Blog Archives

11/21/2020

SIGN Petition for Republicans to Stand Up to Trump

Read Now

Please sign/share this nonpartisan grass-roots petition asking Republicans (House/Senate) to stand up to Trump: www.Change.org/GOPStandUp. There’s no time more important than now. He needs to hear from his own party.

Easy to do: click link, enter your info, select if you don’t want your info to show, and sign.

The President is using meritless claims to contest a legal/secure election and put our country in an unnecessary crisis, challenging our founding principle: Peaceful Transition of Power. (He can legally challenge results with merit-based legal claims until states certify in early December; that should be allowed of course.)

This is a nonpartisan effort, it’s a 1776 moment for people to sign up to a movement asking our elected Republican representatives to challenge something fundamentally wrong in our system.

0 Comments

11/16/2020

Fact Check: Giuliani Election Fraud Misinformation (Nov 16)

0 Comments

Read Now

False/Unproven Election Fraud Allegations by Rudy Giuliani as of 11-16-20:

Election software company (Dominion) has ties to Venezuela and China and is using software used to steal elections in other countries. False. The company says it is nonpartisan. “Dominion has no company ownership relationships with any member of the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative, Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela.”
Dominion is “a radical-left company” and has a person who is “a big supporter of antifa ... and has written horrible things about the president.” False. There is no evidence that Dominion is “radical-left” or has connections to antifa, the anti-fascist political movement. There is no information on the specific employee.
Dominion software “is done by a company called Smartmatic, a company that was founded by [Hugo] Chávez and by Chavez’s two allies, who still own it. And it’s been used to cheat in elections in South America.” Misleading. Smartmatic, an election technology company, was founded and incorporated in the United States in 2000 and is now headquartered in London. There is a long-ago corporate connection to Venezuela, according to news accounts in 2006. Smartmatic replaced Venezuela’s election machinery before a referendum that confirmed Chávez as president in August 2004, and the Venezuelan government made a $200,000 loan to another technology company owned by some of the same people as Smartmatic. With the money from its contracts with Venezuela, Smartmatic in 2005 bought Sequoia Voting Systems, which had contracts in 17 states. But it sold Sequoia in 2007 after an investigation was launched by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States into the company’s possible Venezuela ties. Dominion eventually purchased assets of Sequoia in 2010.
Smartmatic chairman is a close business associated of George Soros. True, but irrelevant. Mark Malloch-Brown is chairman of SGO Corp., the parent company of Smartmatic. Malloch-Brown is also on the board of Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which makes grants to civil society groups. George Soros is a billionaire backer of liberal causes. Soros otherwise has no connection to Smartmatic.
Smartmatic has methods for fixing elections “by calling a halt to the voting when you’re running too far behind” and “have done that in prior elections.” False. Giuliani has offered no evidence to back up this claim. In 2017, Smartmatic reported that the Venezuelan government reported a false turnout figure for a contested election, adding at least 1 million votes to the number. The company said the absence of election monitors from the opposition — which boycotted the election — allowed for the manipulation of turnout figures. The Venezuelan government, which needed a large turnout figure to lend legitimacy to the election, denied the numbers had been manipulated. The company stopped its work in Venezuela in 2018.
Trump “was ahead by 800,000 votes in Pennsylvania. Impossible to catch up unless you’re cheating, and same thing in Michigan, Wisconsin. False. In all three states, absentee and early votes could not be counted until election night because of rules set by GOP-controlled legislatures. So in-person votes, which leaned Republican, were reported first. Just in Pennsylvania, more than 1.4 million votes still needed to be counted after midnight. Because these votes were overwhelmingly for Biden, Trump’s lead was wiped out as the hours ticked by.
A witness in Michigan “was getting trained in how to cheat in September 2020.“ False. Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny denied a request to stop canvassing and certification of the county’s election results, saying the witnesses’ “interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”
Someone brought in 100,000 ballots in Michigan at 4 in the morning when it was determined that Trump had a 120,000-vote lead. False. Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny on Nov. 13 concluded that Carone’s “allegations are simply not credible.” The claim stems from a single affidavit filed by an alleged witness, Melissa Carone, a contract IT worker for Dominion. But Carone, who made a number of voter-fraud claims, does not make the conclusions that Giuliani makes. Carone simply says that food was brought in on two vans, but “I never saw any food coming out of the vans, coincidentally it was announced on the news that Michigan had found over 100,000 more ballots — not even two hours after the last van left.”

Source:
Washington Post Fact Checker

0 Comments

11/14/2020

Fact Check: Election Fraud Misinformation (Nov 14)

0 Comments

Read Now

False/Unproven Election Fraud Allegations as of 11-14-20:

A secret supercomputer was used to switch votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. False. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has flatly rejected such claims. CISA has said that safeguards — including auditable logs and software checks — used by states ensure accuracy in the vote totals. Election/computer experts provided examples of why the claim is not valid. Trump lawyers discussed on conservative media but refused to provide evidence to FactCheck.org, saying “stay tuned.”
Trump Tweet: “REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.” False. See response to #1. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” says a statement emailed to reporters Thursday by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency that oversees U.S. election security. “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” Dominion Voting Systems said in a statement that it “denies claims about any vote switching or alleged software issues with our voting systems.” There have been only a “small handful” of issues that were the result of human error involving voting technology, not the software itself, said Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election technology research and development nonprofit.
Same claim as #1 and #2. False. According to USA Today, OAN’s Lilia Fifield made the claim on air, per a clip on Mediaite. Election systems across the country are found to have deleted millions of votes cast for President Trump," she said. "According to an unaudited analysis of data obtained from Edison Research, states using Dominion Voting Systems may have switched as many as 435,000 votes from President Trump to Joe Biden, and the author also finds another 2.7 million Trump votes appear to have been deleted by Dominion including almost one million truckloads in Pennsylvania alone." Trump and Donald Trump Jr. then magnified the claim. A national coalition announced Thursday that there is no evidence that any voting software deleted or changed votes in last week's election, per USA TODAY.
Trump Tweet: “Report: Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide. Data analysis finds 221,000 Pennsylvania votes switched from President Trump to Biden. 941,000 Trump votes deleted.” False. See response above. In addition, Dominion calls the claim from Trump that its machines deleted 941,000 votes for him in Pennsylvania alone "impossible." Dominion only serves 14 counties in the state, which produced a total of 1.3 million votes — 52%, or 676,000, of which went to Trump. That only leaves 624,000 other votes, fewer than what Trump claims were switched.
A large number of votes in Michigan switched from Trump to Biden. False. The biggest example of a tabulation problem in the 2020 election involved a few thousand votes in Antrim County, Michigan, and was the result of human error, Perez said. It turned out Dominion was not to blame, according to the Michigan Department of State. “There was no malice, no fraud here, just human error,” County Clerk Sheryl Guy told The Associated Press. The tabulation error was corrected.
A CNN video from election night is evidence of the supposed vote-stealing operation in action. False. The error was actually a simple mistake by a research firm that gathers results data for CNN and others; it wasn’t a change in the reporting by election officials. (Those vote tallies are unofficial tallies, not final, official results.) The mistake was corrected about an hour later.
Trump Tweet: “The Consent Decree signed by the Georgia Secretary of State, with the approval of Governor @BrianKempGA, at the urging of @staceyabrams, makes it impossible to check & match signatures on ballots and envelopes, etc. They knew they were going to cheat. Must expose real signatures!” False. There is nothing in the consent decree that prevents Georgia election clerks from scrutinizing signatures. The legal settlement signed in March addresses accusations about a lack of statewide standards for judging signatures on absentee ballot envelopes. L. Lin Wood Jr. filed a federal lawsuit Friday questioning whether the secretary of state had the authority to require the process of signature verification outlined in the agreement. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said that not only is it entirely possible to match signatures, but that the state requires it.

Sources:
FactCheck.org
AP Fact Check
USA Today Fact Check

0 Comments

11/9/2020

Fact Check: Voter Fraud Misinformation (Nov 9)

0 Comments

Read Now

False/Unproven Voter Fraud Allegations as of 11-9-20

A glitch in the vote counting software used in Michigan led to thousands of ballots cast for Trump being counted for Biden. False. Michigan’s Secretary of State acknowledged a problem in one county where votes were initially incorrectly reported for Biden; this problem was quickly identified and corrected. "There is no evidence this user error occurred elsewhere in the state." This was human error, not a software glitch.

Dead people voted in Pennsylvania. No evidence yet. This is a common allegation that is sometimes true but is usually a) a person dying after mailing a ballot or b) administrative list-matching error. There is 1 verified account in Allegheny County of a person’s mail-in ballot being sent after they died (the person’s wishes were to vote for Trump).

21,000 ballots were cast in the name of dead people in Pennsylvania. False. Plaintiff (Public Interest Legal Foundation) did not provide proof to the judge.

Dead people voted in Michigan. False. Michigan election officials called the rumors "misinformation" noting that votes from dead people are rejected.

A video of searches of Michigan’s Voter Information Center shows that dead residents voted. False. Video actually showed legitimate voters, and examples implying dead voters were proven wrong. The false claims were shared online with the hashtag #stopthesteal, which has been circulated in recent days to suggest that votes are being stolen from Trump.

Poll workers illegally filled in ballots in Pennsylvania. False. Video shows election workers transcribing votes from damaged ballots so they could be scanned and recorded.

Election workers in Delaware County stamped clean ballots as received and then filled them in. False. Livestream video was an election worker transcribing votes from damaged ballots to clean ballots. the video was cropped to remove the bipartisan observers watching over election workers from 6 feet away.

Poll workers stuffed ballots in Flint, Michigan. False. Video shows poll workers in Russia, not in the United States. It has been circulating online since March 19, 2018.

Ballots were suspiciously mishandled in Detroit, Michigan. False. The video is of a WXYZ-TV cameraman using the wagon to carry his heavy camera equipment.

Votes eliminated in Arizona and Michigan because people were made to use Sharpie pens to mark their ballots, causing tabulation machine to cancel the vote. False. Maricopa County (Arizona) Elections Department tweeted on Election Day that voting centers use Sharpies so that ink does not smudge when ballots are counted.

More mail-in ballots were counted in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania than were requested or sent. False. An inaccurate graphic on a local TV station briefly showed this but was quickly corrected.

Wisconsin had more votes counted than people registered to vote. False. The number of registered voters listed in a viral tweet used the number from 2018. Registered voters in 2020 are a half million higher than in 2018.

Election officials in DeKalb County, Georgia, rejected 40,000 absentee ballots. False. Twitter users circulated false information. DeKalb County issued a statement: “Currently, there are approximately 200 ballots that need to be cured and each voter is being contacted.”

A map of voting in Michigan on election night showed a sudden increase of around 130,000 votes for Biden but none for Trump. Misleading. This map was shown, but it was a data entry error that was later corrected. The election monitoring website which created the map, said: "It was a simple error from a file created by the state that we ingested… the state noticed the error and produced an updated count." Matt Mackowiak, the user whose post was picked up by Trump, has deleted the tweet and apologized.

Trump alleged that Pennsylvania ballots counted after Election Day are being counted “... without any identification whatsoever.” False. Pennsylvania requires people voting in person to provide proof of identity if it is their first time voting at that precinct. That’s also required from from anyone registering for a mail-in ballot. Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State advised that ballots should not be counted if a name on a mail-in ballot can’t be verified, or if identification was not received. But such voters have six days after their ballot is received, but no later than Nov. 12, to show ID and have their vote count.

Trump alleged that in Pennsylvania “Democrats have gone to the State Supreme Court to try to ban our election observers very strongly.” False. Philadelphia officials appealed a state court ruling granting Trump’s observers closer access to the city’s vote-counters, saying they have provided access that complies with state law and contains necessary precautions in light of the pandemic.

Trump alleged “The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania, all part of a corrupt Democrat machine." False. The counting of votes is run by counties, many of which are controlled by Republicans.

Sources:
FactCheck.org: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/thin-allegations-of-dead-people-voting/
AP News: https://apnews.com/article/fraud-claims-aimed-trump-base-loyal-e1c3c5147d11a033fb43ebe66a29f7e8
AP News: https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-ap-fact-check-pennsylvania-media-social-media-cffc1bf12660177b0c651f98054a3a76
BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54811410
Philadelphia Inquirer: https://www.inquirer.com/news/trump-fact-check-pennsylvania-ballot-philadelphia-president-20201105.html

0 Comments

11/7/2020

Fact Check: Trump Post-Election Misinformation

0 Comments

Read Now

Post-Election Fact Check Summary (www.CRAPNow.org/Facts):

Counting illegal ballots. False. No evidence provided yet of systemic problems in voting or counting (including illegal ballots).
PA not allowing count observers. False. Trump lawyers admitted in court that observers allowed. Court case ruled in Trump’s favor, but only to allow observers to be closer to counters.
MI not allowing count observers in Detroit. False. Hundreds of observers from both parties allowed in Detroit.
PA Democrats allowed late ballots. False. State law allows (and state Supreme Court upheld) votes postmarked on Election Day to be counted within 3 days. Trump team provided no evidence of unallowable ballots received late.
GA election apparatus run by Democrats. False (and irrelevant). GA Sec of State is Republican.
GA ballots received after Election Day. Misleading. Military ballots received after Election Day are valid (confirmed by GA court).
Trump won if discount illegal votes. False. Trump team has provided no evidence of large-scale illegal voting in swing states.
Were winning in swing states until numbers miraculously changed. False. They were winning based on initial votes counted/reported in GA/MI/PA/WI, but that changed as more votes counted/reported.

Sources:

AP News Fact Check

0 Comments

Comprehensive Reform of

American Politics

SIGN Petition for Republicans to Stand Up to Trump

Fact Check: Giuliani Election Fraud Misinformation (Nov 16)

Fact Check: Election Fraud Misinformation (Nov 14)

Fact Check: Voter Fraud Misinformation (Nov 9)

Fact Check: Trump Post-Election Misinformation

Author

Archives

Categories

​Comprehensive Reform of​ American Politics

SIGN Petition for Republicans to Stand Up to Trump

Fact Check: Giuliani Election Fraud Misinformation (Nov 16)

Fact Check: Election Fraud Misinformation (Nov 14)

Fact Check: Voter Fraud Misinformation (Nov 9)

Fact Check: Trump Post-Election Misinformation

Author

Archives

Categories

Comprehensive Reform of

American Politics