Posted on 11/10/2020 11:02:14 AM PST by Kaslin
The presidential election might come down to Georgia, where years of subtle changes have been chipping away at election security in the state.
All eyes are on Georgia right now, where former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by a razor-thin margin of fewer than 12,000 votes, making the presidential contest there the closest in the country.
Votes were still being counted over the weekend, and state election officials said nearly all ballots would be counted by the end of the day on Monday. Because the margin between Biden and Trump is so thin, less than 1 percent, it appears Georgia is headed for a recount regardless of the final vote tally.
All of this is happening amid allegations of voter fraud and ballot-counting irregularities. Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler issued a joint statement Monday saying the management of the election in Georgia has become an “embarrassment.” They called on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, to step down for failing “to deliver honest and transparent elections.”
Other Georgia officials pushed back. Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Ducan told CNN that his office had seen “no credible examples” of voter fraud or irregularities, and Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting systems implementation manager, held a news conference Monday to reassure the media that everything is fine and that any irregularities are a result of human error, not fraud.
But the story in Georgia isn’t that simple. Structural changes to Georgia’s election law implemented piecemeal over the past decade, specifically changes to absentee mail-in voting, have made the state more susceptible to voter fraud. Whether it’s on a scale large enough to change the outcome of the presidential election, no one knows right now. That’s one of the things we might find out in a recount.
Because most Americans don’t closely follow election laws and lawsuits in Georgia, here’s a quick breakdown of the ways recent changes to Georgia’s election laws might be affecting the presidential election.
Back in March, Georgia election officials agreed to a settlement in federal court with the Georgia Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which had sued the state over its rules for absentee voting.
Specifically, the settlement introduced something called “ballot curing” to Georgia election law. Ballot curing is when voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for some reason—the signature on the ballot doesn’t match the one on file, the ballot is missing certain voter information, etc.—are notified and given a chance to correct or “cure” their absentee ballot. Under the settlement, state election officials agreed to contact voters whose ballots were rejected within three business days. If an absentee ballot is rejected in the 11 days before Election Day, officials agreed to contact the voter in the next business day.
Because more than 8,000 absentee ballots were rejected in the 2018 general election in Georgia, this provision in the settlement got the most media play. But it wasn’t the most important provision, which was a crucial change to the rules for accepting absentee ballots in the first place.
Previously, the signature on the absentee ballot had to match the signature on eNet, a computer database that maintains Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot information. If the signature on the ballot didn’t match, it was thrown out.
In a cleverly worded section of the settlement, Georgia election officials agreed to a subtle but profound change. Instead of having to match the signature on file with eNet, the absentee ballot signature only had to match the signature on the absentee ballot application. The key word in the settlement was “any.” That is, an absentee ballot can only be rejected if it doesn’t match “any” of the signatures on file—either in eNet or the signature on the absentee ballot application.
What’s more, an absentee ballot can only be rejected if, A) it doesn’t match any other signature, and B) “a majority of the registrars, deputy registrars, or absentee ballot clerks reviewing the signature agree that the signature does not match any of the voter’s signatures on file in eNet or on the absentee ballot application.”
Why is that change so important? Well, if someone fraudulently filed an absentee ballot application, that same person could then sign the absentee ballot itself, and since the two signatures would match, the ballot would be accepted. This is obviously a huge flaw in the system, but it’s one Georgia elections officials agreed to—and they did so without making the Georgia GOP a party to the lawsuit or the settlement, which means Georgia Republicans had no say in this major change.
The other big problem in Georgia you probably haven’t heard about is a legal challenge now underway in Fulton County, the state’s most populous county that encompasses Atlanta.
Earlier this year, Atlanta attorney Ray Smith issued written notice of an election challenge on behalf of two clients in Fulton County to the Georgia secretary of state and the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections. That challenge, which Smith first sent in July and issued again on November 2, alleges there are as many as 15,000 people registered to vote in Fulton County who no longer live there. Of those, some 1,246 are registered to vote outside of Georgia, and at least 24 of them, as of November 2, had already voted in Fulton County.
I talked to Smith on the phone Monday, and he told me the original purpose of the challenge was to be able to furnish information on potential absentee voter fraud to a handful of candidates for the Georgia state House of Representatives, in case there were contested elections in Fulton County, as had been forecast.
“We never, ever anticipated we would have to provide this information for the presidential election,” said Smith, who has since joined the Trump election team in Georgia.
Smith explained that he has evidence in the form of written affidavits that these people no longer live where the Fulton County voter rolls say they do. According to Georgia state law, they were supposed to have been removed from the rolls, but, said Smith, Fulton County refused to do so, as did a superior court judge earlier this year. The case is now under appeal with the Georgia Court of Appeals.
Let me repeat. Fulton County elections officials told the media and our observers that they were shutting down the tabulation center at State Farm Arena at 10:30 p.m. on election night only to continue counting ballots in secret until 1:00 a.m.
— David Shafer (@DavidShafer) November 10, 2020
There’s a history to all of this that goes back further than Stacey Abrams’s failed 2018 bid for the Georgia governorship. Efforts have been underway in Georgia for the past decade to expand early and absentee voting. Here’s a quick rundown.
In 2013, a federal judge ordered Georgia to expand its runoff election window to 45 days to allow more time for absentee ballots to come in. The decision exacerbated already weak mail-in voting rules like the ability to request an absentee ballot online with only a driver’s license or a state-issued ID number.
Then in 2017, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit group, successfully sued the state to require a fresh registration window for federal runoff elections. Before, you had to have been registered for the regular election in order to be eligible to vote in the runoff, which was considered a continuation of the same election. Now you can vote in the runoff even if you didn’t vote in the regular.
This change might have an outsized influence on the current election. For example, Georgia voters who want to cast a ballot in the January 5 runoff next year have until December 7 to register. Critics say that opens up federal runoff elections to the possibility that out-of-state voters might try to rush in and illegally take part in a runoff—a prospect that could come to pass if control of the U.S. Senate comes down to runoffs in Georgia.
I spoke to a longtime GOP activist and former elected official in Georgia who told me these changes have all been part of an effort to chip away at Georgia election law. “Everything they’ve been passing makes it easier to cheat,” he said. “This is the first election in my lifetime where there’s a great deal of uncertainty about whether we’ve had a safe and fair election.”
Can you say Dominion? I thought you could.
Used in every county in Georgia, I believe. It is an amazing piece of software as open access, backdoors, plain text admin password storage are built into the design to allow anyone anywhere to effortlessly hack the system and change or replace any or all voting files. Even the file servers are located outside the country making cyber crimes easier. Heck, they even thought of making the audit files open to anyone to change or replace at any time.
Some republicans are hate Trump. I imagine they’re like FOX. They can sense a rejection of Trump And they’re on board
In their hatred they reject the voters’ preference. That won’t end well for them
People still refuse to recognize that Trump is all about the survival of MGA as his voters are. Even trump supporters. I think they think he’s weak like they are. That he goes home and drinks or somehow loses his way. He does not.
And this was the first year it was used in GA!
Oh, so that’s how a state “turns blue”
Not only is the dominion software an issue in Georgia, there is also:
The 132,000 people with mover flags on file at USPS who voted in Fulton County.
We’ll have to also check on Zombie voters and Maidengate to see how many more illegal ballots were counted.
Then there are widespread allegations of ballot harvesting.
That’s not to mention officials in Fulton County illegally excluding Republican poll watchers.
The Secretary of State is full of crap. Only 12,000 votes separate the candidates currently and military ballots haven’t even been counted yet.
disgusted with gov kemp for putting the woman who was a rich unknown instead of giving that senate seat to doug collins... it was his.
collins, if as an incumbant, could easily win this seat.. kemp would not ..even with all the voices.. would not put collins in.. now look at it!
9000 military ballots sent out were not returned according to Raffensberger, the SoS. Not sure how many were returned.
Apparently the Kemp administration has been out to lunch since it took office.
When asked whether Trump's legal challenges will be enough to result in President Trump's reelection, Mr. Sekulow said it will be a long legal process that may continue into December. He also said he prefers to only talk about legal proceedings happening today and tomorrow. He doesn't want to speculate about the more distant future and the ultimate outcome. However, Mr. Sekulow did say that given the large number of lawsuits regarding a number of states, many things must all fall into place for the election to go to President Trump. I found that concerning because Sekulow is a Trump attorney and if anyone would have legal insight into Trump's challenges, it would be him. Based on Sekulow's comments, I'm guessing Biden has roughly a 75% chance of winning and Trump 25%. As legal developments continue and legal decisions are rendered, I'll adjust my rough probability estimates, hopefully in favor of President Trump. We shall see.
The left and their MSM media lap dog have orchestrated this perfectly to control Presidential election psychology to maximize angst and violence should Trump win in the end:
1. Before the election, cite erroneous polls showing Biden winning by big margins. “Biden is going to win by a landslide.”
2. Don’t call states for Trump during Election night that would have made Trump ahead in the Electoral Votes. (e.g. Florida should have been called for Trump way earlier). Thus Biden “appeared” to be winning by a long shot during the entire evening as-presented by the MSM.
3. When it appeared Trump was headed for a win, stop counting ballots in the battleground states during election eve. Everything mysteriously ground to a halt.
4. Activate the army of vote fraudsters that have been coached to commit massive voter fraud.
5. Under cover of the darkness at 4:00 a.m. while the Sheeple were sleeping, hundreds of thousands of Biden-only votes miraculously tilt the scales to help Biden in GA, MI, PA, WI.
6. The left-controlled media declares Biden as the winner, even though they don’t have the “right” to declare winners, only projected winners.
7. On cue, many DemoRats and Romney RINOs immediately “congratulate” the winner, Joe Biden. This further builds the perception among the Sheeple that Biden won legitimately. And foreign leaders did too. Except Mexico’s president.
8. Biden starts acting Presidential by discussing appointments/plans and even defying the Logan Act by having discussions as an “official” of the United States with foreign leaders.
THEN (if/when Trump’s campaign and lawyers prevail and prove the election was rigged and he won), HERE’S THE PRE-PROGRAMMED CONCLUSION by the easily-manipulated low-information voters: “Trump stole the election!”
In reality, the media and the Democrat machine stole the election.
They and you underestimate Trump
Don’t be surprised with Stacey running the Dem’s show.
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