits and support for investigations.  In mid-July after Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium showed evidence of widespread election fraud and demonstrated just how vulnerable our election systems were to manipulation, there was great outcry for audits and pledges by representatives from all fifty states to pursue Arizona style forensic audits in their states.

Since then, our attention has wandered.  Vaccine mandates, inflation worries, a horrible Afghanistan exit, increasing Chinese belligerence, weaponization of the DOJ against U.S. citizens expressing legitimate concerns, decimation of our military through radical purges and forced vaccinations, Fascist use of private businesses to force employees to violate personal choice, and a growing host of other incursions on our lives have served to distract us from election concerns.

Opposition to election reforms, calling them partisan voter suppression efforts, deflects attention from the issues that were identified not just in the 2020 election, but also in several prior elections.  Covid is used as an excuse to keep and even extend mail-in voting, even though nearly every country that has tried that has discontinued the use due to their potential to enable massive fraud.

Mindspace is limited, and the introduction of a long list of significant concerns in nearly every area of our lives has diffused attention and reduced the amount of attention people have to give to any issue of importance. Even for those whose attention span exceeds that of Dory in Finding Nemo, it is a struggle to maintain focus on things like the need for election audits.

Moving On

With the passage of time, and the frustration of all the roadblocks that have been thrown up in front of 2020 audits, many people seem to think that it is futile to investigate 2020 fraud.  Better, they think, to just accept things and look to fix matters in 2022.

It has been repeated over and over again, that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different outcome.  Unless the fraud mechanisms that were employed so effectively in 2020 are identified, exposed, and addressed, why would anyone expect the 2022 elections to be any fairer and more honest than in 2020?  Insanity?  Wishful thinking?  Laziness?  Gullibility?

Elections Have Consequences

Nearly every problem we face today can be traced back to the outcome of the 2020 election.  Energy supply shortages, foreign policy fiascos, inflation, government overreach, agency weaponization, even Covid mismanagement and denial of effective treatments, among everything else, all come back to the 2020 election results.

Questioning Authority

Was the right person chosen as President?  Would audits show that someone else should be in that office?  Is that why there is so much opposition to audits?  What if audits would show that we don’t know who should be in office – that the results were so contaminated by fraud that the election results should never have been certified?

Is it better to have someone incompetent, or worse, anti-American in office than to have ambiguity about who might be the legitimate officeholder?  Is it better to have a nation divided and mistrustful of its electoral processes than to have audits that might expose corruption?  Do we still have a government of the people?

Unless we can answer these questions, we will continue to fester in mistrust and division.  The indications are not positive.  Mail-in ballots will continue to be widely used.  California style internet ballot generation adds another dimension to fraud potential.  Electronic election systems with demonstrated flaws and potential to implement fraud will continue to be used.  In some areas contracts have already been executed allowing more of these systems for use in 2022 and 2024.  People will still be allowed to vote without any more proof of eligibility than perhaps a utility bill, if that much.  Ballots will still be harvested, ballot boxes will continue to be stuffed, legal ballots will still be comingled with duplicates and other illegal ballots.  Vote totals will still be manipulated in compromised systems.

Failure Is Not An Option

We may know what to do to fix these things, but unless we take action, we will keep doing the same things over and over, hoping for a different result.  There will be no “Red Wave” in 2022.  If we still have a country in 2024, that outcome will be known as well, and it won’t be one we like, assuming we are even still around to complain.

Without fixing these things we can never be confident that any election will ever be free, fair, secure, and honest.  Without that confidence and trust, our Republic collapses.

Audits are key to fixing not only the problems in future elections, but also to the current problems with an administration that is exploiting the effective deadlock in Congress to legislate from the Oval Office.  I suspect they have a shredder there reserved for copies of the Constitution.  Without audits we will lack the leverage to force necessary election reform, and will lack the evidence to take actions needed to stop the abuse of power that is the source of nearly all the problems we suffer today.

Courage and Focus

We need both courage and focus.  Courage is needed to stand up to those forces that will oppose us because they benefit from things as they are.  Focus is needed so that we do not become distracted by lesser matters and become ineffective.  There will be many things that we encounter that are urgent, but not important, and other things that are important but not urgent.  We must remember that audits are both urgent and important.

To fail is to lose our country.  To believe otherwise is foolish self-delusion.  Let us not be stopped by the barriers we encounter but press forward against the opposition.

Let the light of audits shine into the darkness of corruption so the Grand Experiment in freedom that is this nation shall not perish.

Photo courtesy of Jewishfan From Boston at Flickr.