Hearing Out The Other Side On Election Fraud

A careful review of responsible defenses of Biden's election show more problems than answers.

Over the past 16 months, there’s really only been one political issue that’s interested me—fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Sure, I was angry about the cruel withdrawal from Afghanistan, concerned about inflation, worried about the prospects of war in the Ukraine and—like many—continue to live in existential fear and marginalization over the question of vaccine mandates.

But all of those are just  consequences of the stolen election and the subsequent lie that 2020 was really the most secure election in the history of civilization itself. The fraud was the tumor that spread. 

So, I dove in and did a lot of reading. But I also promised myself one thing—that if the other side made a truly honest effort to show me the election was legitimate, I would hear them out.

DEFINING “AN HONEST EFFORT”

I’m not talking about some idiot at USA Today writing a column and asserting, without evidence, that the election was fair. I’m not talking some suck-up Republican running to CNN or MSNBC to give their pearl-clutching take of how, in spite of how much they wished it were otherwise, that Joe Biden really got 81 million actual people to come out and vote for him. I’m not talking about a fact-checker at Facebook labeling something as misinformation from the comfort of their living room while working in their pajamas. I’m talking about some real effort.

Over 16 months, there’s been two such efforts, at least that I’m aware of. Both came from the Republican side. Which makes sense. If you’re a Democrat and you have the entire corporate apparatus pushing your lie and deplatforming anyone who contests you, why bother? But Republicans know it was their state legislatures that certified these elections, that a lot of us were watching them do it and we aren’t yet ready to be in a forgiving mood as primary season begins.

So, the Michigan state legislature issued a report that can essentially be considered a Republican report. So did the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. I’ve read both of them. I take them both at their word. And all it does, it leave me further convinced the 2020 election was dirty. Let me explain why.

THE ANALYTICAL PROCESS I USED

I believe the legitimate case for voter fraud is found in The Navarro Report. Peter Navarro, a former aide to President Trump, laid this out in a meticulous manner, drawing heavily on primary source material for his findings. The Navarro Report represents the opening bid, as it were.

This should be considered the conventional baseline for anyone seeking to defend the election. Not the anecdotes that are around in the media, from the ballot dumps of Wisconsin and Michigan, to the suitcases of ballots in Georgia, to Mike Lindell’s claims about the voting machines, to Sidney Powell’s “release the Kraken”. I’m not saying I don’t believe any of those stories or claims. Some I do, some I don’t, some I’m still in wait-and-see mode.

What I am saying is that The Navarro Report focuses on old-school ballot fraud and identifies with precision the number of ballots that are to be disputed and why. Ergo, an effective response would challenge the claims on that report. I don’t see why that’s an unreasonable expectation.

Then, as I read the reports on Michigan and Wisconsin, I would allow (as far as reason allows) to accept their claims. If one of them conflicted with The Navarro Report, I would simply put it aside and into the category of “in dispute”. Because let’s face it, none of us in the peasantry really know much of anything. We know who we trust. In a conflicted debate, I still trust Navarro, but fairness requires acknowledging when an honest effort is made to dispute his findings.

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The Michigan report came out in June 2021. I wrote an analysis of this report after it came out when Corned Beef Catholicism was still on a different platform. You can read it here. The shorthand is that the Michigan GOP completely tap-danced around the largest chunks of potentially illegal votes.

For example, they contested Navarro’s claim of 482 dead voters and ignored his claim of 174,000 absentee ballots lacking corresponding voter registration information in the system.  The was an election decided by 154,000 votes. The Michigan GOP only interviewed people who believed in the election’s legitimacy and did not reach out to those who didn’t. That’s not exactly an investigation. It’s more of a political cover-your-rear document.

The Wisconsin report, befitting the good people of my old home state, is different. It makes an honest effort to examine all the key claims of The Navarro Report. They don’t mention the report by name, but they deal with its substance. And they conclude Biden probably won the state.

So that’s it, right? Well, if you only read the report’s executive summary and don’t go any further.  

PROBLEMS IN WISCONSIN

The core charge made by The Navarro Report is that 216,000 votes were cast in violation of Wisconsin law regarding indefinitely confined (IC) status. To make a very long story, very short, this is a way of getting an absentee ballot with much laxer verification. It’s intended for people who really can’t leave their house. The Trump campaign team did considerable investigative work to determine that huge numbers of these ballots could not be connected to people who were legitimately confined to their home. There was no area more likely to produce fraudulent ballots in large numbers.

There was also no area that Trump’s team was more anxious to unveil in what, was supposed to be a debate on January 6, than the massive abuse of IC voting in Wisconsin. This is a state that was decided by 20,000 votes. Ten times that number were alleged to be illegal. But after the ruckus at the Capitol, Republican officeholders decided that what was fraud in the morning could no longer be debated at night. So the world did not see just how many laws were broken in getting Biden his votes.

Now we come back to the Wisconsin report. The report actually says that yes, there were over 200,000 votes cast in violation of state law. Where the report breaks company with Navarro is that they believe the votes were legitimately from regular people who just happened to be unaware of the law. This dispute falls into the are of “contested claim”.

Here’s my problem—anyone is more than entitled to a belief that those illegal votes were honest mistakes and that they were intended by legitimate people for Joe Biden. To again keep a really long story really short, I don’t agree. There were factors that the report didn’t consider. But because of the failures of the Trump campaign to execute basic election security on November 3, we won’t be able to know for sure. The 45th (and 47th?) President will have to live with that.

But what no one is entitled to is to certify an election that—even interpreted in the way most favorable to Biden—was clearly lawless, with illegal votes that far exceed the claimed margin of victory.

There are a lot of distinctions that have to be made when discussing this subject and it can get more than a little frustrating. Here’s a big example--there’s a difference between having an opinion on who you think won the state, and having the confidence to legally certify the election.

So, the question is this—how can you first acknowledge 216,000 illegal votes and still say the Wisconsin election should have been certified?

CONSEQUENCES OF REFUSING TO CERTIFY

A refusal to certify is not the same as declaring a winner. It simply means declining to assign your state’s electoral votes on the grounds that we can’t be sure who won. Wisconsin alone would not have impacted the outcome. Wisconsin, combined with two other states refusing to certify, would have resulted in no candidate receiving the required 270 electoral votes.

This would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives. It’s anybody’s guess what would have happened there. The way an election in the House works is that each state gets one vote. Republicans control more state delegations (26-23-1), even though the Democrats have ten more seats overall.  Although given the immense media pressure on the GOP, and how fast they cave, I think it’s a reasonable guess there would have been enough Republican defections to still elect Biden.

But that’s just fun speculation. So is the question of who really won the state of Wisconsin. I’m confident enough that it was Trump, that I would gladly hang a “Trump Won” banner outside my condo if the HOA rules allowed it. The Wisconsin report feels it was Biden. Which one of us is right really doesn’t matter.

That’s because we agree on the basic question—that the number of illegal votes far exceeded the margin of victory. As it did in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. That means you do not certify. I invite the good folks in Wisconsin to take their findings to the next logical leap of de-certification and not worry so much about trying to keep the Left happy.

So, let’s bring this full circle, pull the camera back and put it in all perspective. Even if you give Joe Biden every reasonable benefit of the doubt, the best you can come up with is that he probably won a wildly lawless election that should never have been certified.

And then there’s still that other scenario lingering out there—the one that says he managed to lose a lawless election that was rigged in his favor. Maybe that’s what Barack Obama was talking about when he reportedly told aides “Don’t ever underestimate Joe’s ability to (bleep) things up”.

Who knows for sure. What we do know is this—that even the best arguments about the legality of the 2020 vote are not particularly flattering to Biden.  

And never forget that it could have been stopped. The Trump campaign could have stopped it at the point of attack. Republican state legislatures could have stopped when it came to certifying their votes. Republican congressional officials could have at least tried to stop it on January 6, 2021. None did. And here we sit today. Remember in November, to be sure. Also remember whenever your state’s GOP primary is.